Adoptee Opins Sought

Many on the receiving end of adoption, celebrate a "Gotcha! Day."

From where I sit, as a loser in this uneven, lopsided transaction...I find it a bit offensive.

I cannot help wondering how adoptees feel about it?

Were any of you subjected to it growing up, or is it too new? Either way, how do you feel when you hear adoptive families celebrating the day the "Gotcha!" -- snatched you up and away!

This needs to be added to my list of "Adoption Dichotomies" posted on the 8th.

On other issues:

• How old is old enough to be found by the mother who bore and lost you to adoption?

• How old is old enough for a mother to go directly to her offspring and not ask the "permission" of his/her adoptive parents? 18? 21? older? younger? Never?
  As soon as she can?
  

• Would it have been preferable of you - and at what ages - to have had contact made to your adoptive parents first?

• OR, would rather have been just left alone forever, until YOU were ready to initiate contact?

• What was done right/wrong for you in YOUR contact?

• How do you feel in general about having been adopted?
  
• sucks
• no big deal
• would have preferred to have been born into adoptive family
• would have preferred to stay with and been raised by my immediate family?
• What's the best and worst parts about being adopted? Has it caused you pain? Confusion? Anger? Other feelings?
  
• Would you recommend others adopt?
• Would you recommend someone you love place a child for adoption?
  

Annette Baran: Pioneer of Open Records

A pioneer of Open Records and open Adoption speaks out about HONEST, ethical child alternative care and the importance of maintaining consanguinity and provenance.



You need to watch and listen to ALL!

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibxq6Wgvh0s&feature=related

Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a10ywSZgdpA&feature=related

Part Four: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYMf_YSBLfQ&feature=related

Part Five: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM6yeEbcbVE&feature=related

I hope there will be a Part 6 in which Annette would repeat what she has said previously:

“It seems to us that, if we take off our blinders, we must admit that we have been co-opted in supporting a system that causes pain and lifelong suffering to all the parties involved. ... Relinquishment of children to a new set of parents, as a final, irrevocable act, severing all rights of the birthparents, must be discontinued...

“Open adoption, which we helped pioneer, is not a solution to the problems inherent in adoption. Without legal sanction, open adoption is an unenforceable agreement at the whim of the adoptive parents. Instead, we propose a form of guardianship adoption that we believe would be in the best interests of all concerned, with special benefits for the adoptee for it would decrease the abandonment/rejection issue and permit the child to know the birthparents as real people who cared about him but could not raise him...

“We have always maintained that adoptive placement is the last resort, to be considered only when all other options have been thoroughly explored….The struggle to open records and address the wrongs of the past must continue. However, simultaneously and with equal emphasis, we must begin to look at the future and address the need for sweeping change...

“Why have we not made prevention a major issue?

“We have always maintained that adoptive placement is the last resort, to be considered only when all other options have been thoroughly explored….The struggle to open records and address the wrongs of the past must continue. However, simultaneously and with equal emphasis, we must begin to look at the future and address the need for sweeping change.”

Adoptive Monster of the Year: Judith Leekin, The Face of Evil

In this AP photo, Judith Leekin adorns a comb-over to cover her devil horns.

This one-woman "diabolical" axis of all that is evil wins the prize of
Adoptive Monster of the Year -
hands (or thumbs) down!

We can only hope that he is treated deservedly when she enter prison for ten years for a fraudulent scheme in which she adopted 11 disabled children under four aliases, while collecting $1.68 million meant for their care to support a lavish lifestyle.

Leekin separately faces 10 counts of aggravated child abuse and other charges in Florida, where prosecutors say she used physical violence against the children, restrained them with plastic ties and did not allow them to go to school.
The be-ach cried in court, saying she missed "her" kids. I wonder if she misses the severely handicapped boy who disappeared from her home in 2000 and has never been found!

BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE!! New York City child welfare managers helped steal hundreds of thousands of dollars meant to help adopted children. Three workers -- the Supervisor of Adoptions for ACS, the deputy director of ACS's payment services department, and an outside contracting agency that works with ACS -- funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars out of ACS accounts to Stay Thompson who did not have any adopted children.

Some of the money was used by these greedy men to "adopt" cars like a BMW and a Range Rover.

July 15

"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they don’t remain the way they are."
St. Augustine

Today is my beautiful, precious daughter Alicia’s birthday.

She was born on July 15, 1967. I saw her a few times while she was in foster care and then again I got to see her three times when she was 16 years old.

I hope to be re-reunited with her and visit longer in some afterlife....if there is one.

She is memorialized at http://TwiceLost.org/memorial.html

Happy 41st Leesh!

