I recently attended the CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) Annual Retreat, and it’s one of my favorite adoption events of the year. In my talk I shared some important data from my book, The Adoption Paradox and it’s one of the crucial pieces of data we compiled in researching the book.
What we wanted to understand is if the US does more infant adoptions than other countries by comparison. The answer is unquestionably YES, we do. The United States by far outpaces any other country in terms of the number of adoptions we do overall, and most definitely we do more infant adoption than any other nation on earth, based upon our comparisons.
First, a big shout out is needed to my research team! These ladies were amazing and were great at sleuthing out data on child welfare and adoption throughout the US and abroad. Thank you Sadie and Zhen!
The raw data we collected in compiling the table above can be found HERE. But there are some caveats and explanations needed in order to fully process this information, and it’s important to understand these details.
First, we are using comparison data based on the number of births, by country, per year, of the countries we analyzed and could find data for.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: this is an inherently flawed analysis when it comes to comparing adoptions within foster care or step-parent/family adoptions. The reason for that is that the majority of these types of adoptions are NOT involving infants. But infant adoptions are what we’re trying to evaluate and view in relation to what other countries rates of infant adoption are. So it’s still important to see these numbers and openly acknowledge that this is an imperfect comparison for these reasons.
We still do more adoption.
Let’s dig in, and the way I’m going to do that is to share with you a video filmed from the panel at CUB where I explain these numbers to you. Check it out here:
It’s interesting to note the differences, and the data I think, leaves us needing to ask more questions. WHY do we adopt more than other nations? As I point out both in the above talk, and in the book, they do have other processes. Ones that are not related to a privatized system of adoption or if they are private, do not allow the creation of an online marketplace.
A for-profit and private adoption industry creates inherent friction points within any relinquishment. If a woman or couple is lacking resources and finally at the end of many months have now contacted an adoption agency, that agency is a business. Even if they are a non-profit one, their revenue streams are based on fees collected by facilitating adoptions.
One of the things my researchers and I looked at, but did not make it into the book, is we reviewed some of the information from The Donaldson Institute from a comprehensive study they did on relinquishment. A summary of that research can be found here. It is the only study we found that looks at the personnel working at these adoption agencies, and makes no distinction if the organization is for, or non-profit.
What is says is that very little information about parenting options is shared with expectant parents prior to placement. We, Sadie and Zhen specifically, went to Indeed.com to look up the job listings of current adoption agencies. The jobs all clearly state several things. One, is that an adoption councilor will be working with both expectant and hopeful adoptive parents. Their job is to in fact, facilitate and create adoptions. The job is not titled, for example, “resources coordinator” or other such term. So what is created is that the worker at an agency is there for one purpose, which is to guide an expectant parent or couple towards placement simply because that is their job.
This is the point of friction, and with 18,000+ of these situations occurring annually and virtually no follow up with any governmental body to see if agencies/attorneys and their personnel are following the state guidelines, what happens is that expectant parents lose all power in the situation. No one is actively in their corner looking out for their rights, and only their rights in the process.
Even if you pull the for-profit motive out of the story, the inherent process is that an agency or attorney who is in the business of fulfilling the desires of hopeful parents wanting an infant and are willing to pay an agency to do so, then that creates a very transactional nature. And I think sadly there is ample evidence that everyone is at risk of being manipulated. Hopeful parents take a massive financial gamble. Expectant parents, who we know from research, are largely placing due to a lack of resources whose legal rights are not always protected like they should be. And the infant adoptee, who’s benefit is supposedly the motivation for all of it, gets lost in the process.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the above.
One of the things that truly hit me flat-footed when researching my book was that many internationally adopted babies and children had never been made naturalized citizens in the US. WHAT? Until legislation was passed in the year 2000, any infant or child adopted into the US was not automatically made a citizen – their parents still had to complete separate naturalization paperwork. And many didn’t. To explain, here is an except from my book:
“Many of these parents relied on their legal advisors and adoption agency personnel to begin this process for them. Some failed to complete the paperwork, and others were told, incorrectly, that adopting their child was enough.
