Book Review: Once a Mother: Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers in South India by Pien Bos

Pien Bos is an education specialist and anthropologist who worked in the adoption field before becoming a researcher in 2001. Once a Mother is her dissertation published resulting from two years of field work in South India with mothers, families and social welfare NGOs. Pien Bos defended her dissertation on January 10, 2008 for which she received a PhD with distinction from Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

The subject of the book is the mostly unheard “supply side” of the adoption equation: first mothers in India. The goal of Bos’ research was to fill this knowledge gap and document and probe the process of child relinquishment from the perspective of their mothers. In this respect, Once a Mother is equivalent to The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade in that Bos documents present-day relinquishment practices in South India which are in many ways reminiscent of the Baby Scoop Era in the United States.

Bos interviewed 36 mothers whose factual circumstances varied widely, both in their socioeconomic station in life as well as the circumstances of their children’s conception. Seven of these mothers had relinquished their child at least 15 years earlier. The other 29 were in the process of relinquishing. In addition, Bos interviewed 16 other mothers who decided not to relinquish and were raising their children on their own.

From her fieldwork, Bos developed three main findings:

1. Many mothers who relinquished their children considered themselves married, not unmarried.

The social stigma of unwed motherhood is generally assumed to be the primary reason why children are surrendered for adoption in India. However, Bos notes that many of the mothers she interviewed adopted a more flexible and informal definition of marriage, specifically the tying by a man of a “tali” to a woman without regard to other ceremonies and formalisation. The varying interpretations of marital status tended to be denied by institutions.

2. Blood bond in general, and the blood bond between mother and child specifically, has an extremely significant cultural meaning in Tamil culture. The cultural significance of motherhood, in combination with the meaning of the notion mother in its broader cultural sense implies that motherhood is irreplaceable and life-long. Despite the legal significance of relinquishment, mothers continued to view themselves as their children’s mothers who handed over care of their children to others, but not their motherhood.

Although care of the child was transferable, motherhood is not. According to Bos, “[b]iological mothers of surrendered children still felt and eventually claimed to be the only true mother, and this aspect explained feelings, hopes and eventual expectations after adoption, for instance with regard to possible future reunions with their children.” Bos found that some mothers tended to relinquish out of a sense of gratitude to the NGO for taking them in: “[K]eeping the baby would imply the breach of an informal agreement and some mothers also assumed they would be charged an amount comparable to adoption fees for reclaiming their child.”

Reunion with a surrendered child was a recurring theme in Bos’ research. For this topic, in particular, differences in the individual perceptions and processes of mothers emerged. Whereas one mother raised the issue spontaneously as a consolation after surrendering her beloved baby; for another, the idea of reunion appeared a worse-case scenario. Bos discovered that time was an influential factor in a mother’s attitude towards a potential reunion. Some mothers who took into account their circumstances decades after relinquishment did not immediately reject a future reunion. Married mothers in particular expressed a strong urge to meet their surrendered children again. Despite the interest of many adoptees and biological mothers in reuniting, Bos found that adoption agencies typically do not seriously cooperate in searching for biological families to the point of actively obstructing such searches. The people working for NGOs typically assume that secrecy is demanded to protect the lives of mothers, without regard to the circumstances of the actual mother sought to be traced.

3. The relinquishment process is the equivalent of a “fyke” (a funnel-shaped net used to trap fish) where women who enter the social welfare system upon an unexpected pregnancy are set on a single-minded trajectory toward relinquishment.

Bos writes:

“From the moment of admission in a licensed agency, the internal flows and
forces, determined by prevailing dominant discourses, isolation, hierarchy,
loyalties and money are pushing her deeper inside the fyke. She is trapped
until the day she signs a surrender deed. On that day, the mother is
released from the institution and the child receives the status of ‘parentless
child’ until it is placed into an adoptive family.”

Bos finds the discrepancy between the stated objectives of formal adoption rules and daily practices “shocking.”

