Guest Blog: Reform Needed in Domestic Infant Adoption
Our guestblogger today is KatjaMichelle, a first mom 7 years into an open adoption. She is also a social worker whose experience includes working with foster youth, foster to adopt, at risk youth, pregnant and parenting women in transitional housing, and single parents. Her blog can be seen at therapyisexpensive.wordpress.com.
Rather than turn the comments section of Faith A’s 5/27/09 post, “Frustration with the Assumption that ALL Infant Adoptions are Coerced” into a debate on what is or is not coercive, I decided to submit a guest blog.
Angela W commented in part that, “One state’s laws allow potential adoptive parents to pay for expenses like rent for a pregnant woman, and this woman MIGHT place her child for adoption. Isn’t this coercion? Doesn’t this place a sense of debt/pressure on the pregnant woman?”
Yes, Angela this is coercion. It’s legal but it is coercion and in my opinion it is unethical, especially since a lot of adoption professionals are either social workers or others who claim to abide by the NASW Code of Ethics. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the monetary support for expectant mothers considering adoption to disappear all together, but it is realistic in my view to do away with money going directly from hopeful adoptive parents to expectant mothers.
One way this can happen is if agencies take a portion of their fee and put it toward what they call “birth mother expenses.” If the money is coming from an agency’s established fee instead of in addition to it, prospective and hopeful adoptive parents are protected. Additionally, the adoption agency will perhaps be more discerning with the funds. Some agencies will of course just increase the fee to offset the new expenses, but I think there should also be a cap on what agencies are allowed to charge for their services.
Expectant mothers’ expenses should be scrutinized on a case by case basis. It shouldn’t be, “ok let’s write a check to cover her rent. “
It should be more like, “If she weren’t pregnant where would she be living? How would she be supporting herself?” Did her parents kick her out due to her pregnancy? Has she exhausted other avenues for assistance? Have we helped her to do so? Did she have to go on bed rest and lose her income source? Have we informed her that there is temporary assistance available through non-adoption related avenues? If all the avenues have been exhausted and she still needs help with her rent, lets help her.”
I also believe that agencies should have to eat the cost if the expectant mother chooses not to place her child for adoption because adoption agencies do not have to pay birth mother expenses; they do so as a carrot to get expectant mothers to choose them instead of some other agency. By utilizing this carrot they should be willing to accept the risk, which is that sometimes the fund spent will not give them the desired result.
Angela W also asked, “What are the most common coercion tactics you see?”
I think the most common coercion tactic is offering “options counseling” that really isn’t. I don’t think this is always intentional. I do believe that there are birth parent counselors or options counselors who truly believe they are helping these expectant mothers/parents, but more often than not they don’t present all the options.
Too often I hear about women whose “options counseling” consisted of making a list of all the things adoptive parents could give a child that the expectant parents couldn’t. No discussion about what the expectant parents could give. No discussion of what services were out there. No discussion about the possibility of parenting at all. Again “options counseling” is a carrot to get expectant parents through the door and again I say if the agency wants to use this carrot they need to do it right and not use it as an opportunity to sell adoption. Also there needs to be discussion about the grief that choosing adoption brings both for the relinquishing parents and for the child.
I can’t just decide one day to advertise that I provide CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and then do whatever I want when clients walk through the door. There is something very specific that is considered CBT. There should also be guidelines regarding what qualifies as “options counseling.”
Another common coercive tactic is the terminology, but this post is already long so perhaps we’ll delve into this another time.
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Very shallow deep pockets
The idea that the agency should be the payor to the mother is good. The idea that it comes from their unlimited financial reserves only works for state/county facilities, and then only if they have really jucy budgets. Private agenicies tend to have remarkably limited reserves. They would have to hit prosepective adoptive parents with a much higher up front fee to pay birthmothers and birthmothers who change their minds.
The money still comes from the adoptive parents, the only change is the name of the person writing the checks.
I see your point...
I see your point John and in a perfect world I'd say do away with "birth mother expenses" all together. We, however, do not live in a perfect world. I believe that changing the name of the person writing the checks as you put it does alleviate SOME of the coercion. It does away with a specific set of potential adoptive parents being financially responsible for a specific expecant mother. In my opinion it would be a LOT easier for an expectant mother to live with disappointing an agency by parenting than for her to live with disappointing a specific person or couple.
Also I think it would make agencies re-think how much financial support they give. I've heard adoptive parents remarking on how much their agencies have encouraged or required them to spend on these expenses. If the adoption does not take place these people are out that money and may even have to pay for expenses during their next match. If the agency takes the money out of the one time fee that replacation doesn't occur although yes some agencies will use it as an excuse to raise their agency fees.
Do you (or anyone else) have a better idea?
Annomolies happen
If an agency was the payor, without considerably higher fees, they could quickly be out of business. If they hit four birth mothers in a row that changed their mind, that would probably put the private agency out of business. Four in a row is a statistical annomoly, but they happen.
The new fees would have to be based on not just the typical ratio of birthmothers who do and don't place, but a worst case senerio. No agency would be able to avoid this increase. The net result would be more costly adoptions with no discernable improvement to the birth mother, but likely higher profit in the long term to the agency. There is no tooth fairy.
No expenses paid prior to placement would be the more practical solution. Probably not doable from a political standpoint.
Limits
Agencies could avoid the increase by limiting how much financial support they are willing to give. By having their "birth parent" counselors or case workers or whatever they call them actually help the expectant mother find the resources that are available to her from other avenues.
But you're right the more practical solution would be no "birth mother" expenses. I don't see agencies being quick to give up such a large carrot though. Potential adoptive parents have some power in this by refusing to work with agencies that require "birth parent" expenses.