Most of these children grew up going to school, got a social security card, driver’s license and the other common trappings of the modern paper trail. Troubles often only erupted when the adult adoptee tried to get a passport, apply for an SBA loan, or have a need to prove what was assumed—their citizenship.
The fallout for these men and women is a staggering blow. In 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Child Citizen Act, which guaranteed that any adopted child entering the country who met the citizen requirements were automatically made US Citizens. This law took effect in February 2001. However, it left a gap. The law only applied to adoptees already living in America who were under the age of eighteen, and those adopted afterward.
Lawmakers intended to revisit the bill to close the loop. But then, September 11 happened. Little has been accomplished since.”
What’s Happening Now?
Multiple bills have been introduced in congress for the past ten years. None have gained any meaningful traction, and this is wrong. A NEW BILL has just been introduced to the 119th Congress, the The Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2025 (HB5492). From the AdopteesUnited.org website they share:
“This is sixth iteration of the Adoptee Citizenship Act, going back to the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015. This one—the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2025 in the House and the Protect Adoptees and American Families Act (PAAF) in the Senate–is identical to the last three bills introduced in 2019, 2021, and 2024. It continues to be a critical piece of federal legislation that would close a huge loophole in US immigration law, one that has denied U.S. citizenship to thousands of intercountry adoptees who decades ago were legally adopted by U.S. citizen parents. The loophole relates primarily to the age of the adopted person on a specific date in 2001, denying automatic (sometimes called acquired or derivative) citizenship to intercountry adopted people who were born on or before February 27, 1983. Most adoptees born on or before this date must either naturalize or find a different path to secure U.S. citizenship.”
Sign The Petition Here
Anyone from any state can support this bill. PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION HERE. If you’re interested in calling your local representative, there is a script provided HERE.
Why This Matters
It’s important to understand what’s at stake here. It is estimated that there are at least 18,000 adult adoptees facing this situation and potentially as many as 70,000. If you’ve read my book, then you know that one of may disturbing realities is that record keeping on infant adoptions both domestically and internationally has at times been sketchy at best. We have to deal in round numbers and estimations because not all states require that all private adoptions be reported. And those loopholes have created no small amount of chaos in the system.
The families who adopt children internationally enter into a unique covenant. One that must be honored. Many Americans believe that any child adopted into our country is lucky. They have come from, in general, countries where social services were weak or completely unable to respond to the needs of their own children. Sadly, there will always be some humanitarian crisis somewhere in the world, where families and the most vulnerable are at risk.
Adoption professes to be one highly benevolent answer to these often human-caused situations. If adoption is to be used responsibly, or to even pretend to be so, then at a minimum it must fulfill its basic promises. Such as, that if someone is adopting a baby or youngster and taking them into a new country to be raised, that these persons grow up in circumstances keeping these commitments. Citizenship is THE most basic right owed to these youths and the adults they will become.
We promised them protection – but they are at risk. It is estimated that some 35-50 of these adults have been deported back to their former country of origin. We promised them safety and a better life than the one they would have had. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But we are failing them now due to ignorance and indifference. To remain nonchalant or well-intentioned but inactive, is a slap in the face to the adopted adults living with these consequences and what our society believes it provided, but failed to complete.
As long as we continue to remain inactive or ignorant, then we invalidate not just these individuals, but ourselves and our country. If citizenship and sovereignty is supposed to mean something, and that becoming a naturalized citizen of the US is possible or even desirable, then the failings of the system and adoptive parents are not an excuse to deny people the rights which were implicitly implied by their adoptions into their new families. The covenant has been broken, and needs to be set right.
Shame on the United States, and all of us. for allowing this to go so long in fixing what are really, very simple loopholes to close.
People often ask me what my favorite chapters are in the book. That’s a hard one because the initial answer is of course “All of them!” I like my intro and outro where you hear some of my story and evolution through the writing journey. I love the chapters on the topic of reunions, 24 and 25. I love Chapter 3 on the history of American adoption. I love Chapter 26 where we get into the crazy laws here in the US that seal our birth certificates and the fight to gain access to them.
But one of the chapters that deeply affected me when I wrote it, and that was mentioned keenly by my beta readers and critique groups, was one right in the middle if the birth parent section: Chapter 13, The Cloak of Grief and Shame. So, we’ll begin here. In the center of the storm.
