An Open Record

Adoption News: Curation & Commentary from an Adoptee Writer & Activist

[anopenrecord]

It's not so much a question but a comment on how one of your articles, about your Special Day, resonated with me.I loved your use of the word original vs. birth /bio.I don't know why but I do.Your term, ghost girl very much explains how I have been feeling recently, having just reunited with my original dad and my sister.A ghost splintered off meeting my sister and I feel a deep loss at having been apart from her for 50 years. I love my adoptive family but there are ghosts of me that now exist.

<3

[anopenrecord]

Thank you for writing the narrative about the adoptee experience. You are the first person to put into words this journey. I’m 44 and just found both my birth parents a few weeks ago. No one else has been so accurate. Thank you so much.

<3

[anopenrecord]

I don't want to ask you anything! I'd like to tell you that I stumbled across your article WHAT WE LOST: UNDOING THE FAIRY TALE NARRATIVE OF ADOPTION and wanted to say thank you for writing it. You articulate my emotional experience so eloquently. I've shared it online and the conversation has started.

<3

[anopenrecord]

Do you ever think adoption is for good?

I think the question is a distraction from the real issues, which is why are families separated in the first place and how can we create the conditions under which this doesn’t happen? Focusing on individual outcomes obscures the larger social and political issues that perpetuate unjust and oppressive systems. 

[anopenrecord]

I wanted to thank you for your piece “WHAT WE LOST: UNDOING THE FAIRY TALE NARRATIVE OF ADOPTION” The imagery or the ghost girl and her life spanning out before her when you were with your paternal family was very powerful. It helped me see another dimension of the grief I see my son experience every day. I understand he has grief but he can’t yet fully articulate it. Do you have recommendations of books for grade school kids (he is 9) that tell the story of an adoptees experience?

I did an interview awhile back with Books for Littles: Raising Luminaries and the creator of the site, Ashia Ray,  included a curated list of potential kids books about adoption. That might be one place to start. Her site in general is wonderful. Here’s the direct link to my interview. The book list starts further down the page. https://booksforlittles.com/centering-adoptees/ 

[anopenrecord]

His birth mom ‘desperately’ wants him back. But N.J. court says 1-year-old belongs with adoptive parents.

The couple who adopted "Baby J" say other adoptive parents should hear their story.

Just curious how you plan on explaining to your son that you fought tooth and nail to separate him from his own mother who desperately wanted him and left her buried in a mountain of debt.🤔 

CW: first parent erasure, parenting as class privilege, parenting as race privilege, coercive adoption, consent violations, adopter entitlement, state-sponsored kidnapping, general child and human rights violations, total fuckery, you’ll probably want to set shit on fire after reading this. 

[anopenrecord]

Adoptee Blake Gibbins has a new YouTube series/channel called @NotYourOrphan and it's fucking great. Blake explores adoption history and practice through a social justice and adoptee-centric lens. Critical voices in adoption, you guys. They make my heart full. Do yourself a favor and check it out. xoxo

[anopenrecord]

The Threat of International Adoption for Migrant Children Separated From Their Families

Are the children separated from their parents in the border crisis and put in the federal government's care at risk of unethical adoptions in the U.S.?

READ THIS. RUN DON’T WALK.

Kathryn Joyce, journalist and author of, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, did some fantastic journalism here on what the threat really is of migrant children getting funneled into state foster care and adoption. She also stealthily connects the dots between the current crisis and the U.S. history of family separation and adoption.

What’s terrifying is that the bottom line is still, no one has any idea which way this is gonna go because 45 does whatever he wants. The legal precedents, the racist/classist/xenophobic systems, and the billion dollar industries are all there to support this trajectory. So how do we get out in front of it?  

