Comments on Math Geek Mom: Another Option

• Thank You
• Posted by Ohio Dad on December 12, 2008 at 8:25am EST

• Thank you for showing this side. I can't imagine how difficult a choice an unplanned pregnancy is, but I pray that those who need to hear your message will understand that there are many options.

• Posted by Stephanie , Assoc. Prof. on December 12, 2008 at 8:45am EST

• Thank you for writing this beautiful piece.

• Unplanned pregancies and adoption
• Posted by Moya , Executive director at Mercy higher ed on December 12, 2008 at 2:30pm EST

• Dear Math Geek Mom,

  You are exceptional and inspirational--thank you for writing this piece and for relating the experience of unplanned pregancies to the adoption process and to this holy and wonderful time of year.

  Blessings on you, your family, and all moms by choice or chance--planned or unplanned.

• seeing options
• Posted by Susan on December 15, 2008 at 9:40pm EST

• I'm an adoptive mother, too, and I think that adoption is a wonderful way to form a family.

  It's also a very difficult way to form a family, and I'd add a few other pieces of advice to anyone facing an unplanned pregnancy:

  1. Do your best to find someone to talk with who has YOUR interests at heart (many adoption professionals have their interests aligned more with adoptive parents than with women considering adoption).

  2. Relinquishing a child for adoption is a difficult choice, a choice that causes grief and loss. Talk with other women who've made this choice. There are birthmother blogs now; there are organizations like Concerned Birthparents United.

  3. Consider what support you might have for parenting. You may want to place a child for adoption, but being young, being not quite financially settled, being untenured, being surprised by a pregnancy are not necessarily reasons to relinquish. Take your time and carefully consider the option of parenting your child.

  4. Know what your legal rights are (childwelfare.gov offers state-by-state overviews). You are the parent of your child until you relinquish.

  I love my daughter, who joined our family through adoption. Yet I am haunted by the thought that her birth mother might have relinquished her due to coercion of one sort or another. I love my daughter fiercely; I can't imagine loving her more. I know she is happy here and now-but I know she, too, grieves the mother she never had the chance to know, and the other family she can only imagine.

  I'm reading The Girls Who Went Away now, a history of American women who placed children for adoption in the '50s and '60s (most sent away from their families to live in maternity homes for the later portion of their pregnancies). Placing children for adoption occurs in a very different culture now, but that doesn't erase the complicated emotional ties between mothers (adoptive and non-adoptive, parenting, and not-parenting) and their children. And it's that first parent/child relationship that needs a lot of consideration during an unplanned pregnancy. I worry that our adoptive parent view of how happy we are when we get that call about the child can pressure a woman to relinquish for us, at a time when she needs to be thinking for herself, "can I parent?" maybe yes, maybe no.

• A Thougtful Piece
• Posted by Megan Isaac on December 16, 2008 at 10:15am EST

• I am a very strong supporter of reproductive choices for women--all of them, and adoption seems to me to be the one most oftened ignored. We don't do a good job in the US of making adoption an attractive alternative. So often adoption is described only as a possibility for very young women or those with very limited educational and financial opportunities. Thanks for reminding everyone that adoption is a potential resolution for any pregnancy, and only by encouraging women of all sorts of means to consider it--without condemnation--can we shift more unplanned pregnancies toward adoptions that benefit everyone involved. Like any reproductive choice--it is a hard one. There aren't any easy responses to any unplanned pregnancy.

• I'm an adoptive mom, too
• Posted by dawn on December 17, 2008 at 5:05am EST

• And I absolutely do NOT think that a woman facing a crisis pregnancy ought to be thinking about the trials and tribulations of the infertile/waiting to adopt. No way, no how. Adoption may be a terrific option for women to consider -- and as a pro-choice feminist I am all for options -- but the woman considering it should do it in the context of HER life and HER choices as well as what she wants for her child should she decide to carry to term.

  Your post doesn't point out that women who relinquish in open adoptions have no control in how openness is handled and whether or not openness remains. I know many women who placed their children only to be denied contact with them despite the agreements within which they placed.

  Further, domestic infant adoption -- the kind we used and the kind you used -- doesn't promise "great joy" for kids anymore than being born into a family does. In fact for some (not all) adoptees, being placed for adoption is a source of great struggle and loss.

