A 23-year-old Sunshine Coast university student has spoken about taking his pregnant teenage cousin under his own roof to care for her and her newborn.

~snip~

“I became the legal foster parent for her to make sure she’d keep the baby, stay off the streets and have a better life,” he wrote on Facebook.


~snip~

“I became the legal foster parent for her to make sure she’d keep the baby, stay off the streets and have a better life,” he wrote on Facebook.

~snip~

“When bad things happen, it's your family that supports you,” he wrote.

“It means no one gets left behind or forgotten.

“I've had my family pull my head out of the gutter before... It was time to pay it forward.”


~more @ link~ http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/04/15/11/46/queensland-university-student-adopts-homeless-and-pregnant-teenage-cousin#gig_comment_id=041c9ce8d860415885030a7a9d69f4dd

Dear Adoptive Parents: The Burden of Adoptee Loyalty

Dear Adoptive Parents,

I want you to listen. I want you to read this and truly consider it. For the sake of the ones you love and call your own.

You have no understanding of the burden of Adoptee Loyalty that your adopted child bears.

You do not realize that he will sacrifice his own feelings and desires for your sake--and that he does this subconsciously, because you also have no idea how easily, how quickly the unspoken thoughts and emotions inside of you, the silent and passive cues you communicate are internalized by your adopted child.

The burden of Adoptee Loyalty will compel your adopted child to remain silent on the things closest to her heart because she can sense these dark things scare you, make you uncomfortable, threaten you.

~snip~

When she hears you talking about how you ultimately think she will be fine and won’t have many issues because adoptive parents today know so much more about adoption and birth families than did adoptive parents of yesterday, she will internalize your words and teach herself to be fine and to ignore her emotions and questions, because the burden of Adoptee Loyalty is not easily set aside. She wants to please you so that you will want to keep her. She wants you to see her as you want to see her because this will assure her position in your family.

She will be loyal to you above all else because this is what you have taught her is most important to you. By both your spoken and unspoken cues. Because she realizes deep down, at a subconscious, instinctive level that what matters to you most is that this adoption work out the way you want to work out--that you are desperate to see this adoption be what you always dreamed it would be:

That happy ending of a doting, grateful, happy child eager to sing your praises, eager to thank Almighty Adoption and Almighty Adoptive Parents for giving her such a wonderful life.

And so, she knows that if she shows anything other than that, if she departs even a little from that narrative, if she comes to a different conclusion, she may cause you pain and hence, face rejection again. And that is more than she can handle.

She must cling to Adoptee Loyalty so that her fragile world does not fly apart.

Your children will never genuinely feel free to be their true, unfiltered selves as long as they carry the burden and guilt and obligation of Adoptee Loyalty. They need to understand and trust that they can have their own thoughts, emotions, ideas, perspectives, conclusions about adoption and know that you will not take it personally or feel threatened or freak out if they happen to diverge from you. If you allow them to continue to carry the burden of Adoptee Loyalty, they may never allow themselves to acknowledge and much less pursue the deeper parts of themselves.

There are profound and beautiful parts of your adopted children that you, that the world will never see as long as they feel their existence, their lives, their experience of love is contingent upon their loyalty to you.

As their parents, it is your responsibility to recognize this burden they bear. And to help them unpack and unload it. It is your responsibility to empower them to let go of the heavy load of Adoptee Loyalty. If you allow your adopted children to continue to carry such a burden, you are demonstrating that your comfort and ego are more important to you than the well-being and self-actualization that you promised to give to the children you are supposed to love above yourselves.

~more & http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2015/04/dear-adoptive-parents-burden-of-adoptee.html


This has needed to be said for a long time. End the fantasy and fairy tales of adoption and look at the reality.

