[Dickons]

Fran,

But at what cost, is what is running through my head, if people are willing to pay outrageous impossible to justify fees to adopt a child it creates exactly the type of business that bad people look for to take advantage of. That is what I feel and I also feel there are good agencies out there, but the lure of exagerated profits, recessions and the reprecussions on the average family could cause problems (less families to adopt) even for those that started in the business for all the right reasons.

I do understand that the reality is that you are one family and because there are others willing to jump the quere (so to speak) you either go along or end up with nothing. I don't know the answer to that other than speak out and more will follow and eventually change can happen.

Kind regards,
Dickons

[RavenSong]

I'm glad we're going to read the book together on Brandy's thread. I'm going to order it from Amazon tonight. (If you ever see a movie on late at night called "Stolen Babies"...watch it. The movie is based on Georgia Tann's life; Mary Tyler Moore gives an excellent performance as Ms. Tann...it totally creeped me out.)

Dickons, you've made some really thought-provoking comments today. I agree with you 100 percent... It has to stop somewhere.

[sbaglio]

Brandy, thanks for starting that thread a while back.

I haven't finished the book as yet (I'm on page 228; 23 pages to go), but since this topic has come up, and i had planned on starting a thread on this once I'd finished the book, I'll put some thoughts down now.

I bought the book 2 months ago, and one reason why it has taken me so long to read is because I am physically and emotionally unable to read too much of it at once.

The book has literally turned my ideas about adoption upside down. I have been ignorant, and blind. I wonder how I could not have known that this was the system through which I became a parent.

Let me set up a scenario for you all. There is a photo of a smiling little boy in the book, holding a ball. This was published in newspapers around the country, along with hundreds of others of children who were literally stolen from their parents' arms. The caption above the picture states: "Yours For The Asking!" Another picture is of three little kids sitting next to each other on a step. The caption is: "They'd Like to Be Your Christmas Gift". Every year, people looked forward to the Christmas child giveaway contest.

Brandy summarized the book so well, I won't rehash all of it. But some of the points that really hit home for me were these:

- Children were stolen from their parents, and the judges who presided over cases brought by many of these poor parents were on Georgia's payroll. Some were stolen right from their backyards; others were taken by nurses on the payroll in the delivery room, and mothers were told that their babies had been stillborn; others were stolen while walking home from school. These kids were shipped according to order, across the country: blue eyes, brown eyes, blond hair - whatever the adoptive parents wanted and could pay for. Their histories were rewritten, and lost forever - kids from poor families were suddenly the product of a married lawyer and an intelligent woman in college who had fallen pregnant. Christian kids were sent to unknowing Jewish families who had requested Jewish kids. Many of the adoptive parents, disappointed that their adopted kids did not live up to their recreated bios, abused the kids or tried to send them back.

- Georgia Tann "maintained" children's homes for many of the kids she stole (as weigh stations, of sorts), and all manner of abuse occurred there. Georgia herself sexually abused some of the children. There was a heartbreaking story of a gardener at one of the homes who enticed a small boy into his room, and savagely abused him, for years. The boy became incontinent, and had to have surgery as an adult. He later became an advocate for these lost children.

- Most of these parents spent their entire lives searching for their lost children, and most did not find them.

- "Amended birth certificates" are basically false birth certificates. When I read this in the book, I became very upset. But after a few days of pondering this, I realized, with sadness, that this is true. Our proof of adoption is the adoption decree. Putting the names of us as adoptive parents on a birth certificate, which should have the names of the birth parents, is false. It is plainly not true (and I'm not saying this because we are a 2-dad family; it goes for all adoptive parents). This will ruffle many feathers, but those are the facts. We can argue about needing the BC to obtain SSNs or passports and such, and this is true, but the basic fact is none of us adoptive parents bore our children, so putting our names on the BC is falsifying it.

- The exorbitant fees that many agencies charge originated in Georgia Tann's practices. Brandy explained this well. They are a legacy of her selling children like chattel. It became a business, and still is today. Agencies continue to charge these fees because other agencies do, and aparents are willing to pay them (as were we). Things are much improved from how they used to be, but the legacy remains.

- Even today, many, many adult adoptees cannot, by law, gain access to their original birth records. I was seriously oblivious to this fact. How outrageous, in 2009, that this is still the case.

My God, there is so much more. So much more horror. I wouldn't have believed it if it weren't actually true.

