Networking, Advertising, Fundraising…

This is a venting post…

I just read this line in an advertisement for an adoption agency…

Wide selection of Birthmothers to meet your family’s goals.

How is this an appropriate statement to make?  Could you make it sound worse if you tried?  ”Birthmothers” are not objects, they are human beings.  Reminds me of the ads placed in the towns along the railway before the Orphan Train stopped and lined up the children on the platform to viewed and adopted.

And the networking that happens.  Pass-Along Cards.  Websites showing how absolutely perfect you are.  Parent Profile Websites.  Forums for connecting.  Advertisements in Newspapers with 800 numbers.  YouTube Videos.  Even Billboards.  Enough to make me seriously question whether the adoption world has gone mad, or rather that the adoption industry has just found a way to make money without spending their profits on advertising – think about that.  Ethics, not so much.  Adoption if finding a home for a child not finding a child for a home…

Fundraising is another thing that frustrates me.  Mothers are told they are not good enough and look at all these fine couples ready to parent your child, financially secure, working, beautiful homes – everything you could possibly want for your child to have growing up.  And then you find out that they had to fundraise to pay for the adoption.  If you don’t have the funds then save your money – raising a child is expensive, at least that is what the mother is told as a reason to surrender.  How did you pay for the new car in the driveway?  Monthly payments?  Do the same thing but proactively and then adopt.  If you have to ask people to help you afford to adopt, then are you really capable of financially supporting a child throughout their childhood and beyond? 

And if you do network or fundraise are you going to include those items in your child’s life-book?  It is part of their story as to how they became part of your family.  Look honey at the Pass-along card we posted at the homeless shelter where your mother lived.  This is the newspaper ad we placed across the country looking for a mother to give us you.  Here is the fundraising we did to be able to afford you – weren’t we clever.

People need to stop and think how the adoptee will feel when they grow up.  I would be creeped out.  Adoption should not be done this way.  It should be all about finding a home for the child who can’t stay in their family.  What is happening now is wrong, and I don’t have the words to thoroughly describe how wrong it is.