People keep asking me if I think it’s a bad idea for people to sign up to foster kids separated by ICE, and I just keep warning them, that even if they fully support reunification, that doesn’t mean they will be able to do anything about it. I think it’s entirely possible families will get trapped or pressured into adoption because the feds or state will decide to terminate parental rights or the ASFA clock will run out. Imagine you foster a kid for 6 months to a year and then the state tells you they are terminating parental rights. They ask you if you want to adopt the kid. You know this child has a family that desperately wants them returned. You understand the stakes involved. But if you say no to the adoption, the kid gets put back into our foster care system. What would you do? You KNOW they have a family. What do you do? Resign yourself to the best/least worst option? Convince yourself it’s ok because at least they are safe with you? 

These systems are completely fucked. There is no solution here that is ok except for reunification without detention, with asylum, and with support services. Anything less would be inhumane. 

We have to imagine something new. 

[anopenrecord]

A tug-of-war over a five-year-old boy is at the center of a national debate over parental rights and immigration, and a sign of what critics say is a growing trend in which immigrants are being deemed unfit parents because they crossed the border illegally. Seth and Melinda Moser of Carthage,...

This is NOT a current case This is a case from 2012, but this is an example of the kinds of legal precedents that have been set and why adoptee activists are deeply concerned many of these kids will not make it back to their families. In this case, the child’s mother was deemed unfit simply for crossing the border. When parents can be deemed unfit for crossing the border, then any child of a migrating parent put into foster care is vulnerable to becoming available for adoption. Once the child is in a foster, pre-adoptive, or adoptive home for awhile, the slope becomes even slicker.

The general scenario goes like this: Child is removed, placed in foster (or adoptive) home, family of origin is undocumented or incarcerated or working to meet requirements for reunification, system sees fit to terminate parental rights or the process to reunification is so long and arduous that kid is raised by adoptive or foster family for awhile, family of origin tries to regain custody and a case is made for it being in the best interests of the child to stay where they have been in their "loving, stable" (typically white and middle class) home. Birth/first parents are almost always criminalized and demonized as immoral and unfit. In this case, they said the fact that the mother was "smuggling" her child over the border alone proves that she can't provide a stable home, even though ample evidence to the contrary was given. Carlitos' identity has already been whitewashed. He is now Jamison. He now speaks English, his mother doesn't. How would they even communicate? And anyway, she's an unfit criminal/illegal and this is the only home he knows. He belongs with us. He is ours. Adoptive parents win.

This kind of reasoning is especially easy for them to stick on a child who was placed in foster care or an adoptive home as a baby. People believe infants are clean slates and therefore should remain with whomever has had them the longest, because the child doesn't know the difference and it would be more traumatic to move them again back to their family of origin, right? It's true that it will be traumatic to move the child again, but this pales in comparison to a child losing their family forever. Also, what other kinds of transformative collective transitional care could be employed here? But in this system, it is all or nothing. Also, infants aren't clean slates. The science is crystal clear.

Another thing that concerns me is that many foster parents waiting for placements have been lured away from private adoption agencies to foster care under the guise of an insidious marketing scheme called “foster-to-adopt.” Foster care is, in theory, supposed to be a temporary solution while working towards reunification with the family of origin. But many show up to foster (often because they can’t afford private adoption or the wait list is too long) having been told they can “foster to adopt,” meaning that you foster with a clear intention of the end goal being adoption. Except that the goal of foster care is supposed to be reunification. The two are in deep conflict and can lead to foster parents being unsupportive of reunification or deliberately impeding it. Anyone that fosters should never ever go into it because they want to adopt, unless you are specifically opening your homes to older youth in care whose parental rights have already been terminated and there is no hope for reunification and the kids themselves can enthusiastically consent to being adopted--but few people do this because everyone wants babies and children under 3, whose cases are typically still in limbo. You have to be prepared to be a temporary home for a child and be part of the team working toward reunification with only that goal in mind. The children already have families and families are not interchangeable.

