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Who Decides for me and my Child? reveals attitudes of some adoption social workers. I commend the adoptive mother who wrote this article for challenging this sort of behavior. Unfortunately, the kind of attitude mentioned in this article is not uncommon.
All social workers do not operate in the same manner. Social workers are no more all alike than birth mothers. Yet, we sometimes tend to demonize social workers at times as we do birth mothers. However, some adoption social workers deserve our scorn. With superior attitudes, they try to force their values onto birth and adoptive parents.
Sylvia, an adoptive mom that I know, described to me several events that occurred with the social worker who handled her daughter’s adoption. She wanted to include part of her daughter’s birth name when choosing a name for her daughter. Sylvia asked the social worker if her daughter’s birth mother had named her baby or called her by a certain name. The social worker emphatically said that she had not. He either lied or did not know and pretended that he did. Her daughter’s child had been named by her birth mother. This all came out at reunion – one of the reasons some adoption agencies fear reunions. Lies come out at reunion.
Sylvia went back to this same social worker when her twenty-year old daughter wanted to search and he discouraged a search. He seemed certain that her daughter’s birth mother would not want to be found. Was that his opinion, or did he have any reason to believe that she did not want to be found? In any case, he was wrong. Sylvia’s daughter’s birth mother was quite eager for reunion.
Often I have heard that social workers try to pit adoptive parents against birth parents. They warn adoptive parents against open adoption and insinuate that all birth parents are horrible people. Some ethical adoption social workers encourage and support open adoptions.
Maybe as an adoptive parent, you have your own stories about the ways adoption social workers tried to impose their opinions on you. Another common tact is to discourage adoptive parents from direct contact, or sending too many letters or pictures. They say that birth mothers need to move on with their lives without letters and pictures to remind them.
Is anyone not aware of social workers lurking in hospital rooms and sympathetically clucking about how a new mother “is doing the right thing” by choosing adoption? Under the guise of supporting the new mother, it is clearly a way to manipulate her to follow through with an adoption plan.
Adoption social workers seem to have free rein and yet, we seem not to question their actions. Why do you suppose that we continue to allow their practices to continue unchallenged? Why are they seemingly immune from consequences?
Further Reading:
Social workers – Annette Baran – one of the good ones!
In the best interests of whom?
Photo by Jan Baker 2007
