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Effects of adoption on the birth mother include stigma and other psychological effects a woman experiences when she places her child for adoption.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2022) |
Effects of adoption on the birth mother include stigma and other psychological effects a woman experiences when she places her child for adoption.
The decision to relinquish birth rights of a child is a heavy burden on the psychological makeup of a birth mother. Reactions following relinquishment include psychological, physical, and social-inter personal reactions. Birthmother Syndrome is a term that came about after a survey including 70 women who placed their children in adoption all were experiencing the same eight symptoms; signs of unresolved grief, symptoms of PTSD, diminished self-esteem, outward professions of perfection masking inner feelings of shame, arrested emotional development, self-punishment, unexplained secondary infertility, and living various extremes. She may feel a sense of loss for someone who is still alive or mourns the loss of her mothering role and may mourn for who her child may have become as her son or daughter. These feelings may resurface in later years, perhaps on the child's birthday or other important milestone in the child's life. Reports show that a birth mother feels grief when she has more children because this evokes the memory of the child she gave up. If she is faced with future infertility, she may believe it is a form of “punishment” for relinquishing her parenting rights over a child. Many birth mothers continue to mourn the loss of their child but with varying intensity.
It is not until a mother actually places her child for adoption that she experiences what Julie Axelrod believes is similar to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Inspired by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's On Death and Dying, the author attempts to show how those who have experienced the death of a loved one may be psychologically similar to a birth mother who has placed her child for adoption. The adoptive Families Association of Of British Columbia conducted a study where birth mothers completed a short questionnaire and a 40-minute recorded interview, the birth mothers in this study expressed a wide spectrum of feelings about their pregnancy and child relinquishment, ranging from happiness to debiliabting depression.
The decision to relinquish birth rights of a child is a heavy burden on the psychological makeup of a birth mother. Reactions following relinquishment include psychological, physical, and social-inter personal reactions. [1] Birthmother Syndrome is a term that came about after a survey including 70 women who placed their children in adoption all were experiencing the same eight symptoms; signs of unresolved grief, symptoms of PTSD, diminished self-esteem, outward professions of perfection masking inner feelings of shame, arrested emotional development, self-punishment, unexplained secondary infertility, and living various extremes. [1] She may feel a sense of loss for someone who is still alive or mourns the loss of her mothering role and may mourn for who her child may have become as her son or daughter. These feelings may resurface in later years, perhaps on the child's birthday or other important milestone in the child's life. [2] Reports show that a birth mother feels grief when she has more children because this evokes the memory of the child she gave up. If she is faced with future infertility, she may believe it is a form of “punishment” for relinquishing her parenting rights over a child. [2]
Many birth mothers continue to mourn the loss of their child but with varying intensity. [3]
It is not until a mother actually places her child for adoption that she experiences what Julie Axelrod believes is similar to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Inspired by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's On Death and Dying, the author attempts to show how those who have experienced the death of a loved one may be psychologically similar to a birth mother who has placed her child for adoption. The adoptive Families Association of Of British Columbia conducted a study where birth mothers completed a short questionnaire and a 40-minute recorded interview, The birth mothers in this study expressed a wide spectrum of feelings about their pregnancy and child relinquishment, ranging from happiness to debiliabting depression.
The following occurs in each stage:
The overwhelming emotions that a mother feels making her feel numb to the situation. In this stage, reality has not set in. When adoptive parents maintain a positive relationship with the birth mother increased empathy can be preserved and denial can be reduced.
This emotion is a manifestation of reality, the understanding of how devastating an impact the mother's decision has made on her and her understandable vulnerability. This may cause the mother to lash out to those closest to her. Some mothers report feeling as if their grief and loss were not considered legitimate, and were left alone to cope with the loss of their child. [4] Additionally, mothers felt a lack of support
Mothers who continue to have contact with their child after the adoption report having feelings of anxiety and pressure. When having direct contact with their child the mothers hopes to make the experience memorable and special which can bring about these challenging feelings. [5] Having inconsisent contact is another factor reported by mothers that invoke anxiety.
Guilt was reported to be listed as one of a number of lasting impacts that effect birth mothers. [6] Some mothers also reported that contact with their adult children and information would help them with their persistent feelings of guilt. [7]
The mother begins to rethink the decision she has made. She feels the need to regain control of her emotional state by attempting to bargain with a religious or psychological figure to get rid of her sense of guilt. Birth parents may choose the adoptive parents based on whether they will allow continued communication with the child. [8]
There is no real timetable as to when or whether a mother will ever be able to accept her decision, but at this stage, she begins to feel at peace with her decision. She still struggles with the reality of the adoption but understands and truly believes that she was acting for the child's well-being.
