Facebook, Blogging and Biology: Saturday in Boston at the ASAC

PhD Thesis Defence MIT

So now I have worked my way to Saturday, May 1st. I have survived 1.5 days at the adoption conference. I have listened to some beautiful writing on the subject of adoption, I have met some good people. I have heard some interesting ideas. Some I agree with, some I don’t. Pretty much what I wanted and expected. It’s OK.

The first session I go to at 9:00 am on Saturday morning is called Writing and Publishing About Adoption.

The first presenter, speaking on Editing Adoption and Culture, is Emily Hipchen. Adoption and Culture a publication of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture. She is its or one of its editors.

The discussion starts with the things most editors get asked: Why does it take so long to respond to a submission? What are the style standards? Why consistency of style is important?

Ms Hipchen explains the difficulty of producing a journal where the readership may have very divergent views about many things including the terminology used, e.g. birthmother. She talks about how they try to find balance in the magazine amongst the differing views on adoption, those who think it’s great: those who would like to see it abolished.

She mentioned that one thing that might help turn around times for submissions would be more volunteer readers. She suggested anyone who is interested in being a reader get in touch with her at this email address: emily at hipbo dot org I put it here in case anyone wants to volunteer.

And here is a link to the Submissions Guidelines, in case anyone has an essay they want to submit:

http://www.english.pitt.edu/adoption&culture/Submissions.html

Gehry Building MIT

The next speaker was an adoptee, Liberty Hultberg, who spoke about Writing Adoption in a Digital Age. She has a blog called “Writing for Liberty” on Blogspot. Liberty was trying to find her father and, knowing his last name, she did a search on facebook to see if she could find him. She did not find him but she did find people with the same last name and so she joined a group of people with that name saying she was looking to connect with family and , I believe I understood this correctly, she included her father’s name. All of a sudden she starts to get many friend requests on face book. As she described it, she was going, Accept, Accept, Accept, Accept. These friends, of course, were members of her family. Suddenly, it occurred to her, now they all had access to her facebook page too. Suddenly, she thought about what her facebook page projected about her. She said she hoped she came across as “claimable” – very touching, I thought.

One little thing though: her father was not on facebook. She was starting to feel very much as if she had lost control. There is some discussion on facebook about good old [her father] having a kid; there is talk on line as to just who this long lost daughter might be and just what she might want. Although it all worked, she felt it was almost too fast, too out of her own control. She had effectively “outed” her father which didn’t seem completely fair and was never her intention.

I thought it was an interesting discussion about how one must be ever vigilant with the internet and the sensitivities of adoption. What feels very private, often is private no longer once it goes up on line. You have to stop and think each step of the way and be very conscious of what the privacy rules and policies are on the social media site you are using. We all need to be careful with our own and other people’s personal information.

The next speaker was Martha Nichols whose presentation was entitled You Don’t Know My Family: The Ethics of Adoption Memoir Writing and Press Coverage .

She is an adoptive parent and a free lance writer whose work has appeared in salon.com. She spoke on a similar theme: How we must be conscious of the fact that in writing our own stories we are also writing the stories of others. She used as an example the adoptee who was returned to Russia. In response to the outrage directed toward the adoptive mother in that case, many other adopted parents who were also experiencing difficulties began posting their own situations in words and in photographs. In the rush to generate sympathy for adoptive parents who are experiencing problems they forgot about the privacy of their own children. Children whose stories and photographs are now up on the internet for all the world to see.

All and all, a pretty good session.

Korean BirthMothers' On Line Community

The next morning session was: BirthMothers: Agency and Activism. Due to some technical difficulties (There were many technical difficulties at MIT!!) with Hosu Kim’s presentation, the first speaker was Frances Latchford from York University in Canada. Her presentation was entitled: Recovering Jocasta: Bio-essentialism and Agency in Discourse about Birthmothers.

If you need to refresh your memory re Jocasta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocasta

Dr. Latchford and I exchanged a few words before the session began having recognized each other as Canadians. Her presentation went along these lines. If I get it wrong I hope someone will let me know or Dr. Latchford will post her paper.