Also, the adoption industry is a billion-dollar for-profit business (yes, billions) and there are 30+ prospective parents for every one baby available for adoption. It is a business, like any other, driven by demand. Children under the age of 3 will be most at risk for permanent placement because they are in the highest demand. The younger, the more able-bodied, and the lighter-skinned, the higher the demand. Also, lots of folks who are waiting to adopt are white evangelicals and are driven by what they believe are mandates from God to save orphans and so will be frothing at the mouth for the chance to save brown babies from "unfit" parents who have crossed the border “illegally.” Journalist and author, Kathryn Joyce, has done amazing and extensive reportage on this. Google "Orphan Theology" for a deep dive. Here’s a good place to start: https://www.motherjones.com/…/christian-evangelical-adopti…/

Lots of "think" pieces have made headlines in recent years across media platforms, including the NYT and other "liberal" outlets, bemoaning the drop in availability of adoptable children in the U.S. and the fact that many countries have closed their doors to international adoption in an effort to stop corruption induced by western money and keep children in their own communities. BEMOANING that they can’t get access to other people’s children. Which is to say, the demand for adoptable children in the U.S. is big and hungry. And the narratives and systems at work, which are well-oiled machines, almost unequivocally support the rights and entitlement of adoptive parents because they almost always have more money, more resources, and more political power. Most kids who have been adopted transnationally in this country are children of color who come from global south countries in which the United States has a long history of military intervention. Acquiring kids that become vulnerable as a result of US militarism and adopting them out to mostly white, middle-class Americans for large sums of money is at the core of the adoption enterprise. There is nothing to suggest this would be any different, given that the migrants and refugees seeking asylum at the southern border are fleeing countries that fit this bill, and there are plenty of arms wide open "hopeful" adoptive parents ready to love/save/pay for them. If you aren’t familiar with how this migrant crisis was created by US military intervention in Central America, here are some places to start: https://medium.com/…/timeline-us-intervention-central-ameri… And here: https://www.dailykos.com/…/-So-we-re-gonna-pretend-these-re…

We have to connect the dots between all these systems - immigration, incarceration, policing, militarism, the child welfare and adoption industries. Putting kids into another arm of this system is not the answer. Especially one that removes the physical fact of the crisis - an actual child - from the public eye. When kids get moved into a “family” or a “home” we get duped and become complacent, we accept this as a solution because what they’ve done is move a social problem of systemic oppression out of sight into the cozy lamplight of the family living room, loving arms, and a comfortable bed. We know these interconnected systems do not work in favor of marginalized families and we should not trust them to do so. The history is there, the precedents have been set. Throw all your support and money behind organizations that are working towards reunification without detention. Placing children out is not the answer.

[anopenrecord]

The Government Had No Intention of Reuniting Separated Families and Has No Plan to Do So Now

If you treat all migrants like criminals, then suddenly they are “unsuitable” parents deserving to lose their kids.

There is no plan for reunification, just so you know. ICE doesn’t give a shit about families. The child welfare/foster care systems (it is not one entity, they are different depending on state and city) in this country prioritize reunification *in theory* but often not in practice. There are conflicting protocol and practices that often deter and discourage reunification. And it is a system that, at its core, does not value the family bonds of black, brown, and poor people. Also, because child welfare operates differently in every state, it’s incredibly difficult to know how each kid will be processed. They are scattering these children, many of whom they do not have any information for, some of whom speak indigenous languages and so likely can’t communicate their identity or needs, and they will likely never see their families again.

Once they are in foster care, there are sometimes time mandates about how long a child is supposed to be without permanent placement. Which is often a reason reunification doesnt happen and adoption gets rushed. Once a child is placed permanently/adopted, the adoptive parents will assume all legal parental rights and the child and their family of origin will have absolutely no legal recourse with which to be together. In fact, if the child and parent were to find one another (through social media, dna testing, etc.) and try to be together, the parent could theoretically be charged with kidnapping. Adoption is legally binding in this country and erases all family-of-origin ties permanently.

