A Private Matter No Longer: the Stigma of Adoption Fades, But Some Strings Persist

STAMFORD, Conn. -- Charlene Kelly was a 20-year-old college senior nearing final exams when she missed her period. Stunned by her unwanted pregnancy, she dove into her studies, pretended the daily nausea wasn't morning sickness, and engaged in what she calls ``complete denial.''

Eight months later, in November 1993, Kelly became one of 40,000 women who give up their babies for adoption each year. It was a gut-wrenching decision, made tougher by her belief that people perceive women like her as promiscuous or uncaring. Or evil.

``Most things about adoption seem to be changing for the better,'' explains Kelly, who asked that her real name not be used. ``But birth mothers are still widely seen as these terrible witches who give away their children.''

Notwithstanding the lingering ambivalence about birth mothers, adoption is undergoing a quiet revolution. Indeed, after generations when it was shrouded in shame and protected by lies, it has come into vogue.

Politicians across the ideological landscape embrace adoption as a solution for the foster-care crisis and as an alternative to abortion. Celebrities such as Rosie O'Donnell and Steven Spielberg proudly announce the arrival of their nonbiological children. Infertile couples, once embarrassed about their inability to produce offspring, gleefully tell anyone who will listen about their trips to Minneapolis or Moscow, Baltimore or Beijing, wherever they traveled to pick up their babies.

At the same time, the process is being transformed.

Contact between biological and adoptive parents, a rare and controversial experiment just a decade ago, is becoming the norm.Mixed-race families, frequently with white adoptive parents and Asian children, are now commonplace.

In America's social landscape, adoption is surfacing from underground, becoming the subject of public discussion and examination. As it does, it is now becoming clear that it touches far more lives than anyone realized -- nearly 60 percent of the US population in some direct way, according to a recent survey by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York.

``Definitely, something's happening and it's very exciting to see,'' says Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard Law School professor and author of several books on adoption. Adds David Liederman, executive director of the Child Welfare League of America: ``Adoption as a lifestyle, almost unnoticed by everyone outside the field, is becoming as American as apple pie.''

The metamorphosis is far from complete, however.

Many laws governing adoption have gone unchanged for decades. They not only foster secrecy, but maintain barriers and escalate the price of a process that society is not only accepting, but promoting. The cost of adopting an infant -- domestically or abroad, using a private attorney or an agency -- averages $15,000 to $30,000, and sometimes far more.

Adoption also remains tainted by misinformation and misconceptions, in part because it was viewed as such a private matter for so long that professional scrutiny and public debate were stifled. Media accounts frequently foster skewed impressions because they tend to focus on the sensational exceptions, like birth fathers regaining custody of their children.

Despite the positive trends, adoption's most essential participants -- the women who relinquish their children -- continue to bear a stigma. Biological fathers get far less attention because few are involved when a baby's fate is being decided, either because they aren't interested or don't know the child exists.

``If a young woman in difficult circumstances chooses to keep her baby, people think she's brave and wonderful; if she goes instead for an abortion, they think that's a . . . personal decision and she can get on with her life,'' says Judy Greene, a senior official at the Spence-Chapin Adoption Agency in New York. ``But if that woman says she's giving up a child for adoption, people are uncomfortable. . . . They don't know what to think of her or what to say. They have an uneasy feeling that she's doing something wrong.''

Elaine Correy, a secretary in St. Louis, says the attitudes she encountered when she considered giving up her baby two years ago contributed to her decision to keep her daughter.

``Vilification isn't too strong a word,'' says Correy, also not her real name. ``It wasn't everyone, you understand, but once I tuned into the message between the lines of the attitudes around me . . . it was that I must be a low-class slut or stupid or something to have let myself get into this predicament, so I might as well give my baby to some decent people.''

Researchers, lawyers, and social workers all say the misconceptions about birth mothers are the most corrosive and least accurate stereotypes in adoption. The consequences include less incentive for women to place their babies even if they think they should; damaged self-esteem and even lifelong shame for many biological mothers who choose adoption; and heightened identity and self-worth issues for adoptees who grow up hearing disparaging descriptions of biological parents.

Professionals say the majority of mothers who surrender their children are not reckless teens, but women in their early-20s to mid-30s, usually single, who have anguished over their decisions. Most have graduated from high school; many have attended college. Invariably, their primary motivation is not to jettison a personal problem, but to give their babies a better life. And while they often bear emotional scars and want to know about their children for the rest of their lives, they rarely attempt to interfere in the adoptive families or consider trying to get their children back.

Today's birth mothers have more acceptable options.

Charlene Kelly illustrates the new realities.

Whatever difficulties women like her face, they differ radically from their counterparts in past generations who seldom had the option of abortion, felt keeping their babies was unacceptable, and often were shamed, coerced, or even forced to give up their ``illegitimate'' children by families, churches, and doctors.

Kelly, raised as a ``devout Irish Catholic,'' says she thought from the start that she wasn't ready to raise a child alone and wants to start a family only ``when it can be traditional, with a mom and a dad.'' By the time she looked into abortion, it was no longer an option since she had procrastinated into her fifth month of pregnancy.

So she started looking for adoptive parents -- in the classifieds section of the Irish Voice newspaper.

Adoption agencies and lawyers frequently advise clients to buy advertisements seeking birth mothers. Typically, the ads are placed by white couples who earn a minimum of $50,000 a year, at least one of whom is in their late 30s or older; have repeatedly been unable to produce biological children; have exhausted their insurance coverage and/or spent tens of thousands of dollars on failed in vitro fertilization and other infertility treatments. And they badly want a white infant.

