Gifts For "Birthmoms", "Nurturing
Birthmothers"
Open adoption - it's such an unnatural, man-made "institution".
As in closed adoptions, mothers are essentially banished while unrelated
people raise their children.
In the United States, adoption agencies and adoption attorneys
are enthusiastically promoting "open" adoption to get
more babies for their customers. They encourage pregnant women to
select permanent caregivers for their children long before their
babies are even born. The mothers may later get pictures or letters
from the adopting people - they may even get a few occasional visits
with their child. Some moms later say they were used by the adopters
as a babysitter - right up until their child was old enough to figure
out who his real mother was.
The moms who get visits may find it very awkward - dare they tell
their own child they love her?
The moms who get no visits wait anxiously by their mailboxes looking
for their quarterly letter and a few pictures. The letters are often
late, the photos often outdated or out of focus.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to "be nice" some of the permanent
caregivers select gifts - trinkets - to thank "their
birthmother" for the use of her son or daughter. The adopters
may give the moms photo albums to put pictures of their growing
child, whom they may never actually see in person. They may give
journals to help the mom with her grief of losing her own firstborn
- or later born - child to adoption. Lockets, bracelets, gifts of
handmade soap.
"Bring flowers or balloons to the hospital" advises one
website. Prospective adopters go to the hospital bearing cards -
not cards congratulating the new mother - but cards "thanking
the birthmom" (ex-mother?) for her baby. If a woman is considering
divorce, she is not called a "divorcee" but is still a
"wife" and when a mother is considering adoption she is
not an "ex-parent" or "birth object" - she is
the MOTHER and PARENT of her child.
Evidently anything goes - anything that will make the mother feel
beholden to the "loving" people who want to get her baby.
There is a new adoption ritual that sometimes occurs with "open"
adoption - that ritual is called "an entrustment ceremony".
In an "entrustment ceremony" the naive mother hands her
own child over to the adopters. The "entrustment ceremony"
is a party of sorts, a party to celebrate the destruction of one
family to get a baby for another. Entrustment ceremonies" (and"birthmother's
day") are a great time for adopters to honor a woman not
as the mother of her child, but as "birth" equipment that
produces "adoptable" babies.
NURTURING "Birthmoms"?
Once they have obtained her baby, the adoption agency will still
want to "counsel" the "birthmom" to build up
her confidence so she can help them talk other moms into surrendering
their sons and daughters, too. This is known as post-adoption "counseling".
The mother does not see her baby crying for her mother - and as
time goes on, the prospective adopters will not tell her of the
issues that arise for a child raised in an environment where she
is unrelated to everyone.
Do people who are infertile or gay deserve the "gift"
of a mother's own beloved child? I think not.
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