In Defence of Adoption 1985

Margaret McDonald

Adoption Branch

NSW Department of Youth and Community Services

Caroline Sutton

Probation and Parole Services

Department of Corrective services

Helen Dillon

Catholic Adoption Agency

`Adoption and the Relinquishing Mother'

MacDonald and Co., claim two events of the early 1980's informed the industry of the effects of adoption on the relinquishing mother. One being the establishment of the Australian Relinquishing Mothers Society, founded at the 1982  National Adoption Conference, and the publication in 1984 study by the Western Australian researchers Winkler and Van Keppel `Relinquishing Mothers in Adoption'.

However, as is always the response of those in the adoption field, the experts, once caught out, manage to justify their position. The fact of the matter is that the everlasting grief of the mother has always been known, (it is the reason she had to be warned of the psychological harm, and the risk of dire future regret if deciding upon adoption - as per their own legislation). Their own social work records, now 20-40 years old, readily available under Freedom of Information, constantly refer to mothers contacting the agency months and years after the adoption, still grieving for their babies and not being able to get on with their lives. Using `divide and conquer' tactics, each and every one of the mothers were being told how she was the only one who hasn't gotten on with her life, indicating there must be something wrong with her.

Their old adoption literature, eg. Adoption, by Margaret Kornitzer 1958, describes how a mother grieves for, and shows concern for her child, for many years after separation. Their own more recent literature, as described earlier in this submission by Berromeo, explains how a mother needs to mourn the lost child, and equates adoption separation to a death experience because of the irreversible nature of adoption.  The simple fact is that the adoption experts did not chose to acknowledge the mothers grief prior to the 1980's as it suited their objectives to ignore it.  Even once it was formally acknowledged it made no difference. Little changed.

The only reason her grief was eventually acknowledged was because the industry was unable to keep the mother isolated and silenced any longer. With the evolution of the Australian Relinquishing Mothers Association (ARMS), the industry found she was no longer able to be controlled and oppressed, and so, pretending to be surprised that anyone had actually suffered at their hand, and in their attempt to protect their industry from charges of professional neglect, the industry justified itself by declaring how they had been totally oblivious to the suffering adoption had imposed upon the mothers, until of course, the early 1980's. 

The lack of professionalism in the adoption field is indicated by the following attempt by the authors, to justify the effects of adoption on the mother with the continued use of antiquated and irrational theories by Leontine Young, although debunked in the 1960's as nonsense, was still handy to use through the mid 1980's, in helping agents justifying their practice. That anyone could even contemplate the concept of a mother losing her own baby forever as a "growing point", or that giving away their own babies would resolve conflicts with ones mother shows the utter insanity of the industry as the following shows:

Nevertheless there is strong evidence to suggest that, as with any major life crisis which is satisfactorily resolved, the surrender of a child for adoption may represent a growing point from which a woman may achieve greater self-awareness, often through resolution of previously unexplored conflicts, most notably in her relationship with her own parents.

The adoption experts so wanted to believe that a mother was capable of making a rational decision to willingly give away her own baby, they lost sight of the female human condition altogether in their need to promote adoption. Even their predecessors of earlier decades considered the separation of a mother and baby as a tragic but necessary separation given the stigma of her illegitimate status. The new scientific approach to adoption, allowed long term adoption workers to get lost in their own mythology and rather forget mother

nature altogether, as the following use of Ericsons work shows:

 Statements about the inability of a woman ever to accept having given  up a child tend to ignore what is known about personality development.

The work of Ericson, for example, emphasises the importance of the successful completion of life tasks, identifying the stage of generativity as that at which the individual has the capacity for proper parenting, the stage at which  a child can be seen as a separate person with its own specific needs for nurture rather than as an extension of the mothers own need for dependent care.

And further: this next passage, while acknowledging the wrongs of past practice, indicate their belief that if the mother is freely permitted to see her child it will allow her to grieve and move on, rather than acknowledging that the cost of adoption, in human terms, has been just too high.

There are still some mothers whose way of coping with an adoption

surrender is to attempt to block out the experience. Agencies may find themselves working with women who are striving painfully after a lapse of years to come to terms with a grief they were unable to face at the time.

Theold practice of denying a mother access to a child she planned to surrender has died out. The right of the mother to see her child if she wishes to do so is now freely acknowledged, but her right to choose not to do so has also to be accepted, even when it runs contrary to our current professional nsights.