Peaceful wishes to all,

Mirah Riben

Ralph and Alice's Adoption

The Honeymooners: The Adoption
Running Time: 37 min. Episode #57

Originally seen as a 37-minute sketch on the March 26, 1955, edition of The Jackie Gleason Show, "The Adoption" is easily the most poignant and heartrending of all the Honeymooners episodes.

The Kramdens want to adopt a baby. "We wanted this more than anything in the world," says Ralph. The adoption agency tells Alice her application is being considered, but that a staff worker must come to the apartment to look it over before final approval is granted. A pall falls over the Kramdens because they think once the worker sees their crummy apartment they'll be denied a child. They borrow furniture--a TV set, drapes, refrigerator, stove, new table and chairs, couch, etc.--to make the apartment look presentable.

Ralph and Alice are as nervous as two kids on their first date as they wait for Miss Lawrence from the agency to arrive. As she is interviewing the Kramdens, Ralph almost blows everything when he notes with amazement that a light goes on in the refrigerator when the door is opened. But no amount of homina-hominas can keep the charade going when Frank, the iceman, comes in with the Kramdens' daily delivery for the icebox. Ralph and Alice finally admit they redecorated the apartment with borrowed goods to make an impression. We're not cheating to get a child, Ralph says desperately, we're fighting to get one.

Miss Lawrence says the agency is not as concerned with furnishings as it is with finding couples who really want children, and that she's never met a couple who want a child more than the Kramdens. Approved!

The Nortons accompany the Kramdens to the hospital to pick up the baby. When the child is wheeled out Ralph's joy turns to anger when the doctor says the baby is a girl. Ralph insists that he get a boy, and the doctor goes off to try to arrange it. Alice, near tears, leaves the room, leaving Ralph alone with the baby. Ralph apologizes to the baby for not wanting to bring her home. As the infant weaves her magic on Ralph, his arguments for not wanting a girl become less convincing. By the time the doctor returns with the news that the Kramdens can get a boy, Ralph turns on him like a lion defending his cub--Ralph wants the girl. "Ralphina" is a Kramden.

A week later, the doctor visits with somber news: the child's natural mother wants the baby back. Ralph, enraged at the doctor for bringing the news and at the mother for trying to reclaim the child, pounces on the doctor and manhandles him. The doctor hastily explains that the Kramdens are Ralphina's legal parents now [in just one week??] and that he and the adoption agency will support them in a custody fight; he came only because the mother was so insistent.

He leaves, and Ralph, emotionally unprepared for this turn of events, reacts the only way he knows how: he hollers, in pain. Alice, as bad as she feels, empathizes with the mother. Ralph tries to suppress similar feelings, but eventually his conscience overrules his heart: they must give up the child. He goes upstairs to the Nortons' to call the doctor, leaving Alice alone, sobbing.

Running time: 37:05

On January 8, 1966, Audrey Meadows returned for 1 special episode, "The Adoption", a classic Jerry Bresler & Lyn Duddy musical episode featuring Ralph & Alice's attempt to adopt a baby. It was part of the "Jackie Gleason and His American Scene Magazine" This would be the last episode filmed in black & white and is a precursor to what is now known as the "Color Honeymooners" over the next 4 seasons.

NOTE: I guess this was case in which "art" did not affect life.

Adoption Dichotomies

There are perhaps more contradictions in the world of adoption than agreement amongst those whose lives are irrevocably changed by it.

ONE: Fundraising - by private parties and even churches - to help people pay ridiculously high adoption fees to obtain children through private adoption, thus supporting the often coercive and exploitive world of child trafficking...RATHER THAN fundraising to help support mothers in crisis keep their families intact.

This has become so widespread here are websites and articles that lists various to fundraise to support baby brokers:
http://www.thelaboroflove.com/articles/adoption-fundraising-ideas/
http://www.easy-fundraising-ideas.com/programs/adoption-fundraising/
http://adoption.families.com/blog/adoption-fundraising-part-1
http://loans.adoption.com/financing/loans-fundraising.html
www.exploringadoptionblog.com/adoption/2006/12/adoption_fundra.html -

Agencies, of course, encourage this practice - beg and humiliate yourself, use your freidns and acquaintances to support your "need" to obtain a child at any cost: www.achildsdesire.org/fundraising.htm

This one specializes in one fundraising method: http://annabears0.tripod.com/

And there there are the untold number of sites of private individuals and churches holding fundraisers:
http://thesugarbeanscloset.blogspot.com/2007/09/adoption-fundraising.html

Seems like an especially OBVIOUS irony that children are most often placed into adoption because of lack of financial ability on the part of their natural families...and yet these strangers who cannot afford to have one, get help!