She questions whether women are innately drawn to motherhood. The biology is destiny thing. In addition, to believe that a biological connection to a child or parent is important reflects an attitude of bio-narcissism. A belief that being raised in your biological family is important is bio-narcissistic nurturing.

Because of this, she questions the grief which many birth mothers express as well as their claims of coercion. She speaks of a Birth Mother Syndrome. How mothers who made a choice, believe it was a choice, and are happy with that choice, are fearful or intimidated about speaking up because the current party line (my choice of words not hers) is that birthmoms were and still are coerced or manipulated.

I found this birthmothers as sheep theory kind of interesting. One of the main reasons I was at this conference was because I have heard various birth mothers express opinions as to why feminists have for the most part thrown birth mothers under the bus. I have never quite understood this because they, or should I say, we birthmothers are women who were essentially punished for daring to be sexual beings and for breaking a patriarchical societal taboo of having children outside the bounds of, as Dr. Latchford would say, hetero normative marriage. I wanted to attend the conference, listen and see what I thought thus enabling myself to reach my own conclusions.

I am, at this early point in the proceedings, starting to feel I am hearing a theory whose philosophical underpinnings are motivated by a very healthy dose of self interest. I am also starting to understand at an even deeper level than I anticipated about the bus tire tracks that are on my back.

I am also starting to feel on behalf of the (birthmother) sisterhood, a little offended.

In my pre-presentation discussion with Dr. Latchford I expressed the view that adoptees seems to feel some longing to know where they come from. She believes this is because they are denied the information and that this will be solved by open adoption.

It does, after all, take a village to raise a child, Dr Latchford points out.

After the presentation someone who appears to be familiar with these theories asks a question about how rights are determined in this situation. Dr. Latchford answers that it is based on work. So mom does get some rights for being the person who actually bears the child. (Where does this leave men I wonder, given they do not do too much work before birth? Pretty close to the minus column.)

How would these rights be determined? They would be negotiated, says Dr. Latchford.

Hmmmm? Young frightened, recently delivered, under pressure birthmom negotiating with academic or wealthy PAP’s? What’s the number for the Power Imbalance Police? Or the Pregnant Teenager Defense Team?

According to her profile on the York University website:

Dr. Latchford’s area of specialization is feminist social and political philosophy. Her interests are interdisciplinary and encompass a strong knowledge of continental, post-structuralist, post-colonial, psychoanalytic, and queer theories of subjectivity, sexuality, race, and gender. Her publications focus on questions of queer identity, subjectivity, and rights, as well as questions concerning ethical knowledge. She is currently completing a book, Steeped In Blood, that examines how ‘family’ experiences are produced in the modern Western context. She uses feminist, continental, post-structural, and psychoanalytic theories to examine the social and political devaluation of adoptive ‘family’ experience through discourses and psychologies surrounding the family, adoption, sexuality and incest, all of which intersect. She is also working on a new anthology entitled, Adoption and Mothering, which will be published by Demeter Press.

A Tactile Love: Korean Birthmothers’ Online Community presented by Hosu Kim, College of Staten Island was next. To be perfectly honest I was still processing from the last presentation so please forgive the short description. It was about a very poignant website for Korean birth mothers. What I wrote down in my notes – many sad love stories. Ms Kim talked about what the mothers posted and how they would stay for awhile and then disappear. Finding a place to express their grief I guess and maybe hoping against hope that some connection with their child might be made.

Finally, Mary Anne Cohen a founding member of CUB spoke on A History of Birthmother Activism 1976-2010. She reviewed the history of CUB, Concerned United BirthParents explaning that it arose from ALMA the early adoptee rights movement. She talked about the early leaders in CUB and read a beautiful poem in tribute to the late Carole Anderson. This was actually the reason why I had attended this particular session.

There appeared to be a number of academics in the audience and so at the Q & A afterward, many of the questions were directed at Dr. Latchford. To her credit, the chair, Jean Teller, invited others into the questioning so that there would not be just one focus.

