Day 1: Fact

So day one is a fact about adoption. I really wanted to find some specific facts about birth parents, but since facts about adoption are pretty limited I couldn't really find any. However, I found two articles that show something that I like to point out to people.

So the first article is a Buzzfeed article, which while I love Buzzfeed for so many reasons but I know that what ever I read (regarding serious topics that is) I have to take it with a grain of salt. This one is titled "17 shocking things everyone should know about adoption" and its written by a young woman named Alison Caporimo.

Buzzfeed Article

So people who really know about adoption, the adoption process, and the many different things involved in adoption please hold what ever you want to say until you read the whole post. What I love (in a laughable way) about this article (as I try to sit and read it with my many hats: birth mom, social work, average citizen), is its like the beginners guide to some area's of adoption. Not even whats wrong with adoption, just some facts about adoption. The article obviously has a very like "HOW TERRIBLE ARE THESE THINGS?!" undertone to it. Which yeah, looking at this as an average American some of these Im like "What?! Korea should be happy that my fat ass wants to adoption a child!" As a social worker and to some extent a birth mom Im thinking "How smart". This article picked out all the facts that are really hot topics right now. Money, LGBT rights, racial issues, foreign policy, and overall it takes the side of the child and adoptive parents. Don't get me wrong these issues are important, but instead of going whole hog into it, the issues are just touched upon which doesn't give them the justice they deserve. To be honest, as a social worker and birth parent this article frustrated me so much for so many different reasons. Its one sided, it doesn't look at the deeper issues of these facts, some facts were just put there to obviously insight some kind of negative feeling, to it wasn't well researched and so many other things that I thought to my self 'The f!@% did I just read?'

I found the Buzzfeed article because of a different article done by the Huffington Post. Its a response to the BF article titled "10 Really Shocking Facts of Child Adoption" by Mirah Riben.

Huffington Post Article

Can I just say, that I love when some one just rips some one apart when they actually deserve it. Riben's just tears into Caporimo's article like its wet tissue paper and hits everything that is wrong with that article perfectly. She comments about the facts; conforming that those facts are true and here is why or saying no, thats not quite right heres what it really is and why. My favorite thing about it is her tone. You can tell that Riben is angry and is ready to defend adoption to the end. To an average person, this looks a little extreme. To a person like me, who is very involved in adoption I think its the attitude that was needed.

To make it better, Riben adds some well researched adoption facts that are shocking and truthfully scary. The fact that hit me the most was fact number 7. Let me explain a but further. Adoptive families can choose how open or closed there contact with each other is. Open adoptions equals more contact (emails, photos, even visits), while closed adoptions equals less or no contact. Open adoption is not legally mandatory in a majority of states. Meaning, that if a open adoption is promised by an adoptive couple but then they completely close the adoption after that is final the law is on the side of the adoptive parents not the biological parents. Now, Ive known about this since I first gave my son, Jude, up for adoption. I was lucky being in California where open adoption is legally mandatory so I had an open adoption going in. While looking for support from other birth moms and birth parent oriented sites back in 2011, I came across a article about a birth mother who was promised an open adoption and the adoptive parents closed it the moment the adoption was final. The birth mother committed suicide two months later due to grief from the closed adoption. This scared me for two reasons; 1) I had given my son up not two months ago and was very worried the same would happen to me. 2). I complete understood why she committed suicide and I was %100 sure that would have done the same thing if the same happened to me.

All of the facts Riben talk about are hard to read, as they should be. Those facts are the ones that are truly terrifying and should cause alarm. When we fight for child adoption reform we should look at the things that cause great harm to a mass of people. Adoptees that cant get their official birth certificate with out jumping through hoops, birth mothers pressured into a situation, birth fathers not having rights at all, adoptive parents who abuse their adoptive children, and state and federal laws making it harder on the adoption process. These are things that truly make me frustrated about adoption.

To me these are the facts that matter.