TWO: Adoptive parents complaining about news reports that identify adopted chidlren as adopted children. This is very odd inasmuch as politicians, celebs and others who adopt often use the fact as a badge of their nobility and altruism.

I cannot count the number of blogs of people walking those who chose to read through the TRIALS and TRIBULATIONS of their "adoption journeys." Google "adoption journey and you will see THOUSANDS...this is just a very tiny sampling:

http://comeunity.com/adoption/realmoms/3journey.html
http://adopttaiwan.wordpress.com/
http://scottsadoptionjourney.blogspot.com/
http://greysonsjourney.com/
cornishadoptionjourney.blogspot.com/
ajourneytoadopt.blogspot.com/
www.hiestandadoption.org/
www.galatians4.com/
www.homeschoolblogger.com/suemy6/
markandcourtney.blogspot.com/
halbaueradoption.blogspot.com/
adoptionblog.mpdsales.com/
plumleyfamilyadoption.spaces.live.com/
http://www.familyadoptionfundraising.org/home.html

Readers are expected to offer sympathy every step of the way, starting with a long list of failed infertility treatments. TSK TSK what a shame they make you jump through all those hoops! Imagine, a home study to ensure you might actually be fit parents! How UNFAIR these blogs claim, that others can give birth without having to complete all these forms, etc.

If they go overseas, that's another entire adventure and full of tales of unfair delays, etc. etc. Kinda brings me to IRONY NUMBER...

THREE: Adopters can be angry when their adoption falls through, but how dare a natural mother be "an angry, bitter" person about actually and literally losing HER child!

FOUR: The myth that adoption is 'the same as giving birth' and nurture trumps nature. The so-called "forever mothers" who raise a child are the "real" mothers...that is of course until their child turns out to be difficult. They are then the first to cry "bad blood."

Then there other blogs - a smaller number - who also seek sympathy, but in in these it's for the fact that they ordered a and paid for a BMW and wound up with a lemon, or simply a Chevrolet.

Just yesterday I was speaking to someone about one of my books on adoption. A woman within hearing distance, butts in ad says, "Oh, you've written a book about adoption?" "Yes," I reply.

The woman then puffs out her chest ad very proudly announced: "I'm an adoptive mother" and then pointing to an 8-10 year-old red haired tyke next to her, she says: Domestic!" as if describing the type of automobile she had chosen, a domestic model over an import.

It seems clear to me that adoption is often analogous to the olf joke about husbands and wife and their division of responsibility for their children's behavior. "When he's good he's mine; when he's bad he's hers/his."

So it seems with adoption, that adoptive parents are allowed to point out their children's adoption status if it is thought to be to their advantage - a source of status for them...or if they want to separate themselves from a "bad seed." But others should not.

Why? Is adoption like "the N word" in that it's acceptable when a Black person uses it but not at all proper or acceptable for a white person to? If so, that makes the word adoption a dirty word.

In all of this, one can only wonder what sense of self the impressionable children growing up with these dichotomies are learning? What messages are being sent about them? That they are the proud "domestic" model their Mom obtained and is proud to show off? That the word adoption is good or bad? Something to be ashamed of? Something private like masturbation? No, that's a bad analogy because masturbation is natural and on does it to themselves - whereas adoption is unnatural and done TO children and their natural families.

Perhaps it's most like divorce. When an acquaintance announces they are newly divorced, the polite response is often to ask whether that is a good thing or not for them. New divorces are sometimes eager to get back into dating and will make it known immediately that they are in fact divorced. being divorced myself for more than a decade, I prefer to identify myself as a single woman rather than a divorce.

But again, that doesn't quite fit as it is I who get to make that choice. It is beyond my writing abilities to come up with any analogy for the oddity of adoption.

Be sure to see also: Gotcha Day! for the biggest irony of all.

Material Mamma

Madonna's marriage was rumored to be on the rocks even before she adopted - or more accurately while she was adopting - David Banda. The media said that Ritchie did not want the adoption.

Now, her divorce and infidelity rumors have reached epic proportion with her being named as "the other woman" in Alex Rodriguez's divorce.



And as it all unfolds...all I can think of is what does David Banda's father think of all this? Yohane Banda said that he had been told the Kabalah follower was "a good Christian woman."





On a far less serious note, I also cannot help but wonder why this material woman with all her wealth cannot afford a root touch-up before being photographed in public...not just once, by consistently:

(L) Madonna and boyfriend Warren Beatty in 1989, who according to Madonna's brother's tell-all book, suspected her of cheating on him. (R) Madonna currently (and A-Rod)

Below, another view of the rich bitch with the baseball dude.

Get a colorist, woman! And get rid of that awful dress while you're at it.