Re: What is the first step in adoption?

Jamie, I will be honest and hope that I am not being offensive, but
this paragraph you wrote makes me positively cringe.  You should not
judge if your daughter's first mother made the right decision in
placing her daughter for adoption.  You really have NO way of knowing
for sure if your little girl would really have been worse off in her
original family.  It's a pure conjecture on your part and better left
unsaid (and undo***ented in writing LOL).  I can also see that attitude
being extremely distasteful to *some* adoptees.  Basically, who in the
world are you to judge?  It is your daughter who will have to make
sense of being placed for adoption, will be the one to look back on her
childhood and seeing how she felt about it, etc.  She may be one of the
adoptees who feels a huge loss in losing her family of origin.  You
just don't know, and it comes off as arrogant to even make that guess
at this point.  Your opinion that your daughter is better off with you
may bite you in the butt someday if your daughter has a differing
opinion...and you just don't know.  Reality for me is that I am so so
blessed to be raising my 2 children...but I will never be so arrogant
as to think I was "better" or that my children may not view their
adoption as the happiness that it has been to me.  In fact, I doubt
they will...I believe that the only people THRILLED with adoption are
adoptive parents.  To adoptees and first parents, it involves loss.

This is why I've come to the point where I believe that aparents-to-be
should never be anywhere near the hospital when a first mother gives
birth and is making that final adoption placement decision (yes, I know
that we were there for our first child's birth, but I was naive at the
time).  What if you had met with your child's first mother and implied
in any way that she would be making the right decision by doing a
placement, or that her daughter would be better off with you?  That
would have been a clear case of coercion of the worst kind.  I really
really believe that a mother should be encouraged to keep her child, no
matter what her cir***stances in life.  Adoption really should be last
resort.

I have been reading some first mother blogs lately.  Admittedly, some
of them are very unsettling for me to read.  They make me confront a
lot of opinions/feelings.  If anyone is interested in links, e-mail me.
Even though they are public blogs, it feels disrespectful to post them
on the newsgroups.

Jamie Clark wrote:

> My second daughter's first mother was barely 20, had no job, didn't know
how
> to drive, had a 6 year old and a 2 year old, a 42 year old boyfriend who
> wasn't able to sup****t them, and they were living in residence hotels
and
> not making ends meet.  She had her first child at 15, and quit high
school.
> Her mother was 47 and looked 67, and was an unemployed ex-massage
therapist.
> While we were meeting them for the first time, they needed to pawn the
half
> torn out factory radio from their junker car to buy gas and cigarettes.
> Will her life always be like this?  I don't know.  Do I think that she
made
> the right decision in placing her newest daughter for adoption?  Yes. 
Do I
> think that child, my daughter, will have a better life with me in my
home
> and life situation, than she would have if she'd stayed with her family
of
> origin.  Yes.  Do I think that my daughter will live a better life, and
have
> more op****tunities than her siblings?  Yes.  I also wonder if my
daughter's
> first mother's life would have been different if she'd placed that first
> child for adoption instead of parenting.  Maybe she could have finished
high
> school and goen to college, or at least gotten a job and been able to
take
> care of herself.  We'll never know, but I'm grateful that she made the
> decision to place her youngest child for adoption.  Of course, if she
had
> placed her first, she might not have had the next two, so I wouldn't
have my
> daughter, but perhaps if her life would have been better, she'd have
made
> that trade.