There are only a handful of states that allow for any legal protections for birth families/families of origin, but this typically happens when an open adoption is agreed upon by all parties and the birth/first parents are there to ask for these protections and also have the money to pay for the process, which is rare. Often reunification doesn’t happen because the legal and buerocratic process it requires is so indescribably long, complicated, traumatizing, dehumanizing, exhausting, and requires resources that families often don’t have because of all the reasons their children ended up being seized by the state in the first place — poverty, homelessness, immigration issues, mental health issues, etc.

If you want to know more about this country’s child welfare systems and how they work, I really encourage you to read brilliant legal scholar, Dorothy Roberts, check out Rise Magazine (a magazine made by parents whose children have been seized by the state), and talk to anyone you know who has been in the system or whose children have been.

Focus your attention on the systems that are wreaking this havoc. Show up to protest at the institutions that are responsible for this and involved in how it's unfolding: ICE, DHS, CPB, HHS. Demand accountability on all sides. Connect the dots between these systems. Support organizations that are working toward reunification WITHOUT detention. Because ICE is relatively new and I have lots of privileged blind spots (as we all do), I feel really unclear about how their agency protocols intersect with the range of child welfare systems throughout the country. It also seems like they are really unclear in how they intersect and how to deal with those intersections. Anybody that has good resources on this, I’d love to hear.

We have to imagine something new. There is no other way.

[anopenrecord]

Bethany Christian Services providing foster homes for 81 children due to border crisis

In the last six weeks, thousands of children have been separated from their parents at the U.S. border, and some of them are being housed in West Michigan as a result.

Some of the most vile and notorious adoption/child welfare agencies in the country are now in possession of these stolen children. It's a hop, skip, and a jump before people acquiesce into believing that it's ok/better if these kids are in loving (or any) foster or adoptive homes and get lulled into complacency.

Don’t you dare for a second think that the answer to this will ever be in one single case that some nice white family should adopt a single one of the kids kidnapped at the border. Every single one of us should refuse to participate in this solution. This may sound inhumane, but adoption is propelled by demand and money, like any other business. If there is a release valve for the government to take them and place them out, then they will. If there isn’t a release valve they will stay in the system. We cannot allow this either. We must DEMAND a different solution and not rest until they make it happen. Adoption is NOT a solution. Foster care is NOT a solution. They are the erasure of family bonds and the fracture of identity. They are traumatizing and re-traumatizing. They are racist, classist, ableist, misogynist, and colonialist at their core. They are billion-dollar, capitalist projects and systems that are not built to care for the actual welfare of a child, even if good people who really care do lots of hard work inside them.

DO NOT fall for the redemption narrative: “At least they're in a loving home.” “At least they aren’t languishing in foster care.” These are the typical ways in which people rationalize and allow for the permanent (and temporary) dismantling of families. But these children belong in THEIR homes. With THEIR families. They have been kidnapped by the United States government and we must ensure their return to their families of origin. Take it from those of us that have lived foster care and adoption, that live with the lifelong effects of family separation and erasure: mental illness, suicide, addiction, homelessness, prison. Foster care and adoption are NOT the answer. They are failed, piss-poor solutions to and release valves for systemic oppression. They are insidious systems that dismantle communities and funnel vulnerable kids away from their families and often into prison and homelessness. Just because someone gets loved by whomever takes them in, doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. Even when it was the least worst thing to do. Even when it seems like the best option. Families are NOT interchangeable.

Family separation and loss at any age, even infancy, changes your entire life forever. It rewires and reorganizes your body, it disrupts and derails your development. When a body – a brain, a nervous system - develops around separation trauma and loss, we KNOW that body is now, and maybe forever, altered—PTSD, depression, anxiety, lifelong difficulty with attachment and relationship, the list goes on and the science is clear.

And please hear this: If these children are fostered and/or adopted to ANYONE they will have 100% been trafficked by the United States government. If they end up being adopted through foster care or remaining in the system, about $20,000 per year of public money and services will wrap around them during the years until they age out (which could be 18-20 years, do the math). At which point they will likely be left, traumatized and disconnected, to fend for themselves. Public agencies get paid by the kid to keep their doors open, so it is an industry and a self-preserving ecosystem, just like private adoption, only with public/government dollars. Either way these kidnapped children will be commodified. This is child trafficking.

