Absolutely. Not for everyone, but not to be overlooked, and most of all, not to be looked down upon.
A recent diary entitled "Is adoption the better option" reprinted an angry rant from a birthmother who had had an unhappy adoption experience. She was obviously in a great deal of pain, and I'm not here to diminish her story. In the comments, however, I saw a lot of fairly typical and not-so-subtle anti-adoption rhetoric which, sadly, is all too often promulgated more out of personal prejudices than out of fact. I'd like to do a bit to dispel some of that.
A little about my experience. Before I go on, I will tell you a bit about my bona fides with respect to this subject matter. As a lawyer, I have been involved in the field for nearly twenty years. I was on the adoption laws committee of my bar association for many years, during which time I served, among other things, as legislative liaison and as chair. I am the co-author of a bit of legislation in my home state which created, among other things, the model for the putative father registry, a legislative device which has ensured that children whose unmarried biological fathers had shown no interest in parenting could be legally freed without risk of a last-minute contest as in some of the heartbreaking high-profile adoption contests that used to be routinely featured on daytime talk TV. For three years I was the a division chief for my state's child welfare agency. I served as an assistant guardian ad litem in the busiest adoption courtroom in America for several years. How busy? There were years in which we saw between four and five thousand petitions for adoption - that's over eighty petitions a week, and a sizeable percentage involving multiple children. While I never had a big private practice, I've represented everyone in the triad - birthmothers, adoptive parents and adopted children. I used to be something of a regular on my local adoption speakers' circuit, and in the process, I met more people on every side of the triad (birth parent(s), adoptive parent(s), adoptees) Finally, closer to home, there was a time when my husband and I served as foster parents to pregnant teens who had made adoption plans for their babies. What I am not: a sociologist, a scholar or a statistician. The information offered here comes from my own experiences. It is one woman's view, and in no way a definitive work on the topic.
How it was: Before I go on, however, I'd like to add a caveat. My experience is all within the last twenty years. I mention that because during that time there's been a huge sea-change in the institution. As I began exploring the field, the process was controlled almost exclusively by agencies and a few high-volume lawyers who did private placements. And everyone involved - birth parents, adoptive parents and most of all the children were at the mercy of their policies or whims. Birthmothers were given little or no control in the selection of adoptive families for their children. Many agencies were run by religious organizations and would not place with families outside of their own church membership. (Good luck if you were Jewish, for example) Singles would be turned away, and gays knew better than to ask. Couples could be screened out based on age, their own parents' drug or alcohol history, weight (yes, weight!) or any number of other characteristics which might have little or no relationship to their likelihood of success as parents. People were probed endlessly about their fertility history, their SAT scores, and whether the wife ever intended to work again - and rejected if they didn't give the right answers. All of which we would think of us MYOB questions if asked of a couple hoping for a child in the more traditional, biological way. Most significantly, birthparents and prospective adoptive parents were kept far, far apart, as though the sky would fall if they should ever meet. A giant wall of secrecy was placed between these people who would intimately and forever be connected to each others' lives through the life of the child they shared.
Of course the more "flexible" a couple was - ie., the more willing to take a "less desirable" child, the lower the cost might be and the more "flexible" the agencies might be. While white families willing to take an African American child were often told that they couldn't because they couldn't possibly understand and respond to the child's cultural needs, the same couple would be welcomed if they were willing to take a biracial black-white baby. Go figure. (At the time, it seemed to me that biracial babies were disproportionately represented among children available for adoption. My own sense was that perhaps there were birthmothers' families who could bear the stigma of a child born out of wedlock, but could not bear the stigma of a biracial child. (No doubt some of them are looking at the White House today and wondering what they were thinking). There were a few overseas programs, the biggest and best known was Holt, whose primary focus was Korean orphans. There were a few Latin American programs as well, and some children were available from India. Many local agencies worked with a big international agency and made overseas placements available to the same clients that they had deemed ineligible for healthy white infants. International placement was pretty much the only shot for a single parent. Very few parents travelled to the child's country of origin, rather, the children were strapped into the seats of airliners lined with pillows and flown en-masse to large hub cities like Minneapolis where they met their forever families for the first time on airport concourses.