Placing a child for adoption may also prompt identity issues in birth mothers. They may feel a desire to establish who the child will be in their lives and what role they will play in their lives. Birth mothers in open or mediated adoptions may be presented with more identity issues as they interact with the adoptive family. Placing a child for adoption does not mean a birth mother will never be able to contact the child. Adoption can include some communication between the birth mother and adoptive family. Both parties need to decide the level of openness for the adoption. [2]
Some birth mothers may have difficulty forming and maintaining relationships post an adoption. This could be because of persisting feelings of loss and guilt, or due to the fear of becoming pregnant again and repeating the process. Some birth mothers may try to replace the loss quickly by beginning a new relationship, or giving birth again—without dealing with the grief of the adoption. [2] For some birth mothers, the capacity to establish a successful long-term relationship may be conditional on the openness with which they can relate their past experiences of the adoption to their partner. The eventual acceptance of this loss does not mean that a birth mother has forgotten the child, but instead means that she has integrated the loss into her life. [2]
In underdeveloped nations, international adoption is commonly treated as a business where women and children are a commodity. This violates several standards and guidelines given by the United Nations. In many cases, reports from Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Thailand, and other nations indicate that children have been placed for adoption after being purchased, indentured, or abducted from the birth mother. In one instance in Colombia, children were bought for $600 and sold for $10,000 with the use of illegal and falsified papers. In Honduras, it was found that to remedy inadequate prenatal care, many merchants pay teenage girls to get pregnant and monitor them to make sure they eat well and receive some kind of care. After the baby is born, $50 is paid to the birth mother in exchange for the healthy baby. While foreign adoptions provide several countries with much needed foreign currency, the exploitation of birth mothers raises several ethical and human rights issues. The lack of information on the circumstances involving the conception, birth, and the placement of a child poses a dilemma for women adopting internationally who have pro-choice views and yet quite possibly adopt from women who have little to no choice. [9]
Typically these systems involve persons with the language and literacy skills, resources, and social positions to interact with first-world adoption agencies and prospective adoptive parents. These persons send out scouts or recruiters to target and take advantage of poor families and mothers. Birth mothers are often induced with false promises of money, continued contact with their child after adoption, or even immigration to a first-world nation. In instances such as this, many legitimate, licensed agencies in recipient countries such as the United States, Canada, and Europe, adopt through these illegal channels without their knowledge, thus contributing to the flow of funds and the illegal undertakings of child trafficking and the exploitation of birth mothers. [10]
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.
Grief is the response to the loss of something deemed important, particularly to the loss of someone or some living thing that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, grief also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, cultural, spiritual and philosophical dimensions. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement refers to the state of loss, while grief is the reaction to that loss.
The international adoption of South Korean children was started after 1953 because a large number of mixed children became orphaned during the Korean War, but later, the children who were adopted in accordance with the international adoption program included orphaned Korean children. Religious organizations in the United States, Australia, and many Western European nations slowly developed the apparatus that sustained international adoption as a socially integrated system. However, this system is essentially gone as of 2020. The number of children who were given up for adoption is lower than it is in OECD countries which are similar in size, the majority of adoptees are adopted by South Korean families, and the number of international adoptees is at a historical low.
Closed adoption is a process by which an infant is adopted by another family, and the record of the biological parent(s) is kept sealed. Often, the biological father is not recorded—even on the original birth certificate. An adoption of an older child who already knows their biological parent(s) cannot be made closed or secret. This used to be the most traditional and popular type of adoption, peaking in the decades of the post-World War II Baby Scoop Era. It still exists today, but it exists alongside the practice of open adoption. The sealed records effectively prevent the adoptee and the biological parents from finding, or even knowing anything about each other. However, the emergence of non-profit organizations and private companies to assist individuals with their sealed records has been effective in helping people who want to connect with biological relatives to do so.
Surrogacy is an adoption arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to childbirth on behalf of another person(s) who will become the child's parent(s) after birth. People pursue surrogacy for a variety of reasons such as infertility, dangers or undesirable factors of pregnancy, or when pregnancy is a medical impossibility.
Empty nest syndrome is a feeling of grief and loneliness parents may feel when their children move out of the family home, such as to live on their own or to pursue a higher education. It is not a clinical condition.
More adoptions occur in California each year than any other state. There is domestic adoption, international adoption, step parent adoption and adult adoption.