  While we are forever grateful to our daughter's first mom for giving us the privilege to be Madison's parents, I grieve the loss that both she and Madison have had to experience in order for me to HAVE that privilege.

• as a birthmother
• Posted by Barb on December 17, 2008 at 7:00am EST

• quite frankly, i'm disheartened at the blatant glossiness of this piece.

  "Placing a child for adoption is a difficult choice, but it is one that will lead to great joy for both the adoptive family and, most importantly, for the child involved."

  a difficult choice? wow, that's an understatement. and yes, my choice of choosing "great joy for the adoptive family & child involved" has been at the expense of my self worth & self esteem for the past decade. and i'm not alone on this. there are a wealth of birth/first parent blogs out there.

  suggesting to a woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy that she can "make someone's dreams come true" as you do in this piece is simply coercive.

  there are no guarantees in open adoption. promises of pictures/letters/contact are verbal agreements, and yes, its lovely to think that all parties hold up their end as promised prior to birth, but i've seen it time and time again that it's not always the case.

  and my "birth child" is my son. he has always been my son. a piece of paper signed by a judge doesn't change that.

• Posted by Math Geek Mom on December 17, 2008 at 9:25am EST

• Barb,
  I am sorry that my entry may have offended you. Please know that I did not mean to hurt anyone with it. Indeed, I ran it by other people before posting it, to get their opinions, so that I would not do that. I appologize for any pain I may have caused you. I have the ultimate respect for the difficult decision you have made.

• Posted by Abby on December 17, 2008 at 11:00am EST

• I just want to second every last word in Dawn's comment.

  Women in our society are raised to be pleasers, and women in crisis pregnancies are a vulnerable group, with quite possibly a heightened feeling of "I just want to make it all better. I just want to make everybody happy so they'll stop yelling at me and stop looking at me that way." So every time somebody says to woman in an unplanned pregnancy, "Give your child the gift of a good life and give this precious, better-than-you couple the gift of raising your child," it plays on the pregnant woman's vulnerability and it is coercion, plain and simple. It may seem subtle to some, but to those who have been through it and look at it through the clear eyes of hindsight and experience, it's as subtle as a jackhammer.

  If you are facing an unplanned pregnancy, do NOT give one thought to the nice, sad, infertile couple. It is not about them. It's about you. Talk to women who have been there. Better yet, talk to women who have been there and been through therapy.

• Posted by Thorn on December 17, 2008 at 11:25am EST

• My partner is on the tenure track and she and I are currently waiting for placement on an adoption from foster care, so I come at this from a slightly different personal direction than you.

  First, I think it's pretty scary that on a site for mothering profs you'd put a "young, assistant professor for whom the tenure clock ticks loudly" on the list of people with good reasons to relinquish their babies! There's still a lot of work to be done in making the academy a safe, healthy space for women whether or not they choose (or are able) to have children and/or parent children. I'd hope, though, that there would be other questions to ask in terms of how to support this young assistant professor beyond just suggesting she start looking at placement options!

  I said I was adopting from foster care and that's partly because my partner and I aren't comfortable with certain aspects of infant adoption that seem coercive to me (though we're also uncomfortable with many, many factors that push children into foster care and contribute to the termination of their parents' rights, too) although I absolutely respect that others make different good decisions. Still, it's hard to read this piece without feeling so sad for these women you encourage to think about the future happiness of others. You're encouraging them to make a choice, but where does their own good come into it? Yes, you say they can back out at any time, but if they're under enough pressure not to want to parent during the pregnancy how is making a commitment to an infertile family not going to increase the pressure level?

  Perhaps "coercive" isn't entirely the right word for this, but it really strikes me as being lacking in empathy toward these pregnant women, these mothers-to-be, that their thoughts should be of someone else's pain and easing someone else's burden. Who is there to think of them, to acknowledge what makes their situations difficult and help them resolve those situations? How can we set things up so that women who want to parent -- fertile or infertile -- are able to do so?

  I'm sure all the hypothetical pregnant women you mention recognize that adoption is an option, as is abortion, as is parenting. The option they choose, though, should be one that best meets their needs and not just their future child's or the desires of some infertile couple. Otherwise the focus just seems wrong and it leaves me unsettled, like I am now.

