Infant Adoption: What The Baby Brokers Won't Tell You About Adoptees and the Truth!
by Anne Patterson, Adoptee
For all the things that are written and told about adoption, few are true. As a reunited adult adoptee I hope to shed as much light on this issue as possible within my lifetime.
If asked by anyone considering adoption "Is adoption a good choice"? My answer unreservedly would be "NO". Adoption is NOT a healthy or a good choice.
If you ask a baby if they want to be adopted they would say if they could talk a thousand times over "NO". Each year hundreds of people are lied-to about adoption, it is time for those who are its experts to come forward and share its reality.
Adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary situation. It is important to stress that it is NOT the baby that is a problem, it is the circumstances in one's life that is or could be presently challenging.
Adoption is a negative, punitive exercise of robbing babies and children from their mothers, their heritage, their roots, their identities, and their rights as human beings. Adoptees lose from the minute they are separated from their mothers. This loss is cloaked in lies, and illusions.
For those promoting adoption, the idea is that it is a gain for the baby or the child. Being surrendered for adoption is not a gain in the least. No amount of money, or a two parent family, nor anything can replace the real and natural mother for adoptees. Nothing can replace the heritage and connections with others in the natural family as well. They won't tell you this but I will - from day one we grieve and are sad to have lost our mothers and are not happy! Not only are babies sad they are also afraid. We know our mothers, we grow inside their wombs. We hear the music of their hearts, we know their smell, we trust and love them by nature. They are ours, our universe - all that we know, all that we feel, love and are attached to. Adoption takes our universe away. If someone took away all that you love and all that you know how would you feel?
When we are born we only want one thing to be held and loved by our own mothers. We know them, they belong to us and us to them. To take that away is not good for babies it is the worst most abusive act emotionally to inflict. When adoptees lose their mothers they lose themselves as well. They forever lose the person that they were born to be, and they lose the joy and right of being that person.
Above all we lose trust from the very beginning of the separation. The loss of trust is not a temporary feeling that is lessened by being adopted. That is another famous lie promoted by baby brokers. It is forever and permanent just like adoption is.
When the first lesson in life is that the one person you love and trust will go away it is hardly a good start for anyone. Along with the broken trust is grief and sorrow. This is not a lesson or anything that should be encouraged to inflict on helpless infants. Being severed from your mother and family is not anything that adoptees are happy about. The loss in adoption for adoptees can rarely ever be expressed or acknowledged. There is a horrible expectation and false belief that the adopters and adoption will overcome any damage done to adoptees. This is another lie - it cannot undo our pain in losing our real families. In fact it makes the pain worse as it is so often denied to begin with. The truth is that we are traumatized from the separation and always will be. The grief that we feel as infants is not ever acknowledged. This lack of support also breaks our trust. It also makes us untrusting of our own feelings when our first feelings are blatantly ignored. It is normal for babies to be sad and in grief when they lose their mothers - what is NOT NORMAL IS ADOPTION to begin with.
Anyone considering adoption should know and see themselves as having value and worth. Above all they should know that a child's true mother is NOT replaceable. Babies are not interchangeable entities to be adopted without negative effects either. In truth, the bonds of nature are not replaceable any more then the mother or the baby is to begin with!
Along with the broken trust and the grief, the second lesson in life for adoptees is to be fake and live in worlds of illusions. From the minute of the adoption we are conditioned to be someone else.
Adoptees are forced to take on the identity of strangers. We are not born to adopters, social workers or social agencies. We are born to two parents. Our birth certificates are falsified, then locked away. Our grief is not locked away though! Adoption changes our names it cannot change either a babies or a mother's heart or the lifelong loss that both will forever experience.
One of the arguments for adoption is that adoptees will gain two parents. This is ridiculous as we all ready have them. This is the first lie used to coerce people considering adoption. If you are pregnant and reading this know reality - you are the baby's mother not anyone else. The baby also has a father. The father may be unsupportive, or supportive but the reality is your baby has 2 parents to start with.
Our personalities and our lives are assumed to be shaped to those of our adopters. The famous lie we will be just like them. Babies are born with set personalities, genes, behaviors, temperaments, likes and dislikes. This is not an idea it is a FACT! The idea of shaping a baby that is all ready a human being with a personality is again not healthy it is negative. For adoptees fitting into another persons life at the expense of not being themselves - does not foster self-esteem or happiness. It breeds only one thing - insecurity, self-doubt and fear. It is not natural to live with strangers and pretend to be born to them. It is not fair, and it is not in the best interests of anyone other then adopters. It denies babies and children their rights to be only one thing - exactly who they were born to be.
This continual lying that adoptees must live with manifests itself in thousands of ways. Adoptees are sad to be adopted, angry and insecure. The myth of the happy, grateful adoptee is nothing more then a blatant fantasy spread by baby brokers, and adopters. It is hardly the reality that I live with and not a reality for most adoptees that I know and have worked with.