We’re talking grief in a big way. From the book:
“Birth parents always grieve their loss, whether they acknowledge it or not. But what they most often experience is disenfranchised grief. This is any loss or sorrow that is not acknowledged due to societal norms. These emotions are often minimized or not understood by others, which makes it particularly hard to process and work through. No one comes visiting with banana bread or a casserole. They’re on their own, and often alone with no one to share their suffering. Even close family will not acknowledge what has just happened. Co-workers avoid them. Friends and extended family are at a loss. Worst of all, no one wants to talk about or even see how traumatizing the relinquishment has been.”
These amazing women opened their hearts to us, and in this chapter, they strike a big chord:
Shayanne~
I was not okay for a long time. I was really, really not okay, and I am proud of myself because I almost didn’t make it. I realized that my kid was gone and I was not going to get a visit no matter who I asked or what I did. I think becoming a foster parent subconsciously helped, as if by being a foster parent I was as good as these other people. I was going to be as good as his adoptive parents and then they won’t be afraid of me anymore. They will let me have a visit.
They will do this and that and the other thing and it’ll be like I proved to them that I’m good enough. And I still wasn’t good enough, even after raising these other kids and becoming a foster parent. I was a shell. I just laid in bed and cried because of the devastation from realizing, “Oh my God, I don’t have a choice. There’s nothing I can do.” I have never been able to not help myself before. And it was so infuriating for me to realize, “I can’t do anything.”
The Impacts of Shame
Shame is systemic in adoption. Everyone takes a bite of this bitter sandwich, it seems. It’s plated up pretty with assurances that everything will be fine, everyone’s OK, it tastes fine. But its liverwurst dressed up like a juicy BLT. And the aftertaste lingers forever.
That’s one of the things about birth parent grief, and particularly so for our mothers of loss. Their longing, emotional pain, shame and guilt grow as time goes on, rather than diminish.
Disturbing Data
One other important part if this chapter we owe to the recent work from researcher Dr. Lynn Zubov, who gathered rather startling statistics on the consequences of relinquishment for birth mothers, in particular. Their health suffers, including even their life expectancy. Her preliminary research numbers show the following:
First mothers are 39 times more likely to attempt suicide than the general population
Of the 245 first mothers who were reported deceased by their relinquished adoptees from the survey, nine died by suicide
The death rate of 3.59% by suicide for first mothers makes them roughly 511 times more likely to die of suicide[1]
More study is needed, but one thing noted in the three years of researching for the book, birth parents are by far the least studied group in the triad. And most of that research has been done in Australia and Canada, not in the US.
Cathryn~
I can’t think about this. I can’t ever think about this again or I’ll lose my mind. So, I didn’t. I pushed her down and away. I thought, I have to keep going—there’s no choice. There’s nothing I can do. It was as if she was dead.
I held a gun. The girls were young teen- agers. My husband was a hunter, and he had bought a handgun for small game hunting. I’ve always hated guns. I considered taking my life just because I was in so much pain, and I didn’t know what was wrong.
Honoring The Lost Mothers
The shame for some women who relinquish consumes them. They continue to make bad choices or meet unkind people who further abuse them in a cycle of self-harming behavior that reinforces their shame. Others never learn to tell even one person and remain isolated and alone with their secrets to their graves.
For the ones who don’t make it back into the light of day, may they be heard from now through the eyes of those who survive them.
The chapter closes with stories told from adoptees who have survived their first/birth mothers. Initially I had three stories here, but in the need to trim the length of the book one of them had to be cut. Here it is:
Tina, honoring her birth mother, Marilyn~
It really did mess up my mother’s life. She never recovered. She got married within a couple of years of my birth, had my sister, then lost custody of my sister to her parents.
She became a drug user and an alcoholic. But she was turned on to that by her then husband who my grandparents loved. They thought he was the greatest. But he was the one that turned her on to all these drugs and stuff. She would disappear for weeks at a time. Then my grandfather would go find my biological father, who was a police officer by that time. [My birth dad] would go find her in different drug houses and bring her home. So, the dynamic ended up with my birth dad being the good guy. Her husband was the bad guy.
