How do you think the business of adoption services could be re-imagined to respect birthparents as much as adoptive parents? (My husband and I chose an adoption agency based particularly on our desire for a fully open adoption and were happy with the outcome. It is clear, however, that the bills are paid by adoptive parents. While I don't think that birthparents are pressured to choose adoption, the agency exists fro the purpose of arranging adoptions and the long-term focus is on placement of children. Birthparents receive continued care only by direct request, while adoptive parents get more attention than we often want during the first 6 months of placement.)
I'll try to speak to this without getting on too high a horse, but, first, let me commend you for the care you took in selecting a program to work with. It's clear that you did some digging prior to entering the system, and you discovered that there are many variations on the adoption theme and that all service providers are not alike. I'm pleased to hear that your effort was rewarded.
I confess that I am often bewildered by the casual manner in which folks select their provider. The same people who shop like demons for a flat screen tv end up entering the doors of the outfit that is first in the phone book. Would-be adoptive parents blithely enlist with the program hosting the orientation session that is scheduled soonest. I believe the choice of provider is far more consequential than most people realize and I have no doubt that the reverberations of their choice will far outlast their big screens. You used the right phrase when you spoke of "the business of adoption." These days it's all market-driven, and, in case I haven't tipped my hand, this makes me crazy. Since I think commercialism will do even more damage to adoption than secrecy did, I don't understand why there isn't more uproar about this. On this subject, I am the crabbiest person I know.
Now you might suppose that birthparents would do ok in a marketplace model. After all, using terms of the market, they control a "scarce resource," a fact that gives them substantial "leverage." A handful grasp this power and run with it in a very homely way, but the great majority of the time it does not play out that way. Many potential birthparents feel so beaten down by circumstances that they feel anything but powerful. They just hope they have enough umph in them to get to the finish line. And, of course, as you intimate, the bill payers will always have the last say.
You wonder if it could be different. Maybe, but it sure looks uphill to me. I think we'll be wallowing in this money-drenched commercial model until it stinks so bad we can't take it any more. Till then, it will be hit and miss. Sometimes participants bring so much goodness to the experience that they accomplish greatness despite the system. Other times excellence will happen because informed "consumers" like you hold the system's feet to the fire. My most recent thinking centers on the revolutionary potential of this modest thing called hospitality. As I dove into the subject, it suddenly hit me that hospitality is the antithesis of commercialism. This discovery excites me and gives me hope. Before figuring this out, I could only throw tantrums about the devastation of commercialism. Now I am able to articulate a far more beautiful alternative. Who knows, maybe it will catch on.
~~~~~
More Q&A with Jim Gritter will come shortly. Subscribe so you don't miss a post. 
Comments