If a mother relinquishes her child voluntarily without being coerced or has neglected or abused her child and ?

opedial

I don't think we are responsible for the pain of the mother as in we are the cause of it; however, I do think we have a duty and ethic to be empathetic to their situation.

The other mother of my children was quite neglectful and allowed very negative things to happen to her children, of which I will not say. She lived a very dysfunctional lifestyle and was not able to parent. She herself grew up in this dysfunction and was passed from foster home to foster home. She did not recover from her past before she had children.

After the children moved in with me, she called the foster home that they were at, and asked the foster mom "please tell me they are the kind of people I woudl have liked to grow up with". She is a child, emotionally herself.

While I deplore actions that occured, I have true empathy for her as she is and will always be attached to the children as a part of the history, adn hopefully when they are older, as part of their future. The more I have had my children, the more I fall in love with them and them with us, I feel sad for the other mother, I feel sad she is missing out on these wonderful times.

Given these feelings that have emerged in me, and given the children are definately not allowed to see her anytime in the near future for many reasons, I have myself decided to meet with her annually if she wishes to let her know how the kids are, do a scrapbook, and hopefully when everyone is older and the mom is in a better place, I would be open to some visits. I thought I would feel jealous or entitlement, or even worried that my kids won't love me enough, but all I can find inside myself is compassion for her pain, and a desire to do what is right for everyone.

No I did not cause, in any way, her pain, but I am now connected to her for life, and feel compassion for the pain she goes through. While I suffered pain through my infertility and subsequent knowlege I woudl never have biological children, I got over that pretty quick as I really felt guided to adopt older children, she will never get over the pain of losing her children. Whether or not the fault is hers, the pain is still real, and I think we as adoptive parents need to acknoweldge that pain will exist, and cannot pretend that our joy does not come at the expense of someone's pain.

Honestly I started crying while writing this, hence it is so long. I think I jsut had a breakthrough.

Thanks for hte question.

Santa's Lil' Helper

Hubby and I just adopted an eight year old and fourteen year old cousins. One child is the biological sibling of another child we have adopted.

One showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, pregnant and scared. The other was left by mom for a two weeks visit and never came back. Both mom's consented to the adoptions because they could not "handle" their girls anymore. I guess they were not grateful enough for their dysfunctional upbringing.

We have been thrice blessed by mom's who willingly chose adoption and probably should have at birth.

Rowan

No,i would say to both your questions

no such thing as a woman not being coerced? are you serious? i'll tell you right now, as much as it hurts me magic pointe shoes, my bio mother was not coerced into giving me and my twin up. Me and my twin were 8 months old when she gave us to her boyfriends sister to adopt. She was NEVER suited to be a parent. She was not mentally,emotionally, or finacially able to care for two babies. She wasnt even prepared for the one baby she thought she was having. No ultrasounds, no prenatal care, hell, she didnt even know she was pregnant until she was 5 months along.

Also, some women, just dont want children, but wont take precautions to avoid pregnancy.

ETA: Well, MPS, mabye she felt she had to give us up, but noone was beating down her door and demanding she give us away. I only know what she has told me, and what my adoptive mom confirmed.

Lillie

Who is angry at the AP's?

I mean, really?

Who has every said that AP's seal the records and the AP's are the ones to blame? Wow, personalize much?

It's the agencies and the system, the crappy laws and government policies that treat adoptees like children or criminals, the people who MAKE the money who those of us who are "against" adoption are angry at.

So unless you fit into one of those categories, what are you so worried about?

Dreamweaver ILF posse 2009

No is responsible for the pain of the mother. I'm sorry. UNLESS, she was totally coerced.

I know a lot will say they aren't angry with the AP's...but I see it here

Pointe shoes......I guess I'm horrible then, no one coerced me to give up my son. no one even knew I was going to do it at first. It was my first decision as soon as the woman came into the room and sd " its positive".

Linny G

SIGH... Yet again, another person who does not "get" adoptees. We are NOT "angry" with adoptive parents- our own, or anyone else's. Unless of course our adoption was illegally obtained by our a parents, or we were abused in some way by them.

Are we "angry" with a system who does not always do the what is in a family's best interest? Of course.

A parents (or any other parents) are not responsible for anyone's pain, unless you have done something to cause pain- like denying an adopted child's right to grieve the loss of their first family, or denying their curiosity about their genetic family, or not supporting them when they decide to seek out their first family.

Carol c

Sofia, are you aware of how provocative your question is? And how smug you sound? You ask a question such as this just to see if people can decipher your "real intent"? I don't know...that sounds a tad bit arrogant and mean spirited to me.