But she had done what her parents told her to do. She went with the guy that they told her to go with, and it wrecked her life. She never recovered from giving me up. She never recovered from losing custody of my sister. It was like constant blows to her life, and she just never could get on her feet after that.
I think that maybe things would have been a little bit easier for her, if she could have had just a tiny bit of support. I think that started her downward spiral, and it just went on for another thirty years.
[1] A Preliminary Exploration into Adoption Reunions. Data on when adoptees knew they were adopted. Facebook, 7 2024, 3:19PM, https://www.facebook.com/profile. php?id=61555968231690, Accessed14 Jun 2024.
This past Saturday, May 31st in Boulder City, a group of special friends, supporters and contributors to the book, The Adoption Paradox, gathered to celebrate and share our stories. I’m proud this work has brought together so many different voices and begun to create its own mini-movement speaking about adoption’s real impacts in a gentle but firm light. The night was filled with connections both new and old, and the forging of many important and even unexpected relationships.
Several friends traveled to be with us. Brad, a Late Discovery Adoptee who tells his story for the book came from Dallas. A group of sisters who had been part of both adoption and the foster care system came with their families and supportive friends. Traveling from Arizona they created their own special weekend together. Dirk, another adoptee also visited from Arizona, and there were many, many other contributors who came in from the surrounding area to participate.
Also present was the publisher, Jo Wilkins, the CEO of Mystic Publishing who helped bring the book to fruition along with members of the Henderson Writers Group. I’m so grateful for their early and ongoing critiques of the book as it progressed. Missing was my editor Janelle Evans who I could not have finished without her steadfast guidance.
My good friend Hannah from San Diego along with many other of my early readers, Alan and Peggy were also there. The book would have never evolved as it did without their cherished feedback along the way.
We were also surrounded with so many dear friends locally who supported me through so many revelations as my writing evolved, cheering me on. A bestie from San Diego along with family members Dora, Vienna and Adam who joined us along with my extended Rotary family and so many others who shared in my journey. And I must thank of course my husband for his support throughout this three-year journey as I wrote, researched and worked on this book. You are the love of my life and my best friend. I could not have done this without you.
Food and drink flowed liberally, and our friend and local favorite musician Patrick Mahoney played favorite tunes to ease us into the evening.
Sharing my thoughts with you all, the stories that came after the book, and the ones that didn’t stay in it, was very special for me. Talking about this journey with all of you, this mixed crowd of those who’ve lived it and those who are only now becoming aware of the longer implications is important. And, it’s hard work.
Bein vulnerable is scary. Pushing buttons and saying hard things is uncomfortable. But honest conversations about adoption requires us to sit in squishy and frightening spaces. Places without clear definitions around them of what is right or wrong, good or bad. Because people are rarely just right or wrong, good or bad. We’re more complicated than that, but our survival instincts crave those easy boundaries. That’s the work I think this book accomplishes through all these many, beautiful voices who contributed to it. I’m so honored to have met you all and shared this journey with you. Thank you for your support! To those present to share in this joy that night, I’m so glad you came! To those who were there in spirit only, your presence was still felt.
Our hearts are full and let us please all remember to connect and trust in each other. By speaking our truths, one story at our time we can make our systems better. Thank you for being part of my life.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” ~Margaret Mead
What does it mean to be truly child centered when considering adoption? It begins with listening, sincerely and without dismissal, to the adoptees involved. Most importantly, being child centered in adoption means that the interests of the adults are set aside, and the needs of the child are prioritized over all others. Quite often, this is not the way adoption is practiced in the US, although many like to think it is so.
It begins with our first, natural mothers.
I am angry at the way many birth mothers have been treated in the past and continue to be treated. During the baby scoop, some mothers were left to labor in hospital hallways because delivery rooms were only for proper married ladies. In 2005, when Shayanne (who readers will meet in Chapters 15 and 16) was in labor, she was left to lie for four hours in her amniotic fluid after her water broke. The dignity extended to these women has not improved as much as one might hope.