Kelly chose a couple in New York City. She was too nervous to phone them herself, so she wrote out some questions and listened in as her roommate did the talking. She recalls the would-be father's reaction as he realized what the call was about: ``The poor man nearly had a heart attack.''

In addition to having clients place newspaper ads, agencies and lawyers also solicit birth mothers with 800 numbers in the Yellow Pages and, increasingly, on the Internet. Adoption professionals typically ask biological parents to base their selections on photos and letters that couples have provided, then phone conversations and meetings are arranged.

This empowerment of birth mothers, specialists say, helps them live more comfortably with their decisions. The adoptive parents, meanwhile, get first-hand information they can later share with their children - a process social workers and psychologists believe is helpful to adoptees' development.

After a few telephone and face-to-face conversations arranged by the adoption agency, Kelly stuck with the New Yorkers she first called. Jim Ettorre is a film editor, Joan Humphreys an architect; Kelly liked that he made her laugh, and that she was smart and warm. Two days after her son was born in November 1995, Kelly surrendered him into foster care while the final paperwork was completed to place him with his new parents.

``What made me happiest was to see them and see how they reacted to the baby,'' she says. ``They were so happy, and I knew they would be able to complete their lives and could give him the moon and the stars, which is what I wanted him to have but what I know I couldn't do at this stage of my life.''

Counseling helps smooth the process.

Like most birth mothers considering adoption, Kelly was offered counseling to ensure she really wanted to proceed with a decision that can haunt biological parents for the rest of their lives.

That, too, is a change. In decades past, particularly before single motherhood entered the social mainstream in the 1970s, ``unwed mothers'' were often pressured to give up their children. That produced generations of bitter, angry women who lived with a secret that gnawed at their souls.

``It was hard to think about ostracizing yourself . . . and excruciating to think about branding your baby a `bastard' or `illegitimate,' '' says Sheila Hansen, a lobbyist in New Jersey who was a 22-year-old government worker in Louisiana when she became pregnant by a boyfriend a quarter-century ago.

Her parents, her priest, and her doctor unremittingly pressed her to give up the child, she recalls; before she came to a decision, the doctor said he had found adoptive parents. She stayed home throughout her pregnancy, ashamed to be seen, and was hospitalized under an assumed name.

Hansen was heavily sedated during her delivery so she would have no memory of it, and the nurses were instructed to refer to her child only as ``the baby'' so she wouldn't know its gender. Not until Nov. 29, 1995, when he telephoned her after a long search, did she learn she had given life to a son.

``All I did after we hung up was cry,'' says Hansen, who has since developed a warm relationship with her firstborn and his adoptive parents. She sounds resentful and anguished as she relates her experience: ``The system we had didn't work; thank God it seems to be changing.''

The goal of counseling is to help birth mothers through a tough time, but it's also to keep the adoption business running smoothly by weeding out the women who won't stick with their decisions. About half change their minds after childbirth, causing enormous heartache to the waiting adoptive parents and escalating their costs if they opt to try again.

Like the vast majority of women, Kelly felt an intense desire to keep her baby immediately after he was born.

``It was so strange to see him come out, this beautiful, healthy boy. I didn't want to let him go,'' she says. The memory still makes her cry, and it reminds her to open the silver ball she always wears around her neck -- a present from the adoptive parents -- to show off the three tiny photos of her baby inside.

Although she was willing to sign papers relinquishing the baby within days, Kelly accepted the advice of the adoption agency and took several weeks to think about her decision.

Two months later, she sought out her former boyfriend and told him for the first time that he had fathered a child. He was unemployed and uninterested, she says, which helped ease her mind about not having contacted him sooner.

As they agreed to do, the adoptive parents have regularly mailed pictures and letters of their son. They also do more than fulfill their obligation, spontaneously sending scribbles he has produced and notes
about his accomplishments.

Last March, they asked if Kelly wanted to see the 1 1/2-year-old boy, now named Sam; she did. They met in New York. ``It was just creepy-incredible, because he reminded me so much of myself. But I absolutely loved it.''

As Kelly has learned, the trend toward more openness in adoption is accelerating at lightning speed as a consensus builds that concealment and avoidance ultimately hurt all parties, especially the adoptees.

``I think people in general have come to understand the developmental needs of children, and see that secrecy is just not the way to go,'' says Elizabeth Quackenbush, founder of the Adoptions with Love agency in Newton.

While it is usually the birth mother who seeks continuing contact, a small but growing percentage of adoptive parents are initiating long-term relationships as well. But most adoptive parents still find they grow anxious at even the thought of close connections with biological parents.

``They're afraid the birth parents are going to want their kids back or, worse, the kids will want to return to their birth parents,'' says Bob Tuke, an adoption attorney in Tennessee who has two adopted children. ``But neither of those things almost ever happens. And the adoptive parents who stay with the process find there's nothing to feel threatened about.''

At their meeting in New York, the couple who adopted Kelly's son asked her to play an ongoing role in his life, perhaps as a pseudo-aunt or close friend of the family. Kelly declined, saying she thought ``it would be too confusing for the child.''

The thought brings back the memory of a television program about adoption she saw when she was young. She recalls thinking she could never give up a baby because she would forever wonder what happened to him.

``I think about my boy every day, every single day,'' she says, her voice trembling. ``But I have no regrets about what I did. It's all about options and choices, and I know I made the choices about his life as well as my own . . . and I can change my mind about seeing him anytime. That helps a lot. . . .

``And I never have to wonder. I know where he is.''

For more information, please contact:

Adam Pertman, Executive Director
Adoption Nation Education Initiative
apertman@peoplepc.com
www.adoptionnation.com
617-332-8944 (work)

© Adam Pertman

Credits: Adoption Nation Education Initiative