• Posted by Thanksgivingmom on December 17, 2008 at 11:25am EST

• Rosemarie....I'm a First Mom that placed my daughter for adoption just over two years ago. I was the "graduate student with live ahead" of me. I graduated with my Masters six months before my daughter was born. Because of my own reasons, I placed my daughter for adoption. I did NOT place her to fill a place in her Mother's life and heart. Adoption is about finding families for placed children - NOT about getting women to place their children to fill families. Asking women in crisis to think about someone else, and how they can help them is very irresponsible. Now, not only is this woman (and possibly her family) in crisis, but she's supposed to feel the pressure of another family waiting to complete or add to their family? How does that help her make a clear decision about what's best for HER and HER CHILD?

  As for open adoption, you've laid out a very idealistic view of what open adoption can be. But let me give another perspective. You can go to the hospital, where the staff knows that you have an adoption plan, and be treated like dirt by uneducated nurses and doctors that treat you like an incubator, rather than a new Mom. You can sit weeks or months by a computer waiting for an email that gives a hint of what your child's life is like, with a picture attached if you're lucky. You can wonder when you're next scheduled visit will be - as you're last one was pushed back three times. You can get a call one day informing you that your child seemed a little "off" after your last visit, so visits will be stopping - let's say for a few years? - just until we're sure it's "best" to resume visits. Oh! And the best part! After the First parents have no say in the matter. We must just take the adoptive parents word, and accept it.

  I think it's very important to be honest about adoption - and that means talking about the positives AND the negatives, the gains AND the losses.

• Posted by Heather on December 17, 2008 at 1:05pm EST

• Like you, our children came to us through private domestic adoption. We have open adoptions with both their first moms and first dads. So I have witnessed the joy the open adoption can bring and also some of the intense grief that comes from watching their child be raised as someone else's son or daughter.

  I stand behind adoption as a vital reproductive choice. But it is a choice that needs to be made free of concerns about those waiting to adopt. I would be horrified to learn that someone had counseled our childrens' first parents to factor our emotions as potential adoptive parents into their decisions to place. Our happiness was not their responsibility anymore than our infertility was their fault.

• Coercive
• Posted by AidelMaidel on December 17, 2008 at 1:15pm EST

• I am a woman who suffers from infertility. I was lucky and was eventually able to have to biological children. My children's father was adopted as a newborn in the early 70s.

  I would be understating myself to say your article is coercive. Yes you want a baby. So did I. But adoption is *not* about you or me or anyone else "getting" a baby, as it was when my ex was adopted in the 70s.

  Adoption is about surrendering a child from his or her birth parents and giving them to someone else. End of story.

  Open adoptions can be closed; in an instant. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work both physically and emotionally to keep an adoption open. On both sides sometimes it can be too painful or difficult or just too hard to keep in touch. (Why do I have to keep in touch with bio-mom? I'm the mommy now, and it's too emotionally difficult. Why can't I just focus on my child?)

  While you might be grateful for the woman who sacrificed her relationship with her child so that you could mother, she is likely devastated. She will face the ramifications of this adoption for the rest of her life, as will your child. More than likely you will be considered a saint for adopting that poor, poor child.

  And don't think that adoption only affects the child - it affects their children as well. My children ask me all the time why they don't look like their grandparents. They ask why was daddy given away? Are you giving me away?

  Rosemarie - when was the last time you were in contact with your child's birth mother? When was the last time she saw her child? When was the last time you gave her "tidings of great joy"?

• Posted by Eos on December 17, 2008 at 1:20pm EST

• I know that it's hard to write something you think of as "inspiring" only to feel attacked and this might make you feel defensive and perhaps not listen to what is being said. I urge you to read and reread some of the above comments (as there isn't much of substance I can add and I agree with them) and take some time to think on it. I think most of us down the adoption road (specially seeing how our children are affected by this and not in a positive way) start to develop a much more emphatic and realistic idea of how damaging (even if it brings us the greatest love) it can be so we become very careful and vigilant...we are simply in a different place which is why "inpirational" can be considered dangerous. Dangerous because it perpetuates the idea that giving up a baby is a "good" thing for the benefit of others (including the baby) and to alleviate a "problem" when it reality it is the problem that should be addressed so that the woman can make a better decision.

  The best situation is not adoption...'tis a secondary plan which means the primary & best situation must be evaluated carefully. Economics, the feelings of infertile couples (I'm one by the way), tenure, etc., shouldn't get in the way of a woman thinking of adoption. We need to address those stressors/obstacles so that women don't find themselves in the horrible position of considering adoption because of lack of money or job improvement or no social network.