My natural mother may indeed have made some mistakes and used poor judgment. I do not romanticize her but see her for who and what she was at that time. I don’t know her full story, but from the non-identifying information in my file, she was an eighteen-year-old young woman with an abusive stepfather, and a boyfriend who couldn’t support her and wouldn’t marry her.
But she is more than just a sad story and deserved the opportunity to prove that. Automatically assuming her incapable of parenting me is a myth, and she likely would have made a good mother. My adoptive parents also made mistakes and, in spite of that, were good parents whom I love, respect, and cared for through the end of their days.
I am a product of both my first and raising parents. When people with power exert coercive pressures or treat my mother with a lack of care, harsh judgements, or disrespect, you are treating me the same whether you understand the truth of this or not. Biases about her and her situation create the belief about my “need” to be “rescued.” If her options are limited, and you think they deserve to be because she got herself into this predicament, then please recall a certain parable about people carrying stones in glass houses.
She had sex and may not have been as responsible as she could have been about using birth control. For some of these women the sex was not consensual. Now, this baby forming in her womb is unplanned for, but that does not mean she doesn’t want to parent. When you judge her, you are judging my existence. And because she was “irresponsible” I therefore need to be better provided for by others. Maybe some view her as no longer of the same value she was before. These biases were applied to my mother back in 1965 and are still present today.
Our society says to modern mothers, “You’re irresponsible and can’t possibly raise this child, so we’ll take better care of it than you can.” They deem that such children should be raised by another, more suitable, family. We pretend this is her choice, but others have manipulated her options and are profiting from her misfortune.
The outcome of an adoption means that barely out of the womb, I’m separated from the one person I need and know more than any other human being. This is done supposedly for my welfare, and people will say she did a good thing by being so noble and brave. Society then declares me lucky, and insists I agree.
Everyone needs to understand the bond between a natural mother and her infant is not a casual one, and that breaking us apart has consequences. An infant pays dearly for that separation and so will their mother. When we use adoption as part of our social safety net, we fail everyone involved. Financial hardship must not be the only factor in the equation of when an adoption occurs, nor should society or religiously imposed shame. If these are the only reasons an adoption may be happening and the mother wants to parent, then that adoption is unnecessary.
ALL ADOPTIONS CONTAIN TRAUMA
Separating an infant from its mother at birth is inherently traumatizing. These actions will affect both of them for the rest of their lives. This has been shown in a multitude of studies in mammals with rats and monkeys, and much study has been done on human beings. What is unknown is how and at what level that separation trauma and loss of attachment so early after birth will manifest in that adoptee’s life.
Many will say endlessly that the adopted adults they know in their life are fine. Many adopted persons reading this will agree. It is true that many such individuals are successful and appear to have no problems. But consider another view.
Adopted children grow up with messaging they are “chosen, special, and wanted.” If their nervous system is already geared around abandonment because this is how their primal instincts have interpreted their separation, one of the ways this can manifest is a highly driven need to be perfect. The preverbal trauma responds within their nervous systems and intrinsically motivates them to be sure they are wanted and kept. These individuals may be driven to be good or even the best at what they do, which can make them highly successful in their careers and lives, and are traits this society admires greatly.
An adoptee who wants desperately to be loved and to “fit in” with the world around them may develop a “chameleon” personality, which makes them highly malleable and likable to be around. This persona seeps into their being and does enrich their lives, in that they may have many friends and appear well adjusted. On the surface, the world interprets them as happy and maintaining great relationships.
One question worth asking is if the adoptee is more resilient, or did their adoptive parents bond with them more thoroughly, or did they disassociate from their pain in childhood so completely they are not in touch with their honest feelings? Does a chameleon personality know who it truly is or what they want from life? Or, what happens when a perfectionist who equates their success with love struggles with normal human failures?
The adoption competent therapists interviewed for the book all had stories of the 40-to-50-year-old adopted adult who wandered through their doors seeking help, believing they had always been fine. But then, a divorce or death occurred and suddenly they found themselves unable to cope as they had in the past. Feelings, long buried, surfaced in these moments, but if they don’t have the right help, it is hard to accurately diagnose what is going on.