Bos notes that the consequences of a premarital pregnancy and the decision to relinquish expands beyond the mother and also encompasses her family and community. Hierarchically, mothers are not in a powerful position owing to their youth, lack of money, education and opinion that they “went astray” through engaging in premarital sex. Like mothers in Western countries, particularly during the Baby Scoop era, Indian mothers are strongly influenced and at times completely overruled in their decision of whether to relinquish by family members and/or staff of institutions. “Counseling” of unwed mothers by NGOs typically means advising relinquishment; other options are more commonly explored in the case of married mothers. Some mothers acknowledged the desire to hand over the decision-making process to others, however, Bos met other mothers who revealed that they were manipulated and essentially forced to relinquish against their will. Bos felt that good communication between mothers and their relatives would be beneficial, however, during her field work she discovered that pregnant women or new mothers more often than not were isolated with limited contact with family since they were sequestered through institutionalization or hospitalization. Input in the decision-making process by relatives was often conducted outside the presence or prolonged time spent with the mothers themselves. Bos pleas for informed decision-making; a transmission of cumulative knowledge and sharing with mothers who did or did not surrender.

Bos does an excellent job of noting the inherent conflicts on the part of NGOs that engage in adoption:

“My conclusion is that people on the work floor, practitioners and counselors
working in or for NGOs work with extremely complicated dilemmas. They
balance on a continuum with the voice of their personal conscience, their
perception of acceptable and suitable solutions for women on one side and
financial responsibilities on the other. On the one hand, they need to act
according to the politically correct conventions concerning mothers and their
children; on the other, they need to ‘sell babies’ to adoptive parents to be
able to run their agencies. NGOs are trapped by the construction of an
adoption field where financial income and the placement of children in adoptive
families are intertwined.”

Although legal adoptions are painted as a non-profit endeavor, the fact is that adoption is a lucrative financial means to maintain a flow of money from adopters to licensed NGOs. Bos cites the deleterious impact institutionalization has on the health and welfare of children, and therefore acknowledges that the outflow of children from institutions into foster or adoptive family care can upgrade their lives. However, her research examines how adoption simultaneously “sucks children into residential care” by putting pressure on women to supply babies. Bos concludes that “adoption, as it is legally organized, induces a flow of children towards institutions.”

Bos’ thesis is valuable because it offers a unique exploration voices of the mothers we in the West do not have the opportunity to hear while simultaneously affirming common place present-day attitudes and procedures that conflict with ethical adoption practices.

Once a Mother can be ordered by contacting Pien Bos at p.bos@maw.ru.nl The price is 15.00 euro plus postage.

Usha

Once a Mother: Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers, Pien Bos, ISBN 978-90-9022453-4, 2007

Indian women giving up their children for adoption affected by lack of information, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, January 15, 2008

Guatemala: Big Picture--The Need to Clean Up International Adoption

Time Online "in partnership with with CNN" recently published an article entitled "Cleaning Up International Adoption."

The recent raid of the Guatemalan orphanage Casa Quivera provides the context for a rare and thoughtful exploration of different perspectives on the problems current in Guatemalan adoption, and also, of some of these problems' "bigger picture" causes.

The article begins by describing the recent raid of a Guatemalan orphanage, Casa Quivera, in which the Guatemalan government took custody of 46 infants destined for international adoption in order to scrutinize their paperwork and determine if they had been legally relinquished. The article follows the different ways that this raid is perceived by different parties within Guatemala and the US.

For Carmen de Wenner, Guatemala's Secretary for Social Welfare, the essential thing is to determine if the children were trafficked and if therefore, they are legitimately available for adoption:

"'If these children were bought in the womb,' de Wenner says, 'that is a crime."

For Ana Escobar, a Guatemalan mother whose six month old was stolen from her at gunpoint and who believes that her child was likely conveyed into the thriving international adoption system where the infant could fetch a small fortune for Guatemalan middle men, the raid on Casa Quivera offered hope. At first that hope took the form of hoping that her own beloved Baby Esther was among the children of Casa Quivera; when that hope was dashed, it morphed into a more abstract, political one--a hope for the future safety of fellow Guatemalan families and children.