I started talking to a Canadian PhD candidate who was sitting behind me and we ended up having lunch together. We discussed Dr. Latchford’s theories and I said to me it just seemed like the latest rationale to separate us from our children. In my view, there is a difference betweeen equality in access (gay or straight) to children who truly need homes and developing a theory that is designed to provide “product” for PAP’s and misusing, it takes a village to raise a child, to do it. But it was a good discussion I thought. We also talked about Anita Allen’s presentation from the day before.

Next: Gays, Lesbians and Adoption. This was a plenary session. I’m afraid I didn’t write much down. The wheels in my brain were still turning from the previous session .

First Presentation: Costs of Increased Access in Adoption by Maria BrettSchneider. What I remember most about this is Ms BrettSchneider talking about her children. I hope her presentation will be posted somewhere.

She was followed by John Raible whose paper I posted from his website. I thought he was wonderful. His description of his own childhood and his discussion of the importance of community was very thought-provoking. I really urge you to read his paper.

Next: Agency at the Agency? Adoption and Structural Homophobia presented by Sarah Tobias of Rutgers. Dr. Tobias read her paper at breakneck speed. I really wish academics who are presenting already written papers would do a little editing because it is too hard to process what is coming at you.

Next, a session I was very much looking forward to: Creative Writing on Adoption chaired by Susan Ito who many of you will know from her blog, ReadingWritingLiving.

Carrie Kircher and Carol Lefevre, both adoptive mothers, read from their books, Walking Towards Everything New: A Russian Adoption Memoir and If You Were Mine

The adoptees followed: Kate Vogl reading from Lost and Found: A Memoir of Mothers; Patrick MacMahon reading from The Birthday Party about attending his birth mother’s birthday party and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs reading from On Korean Birth Search Landscapes and Politics and Poems from Paper Pavilion and Others.

Birth Mothers Read From: Gee where are the birth mothers? None present – on the panel. Al least one in the audience.

I asked Susan about this before hand. She had no hand in the panel composition.

As you can tell it was a long day. An exhausting day. I skipped the banquet. I needed a break. I went to a rib joint in Davis Square for dinner.

RedBones Southern BBQ Davis Square

That’s a picture. It was the right decision.

Phewww!

One more post to go or maybe two. Might do one on my general impressions, pats and pans, beefs and bouquets.

I really liked the next session I’m going to write about for many reasons. It was a nice way to end the conference. And I learned yet more new words. But in a good way.

Peace

UM

Home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

John Raible at ASAC

If you are a follower of ThirdMom’s blog you have read the many words of wisdom of John Raible, adoptee and gay adoptive dad.  He posted his address on Saturday to the conference on his blog.  Here is the link

http://johnraible.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/queer-parents-tranracial-adoption/

His sons were 6 and 13 when he adopted them.  He talks alot about growing up in, as he calls it, Whitesville and advocates for transracial adoptees.

Peace

UM

Audi Alterem Partem – More from Boston

That is Latin for “Hear the Other Side” In Canada we call that one of the rules of natural justice.  What lawyers call the rules of natural justice, most people call fairness.  Why am I telling you this?   I’ll get to that in a minute.

The plenary session yesterday afternoon was Secrecy and Policy.  Again another interesting session.  Adam Pertman spoke about the work and philosophy of the Evan B. Donaldson Institute. Elizabeth Samuels of University of Baltimore spoke about birth mothers as the Object of Others Desires.  Naomi Cahn of George Washington Law School spoke about Assisted Reproductive Technology.  As an industry it seems to have very few controls. She is also on the board of  Sibling Registry.  Some people seemed to be surprised by the notion that reproductive technologies will raise the same issues adoption does about wanting to know the true nature of your origins.  This seems self-evident to me.  In my opinion, it is just the next wave.  One of the problems in studying this situation is that people may not know they are the result of reproductive technology as they are not told.  I did a post on this once.  Whose Your Daddy?  Here is the link:    http://wp.me/pgdfz-5N I thought it was an interesting and respectful discussion.  Although one of the organizers of the conference got somewhat upset at the importance being placed on biological ties.

The next session I attended was Complications of Search, Reunion and Aftermath.  One of the presenters was Betty Jean Lipton who is an icon of the movement to give voice to all the issues surrounding adoption from a perspective of someone other than an adoptive parent.  The other two women read academic papers that analyzed existing literature in both the academic and writing sense of that word.  For example, Marianne Novy of the University of Pittsburgh did a review of “Seven Adopted American Women’s Memoirs of Reunion and its Aftermath.”  Conclusion,not surprisingly, each one is different.