RECONCILING THE COLLECTIVE DENIAL
There are so many good adoptive parents out there, my own included. They loved me unconditionally, celebrated my unique personality and differences, and never allowed me to be belittled or “othered” by anyone around me. They were always honest and, overall, got more things right in adoption than wrong. And people are people, and we are all beautiful and flawed in our own ways.
My father, as a school psychologist of his time, quoted the “blank slate theory” and believed it, as it was the dominant view then. Were he alive and still mentally active today he would be reading the work of Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, and others, and learning how wrong these older notions were.
It would crush him to know that his ignorance at the time may have harmed me or the formation of my little self while growing up. I wish he’d known. If his essence carries on in another plane of existence where he watches over us, I know he’s listening closely and is proud of me. The same is true of my mother. I love my raising parents and cannot regret being their daughter.
I don’t know the answers, but they begin by setting aside the false assumptions that have been built by the adoption industry and our culture’s simplified rhetoric that adoption is a beautiful way to build a family. As a fellow adoptee and good friend recently said, “We’ve all been bamboozled!”
The paradox arises from the idea that when adoption is necessary, it can be or at least should be beautiful. It should be. I want it to be beautiful! If you have a child who is unsafe in their home or truly cannot be raised by its natural mother, then being raised by a new family and given the ability to belong and be healed can be beautiful. But it is born of rupture, of trauma, and a loss so profound it must not be ignored. It is not the adopted child’s responsibility to make it beautiful. This depends on the adoptive parent’s ability to accept their child as he or she is, and understand they need to help them heal. When that occurs, adoption can fulfill its potential.
Healing is possible and necessary and, for many, is a life-long journey. For me it comes down to finding grace and understanding for everyone involved. My first mother and father could not figure out how to make it work, and the world they lived in was uninclined to assist. My adoptive parents loved me dearly, and I them, but collectively we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
I’ve worked hard on myself for years to heal from the more visible and clearly understood problems created through my adoptive mother’s alcoholism and my father’s denial of it. I’m grateful for the Adult Children of Alcoholics groups and mentors who helped me. Those wounds are still present, but the new information learned in writing this book has created an internal revolution that reveals more. In spelunking through the internal caverns of my implicit memories, I now understand my adoption’s impacts. I’ve always believed I was fine, and that adoption never affected me. Ironically, I’ve found new peace in understanding how it did.
New revelations surface where suddenly things fit. I have a chronic inability to understand when I need help from others, and don’t ask for help, ever. That tendency likely formed because when I was born and separated from my mother, my little baby brain thought she abandoned me. I received loving care but that was not enough, because no one understood I needed her, my first mother, and had no words to tell anyone. My implicit memory formed under the emotion of loss, and my cries never brought me the help I needed. Which made it very likely I was less able to bond to my already psychologically insecure new adoptive mother. We were both harmed by the lack of knowing.
I had another epiphany about my innate hyper-vigilism which many adoptees share. My nervous system is geared for subliminal stress. If life doesn’t create stressors for me, I will manufacture them because that is my normal. Even if things are calm, I feel an unease, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.
Putting these patterns of behavior into proper perspective has been revolutionary, because no other therapy has been able to touch these struggles. No one ever told me it existed. Now I know. Had I learned earlier, it is hard to compose an explanation for what might have been different.
Seeing all of this with a clear lens gives me the power and freedom to heal. Being around other adoptees and first mothers has been cathartic for my soul. In them I have a community and safety I never expected to find. Other powerful allies are the adoptive parents who have also moved into awareness of these complexities. I have new friends in unexpected places, with a highly diverse and loving band of brothers and sisters bonded by our trials. Each of us toils separately through our lives, but we are never completely alone because we know there are friends just a call away who understand. Healing in community is powerful, and I invite all within the constellation to join.
Appreciating something that is flawed, holding this duality of thinking and emotional intelligence is hard. My love for both my first and second set of parents is unending. It will swirl around and around and feed back upon itself escorted by an eternal fire. One that was lit inside of me first by my natural mother, then tended by my adoptive parents, and now lives under my care. It glows bright and steady and is mine alone, which is as it should be.
Adoption contains love and loss and forces the human spirit to entertain new ways to experience both of those emotions at the same time. This duality is always present. Adoption is a paradox.