For Guatemalan citizens, the raid on Casa Quivera represents hope that the Guatemalan government might finally be starting to take serious measures to investigate and control an international adoption trade that many Guatemalan citizens have come to feel threatens in a very real way, their own families' and children's safety.

In Guatemala, where 1 of every 100 children born last year was sold in adoption to Americans, the threat can feel—and be—very real.

So real, in fact, that some Guatemalan citizens are beginning to fight back...

There have been an increasing number of cases, especially in small towns in Guatemala, where suspected child traffickers have been beaten or even killed--by lynching or being burned alive--by angry mobs seeking to protect themselves and their children from becoming victims of the child trade.

"We are not animals to be bought and sold," [Ana Escobar] says, clutching [her stolen baby] Esther's photo.

For American adoption agencies whose posture in this increasingly difficult situation seems to be to deny all wrongdoing and declare that reports of corruption are simply “political” and/or a figment of the imaginations of the ever-present forces of evil—those “anti-adoption” activists who would groundlessly, needlessly and coldly deny homes to worthy orphans around the world and a livelihood to themselves, the Casa Quivera situation has become yet another thorn in the side—a harbinger of the even more troubled days ahead for international adoption from Guatemala.

Although many agencies fear an eventual, serious country-wide Guatemalan slow-down or shut-down, the likes of which have taken place in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, or Nepal, still, American adoption agencies plunge ahead, continuing to do business with Guatemalan adoption attorneys who can supply them with the ever-in-demand-healthy-young-paper-adoptable-infants ….and continuing to offer referrals to American adoptive parents--adoptive parents, who are assured of the fact that they are giving needed homes to the legitimate orphans of Guatemala. Parents who are assured that the reports of corruption are unfounded (and certainly don't involve their own agencies or its suppliers).

De ja vu... I seem to recall similar assurances from our agency before we adopted our stolen children.

"The activity is driven largely by surging US demand. With adoption in the U.S. still a bureaucratic nightmare and with few babies available in distant places like China and Eastern Europe, Guatemala has become an increasingly popular source for U.S. couples. Almost 5,000 babies were adopted last year from [Guatemala, a] nation of 13 million--the world's highest per capita adoption rate--and 95% of them went to the U.S. Since 1990, in fact, more than 25,000 Guatemalan children have been placed in American homes."
--from the Time Online article listed below

Despite agency reassurances, some adoptive parents have already been caught up in corruption related problems in Guatemala. Having already paid their money and accepted their Guatemalan referrals, many have experienced various administrative delays in "bringing their [Guatemalan] children 'home'," as the U.S. and Guatemalan governments have put additional checks and system-wide controls in place to try to stem fraud and corruption.

As for the perspective of adoptive parents caught in the midst of slow-downs---this is the favorite stuff of American media adoption coverage. Parents who have spent their life savings plus more, cast their lots with an agency that promised smooth sailing, became emotionally attached to referred children, and who are now left with empty wallets, empty cribs, empty promises, and broken dreams--the disappointment and heartache of these parents is real and understandable.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, [Ann]Roth had been waiting with her husband David to adopt a boy and a girl from Casa Quivera--but now, after having paid half the $30,000 fee, she finds everything in a precarious state of limbo. "I feel, says Ann, 37, "like someone has kicked me in the stomach ten times."

What has not been so prevalent in the American media and which makes the Time article stand out as different--perhaps a harbinger of change for the American media, in a way similar to the way that Casa Quivera is a harbinger of hope to Guatemalans citizens worried about losing their children--is its willingness to look at:

• the perspective of other international adoption stakeholders, including the Guatemalan people and those who have been the victims of corruption


• the "big picture" reasons for Guatemalan adoption problems
  

Of the "big picture" reasons, Time says this:

[The]feeling, which more and more Guatemalan mothers and adoptive mothers in the U.S., are experiencing these days, reflects the growing awareness that adoption Guatemala is all too often a multi-million-dollar underworld trade. The nation's ill-regulated adoption business, run by private lawyers and notaries, is rife with corruption, including forged paperwork, payoffs to women who agree to hand over their children and, in some cases, newborns stolen from hospitals or mothers' arms, according to the government human rights ombudsman's office. One U.S. couple spent almost two years and $50,000 to find out later that her biological mother "was essentially a baby factory" who had sold many of her eight children to a dealer, says the adoptive father. "It felt dirty, like we were involved in a child brokering deal."