It is a huge burden to deny who you are and to try and be someone that you are not for someone else. It is not child oriented it is adopter oriented. It is not fair to expect an innocent child to be another person. This alone makes the lack of trust worse. Not only have we lost our mothers breaking our trust but we also lose ourselves further breaking trust more as well. The message for us is to be someone else. It says to us that who we are to start with is not worthy, it says that it is not good. It says that our mothers and our own heritage is not good either. If it was of value then why should it be denied? If it was of value then why falsify, lie and deny it?
The denial of our real selves causes irreparable harm and again breaks trust! This is not in our best interests or any child's for that matter.
For adoptees being adopted does not feel like love or happiness. It feels as though we are unloved. It feels like we are unwanted, not good enough and not quite right. These feelings are not just light feelings that adoptees experience for a short time. They are life-long, deep and permanent. They cause permanent scars that do not go away. Situations can change. For adoptees though once adopted forever adopted. The permanency is not changeable and the negative side effects not worth it for any reason.
Other lies that adoption promotes are things like the baby will be just like the adopters? As I have said we are born to parents to start with, we have genetic influences that are strong, and in fact stronger then nurture to start with. Babies and children will NOT BE JUST LIKE ADOPTERS, they will in fact favor and be like their real parents. Above all why should we be just like strangers, we are not their children we are the children of our real parents. All children should have the right to love and be proud of themselves, and to love and be proud of who they are. Adoption turns pride into shame, love into fear, and robs children of their right to be happy as they are.
For many promoting adoption the idea of income and wealth for the child may sound appealing. Fancy houses, cars and trips around the world is a shallow way to look at life, Life is not about money. It is much deeper then that. The poorest of children if loved will be rich in the ways that count. Adoption for material gain is wrong. Material possessions and financial opportunities do NOT replace a babies or a child's desire to love and be parented by their own parents. NO AMOUNT of money in a child's life is worth it to be separated from their real parents. Better to be poorer and loved by your own then to be richer and live with lies, secrets, illusions and sorrow.
Another despicable myth is that the natural mother will be sentenced to poverty forever. This is a condescending and ridiculous lie. Having worked with hundreds of natural mothers I can attest to the fact that the average first mother was not the negative myth of the starving street person that baby brokers have lied about for years! A person may well be having some financial difficulty and may well be worried of providing for a child at some point in their lives. Finances can change. Jobs are available, training and education are both available, other alternatives are available! While a persons finances can change adoption can not. Again it is a permanent solution that will not change! If you are considering adoption due to a temporary financial situation then please think of this as being exactly that "temporary". I believe humans are more then capable of productive and healthy changes. Everyone can learn new things and grow. One's situation now can always change - adoption can NOT!
Yet another argument used to promote adoption is the question of youth. Being young is not a bad thing, it is not negative and it is not dangerous. Young people can be excellent caregivers and parents. For those that wish to support adoption and promote it - this is yet another thing that they manipulate and lie about. It is as if the young person will be young forever. They will always be 16, or 17 or the age at the time of pregnancy. Just as babies grow so do teenagers, so do adults. You will not be young forever. You will mature and you will grow. It is more then possible to learn how to parent at a young age. The baby brokers will convince you that it is not - will you believe them or will you believe yourself? Above all will you believe in the lives of strangers or the lives of you and your baby as being more then possible to be happy and healthy?
You can grow with your baby, learn new things and parent a child at a young age. There is a myriad of resources to help young people with parenting. Babies living with older strangers is hardly in their best interests. Being older is not and does not mean better then a young mother or father period. Always remember you will not be young forever! It will not matter to your baby if you are young as your baby will love you regardless of age.
Adoption does permanent harm to children. It effects them forever. It causes low self-esteem, identity problems, fear, trust issues, grief, anger and a lifetime of not feeling secure. That is the truth that is what baby brokers will NOT tell you. That is what I will share as an adoptee and as someone who has worked with adoptees for 11 years. Adoption is the only thing that I know of that makes strangers family bound in secrets and lies, and families strangers by the same secrets and lies. I hope for anyone reading this that they hear the truth. Adoption is not good for children!
For mothers as well I would like to again stress that you are NOT replaceable. You are unique, your baby knows and will love you. They are your child, your flesh and blood, body and soul. You do not replace things that are sacred without paying a heavy price. And the price is children haunted by their own faces, that carry forever with them the coffins of infants that only in being born ever wanted one thing - to be loved by their own mothers. Babies want to grow into what they first knew and loved at birth - their own mothers and themselves. Adoption robs them of their right to nature, their mothers and the essence of life.
Finally I would like to ask anyone considering adoption one thing. If you were surrendered for adoption and you lost your most beloved person - your real mother? If you were forced to deny that the loss hurt you and pretend that it did not? If you were forced to live with strangers. If you were forced to be someone that you were not. If your life was a lie and you were forced to be part of a family that you are not a part of. If your identity was hidden from you. If your identity was lied about by everyone in your life. If you were forbidden to know your real name, see your real family, know your real life - would you be happy or grateful? Likely not. I hope this article says something to anyone considering adoption.
Copyright © 2001 Anne Patterson. Anne is a author, adopted person, and licensed private investigator with 11 years' experience and 95.4% success rate in reuniting families separated by the adoption industry. Visit her website at www3.sympatico.ca/searches
Copyright © 2001 Anne Patterson
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