It was spring of 2015. The sun filtered through the living room as I sat with my computer perched on my lap, coffee in my hand growing cold.
In the google search bar I had typed, “Adoption Agencies” and literally thousands of links popped up of agencies around the country. We had just made the decision to adopt a few days prior, and already I was feeling overwhelmed with the information available and had no idea what steps to take or what direction to go.
- Wait time
- And cost
And no surprise, those were the very two things agencies and consultants advertised. Those two things were what motivated us to take the steps we ended up taking. Steps that led us straight to our daughter. We were very fortunate that we had a smooth experience. But more importantly fortunate that our daughter’s birth mama ALSO was supported and treated with respect.
Beginning the adoption process, we naively assumed that every agency was committed to serving expectant parents with respect and dignity, with their needs and wants a priority. We were completely ignorant to the lack of ethics in adoptions and just how poorly many expectant and birth parents are treated. We were so blind to what often happens behind the scenes in many of these agencies. Even reputable ones.
I can admit now that our concerns were very ego-centric, and frankly selfish. I’ll forever regret not asking more questions, and for not doing more research prior to beginning. Our first questions to an agency should not have been how much will it cost, and how fast will a placement will happen.
Rather, “How do you treat, support and care for an expectant couple, before and after placement?”
Since adopting our daughter two years ago we have learned so much, and the more we uncover in adoption and agencies, the more our hearts have been torn up over the sheer brokenness of it all. Now that we are in the midst of pursuing our second adoption, we are being very careful of the decisions we make along the way. We’ve learned to ask questions, even the hard ones before partnering with an agency or entity. We realize now that we have a responsibility to enter into a relationship with an agency not only educated, but fully informed on their processes, with high expectations of the care and service they provide to every mother and father walking into their door.
Our first time adopting we didn’t know what we didn’t know. But now? We are accountable to what we have learned. We are accountable to our future adopted children and their birth parents. They matter. They deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. They deserve to be honored and heard throughout this process and afterwards. Their voices, their needs, and their wishes deserve to be respected. They are not a means to our empty arms, or our infertility, or our desires to grow our family, and they certainly don’t deserve to be treated as such. Their hardship or vulnerability should not be taken advantage of.
And yet, that is exactly what is happening.
So among the thousands of agencies how do we possibly sift through them all? Where do we start ? Well first we need to give more care, attention and energy into researching the process of adoption, and it’s agencies, than we do when we are planning our summer vacation, or purchasing a car.
We need to be committed to doing the hard work, committed to asking the difficult questions, like these ones. And willing to walk away if their answers aren’t acceptable.
- How do you treat expectant parents before placement and afterwards?
- Do you celebrate an expectant parents decision to parent ? And in what ways do you support that decision in the long term?
- What type of counseling is offered pre-placement and post placement? What percentage of your parents utilize these services ?
- When in a mother’s pregnancy do you involve an adoptive family?
- Do you provide separate third party legal counsel to expectant families?
- Do you require adoptive parents to pay birth mother expenses? How much? And do you utilize community resources to offset these costs? Do you require a Mama to pay back gifted expenses in the event of her choosing to parent?
- Do you fully support birth father rights ? How so?
- Are you in habit of moving mothers across state lines in preference of easier adoption laws and “homing” them during their pregnancy?
- What are your fees and do you give a breakdown of where these fees are going to directly? Does your fee structure differ for racially diverse babies?
- And finally, What fees are “at risk.”
We really need to think about these issues. Weigh their importance, and decide what is right and what is clearly wrong. And this needs to be done BEFORE we are looking at situations, where our emotions can take lead.
Also, it’s really important to read between the lines when you are gathering information. I can guarantee through experience that most agencies will tell you exactly what you want to hear. So beyond talking the agency, ask for personal references from adoptive parents but especially from birth parents. You might be surprised with what you learn. Look up reviews online. Google them.
And then dig even deeper. Is there a history of lawsuits? Look into their yearly revenue and how many individuals are on their staff. This information is so telling of the heart behind their agency. Become educated on what the average pay scale is for social workers, counselors, legals, and administrators in their particular state. Question what their peer professionals have to say about their practices.
Do the dirty, tedious and boring work. The world is much smaller than we realize, and that information is readily available to us. We just have to really want that information and we have to choose to look for it.
And when we do, that long overwhelming list of agencies suddenly becomes much shorter.
What would happen if we as hopeful adoptive parents, joined hands, and raised our voices for expectant parents, demanding more ethics from agencies?
What if we refused to work with an agency unless they protected and prioritized expectant families? What if we collectively required MORE from them? Demanded more? What if we stopped just accepting the norms that are adoption today, and fought for change?
What if we said no to situations despite of our aching arms, for the sake of these parents and their children’s rights?
I believe it would completely flip the entire adoption world upside down. At the very least, force unethical agencies to make changes or close. It would put expectant families back in the center of it all. It would tell them that they matter. That we care. That they are loved.
The second our journey becomes more about how long we have to wait, or our empty arms, or that empty nursery, is the second that we are forgetting about what adoption is all about and what really matters.
Loving well.
The more concessions we make along our adoption journey, and the more we turn a blind eye to what’s really happening around us, the more we are propelling unethical adoptions. It makes us a part of the problem. I know that is a hard pill for hopeful adoptive parents to swallow. But we need to. We need to do better in this.
Our desire to adopt well needs to be stronger than our desire to adopt. Period.
Because adopting well is love.
And if we aren’t in it to love? If we aren’t willing to say no to what’s blatantly wrong in adoption? To what is hurtful and broken?
Then we shouldn’t be in it at all.
So if you are just beginning your adoption journey, don’t be overwhelmed, and don’t just jump into it blindly. Instead get ready to do the messy work and be in for a long wait. It will get messy and it most likely will take a long time. Adopting the right way, is the harder way. Believe me, I know.
But I promise you, it will be worth it. Because THEY are worth it.
Written by Cari Dugan. Cari is a lifestyle photographer and writer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She writes candidly about everyday life and experiences on being a wife and a Mama on her blog: Olivedore. You can also keep up with her on Instagram. Her husband, and four children make life what it is – A Beautiful Mess.
