The Complexities Of Adoption: Money, Marketing, and Ethics with Gretchen Sisson

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Well, hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Kate and Ty Break It Down.

Today we have somebody who we are really excited to talk to.

I have listened to her book and we are super excited to have her on our podcast today.

Please welcome Gretchen Sisson, author of Relinquished.

Hi, guys.

Hello.

We're so happy you're here.

No, thank you for coming.

It's been a joy and I'm learning a lot from your book.

I feel like, I feel like as a birth parent, I kind of went through a fog of my own, you know?

And so just like, it's very eye-opening to me to listen to all the different stories and the statistics.

And it's been, I really enjoy listening to it.

Yeah, because I want to say ever since she started listening to it, I actually mentioned it to her.

I was like, you really should read this book.

Because I didn't even get through more than half of it before I was like, all right, I have to, you have to read this.

And then she does the audio stuff when she's driving.

So she'll come back home after listening to it.

She's like, oh my gosh, did you know?

And oh my God.

And I'm like, wow, I kind of see you like completely getting just more information.

Because as a birth parents, we kind of, we're only fed so much of the truth, I guess.

And so like, like the whole point of birth parents, I think, have our own kind of fog that we go through trying to, you know what I mean?

So it was good to read just an unbiased, you know, just fact-based thing.

Well, thanks for saying that.

And I think that a lot of birth parents, right, your introduction to adoption comes through your agency, right?

And the agency is invested in a really particular idea of what adoption is, who it serves, how it's going to work.

And I think very few birth parents are able to connect with other people who have gone through this.

And so I think that part of what putting all of these stories together in one book is it allows you to see these commonalities between your experiences and people who might be coming to adoption from a really different place, but have a similar set of interactions with the agencies or with their child's adoptive parents and how they are negotiating that in different circumstances.

Yeah, so when you were writing the book, like what was your process like?

Were you, did you, I mean, you're interviewing birth moms and just like, how did that, how did that work for you?

Yeah.

Well, so when I started, when I started doing data collection for the book, I wasn't writing a book, right?

I was just trying to finish graduate school, right?

So I started doing interviews in 2010.

So right around when your first season started airing.

And at that time, I was interviewing birth mothers who went back to like the late 1950s, like before, like during the baby scoop era, what they call it, kind of that historical period where these really coercive, extractive, secretive.

Is that the Georgia Tan kind of era?

It's out.

So Georgia Tan was earlier than that.

Oh, yeah.

And so for folks who don't know, Georgia Tan

was this baby broker, basically, who worked out of Tennessee.

And she basically stole children to place them for adoption.

And she's the one who led the fight to steal birth certificates, to really introduce secrecy around adoption.

And she was really, she had this kind of like evil brilliance where she would facilitate adoptions with really powerful people.

So, you know, we're here in New York.

She facilitated an adoption for the governor of New York and then got him to steal birth certificate records.

A lot of celebrities adopted children through her.

So she had a lot of power and she could kind of shape the policies that were around that.

So she's, she's a really interesting

historical character

who has, who almost single-handedly shaped a lot of the practices that still determine what adoption looks like today.

But the baby scoop era era was a couple decades later.

It's really from like the end of World War II until the Roe v.

Wade decision in 73.

And that was a period, that was the baby boom, right?

So a lot of people were having children.

You had a lot of men who were coming back from war, who for it was the first time that men were really open about male infertility because it was a war injury, then you could acknowledge it a little bit more.

Oh, of course.

Not a lot, but like more than never, right?

And you also had these really traditional ideas of family, right?

Where the focus during the 50s and 60s was really on this nuclear family.

You needed to have two married parents.

That was what family needed to look like.

There was a high value placed on having children.

And so all of a sudden, you had this really high demand for people who wanted to adopt.

And you had this really specific idea of what motherhood needed to be.

So if you were a single mom, particularly if you were a white woman who was married before or who was was pregnant before she was married,

you would be sent to a maternity home that were, they were usually church-run by the Catholic Church.

Um, and they would basically take your child at the end.

So, these were very coercive adoptions.

Um, there's a really excellent book called The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler, who herself was a babyscoop era adoptee, that looks at this period of adoption and the maternity homes.

Um,

and so

that was that was the babyscoop era.

And then after Roby Wade, when abortion became more accessible for more American women, then you really had a decrease in the number of domestic adoptions.