If you’re confused about exactly what child trafficking is, I will refer you to Unicef’s definition: https://www.unicef.org/…/SAF_pressrelease_notetrafficking.p… And then I'll remind you that political exploitation and emotional labor are still exploitation and labor. Even without commodification, these kidnapped children are being exploited for political gain and therefore already fit the definition for child trafficking. We are child traffickers. That is what this is. Full stop. Airlines, buses, trains, government agencies...anyone assiting in the movement and/or placement of these children...are all participating and complicit in child trafficking. And I’ll say it till I’m blue in the face, the United States has ALWAYS kidnapped, exploited, and trafficked vulnerable children. Predominantly children of color, but also vulnerable white children because, guess what? White kids turn a big profit. Surprise: white supremacy hurts everyone.

Listen, I am in no way saying children do not require the absolute best care possible while we work to reunite them with their families, - of course they do, and we have to ensure they have it - but this HAS to look different and we have to do something drastically different to make sure separation doesn't happen in the first place. No one will ever be able to undo the damage that the United States government has done to these children and their families. EVER. The longer it drags out, the worse it gets. I’m not saying that detention is better than being in a home. What I am saying is that NONE of these solutions are adequate. NOT A SINGLE ONE. And we must not settle for them because the rest of these families’ lives depend on it. This will NEVER go away for them. We will forget, go onto the next atrocity, the next donation drive, but their lives have been forever altered. If we do not push for the absolute only solution there can be – that all the families are reunited, granted asylum, and given the support they need to heal and thrive – then we will have failed them.

[anopenrecord]

Welcome to America

The United States government has been separating children from their families of origin, criminalizing their parents for being black, brown, poor, immigrant, and vulnerable, and trafficking them or allowing them to be trafficked, lost, or stolen since forever. Slavery, The Orphan Trains, Native American boarding schools, the Baby Scoop Era, being complicit in disappearing countless children from Global South countries through intercountry adoption, and the child welfare industrial complex systemically policing and dismantling black and brown families, chipping away at their communities since always--not because it's a broken system, but because that is what the system is and does. This is not to distract from the devastating current crisis of migrating children who have been stolen from their families, but to reinforce and contextualize it. We have to know that this is who we are. This is what we have always done. This country does not value specific kinds of families and weaponizes the power to control and dismantle them every single day. This is who we are.

[anopenrecord]

Part 2 of 2. (see previous post or YouTube for Part 1)

Queer/Trans/National Adoption Politics: An Adoptee Roundtable w/ M Cambell, Amandine Gay, and Tara Linh Leaman 

[anopenrecord]

In September, I hosted a panel at the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Queer/Trans/National Adoption Politics: An Adoptee Roundtable was a panel made up entirely of queer and gender nonconforming adopted people including M Cambell, Amandine Gay, and Tara Linh Leaman. 

Our presentations and conversation aimed to use queer and feminist lenses to consider the systems, institutions, and experiences of adoption from adoptee-centered perspectives. 

Here is Part 1 of 2 videos of the event. I’ll follow up with Part 2. 

[anopenrecord]

Thank you for your writing. You still make me believe in humanity. Even people I once admired, like, Glenn Greenwald or Charlize Theron, uncritically buy into the "Beauty of Adoption"-BS, like there are no alternatives like family preservation or guardianship. The price adoptees have to pay is ignored. I currently take a media time out because I can't stand it anymore. So my question is, do others feel the same? Or am I "over-sensitive"? How do you best deal with this media craziness? Thank you

I can really relate. It’s especially hard when it comes from folks who you admire. Public figures are hard and I also often encounter people in my own life who have fantastic politics around so many other things, are social justice warriors, and still have an unchecked allegiance to the idea of adoption. Or haven’t thought to apply those same politics to adoption. It can be really frustrating. In terms of media, yes--take breaks! I do ALL the time. I don’t engage in arguments on facebook. I have lots of boundaries. I save my energy for conversations that can potentially have more impact. When I’m overwhelmed or triggered af, I’m not super useful anyway. Which is all to say, you are definitely not “over-sensitive.” Take care of yourself in all the ways that feel right and good to you, and then come back. The work will always be here. <3 

[anopenrecord]

Please watch this critical, insightful, rigorous conversation about adoption, colonialism, forced migration, and resistance.  