  I can tell that your intent was not to hurt but the way it came across seemed almost like a agency pitch to place a child and I doubt that this is what you wanted...at least I hope it isn't. Maybe is some way you were trying to say that adoption was better than abortion (which I don't necessarily agree with as I'm pro-choice but I can understand if that was the underlining intention) and is not always encouraged, so if you find youself in those situation have it and place it? Maybe? Either way...it is a narrow way of looking at the complex reasons involving adoption.

  Your greatest joy (your daughter) came at the expense of someone's greatest sadness and will cost your daughter much anguish as she processes her unique history. You need to understand that adoption is not always the best option so we need to remove or alleviate the obstacles in women's way when they consider it and then, only then, can a woman be in a position of power to make that choice....not one of fear...fear of losing her job, career, no money, no family or social network to help her, etc.,

• Posted by sharon on December 17, 2008 at 1:25pm EST

• Yes, when our son joined our family through domestic infant adoption, it brought us great joy. We will never forget, however, the enormous pain it brought to his first mother and the grief and loss that our son will someday have to face.

  We experienced several "failed matches" before our son's arrival when, for various reasons, the first mom decided to parent. While we were heartbroken, we would never, ever have wished for those first moms to have chosen differently. Our needs as waiting parents should be the very last priority -- the top priority is the needs of the first family and their child. I can not imagine the guilt I would feel if I thought our son's first mom had decided to make an adoption plan because she was worrying about OUR feelings.

• flashbacks!
• Posted by Aimee on December 17, 2008 at 2:50pm EST

• Wow, reading this was like a flashback of all the things *everyone* in my life told me ALL DAY EVERY DAY of my pregnancy more than 20 years ago. What a gift I was giving to these people, they'd had repeated miscarriages, they'd been married for so long, they had stable, respectable careers, I could get on with my promising academic path, my child would be so much better off with these amazing married people. As I held my three hour old son and felt the immense rush of having birthed him, of holding my precious beautiful child in my arms and started loving him with all the fierceness of motherhood, I also knew there was no way I could keep him. Those people were waiting for me. The nurses had already told me they had been to visit. The nurses referred to those people as his parents, but did not call ME his mother. I never really recovered. My great academic career fizzled and failed as I wallowed in depression so deep I'm not sure how I lived through it. And now that I've met my son, finally, I see that adoption wasn't the dream they all said it was. His parents are good people and they are a family, but his adoption has given him some pretty deep scars, as well.

• Posted by Margie on December 17, 2008 at 4:00pm EST

• I pretty much second everything those who have taken exception with this post say. No woman in the world owes me (I'm an adoptive mom) a second thought when facing an unplanned pregnancy.

  It's both fascinating and disturbing to me to see how quickly people jump to adoption as an alternative to abortion and solution to infertility. Those who promote this perspective are quick to point out the benefits to infertile couples and unborn children, but don't ever seem to spare a thought for the women who lose their children in the process, or for the children who lose their identities.

• Posted by Suz on December 17, 2008 at 4:35pm EST

• Our children our not commodities to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. They are not gifts to those that cannot conceive on their own.

  To those who agree with this author, please educate yourself a bit if you read this article and believe what this author has stated here. Better yet, read a different perspective that should be, but rarely is, shared with mothers considering abandoning their children to strangers.

  http://writingmywrongs.typepad.com/writing_my_wrongs/2008/04/white-flag-real.html

• Posted by lhjh4 , First Mom on December 18, 2008 at 12:45pm EST

• As a first/birth mom you forogt to mention the other option -- raising the child yourself.
  OA is not all roses and birthdaughter is MY daughter, I didn't lose a title when I gave birth to her and placed her for adoption as she didn't lose a title after placement. She is my daughter and I am her mother. She is being raised by her parents and she is their child. However, with all that being said I am also a firstmom with what is on paper an Open Adoption and hasn't seen her daughter in 6 months. So for reasons I have yet to be told, the real reasons, my Open Adoption is now what can easily be considered a Semi-Open Adoption.
  So to tell a woman who sees two lines and to go right to thinking about placing their child and having their heart torn in half and portions of their lives lost, I ask them to look again and look inside themselves and realize just how strong they are to raise their own flesh and blood.