From all accounts, including those of the American government, the Guatemalan adoption trade has indeed become a "dirty" one. Still, American agencies doggedly continue to convey children in adoption from Guatemala to the U.S. even amidst such overwhelming evidence of corruption.

Agencies don't seem to see--or rather, perhaps don't want to see--the bigger picture; remarkably they apparently see nothing but unfounded and irrational fear and anti-adoption hysteria.

"Florida resident Clifford Phillips, who runs Casa Quivera with his Guatemalan wife, insists they're victims of the spreading anti-adoption hysteria and persecution. 'This [this hysteria and persecution] is an injustice that needs to be stopped now.'"

Injustice?

Myopic American agencies apparently accept no responsibility for the climate they've created in Guatemala; for the fact that they and their Guatemalan agents have made Guatemalan children pricey commodities, the procurement of which can make Guatemalan middle men into rich men overnight. Agencies see only individual orphans whom they faithfully believe were legitimately relinquished and who are "in need" of homes. Publicly they "see" only their humanitarian good deeds in "finding" these children homes.

Calls from Guatemalan citizens and Guatemalan government officials for an end to their country, their citizens, and their children being ravaged by the international adoption trade fall on agency ears that hear only meaningless, unfounded "political motivations."

Things will certainly get worse in Guatemala before they get better--for everyone concerned. Already, the US and Guatemala are working on implementation of Hague regulation (due to go into effect on January 1, 2007).

Guatemalan press reports allege that child-traffickers are stepping up their efforts to procure children for international adoption and get them processed before the new regulations take effect.

This alleged step-up in the illegal acquisition of children will doubtless cause more suffering for Guatemalan mothers and families.

According to press reports, reports of the alleged step-up in illegal procurements has already caused Guatemalan citizens to be more aggressive in protecting themselves against child traffickers and has led to more mob violence.

It will doubtless also lead to American adoptive parents being further cautioned to be careful as they travel to and in Guatemala to claim their adoptive children. Already the press has reported that at least one traveling adoptive couple was attacked for their adoptive activities while in Guatemala.

As the governments of both countries clamp down in an effort to convince the citizens of Guatemala that someone is watching, that someone cares, and that it is not simply open season on Guatemalan children, there will doubtless be more orphanage raids and additional layers of administrative procedures to control corruption. It already seems that each new layer is simply another layer to be circumvented; every circumvention needs its own new layer of protection.

These added layers of safeguards will result in more children being caught up in investigations and in more delays in homecomings.

Some safeguards may even result in some children never being permitted to leave Guatemala.

According to some perspectives, this may be a good thing. According to these people, trade in children from Guatemala needs to slow or even come to a stop.

Certainly most would agree that some individual children should not be permitted to leave Guatemala--children like Ana Escobar's Esther.

"I won't give up until I find my daughter, says Escobar. "There are a lot of people who adopt children without really knowing if the mother wanted to give them up or if they were stolen. Without knowing if the mother is suffering."

The real question is, does anyone--adoptive parents looking at their referral photos, adoptive parents gazing on the longed-for child sleeping in their arms, the American agency who has stayed in business another year and been honored for their humanitarian work, the US government that has responded to the demands of a vocal voters that demand that adoption remain open despite problems--ANYONE--care about the grief of a Guatemalan mother?

And if they do care, what are they willing to do about it?

As a mother who has indeed cradled in her arms children stolen from a Third World mother, I say, you'd better hope that you care.