Additionally, the adoption industry has continued to theorise and make it up as they go along, regarding any understanding of the mother, in such a way as to make themselves feel comfortable in their profession.

They continue to contradict all previous knowledge known to them by their own Departments as the need requires. eg. This paper also relies on the writers' explanation that uses the many mothers who contact an agency years after the surrender, to let the agent know she `did the right thing' as an indication of proof that there are mothers who have accepted the surrender of their child. Whereas in 1966, their own literature on the issue of why mothers contact the agency, was known to be because the agency was the mothers last connection with her lost baby. It was seen as an indication that she could not let go and get on with her life. (see The natural mothers need after placement, V Nichols 1966). Logic would indicate that a mother who remains in contact with an agency, has not only not moved on, but that she is in continual need of being reassured that `she did the right thing'.

 `Editorial'

New South Wales Parliament

Review of Adoption Policy and Practice

`Options for Reform'

1984-85

As a result of the Health Commission's policy warning on adoption practice, a review of adoption policy and practice was commissioned by Frank Walker MP., then Minister for Youth and Community Services in 1984 and reported on in   Adoption: Options for Reform 1985,  advised the adoption industry that:

         In future, before a consent is taken, relinquishing parents

         should receive counselling and written information on the

         implication of adoption, alternatives to adoption and

         community support services which can assist them if they

         choose to keep their child.

         The provision of written information before a consent is

         signed will provide the opportunity for relinquishing parents

         to consider the issues at home with their family and friends,

         and will reduce the likely-hood of a misunderstanding. 

The written information, when it did arrive many years later was inadequate,

inappropriate, uninformative and not in keeping with the meaning of the Ministerial recommendations that were meant to ensure that no misunderstanding of the decision was possible.

Access Adoption

At a Meeting of Approved Adoptive Applicants

1985

Finally beginning to realise that the child's needs should also matter, the

adoption industry eventually introduced  `Accessed adoption'. This new concept was introduced to allow for an agency-controlled information sharing to be passed between the natural mother and adoptive child.

Given to believe she would have contact with her child, is what encouraged some young mothers to accept adoption as the only solution to her life crisis. Although by the eighties she could select parents from a portfolio of three or four prospective adoptive applicants allowed her to feel she had some control over the arrangements for her child. She would select the new parents on the promises the adoptive parents made to her regarding ongoing contact.

However, she was usually not told by the agency that there was no legislation passed to force adopting parents to honour their promises to her and it was usual for any exchange of letter of photo's to cease as soon as the adoption was legally finalised through the Supreme Court. In end effect, accessed adoption ended up no better than the closed system.

Extracts of the following paper presented at a meeting to approved adoptive applicants, outline that adoption has seen the child's interests as always  secondary to the needs of the prospective adopters.  

     "Access adoption is the final step in truly acknowledging and attempting

     to meet your child's needs. It is the externalising of the inside truth

     of adoption and that is the crux of the fear and threat that many adoptive

     parents feel. The truth is that whether you embrace the truth openly or

     not, the truth will remain, and the truth is that there are two sets of

     parents and both in different ways are important to your child.

     What has brought our community to the point of acknowledging this? Why

     are we all being asked to confront the truth? I would suggest that as with

     all change, it has occurred because the old ways haven't worked out the

     way they were expected to.

     What is scary is that unlike the past, we cannot construct simple answers

     nor have neat black and white solutions. We have learned from the past

     that those aren't the best answers and that the cost in human terms has

     been very high.

    So what are we dealing with in adoption? Firstly we are looking for a

    family for a child who needs one. The implication of this is that there is

    no longer a blurring of the lines between the child's needs and the needs

    of the infertile couple. Up until very recently those were seen largely as

    synonymous. Access adoption is perhaps the most sophisticated attempt our

    community has made to meet what is now being acknowledged as the needs of

    the child"

Human Rights Commission

Discussion Paper No, 5

1984

Dr Cathy McDermott

"The emotional havoc wreaked on natural mothers of

adopted children is frightening and it reaches into

every other relationship they have with subsequent

children and partners."