I guess the ultimate question is - knowing all that I know about the system I partook in, and considering the completeness of our lives now that we have our daughter, what will we do when we adopt the next time?

Well, I believe that our daughter's birthmom is an intelligent woman, who made a plan of her own accord, and went through with it. She was not pressured by anyone, not even her family, and was adamant from the start that she wanted us to be our daughter's parents. She called the agency herself, once at the beginning of her pregnancy (when she was told it was too early), and near the end (when we matched with her).

I also believe that our agency was ethical throughout with our adoption.

The desire to be parents is so strong for all of us. How do we balance that with the need to be ethical in an arguably unethical system?

ETA: I should also add that I know why so few people participated in the original thread. How can you say anything, as an adoptive parent? Do we admit guilt over our own complicity in the process? Few want to do that. Do we deny complicity, only to be faced with the facts of the history of adoption in this country? It's very hard to know what to say.

[BrandyHagz]

How can you say anything, as an adoptive parent?

That's why I was so shocked to see that this book was written by an adoptive parent.

It's easy to 'dismiss' the book as anti-adoption propaganda, if it were written by an angry (insert other side of the triad here) - but when faced with the realization that an adoptive mother researched, wrote and published this book...it just left me...stunned I think.

[Amandak249]

Just a thought regarding the book being discussed-

I wonder how much attention George Tann's "business" and subsequent alteration of lives would have gotten had Tann NOT abused those children. If she had taken care of the children she stole, perhaps there would not have been so much media attention. If she had treated all those children well... who knows what she would have gotten away with?

I ordered the book on amazon myself, and I'm curious to see if more attention is focused on the abuse of the children, or on their illegal and grossly immoral adoptions.


If she had not abused those kids, or had not been caught, I wonder who would have stood up for all the parents who lost their children to that monstrous woman? I wonder how many people would have turned a blind eye to her illegal doings with the thought that she was "giving those kids a better shot at a 'decent' upbringing."

Long story short, I wonder if the only reasons all this is being given so much attention is because she DID horrendously mistreat those kids. If she hadn't I surmise that maybe society would have played the "birthparent blame game" as it sometimes does,and just assume that those kids were taken out of "bad" situations and placed into "good ones"- and this crime would have gone unacknowledged.



Just my first thought while preparing myself to read the book. Can't wait to see other people's thoughts!

[Dickons]

Amanda,

The abuse was not the forefront of the story, it was the stealing of babies/children from parents BECAUSE her clients wanted children and were willing to pay huge sums of money (pretty much equal to today's fees as I understand them).

Read the book...

Sbalgio,

Being brave enough to voice your thoughts here is an incredibly brave thing to do...thank you!

Unless all parties stand up and cry foul the changes will take many more generations to come to fruitition. The starting point is to educate NEW potential adoptive parents to - what is that catchy phrase parents want their children to follow and not use drugs...JUST SAY NO...

Thank you sbalgio.

Now how to we get this conversation moved to Brandy's original thread (which I cannot find again...) where the author may just become part of the conversation and we can all thank her.

Kind regards,
Dickons

[Drywall]

Dickons...this is almost the same as a puppy mill....clearly there should be some media coverage on that ad.

I wish you the best.

[KarenInCa]

There are ups and downs to either domestic or IA. But one thing I appreciate about IA is that the fees are pretty much the same with all agencies for the country chosen.
Our wait for our first daughter was 10 months, whereas with our second daughter it's expected to be 4 years. However, it's the same wait for everyone logged in at the same time as us....and the same fees associated with the waits. It might not feel fair from our first daughter to our second daughter, but it's fair across the board for everyone adopting from China. If there's a surprise, everyone is surprised over the same thing. So, in that light, IA is much more stable than Domestic, even though the IA program sometimes seems unpredictable for waits.

[momraine]

I also read the book after reading what Brandy said about it. It made me so sad for all those families. It did focus more on the children stolen and separated from each other and from thier parents. This is part of the reason I searched for and found my dd's birth parents. The fact is both of my adopted kids had been placed in orphanages long before I came along, both because of thier physical disabilities. I don't know how to fix the system, but I agree it needs to be fixed.

[Amandak249]

The abuse was not the forefront of the story, it was the stealing of babies/children from parents BECAUSE her clients wanted children and were willing to pay huge sums of money (pretty much equal to today's fees as I understand them).

I'm waiting for it to arrive, I got it off of amazon. I'm really looking forward to it. I am curious as to what the angle will be!