Care or not care, eventually there *will* be a day of reckoning. Guatemalan adoptive children will someday no longer be cuddly infants and toddlers, but a new, very large generation of adult adoptees, full of questions about the reported injustices that brought them to their families. You have but a few years to come up with your answers, for children grow quickly into independent adults.

I hope that your answers are good ones.

There is, in the end, nothing more awful than looking your adoptive son or daughter in the eye and having to give them an accounting for their adoption. (except maybe having to do that with their birthmother from whom they were stolen and who has mourned long years for them)

There are no adequate excuses.

Only apologies and guilt and sorrow for the pain that you, in your ignorance and gullibility, caused another human being.

Desiree

Cleaning Up International Adoption, Time online, 29 Aug 2007

and its reprint at Yahoo News.com:
Cleaning Up International Adoptions, Yahoo! News, 31 Aug 2007

To read fleasbiting blogposts about Guatemalan adoption: Fleasbiting Blogposts about Guatemalan Adoption

On Dandelions and Thorns by a Flea

Several hundred Korean adoptees met for the fourth International Korean Adoptee Association Gathering was recently held in Korea. Coinciding with the Gathering is a petition drive to collection 1 million signatures calling for an end to international adoption in favor of better solutions for single mothers.

What’s unusual about this petition drive is that it was launched by a group of mothers whose children were adopted abroad.

The mothers call their group Mindeuelae – Dandelions – as in dandelions whose seeds may have been blown far away, but who won’t be done away with.

Their children who return as grown adults, “a thorn piercing Korea’s conscience,” says this editorial.

I appreciated this quote by Jae Ran Kim who joined the Dandelions in protest:

It is not a matter of whether you had a good experience or bad experience as an adoptee. The adoption system goes way beyond that. It works within a political, institutional structure of society.

This sentiment is very similar to differentiating between individual acts of racism and the deeply entrenched, yet more difficult to identify aspects of institutional racism. It’s the need to recognize that problems in adoption do not rest in how “successful” an individual’s adoption is, but that the problems are part of a larger system that trades children for dollars, favors the wealthy over the poor and preys upon the vulnerable.

Jane Jeong Trenka was a leading organizer of the protest and has a moving video about the Dandelion group on her blog.

May this event of the Dandelion mothers signal the door opening to the voices of mothers the world over.

Usha

Adoptee seeks end to overseas adoption, JoongAng Daily, August 4, 2007

Jane’s Blog, Korean birthparents against intl adoption, August 6, 2007

[Editorial] Stop intercountry adoption, The Hankyoreh, August 4, 2007

Korean adoptees from abroad and birth mothers protest overseas adoption, Yonhap News Agency, August 5, 2007

Europe: Bulgarian Mothers Tricked into Selling Babies

Curious about a sentence or two (in the BBC's story on child-trafficking) that alluded to the smuggling of pregnant Bulgarian women into Greece for child-trafficking purposes, I have spent the last few days researching and reading about the practice.

Here is what I've found....

According to BBC and other news reports listed below, the scheme is one that is played out hundreds of times a year.

An impoverished Bulgarian woman (who just happens to be pregnant) is approached and offered a "lucrative" job in Greece. She is told she will be given travel expenses, housing, and most important of all, the opportunity to work and earn good money.

Wanting to better her life, she jumps at the chance.

However, when she arrives in Greece, she finds there is no job.

Instead, the pregnant woman is sequestered--literally locked away... ...in an apartment with other pregnant women. There she stays--fed and housed but unemployed (except for the work her body is doing in gestating her child--the real "work" her "employers" were interested in all along) until the day that she gives birth.

Alone in a country where she knows no one, cut off from communication with home, prevented from leaving the apartment, having no money with which to support herself or with which to return home should she manage to escape, she has no recourse but to stay and wait...until she gives birth to the precious product she is producing...an adoptable child.

Meanwhile, arrangements are made to sell the child she is carrying.

Housed, fed, and cared for until she gives birth, the "birthmother's" care status will change with the birth of her child.

If she sells her child to her captors, she will be paid approximately 3,000 Euros and will continue to be cared for and eventually transported back to Bulgaria.