There were, of course, children who had been wards of the state. They were older, often in sibling groups, and if not physically disabled, neveretheless bearing the scars of a short lifetime of misery. But at that time, the prevailing theory in social work was "family reunification" and so relatively few children were ever legally freed to be adopted. Indeed, I remember hearing an older, more experienced GAL tell me that many former foster children showed up in court after their eighteenth birthday, when neither the state nor the birthparents' consent was required, to be adopted by the foster parents who had raised them.
How it changed: I can't tell you exactly why or how adoption practice came to change, although I have some ideas. Boomer women seeking to adopt, having come up expecting to be more in control than their mothers were, were less likely to take "no" for an answer and more resourceful in their quest, and turned to a host of methods to find children available for adoption. Some of the doctors here no doubt can report having received countless letters from families looking for adoptable infatns. Birthmothers, particularly adult birthmothers, were also less acculturated to submitting themselves to unbending agency polices and more willing to consider reading the want ads etc. to find the right family for their baby. And while their predecessors had surely wanted to know where their children had gone, a younger generation of women felt more empowered to demand it. Further, the good agencies had evolved enough to observe that all that secrecy wasn't so healthy, and more and more began to embrace openness. And as the agencies who became more flexible became more successful, many of the others followed. At the same time, "adoption consulting" became something of a cottage industry. Because it was unregulated, the practitioners ranged from the very honest and highly skilled to those to whom I wouldn't (with apologies to the wozzle lovers among us) entrust a dog. Consultants told prospective families what agencies might accept them, how to formulate a plan to find an adoptable child, what a good "Dear Birthmother" letter might look like. They had 800 numbers and took calls from people with an interest in placing a child. They learned what hospitals would hold adoptive parents up for a higher fee or cash up front. They knew who offered LaMaze classes that a birthmother could attend with the adoptive mother. The best ones, IMHO, learned to work with agencies so that the adoptive parents were licensed as foster parents and got some real adoption education before accepting a placement. The bad ones? Well, there are predators in every field, and this is no different. Those who mislead birthmothers, those who dangle cash or other material benefits in front of the desperate, those who take the prospective parents' money and run. And most of all, those who view the child as a commodity. Many operate with virtually no regulation, and the internet has made that possible on a scale never before imagined.
Another change? Along with virtually every other aspect of society, adoption saw the emergence of the support group. Instead of feeling isolated, families were encouraged to get together to share their experiences and let their kids meet others like them. Birthparent support groups grew too, as did groups for adult adoptees, each with its own spin, some more outspoken than others. The veil of secrecy that had kept everyone, birthparents, adoptive parents and adoptees quiet about their family history was being slowly lifted as these groups became active not only socially, but politically, and lobbied for law changes that have added transparency and accountability into the process.
Adoption is a creature of state law. That means that the rules of the game are different depending on where you live and where you adopt. There is something called the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children which should provide some consistency among member states, but sadly, there are still places where it is honored in the breach, Utah being a prime example.
Who adopts? Everybody. I've seen families of every race, ethnicity, political and religious stripe. And I've seen them adopt healthy white infants, profoundly disabled sibling groups from state child welfare agencies, children from overseas orphanages, and adults. (Yes, an adult can be be adopted in most, if not all, states). Singles, gay couples, siblings, grandparents. Who places? Everyone, although placements go up when the economy tanks. I've seen birthparents return to place a second child with the family who adopted a previous child. (I knew of one woman who voluntarily placed more than half a dozen babies, one at a time) I've seen married birthparents. I've seen birthfathers who assisted in labor and delivery, and far more who vanished before the baby ever arrived.
So is adoption an option?
Absolutely. But if you're considering it, from any point in the equation, educate yourself about your state's laws. Find others who have walked that walk - from all sides - and learn from them. And if you're not considering it, please don't ask a woman who is making a placement plan why she's not having an abortion instead. That's awfully rude. And don't accuse people who are considering adoption to build their families of planning to "buy" or "steal" someone else's child, or regale them with stories about how dysfunctional their families will be. Do what you'd want done to you - wish them well and support them, even if they're not walking a path you'd choose. I'll be in and out a bit but am happy to answer questions as I am able.