FYI, the beginning and one presenter’s talk are in French, the rest is in English. Listen to whatever parts you can...it’s all wonderful/important. 

[anopenrecord]

Super excited to be hosting this event next week at the City University of New York’s Center for LGBTQ Studies. If you can’t make it, the event will be live-streamed and recorded. Live stream link will be on the FB page and I’ll post the recording here.

https://www.facebook.com/events/479204805792702

Queer/Trans/National Adoption Politics: An Adoptee Roundtable Mon, Sept 25 | The Graduate Center, CUNY | C205 6:00pm – 8:00pm Writer, activist, and adoptee Liz Latty hosts a roundtable on the intersections of queerness and adoption politics in the U.S. and abroad, featuring M Campbell, Amandine Gay, and Tara Linh Leaman. Currently, most adoption discourse and activism in queer communities focuses on queer and trans subjects as parents, and is dominated by the voices of adoptive parents and non-adopted professionals. This convocation of LGBTQ adoptees will use queer and feminist lenses to consider the systems, institutions, and experiences of adoption from adoptee-centered perspectives. How can queer and trans adoptee voices inform adoption discourse and practice in a climate where the fight for reproductive, gender, racial, and economic justice is increasingly urgent? Given the current rhetoric employed by LGBTQ communities around the "right to parent," how can queer and trans adoptees destabilize, expand, and situate this narrative within a larger human rights framework? In what ways can queer and trans adoptees challenge the hetero/homonormative family romance that has been used as a tool of separation, colonization, and nation-building within the context of adoption? These and other questions will guide the evening's discussion. A Q&A will follow. This event will be live streamed and recorded. *This event is made possible in part by the generous co-sponsorship of All Together Now, the CUNY PhD Program in Social Welfare, and individual donors. ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS: M Campbell is a queer, gender non-conforming, transracial, Korean adoptee dedicated to racial, gender, and economic justice, healing, and transformation. M works on issues relating to youth, qtpoc and poc, Asian diaspora, mental health and wellness, adoption, and anti-oppression social work practices and education. They have served on the Undoing Racism Internship Project (URIP) steering committee, and worked with the New York Coalition of Asian American Mental Health (NYCAAMH), the Asian American Federation, and the Coalition on Race, Diversity and Intersectionality (CRDI) with the National Association of Social Workers NYC Chapter (NASW-NYC). Amongst her many identities, Amandine GAY is a Black queer french transracial adoptee. She's also a Montreal-based afrofeminist filmmaker, activist, and journalist who defines herself as a political author. She divides her time between research and creation as for her, reclaiming the narrative is an act of emancipation Tara Linh Leaman, JD is an African Vietnamese American transracial adoptee, and knows well the challenges and joys of transforming adversity to resilience. She currently serves as Program Director of Westchester County Department of Social Services’ Westchester Building Futures, a multiyear multimillion dollar initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Children’s Bureau which assists youth and young adults in foster care and/or alumni of care. Tara also serves on the board of Holt International Children's Services and Family Equality Council’s National Board of Advisers, and is a graduate of Cornell University and Georgetown Law. Liz Latty is a queer adoptee writer, activist, and educator whose writing has been published in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies, as well as nominated for Best American Essays, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart Prize. She is the founder of Open Record Consulting, which offers adoptee-centric, trauma-informed support and education services with a social justice framework for families and professionals. Liz is currently at work on the The Adoption Museum Project’s new History Initiative, launching Fall 2017.