Shawyer 1979

The Human Rights Commission identified the coercive practices of the adoption industry back in 1984, when taking submission for the inquiry into the introduction of the Adoption Information Act 1990 but perhaps because it was outside their terms of reference, none of it was made public. While the Commission clearly determined adoption practices as being coercive and discriminating against the unmarried mother, it fell short of telling the full story - that not only was such treatment discriminatory but that it was also highly illegal on all counts.And while the level of grief had been fully acknowledged by the Commission, by time the Adoption Information Act was passed in 1991, no grief counsellors had been set into place to help the mothers cope with the pain they were in. Instead, the very same social workers who participated in past abusive practices, had been employed to counsel their victims yet again - and yet again perpetuating another shocking professional conflict of interest upon the mother.

These very counsellors, having no training in grief and trauma issues, instead, mediated and controlled the reunions between mother and child. Needing to cover and protect themselves, not only did they not advise mothers of their own participation in past practices, but diverted her need to speak of her past experience by directing all counselling to the present day (for the comfort of their own conscious no doubt), classifying mothers who dared to express the illegality of their treatment as not owning up to, and taking responsibility for `their decision', negating and stifling the truth and  perpetuating further abuse and suffering. Post adoption counselling is the only area where so-called professionals who should know better, have the audacity to deliberately use counselling procedures which themselves

accommodate the promotion of this myth rather than dealing with known reality.

Additionally, one submission declared how:

      `It was assumed that, because bearing a child outside

       marriage was held to be shameful and immoral, the single

       mother would not possess the normal emotions of a mother

       towards her child.'

Reflecting how the adoption industry has always conjured up irrational, unresearched concepts and theories about the mother to promote adoption, so did they then begin conjuring up excuses for their actions once the mothers began to speak out about their inability to recover from the loss of their baby.

Again logic tells us that if this shameless industry really did believe that the unmarried mother did not possess normal emotions toward her child as quoted above, they would not have bothered to introduce the practice of forbidding eye contact between mother and child to prevent bonding.

Additionally, the industry is more than aware of the thousands of grieving mothers who regularly contacted the adoption agency wanting their babies back or asking for a modicum of help and a little information about their child. They got nothing but lies. They would make up stories of having contacted the adopters and would tell the mother the child was fine and happy. Many mothers sent gift annually to their child for decades. The child would never receive them. The agency would help themselves to the gifts or throw them out.

Additionally, those who promised her she would forget and get on with her life once she signed the consent, comfort themselves by believing this is actually possible. and

                                       Re hospital practice -

                                  restricting access to the child;

        `The unreasonableness of rules restricting access to children likely to be

         put up for adoption is arguable on the grounds that such restrictions,

         rather than helping the mother to make a responsible decision, are in

         fact designed to make the decision for her.'

Report No. 23

Review of the A.C.T. Adoption of Children Ordinance 1965

November 1986

By and large the following passage from the Commission's Report identifies what has been known in the industry all along, all except the mother herself.

While subsequent post adoption counseling was allowing the mother to  try to `forgive herself' (see Keys Young Report on Post Adoption Resource Centre August 1994) for her adoption `decision', NEVER ONCE was any mother told that she had nothing to forgive herself for. NEVER ONCE was any mother made to understand that the decision had actually been made for her. NEVER ONCE was any mother advised of what her legal rights had been. NEVER ONCE was it explained to her that her treatment was illegal. NEVER ONCE was she afforded any peace from her torture. NEVER ONCE was she exonerated of her `crime'. NEVER ONCE was she afforded her dignity. NEVER ONCE was the searching child told how his/her mother had been routinely treated. NEVER ONCE has

the searching child been told how mothers were never given a choice.

NEVER ONCE was the child's pain and anger in having spent a life feeling unwanted been alleviated by being told the truth.

 NEVER ONCE IN THE CORRUPT HISTORY OF THE ADOPTION EUGENICS PROGRAMME OR WITH ANY POST ADOPTION COUNSELLING HAS THE TRUTH EVEN BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED.

The Commission declared:

      "Adoption procedures have also largely disregarded the rights of the

      parent considering relinquishment to be made aware of her alternative

      option to adoption, and to full and disinterested support in arriving at a

      decision, The many submissions received from natural mothers who   

      relinquished children for adoption, describing their unresolved grief and

      sense of loss, bear testimony to the failure of bureaucratic procedures to

      protect their rights."

To have been fully aware of the crimes committed against unmarried mothers, as per the Commission's report, and not advising the victims of such routine criminal behaviour, I believe, constitutes a gross obstruction of Justice on the part of all concerned.  This contemptuous attitude in treating their severely traumatised clients like fools, instead of assisting their recovery, is synonymous with the behaviour of the entire adoption industry and must be addressed.