How can you not see how broken our adoption system is? And yet you come here looking for what - reassurance that you rescued your children from a bad mommy? You accuse Sly of being sarcastic and yet your question is the epitome of sarcasm and passive aggressiveness.
Why does it have to be about you and your feelings when asking how a mother who has lost her child to adoption feels? It's just kind of a creepy question if you ask me.

Minnimouse

That happened to me, but as a baby I didn;t know. All I knew was that I was being taken from the person I had been inside for 9 months and that I had begun to bond with. The person who was supposed to protect me, feed me and provide me warmth. That is what I grieve today not the reason behind it, but what I lost as a baby.

I also went through other trauma as I was adopted into an abusive home and then taken out again so again I felt unsafe and abandoned several times. This is what I grieve today, not the people but the security that I lost and that I kept losing.

The laws required my surname to be changed on my birth certificate to my adoptive parent's names and my adoptive parents names as my father and mother. That is what I am angry about today. The laws that tried to change my identity.

The social worker that worked with my parents when they fostered me when I was 5 months old told my parents to hide my history from me until I was 18. I ended up finding out these secrets myself when I was 15 and had to confront them. It shattered my trust in my adoptive parents. I am angry because the social worker advised my parents to do something that ruined my relationship with them.

I have never been angry at my adoptive parents.

Robin W

Once again the coveters of other women's children tries to tar us all with a very small brush. I am so tired of mothers of adoption loss being judged by their most minute and lowest common denominator. I am one of millions and I know what coercion is like.

And I have another question. How would all those who adopt like to be compared to and judged by the actions of all those adopters and foster parents who have abused and even murdered the children in THEIR care?

Those who adopt stand just as much of a chance of abusing, divorcing, having substance abuse problems, having affairs, going broke and neglecting. They are not saints. They are human beings just as we are not nympho child abusers but human women who were backed up against a powerful wall.

It's about time that those who ask these kinds of specious and snide questions got over themselves.

mom lost 66

Not that many mothers would relinquish their child,
coercion is the main reason a child is lost to adoption
that child being an infant. aps what infants not grown
children they need to feel that they are the mother
neglected children are usually place in foster care
and their is a big difference between a newborn and an abused
child the mother of the newborn is usually coerced.

Not Adopted

I would like to answer this, but cannot since you have lumped everyone in with the abusers.

Adoption due to abuse/neglect is completely separate from infant adoption (whether coerced or not.)

Brother Otter

Short answer: no. For adoptions handled by the state, there is generally a very high wall between the birth parents and the adoptive parents.

Why in the world would anybody be "against" adoption??? Or angry at adoptive parents??!

Sly

What are you looking for here, Sofia? The exception that proves the rule. Yes, there are approximately 2% of women who do not desire to raise their own children. Do we make them the example? If that were all the women who were surrendering, there wouldn't be a problem. It is the rest, the women like Stephanie Bennett, and others, who are pressured, coerced and tricked into it. Those are the ones that are the horror stories, the ones like the mothers of the EMS who are given no choice, no options, and are desperate. In this country, the richest nation in the world, women and children should never be in a place of such desperation that they relinquish a child. If there is one who surrenders for that reason, it is one too many.

I get tired of the repetitious, unending seeking approval that AP's seem to do, asking questions like this one. As if to prove that, "See, that mother lies, because this one is different!" Those AHA moments are lame and tiresome. Why is it necessary to try to disprove the stories of the women who have lived it, by making a lie of our stories, with stupid questions like this?

Yes, I believe that there are a small handful of women who have no desire to parent their children. I believe there are some who are unable. I also know that the small number who ARE willing to surrender without a backward glance are way too few to feed the desire of those wanting infants. So, the secrecy and lies of adoption, which are protected by the sealed records, continue, and so do these nonsense questions that only serve to absolve the PAPS guilt.

Here, Sofia, I forgive you. Your child was unwanted and if you hadn't saved him, would undoubtedly ended up in a gutter or landfill. You are a saint for saving him. Your adoption didn't hurt anyone, nor were you in any way responsible. That goes for all the other AP's and PAP's here, as well. An across the board forgiving, and from a mother, yet! .

There, do you feel better?

magic pointe shoes

There is no such thing as a mother not being coerced in domestic infant adoption. And just so you know, I hold everyone responsible for relinquishment, abandonment and parental rights being revoked. There is plenty of reasons why everyone failed these families to share.

I am serious. There is always some form of coercion going into the decision to relinquish, abandon or forced revocation. There is no such thing as a completely coercion free decision.

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