Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 3, 1994 TAG: 9412060010
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE BROOKE CARPENTER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Scheid addressed these myths as they relate to adoptive parents; I'd like to address them as they relate to birth parents.
Myth 1: Birth parents who plan adoption don't care about their children. In the 14 years I've been an adoption professional, I've never counseled a birth mother who didn't love her child. In wanting for her child what she couldn't provide at this time in her life, she was willing to put aside her own grief and loss of not being able to parent. Planning adoption may be the most caring and loving parenting action she can take.
Myth 2: Birth parents will never know anything about the child they've placed for adoption. This was certainly true in the days of confidential or closed adoptions, when records were sealed and laws prevented contact between adoptive parents and birth parents. Things are different today. Birth parents may select and meet the adoptive parents they feel are best for their child, and have the opportunity for ongoing contact through an exchange of letters and pictures as well as possible future meetings through the years. An adopted child has two families who are inextricably tied through their love for him or her and neither would do anything to hurt the child.
Myth 3: Birth parents who place a child for adoption are irresponsible sleep-arounds. In reality, young people today have serial relationships that may or may not include sex. Most young women faced with an unplanned pregnancy are neither irresponsible nor promiscuous. They may not be the best decision-makers, but, generally speaking, birth parents are like everybody else: They make mistakes in the process of growing up. How they handle those mistakes makes the difference. Birth parents who plan adoption are, indeed, taking responsibility for what's happened by recognizing that they may not be ready to be adequate parents, and by making the most difficult decision they'll ever make for the well-being of their child.
Myth 4: Birth parents fear they'll forget about the child to whom they gave life if they place the child for adoption. Open adoption empowers birth parents to feel good about the decision they made as they see how their child grows and develops through his or her lifetime. Knowledge of the unusually good life they have engineered for this child brings a bittersweet joy, but joy nevertheless.
Myth 5: Children who were placed for adoption are a psychological mess. The media promote this image despite publicized results of the Minneapolis-based Research Institute's longitudinal study of adoptees, now adolescent, who were placed with their adoptive families at birth. Its findings reveal that adoptees are no more or no less emotionally unstable than the norm. In fact, these adoptees were often more achieving than their peers, and they themselves viewed their adoption as ``no big deal.''
Myth 6: Birth parents will have grave psychological problems as a result of placing their child for adoption. Any birth mother who chooses adoption for her child must have counseling to allow her to make the best decision for herself and the child. Sadly, few birth parents have the opportunity for in-depth counseling by adoption professionals, who provide ongoing support throughout the process and thereafter, making sure that decisions are noncoersive and are right for the individual birth parent. The adoption professional often serves as the liaison between birth family and adoptive family through the years, and is always available to address any problems that birth parents, adoptive parents or their child may have.
Myth 7: Nobody can love a child as much as his birth parent. As the mother of a biological daughter and an adopted son, I can attest that I love them both unreservedly, because I've known and cared for them through their infancy, childhood and adolescence, and because of who they are in their adulthood. We have a history that's a part of them and a part of me. My son also has a history that includes another family that's a part of him, and that's contributed to the wonderful, caring, delightful person he is today.
All these myths may make ``adoption unimaginable'' to young women who are faced with an unplanned pregnancy, but who may not be ready to be parents. They feel they must take on the responsibility of child-rearing or suffer the stigma associated with ``giving up your own flesh and blood.'' It's not unusual for birth parents who do plan adoption to tell everybody the baby died to avoid such censure.
Indeed, it's time to foster a more positive awareness of the adoption experience for birth families and adoptive families. The truth is that adoption works. It provides lifelong benefits for birth parents who aren't ready to parent, for adoptive parents to whom family means more than reproduction and, above all, to their children who are given the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.
Anne Brooke Carpenter is executive director of ABC Adoption Services Inc. in Roanoke.
by CNB