Video here:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/03/20/adoptees-line-up-birth-records.html

~~~~~~

A new law that took effect yesterday unseals the adoption files of some 400,000 adoptees whose Ohio adoptions were finalized between Jan. 1, 1964, and Sept. 18, 1996. Advocates had long pushed for the change, decrying a three-tiered statute whereby records access depended on when the adoption took place.

Now, adults adopted between 1964 and 1996 — the group that had been barred from obtaining their records — can request their files. Such records usually contain the adoptee’s original birth certificate.

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The law that kept Ohioans from learning their personal and medical histories was cruel, Vercellotti said, and hollow in its attempt to shield birthparents who didn’t want their identities hidden.

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“I don’t know anything,” she said. “But I have no bitterness. I’m just happy that I might be able to get at least a part of me — a piece of my heart that’s been missing for a long time.”

The Ohio Department of Health Office of Vital Statistics at 614-466-2531 or go to www.odh.ohio.gov/en/vitalstatistics/legalinfo/adoptfnl.aspx. Other information: Adoption Network Cleveland, 216-325-1000, www.adoptionnetwork.org; Ohio Birthparent Group, www.ohiobirthparents.org.

rprice@dispatch.com

@RitaPrice

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/03/20/adoptees-line-up-birth-records.html

“Imagine a large river with a high waterfall. At the bottom of this waterfall hundreds of people are working frantically trying to save those who have fallen into the river and have fallen down the waterfall, many of them drowning. As the people along the shore are trying to rescue as many as possible one individual looks up and sees a seemingly never-ending stream of people falling down the waterfall and begins to run upstream. One of other rescuers hollers, “Where are you going? There are so many people that need help here.” To which the man replied, “I’m going upstream to find out why so many people are falling into the river.” – Saul Alinsky, in Shelden & Macallair

INTRODUCTION

On March 3, 2015, The Drop Box, a documentary film, was released in select theaters for three days throughout the United States. Directed by American filmmaker Brian Ivie and presented by Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group, this film tells the story of Korean Pastor Lee Jong-rak who built a “baby box” outside of his home. This baby box makes it possible for anyone, specifically unwed mothers, to anonymously abandon their children. The Drop Box celebrates Pastor Lee’s efforts by presenting a narrative of his life, his rationale behind creating the baby box, and the work he is doing to care for his own adopted children and others he temporarily fosters, mainly children who face mental and physical challenges. As described on The Drop Box’s official website, this film explores “the physical, emotional, and financial toll associated with providing refuge to orphans that would otherwise be abandoned on the streets.” The website points out that this “is also a story of hope—a reminder that every human life is sacred and worthy of love.”

~snip~

That being said, I also believe The Drop Box presents a limited, distorted, and strategically contrived perspective of the baby box. The baby box is a temporary band-aid fix for systemic problems, and the film does little to address these. The Drop Box glorifies the baby box and, in doing so, exacerbates these problems by presenting child abandonments as inevitable while demonizing unwed mothers. What concerns me is that the film does not examine nor even acknowledge any of the economic, cultural, or social factors that have forced many unwed mothers[1] and vulnerable families into relinquishing their children. What is even more alarming is the film’s inaccurate and harsh portrayal of unwed mothers as potential baby killers or selfish women who will recklessly abandon their children on the side of the road.

~snip~

The film cites that 60% of the mothers who abandon their children in the baby box are teenagers. They will kill their own babies or leave them on the side of the road if it were not for the baby box.

This citation inaccurately describes, dehumanizes, and demonizes unwed mothers in Korea. According to Dr. Helen Noh of Soongsil University from the Department of Social Work, the average age of unwed mothers who are raising children is 25.1 years, and 77.3% of adult unwed mothers have college degrees. Moreover, according to a New York Times article in 2009, nearly 96% of Korean unwed pregnant women choose abortion. Among the 4% who carry their babies to full term, about 70% are believed to give up their babies for adoption. Though illegal, abortion is widely practiced in Korea. Therefore, it is possible to deduce that a woman who carries her baby to full term has considered the possibility of raising it herself. I want to emphasize that abortion is rarely an alternative to abandonment. Relinquishing a child to adoption or leaving it in the baby box is an alterative to parenting. Baby box abandonment is certainly not the best solution. But to some who are unaware of their rights, options, and obligations, it may seem like the only viable one.

~snip~

Reclaiming Abandoned Children

According to an article published by SBS (2014), 383 babies or children were left in the baby box between December 2009 and February 2014. Of these 383 babies and children, 120 of their parents returned to the baby box to reclaim them.

The Drop Box highlights the number of children who have been abandoned since the creation of the baby box. However, it makes no mention of parents who returned to reclaim their babies a day, days, or any period of time after leaving their child in the baby box. The fact that 120 parents changed their minds, returned to the baby box, and brought their babies home to raise them, suggests these parents did not have the intention of killing or leaving them on the streets to die. To put it another way, if you build it, they will come. The baby box provides women, who are most likely in an emotionally vulnerable state, with a quick, easy, yet illegal solution to parenting struggles. I believe that many mothers would exercise other options if the baby box did not exist, such as legally giving up her child for ethical adoption or choosing to raise her baby. The baby box facilitates and encourages illegal abandonments. Abandonment is illegal in Korea. A more constructive action would be to educate expecting mothers on their rights, options, and obligations to their children. Additionally, there will always be mothers who are unwilling or incapable of raising their own children. In this case, I support legal relinquishment at adoption agencies, hospitals, police stations, etc., and legal and ethical adoptions.