In the United States, adoption is the process of creating a legal parent–child relationship between a child and a parent who was not automatically recognized as the child's parent at birth.
Open adoption is a form of adoption in which the biological and adoptive families have access to varying degrees of each other's personal information and have an option of contact. While open adoption is a relatively new phenomenon in the west, it has been a traditional practice in many Asian societies, especially in South Asia, for many centuries. In Hindu society, for example, it is relatively common for a childless couple to adopt the second or later son of the husband's brother when the childless couple has limited hope of producing their own child.
The Minnesota / Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) is a longitudinal research study that focuses on the consequences of variations in openness in adoption arrangements for all members of the adoptive kinship network: birthmothers, adoptive parents, and adopted children, and for the relationships within these family systems.
Disenfranchised grief is a term coined by Dr. Kenneth J. Doka in 1989. This concept describes the fact that some forms of grief are not acknowledged on a personal or societal level in modern day Eurocentric culture. For example, those around you may not view your loss as a significant loss, and they may think you don’t have the right to grieve. They might not like how you may or may not be expressing your grief, and thus they may feel uncomfortable, or judgmental. This is not a conscious way of thinking for most individuals, as it is deeply engrained in our psyche. This can be extremely isolating, and push you to question the depth of your grief and the loss you’ve experienced. This concept is viewed as a ”type of grief”, but it more so can be viewed as a "side effect" of grief. This also is not only applicable to grief in the case of death, but also the many other forms of grief. There are few support systems, rituals, traditions, or institutions such as bereavement leave available to those experiencing grief and loss.
Pregnancy options counseling is a form of counseling that provides information and support regarding pregnancy. Women seeking pregnancy options counseling are typically doing so in the case of an unplanned or unintended pregnancy. Limited access to birth control and family planning resources, as well as misuse of birth control are some of the major contributing factors to unintended pregnancies around the world. In 2012, the global rate of unintended pregnancies was estimated to be 40 percent, or eighty-five million pregnancies.
Genealogical bewilderment is a term referring to potential identity problems that could be experienced by a child who was either fostered, adopted, or conceived via an assisted reproductive technology procedure such as surrogacy or gamete donation.
The Baby Scoop Era was a period in anglosphere history starting after the end of World War II and ending in the early 1970s, characterized by an increasing rate of pre-marital pregnancies over the preceding period, along with a higher rate of newborn adoption.
The language of adoption is changing and evolving, and since the 1970s has been a controversial issue tied closely to adoption reform efforts. The controversy arises over the use of terms which, while designed to be more appealing or less offensive to some persons affected by adoption, may simultaneously cause offense or insult to others. This controversy illustrates the problems in adoption, as well as the fact that coining new words and phrases to describe ancient social practices will not necessarily alter the feelings and experiences of those affected by them. Two of the contrasting sets of terms are commonly referred to as positive adoption language (PAL), and honest adoption language (HAL).
The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade is a 2006 book by Ann Fessler which describes and recounts the experiences of women in the United States who relinquished babies for adoption between 1950 and the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
Concerned United Birthparents, Inc. (CUB), a non-profit organization established in 1976, is one of two primary nationwide organizations offering support to the biological parents of adopted people in the United States. The organization is credited with the creation of the term "birthparent."
Pregnancy options counseling is a form of counseling aimed to counsel women on decision-making for a troubling or unintended pregnancy.
In a confidential birth, the mother provides her identity to authorities, but requires that her identity not be disclosed by the authorities. In many countries, confidential births have been legalized for centuries in order to prevent formerly frequent killings of newborn children, particularly outside of marriage.
Adoption does not exist formally as a practice in Jewish Law (Halacha), although rabbinic texts were not uniform on whether or not they recognized the validity of adoption and several examples of adoption take place in the Hebrew Bible and texts from the Second Temple Judaism. The Hebrew word for adoption ‘אימוץ’ (immutz), which derives from the verb ‘אמץ’ (amatz) in Psalm 80 verse 16 and 18 meaning ‘to make strong’, was not introduced until the modern age. Jewish perspectives towards adoption promote two contradictory messages towards nurture and nature. On the one hand, Judaism expresses favourable attitudes towards adoption across religious movements and is widely viewed as a good deed (mitzvah). Based on the Talmudic teachings that when one raises an orphan in their home, "scripture ascribes it to him as though he had begotten him," rabbis have argued that the commandment of procreation can also be fulfilled through the act of adoption. However, this interpretation raises a number of questions in relation to lineage and biological status, which is a core value in Halacha.
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