Some of the points that hit me:  Closed is more familiar for adoptees than open, even if they are unhappy in their personal closed situation.  The door they are opening feels like a chasm. One adoptee described it as”I came,I saw, I fled.” But the fleeing didn’t last long; he was back in reunion after a year.  That searching often feels like regressing. That they are falling down the rabbit hole like Alice into the life they might have lead.  You meet the ghost baby,the who you might have been.  The baby who got to live with her mother.  One adoptee said, there was the me that was born and didn’t live and the me that wasn’t born and did. That alternate self is totally unscripted,while the adopted self is scripted.  One adoptee said it was a fear of being erased.  Betty Jean Lipton said some adoptees are stuck being the mad, sad baby. She also said the adoptee feels a great need to be in control of the reunion.  Setting down rules, apparently, is not uncommon.

And now the reason for the title of this post.  The secondplenarysession: Adoption and Mental Health:  Realism, Risk and Responsibility.   The presenter was Anita Allen who has a fairly impressive resume.  But despite the resume,I found the presentation a little light.  And a number of statement were made with which I disagreed.

For example:

Adoption is win,win,win.  Win for the child, win for the birth mother,win for the adoptive parents.  How could any one listen to the presentations I described yesterday by birth mothers and believe that adoption is in any way a “winning” proposition for a mother.   But there was more.

The birthmother is, after all, looking for a family for her child.  Maybe in 1952 – and probably not even then – but these days, PAP’s are looking desperately for a child to adopt is a more accurate description of the situation.  And more.

In discussing the merits of open adoption, Ms Allen actually said, that they did not have to worry that they were making their daughter overweight by feeding her doughnuts, because her birth mother was overweight and that’s where she got it from.  The statement was accompanied by an overhead projection of the daughter and her birth mother.

The mental health aspect of this discussion?  It was about the ethics of complete disclosure to the PAP’s about mental illness in the adoptees family.  How ethically there should be full disclosure.  While Ms Allen did not support the return of the child to Russia that has so recently been in the news there was some sympathy expressed for AP’s who have tried everything and not achieved any success.  It was about the process not the fact of the return.

Of course, the topic of disclosure brings up many issues for birth mothers. Disclosure is an element of informed consent and I did not hear any discussion of mutual disclosure.  I did not hear how anyone considering relinquishing should receive full disclosure of the PAP’s family’s mental health history or the true impact of relinquishment on mother and child.

If we had had full disclosure about the true impact of adoption on our and our children’s lives we would not be sitting here today. If we had been given full disclosure of the  nature of the adoptive parents some of our children would be placed with,we would not be sitting here today.

Ms Allen talked about wrongful adoption lawsuits and what the approach should be to adoption, should it be caveat emptor – buyer beware (an interesting choice of phrase) or should it be expectation of a guarantee.  And while Ms Allen did not advocate either of these extremes, one cannot help but think that relinquishing mothers are often given and expected to base their decision on a guarantee of a perfect family for their child – one that is no more applicable to adoptive parents than anyother element of society.

I dont know if Ms Allen,s remarks were those of a person used to speaking to a room full of like-minded individuals.  I kind of suspected they were. I don’t know why she did not acknowledge the strong evidence given earlier in the conference that adoption is not win,win, win for mothers.  Many adoptees would say the same thing. I suspect she didn’t hear it.

As I mentioned above, Ms.Allen has a pretty impressive resume from acedemia to contributing to O magazine (perhas this is where Oprah got the idea that third world surragacy is women helping women) but in my opinion she needs to do a little more thinking about the rules of natural justice and she needs to Audi Alterem Partem.  It wouldn’t be hard to do there are some of alterem partems right here in the same building at MIT.