However, if she does not sell the child, then she and her vulnerable newborn will be turned out onto the street to fend for themselves. The reality of the prospect of caring for herself--a newly postpartum mother--and her tiny newborn baby, without local contacts, without a job, not knowing the local language, and with no money with which to buy food or shelter or with which to return home is ridiculous. The woman, of course, knows this.

She is--away from family, home, and community and the support it provides--at her most vulnerable.

She is trapped.

Through trickery and skillfully arranged circumstances, she is all but forced to "voluntarily" relinquish her newborn child.

Almost immediately after birth the child is transferred to the care of his or her previously identified adoptive parents--parents who have paid six times as much money for the child as his/her mother was been paid.

The woman who has produced the child receives about 3,000 Euros, while the organized crime ring which has "facilitated" the "adoption," receives about 20,000 Euros.

According to news sources, hundreds of women thus make the journey from Bulgaria to Greece, each year. Hoping for a better life through gainful employment, they instead find themselves captive and through circumstance forced to sell their own children.

Many of the women thus duped are Roma or gypsies. Typically unemployed, many live in squalid poverty in one of the wealthiest regions in Bulgaria. Their own poverty, a contrast to the wealth around them, serves as an ever-present motivator for them to change their lot in life. They would like to live like this. Those who prey on them know this. They know that their desire to do better in life will help to blind their eyes to dangers they would ordinarily see.

Those who prey on these women also know that there are equally desperate persons in Greece. With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, the demand for babies in Greece is very high. The number of babies legally available for adoption, however, is very tiny.

Experts estimate [that there] are currently 500 couple waiting to adopt [the] just 54 babies available across the country.

Combine the high demand and the serious dearth of legally adoptable babies, with a highly complicated, long, and bureaucratic adoptive process that may easily take up to five years to complete, and many couples decide either that the process may never work for them or else that is simply too long and too complicated.

Frustrated infertile couples get tired of waiting--waiting for the child that realistically may never come to them. Having the money to pay for a child and the burning desire to parent, they turn to the black market.

Where there are copious amounts of available money, high demand for a particular product, and little legal hope for filling that demand, criminals and organized crime has the opportunity to step in to fill demand and take make money.

Getting this trade under control has proved difficult.

[In 2006,] more than 20 suspected baby-traffickers and prospective buyers had been arrested in a series of police raids across Greece...

--news report in The Independent (as below)

This number is multiplied by the 33 people that the Bulgarian government has arrested on similar charges in the last 3 years since baby-trafficking was outlawed there. However, police believe these 33 people represent "only the tip of the iceberg." Eight separate cases of child-trafficking for adoption had been investigated in the first seven months of 2006 alone.

In its most recent report, Interpol says that Bulgarians have become the ringleaders of the European baby trading circuit and are being investigated in Greece, Italy, France, and Portugal.

But demand is increasing and the gangs are becoming wealthier, according to Greek police. 'The phenomenon is well organised, "said Dimitris Tsiodras of Athens police's organised crime unit. 'The gangs consist of five, 10, or even more people. You need such numbers in order to locate pregnant women [in Bulgaria], transport them through countries such as Austria and Italy to Greece, take them to hospital to deliver the baby and find a place for them to stay until the buyer is found." Most of the buyers--usually childless couples--are found in advance, and the baby is given away as soon as the mother leaves the hospital."

--news report in The Independent (as below)

As for the gullibility of the Bulgarian women...

It is not hard to see why women such as [the woman in the article] are prepared to follow anyone offering her a ticket out of this poverty. 'I was told that I would earn up to 45 Euros a day if I took the job in Greece. What do you think I should have done?'

Bulgarian mothers tricked into selling babies, The Independent, July 18, 2006

Criminal Groups From Bulgaria Among Leader in Europe's Child Trafficking Industry, Sofia Echo, 19 Jul 2006

Bulgarian babies for sale, BBC News, July 18, 2006

Watch a BBC Video Report on this issue: Pregnant Women Smuggled into Europe, BBC News, 18 July 2006
Desiree