~snip~

In Korean adoptee Susan Cox’s essay collection, Voices from Another Place (1999), she writes: “Adoptees are usually identified and defined as children. That we mature, grow up and come into our own wisdom is often not acknowledged. We can and wish to speak for ourselves.” I am a Korean adoptee who has struggled for ten years to obtain my adoption records from Holt, my Korean adoption agency. I have never even been allowed to touch my file. I spent eight years searching for my Korean mother, only to stumble upon what may or may not be her burial site last year. I recognize the challenges she faced as an unwed mother, and the mental health issues that affected my Korean family. I know that I was never an orphan that needed to be saved.

The babies who are left in the baby box are not orphans. Moreover, the baby box is creating a population of people who will never have access to their own information, including personal and medical histories. It is a human right, not a luxury, to know this information. For adult Korean adoptees, birth family searches can be filled with multiple challenges. Some searches may take just a few weeks before adoptees and original families are reunited, while others may span years or even decades and yield few answers. Restricted access to adoption records, incorrect information, and falsified records are some of the obstacles that hinder the reunion process. Children who are anonymously abandoned in the baby box will never have access to their information. Pastor Lee’s intentions are sincere, but the baby box is a temporary solution that facilitates illegal abandonments and grows the population of Korean adoptees who will never have access to their personal histories.

~more @ link~
http://gazillionvoices.com/thinking-outside-the-baby-box-reframing-the-issues-before-imposing-another-solution/#.VQr-j-FdhOZ

Philomena urges forced adoption victims in Britain to speak out



~snip~

The Philomena Project calls on the Irish Government to work with the Supreme Court to reverse a 1998 ruling that adoptees do not always have the right to know the identity of their natural parents.

~snip~

The law currently prevents both parties from being given any information that could be used to identify one another, Ms Lohan claims.

~snip~

The lives of vast numbers of those women have been “ruined”, Ms Lohan added.

“You can identify these women at 30 paces,” she told The Irish Post. “There is a frailty and a vulnerability about them because what happened to them has turned them into shadows of themselves.”

Among the many people who have contacted the organisation since the release of Philomena are some who claim they were given no choice about giving up their child for adoption.

“I am aware of a case from the 1970s where a woman in her 20s was locked in a room with a solicitor, a social worker and a nun who all shouted at her and said she could not leave the room until she had signed the papers to hand over custody of her child,” Ms Lohan said.

~more @ link~
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/news/philomena-urges-forced-adoption-victims-in-britain-to-speak-out

We are not what we seem…

Dr. Phil had posted this on his Facebook page about 48 hours ago:

“Working on a show: Should a birth mother retain visitation rights to a child she chose to place for adoption?”

Well, that post has garnered over 14,000 comments and nearly 550 shares….in 48 hours. I have been watching what has been said on that one post since roughly 3 hours after it was posted…. And I am absolutely blown away by what people are saying. Comments referring to relinquishing mothers as “not a mother”, “dysfunctional teen agers”, and a new one for me… “a birthing pod and not a birthing mother”. I have seen them refer to adoptees as “somethings”, “bought and paid for”, and “belonging to” their adoptive parents….their “real mom and dad”. They have called adoptees “chosen”, “lucky”, “special”, and “gifts”. It is enough to make the strongest adoptee or natural mom sick to their stomachs and the weakest end up curled into a fetal position in bed. Talk about a triggering conversation!

We want to believe we are so progressive these days….that society is filled with people who think better of each other…who want peace and love to abound…who understand we are all the same on the inside and we are all equal. Wow! We are SO WRONG! We are still in the dark ages! Like the 1980s group Tears for Fears sang (I heard that one on the radio today)… “…turn your back on mother nature…Everybody wants to rule the world.”

We all want to think that the Baby Scoop Era of the 1950s through the 1970s is so far in the past… that we will never go back there…. but I am not so sure anymore. I think we could see a return to that sentiment at any time…and it scares me. If these kinds of people “ruled the world” there would be no end to the pain and dysfunction because they cannot see the big picture… “married with a lack of vision”. I really thought sentiment had changed…that moms who relinquish were largely no longer thought of as shameful, dysfunctional, twisted, selfish women who refused to keep to societal norms and decency, and who needed to be punished for their wayward ways….AND BOY WAS I MISTAKEN. I saw enough people writing comments that basically expressed sentiment of wanting to punish them to last me a thousand lifetimes! That sentiment is absolutely shamefully alive and well and living in society at large (at least among what I must assume are watchers of the Dr. Phil show).

~more @ link~

https://orphanedheart.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/we-are-not-what-we-seem/