I am going to end with a personal note but it relates.  As I was walking out of the building where the conference events were being held there was a family mother, father,daughter.  The father was taking a picture of the mom and daughter. I think there are a lot of people here doing the MIT campus tour in anticipation of next September.  I offered to take a picture of all three. They accepted my offer. As I walked away from them I felt myself tearing up.  One of the factors that was stressed to me when I had my son was that he would not have the life that I had if I kept him. He would not get to go to university.  My son did not make it out of Grade 9.  Despite this, he has done very well for himself (not doubt due to his good genes) He has his own business.  But when I met him, it was one of my first clues as to the very false promises of adoption.

My daughter, the one I raised, graduates from one of Canada’s top universities this June.

It’s not a fair comparison of course but I can indulge in a little self-righteousness too.

Peace

UM

from Cambridge/Boston USA

Live From Boston….

In some ways I cannot believe it is only 24 hours since I got here.  There has been a lot of information pass by my eyes and into my brain in that short time. 

As I tweeted, last night I attended the screening of Ann Fessler’s new film, A Girl Like Her.  She explained that it was an attempt to put the lives of the women she depicted in the Girls Who Went Away in the context of the times in which that happened.  

Some of the womenwhose stories are depicted in the film were there.  The movie contained a lot of archival footage.  You know about “becoming a women” or what nice girls do and do not do. There is a young woman confessing to her mother (in what universe did that happen?) that she had “very strong feelings” for a boy. There are funny pictures of condoms being made.  The sad story of someone’s mother giving her a lysol douche to try and end her pregnancy.

There was confirmation of the litany of affirmations social workers used to convince girls that they were doing the right thing.  Didn’t matter where you were from, the script was the same.

Before the movie started I was talking to the woman in the row ahead of me about writing and StephenKing’s book On Writing.  After the movie I got up to make a comment, to my surprise she got up and stood behind me at the microphone.  She was a birth mother too.  There was lots of discussion and the hall was full.

On the way back to the hotel there was  a serious fire in the subway.  Tunnel starting to fill with smoke just before we got off.  That was a little disconcerting.

Had a hard time sleeping last night – thinking everything over.  Happy to be here. Great to meet everyone.  A little angry about what happened way back then to so many people.

First session today:  A Love Diverted: A Birth Mother Speaks presented by Lynn Barber whose daughter is white and AfricanAmerican. Raised in a Polish family. Mother and daughter talked about their reunion.    UM sat and looked at their profiles one white, one African-American but still so much the same.  Why does that still continue to amaze and delight me?  Of course they look a like: they are mother and child.

The second session today was called Birthmothers Speak.  Three very powerful presentations. Karen McElmurray read froman essay about her reunion with her son “The Second Surrender”  about the realities that set in inadoption reunion.  Her story was rivetting, her writing incredible.   Her premise that relinquishment is on-going in reunion is accurate, I think.

The second woman to speak was young and involved as a birth mother in an open adoption.  After giving birth nine years ago, she and the baby’s father decided that open adoption might be the way to resolve their alleged inability to care for their child (the message hasn’t changed much all these years later) and the desire to be involved in their child’s life.  They soon came to realize their role was very unclear.  In one meeting with the adotive parents when the child was one year old, she drew a diagram of her vision of the child-birthparents-adoptive parent relationship.  She and the boy’s father saw  three overlapping circles.   The adoptive mother saw a large circle that was she and her husband with a smaller circle inside – the child.  There was another circle off to the side – that was the presenter and the baby’s father.  The adoptive parents did not tell the child he was adopted until he was five.  

The third presenter was Meredith Hall who read a chapter from her book, Without A Map entitled Chimeras: Birth Mother nad Child.  She said that mothers carry fetal cells within their bodies long after they have given birth.  This has a name – human micro chimerism.   Her writing to0 was beautiful and when she read “I just wanted to say to my son – come home,” I had to pull out the kleenex. Very moving.  Her son’s adoptive father abused him horribly.

Lest you think it was all birthmothers all the time – not so.  Will report when I come back on the rest of today and some of Saturday’s events.  That includes Secrecy, sealed records, reproductive technology, complications of search and reunion adoption and mental health.  Whose mental health you might ask?

I am exceedingly glad I came.  Boston looking beautiful but so far all I’ve done is ride the subway and hang out at MIT.

Peace

UM from Cambridge/Boston USA