So Anne's book had come out in 2006.

Juno had come out a couple years later.

Your season started airing.

And I was seeing all of these ideas about adoption in the cultural conversation that didn't really reflect the reality of the women that I was interviewing.

I was going to say, like, Juno is just the biggest lie.

It was, it's the worst.

You know what I mean?

Like, it is the worst image of like what birth parents go through.

It does not look like that, feel like that, nothing.

Well, I think, you know, and that was when I started, that was really what I wanted to look at, right?

Because as a sociologist, what I want to study is the gap between what we believe to be true about something and what the actual experiences look like for the people who are living it.

And I had looked at that.

I actually came to this work after studying teen pregnancy and young parenthood broadly.

And so I was working with a group called the Alliance on Teen Pregnancy.

I was working with these incredible young moms

and they were all really into 16 and pregnant when it came out, obviously, because this is what they're living and they want to see these stories that are being told about their lives, about your lives, right?

And when I saw the way MTV

was

telling your story, right?

I think that there's your your real story that you all lived, and there's a story that MTV wanted to tell about you through the show and the way that they wanted your story to fit the broader arc of what they were doing with 16 and Pregnant.

And they were very clear, right?

They basically wanted 16 and Pregnant to be sex education

for a generation of people.

Yeah, we wanted, they wanted to make a difference.

Right.

And I remember, like, there's a moment, I think it was Macy, where she talks about like how it's really hard work, but she likes the work, right?

She likes the work of caring for Bentley.

And that was a really rare moment where

it actually let her have control of the story to be like, yeah, some parts of this are really hard.

Some parts of parenthood are hard if you're 16, if you're 26, if you're 36.

Absolutely.

But like, the labor of parenting has its own value and its own reward.

And for some reason, that moment really struck me.

And that was part of why I wanted to continue following my research participants and to see how their feelings about the adoption changed over time to see whether these stories that we were telling about adoption actually resonated as the adoptions went on.

And did you see the kind of a big change?

Like you interviewed them here and then you interviewed them later on and you saw a big kind of a shift in their you know beliefs or ideologies surrounding yeah because i feel like even me for a birth mom like in the beginning um you know when we were making this decision i do feel like it was a lot of me kind of like brainwashing myself in a sense.

Now that I'm looking at it, you know, as a 32, 33-year-old, it was a lot of like, I'm doing the best thing for her.

She is, it's better that she's not with me.

I get to choose her life, all of the things.

And now that I'm older and I look back on things and I'm like, wow, but it's really hard and it's hurt and I miss her and I want to be a part of her life and I wish things could be different.

Like, and my beliefs and everything have shifted over the years.

So I think it's common that a lot of birth parents, their beliefs would shift.

And I also feel like that was kind of like something that it would have been really beneficial if we had talked to one birth mom before making the decision that was 10 years down the line or whatever, or we would have got any statistics on how

adoptees handle their own trauma and what it's like for them.

Or if we had one adult, one person say, hey, you know, there's resources, there's things, you know, I just feel like it could have been so different.

But like, I think that goes to kind of go into like the birth parent.

You put yourself in your own kind of fog to justify what.

Or to heal.

Yeah, to heal because you go through so much pain.

It's like, how do I even make sense of this pain?

Well, I'm just going to craft it in a bow of it being really selfless and being great.

And also, I feel like, you know, we were told so many times when you're thinking about it that the best thing for you can, the best thing you can do, the best parent that you can be is to not be a parent at all.

And we just kept getting that message.

And it was like, it made sense when you're saying it out loud, but it didn't feel like that.

It felt like, oh, it just, and I almost felt like we didn't feel like we could even express the hesitancy or the, how it made us feel because it was like, no, logically, you're right.

You know, we don't have resources.

And if we want to be the best parent possible, we can't be a parent at all.

And I came home because just to piggyback off what he said, I came home the other day from getting my hair done, long drive, whatever.

And I walked in the house and I said, you know, listening to Relinquished, I felt like my mind kept coming back to this one thing of just that women are feeling like they have no other option.

It's not like they automatically are going to, like, they want to place their child for adoption.

But the main thing I kept getting from your book was there's no help.

Yeah.

There's no resources.

Because when I look at my own adoption, I'm like, yeah, if somebody would have said, like, here's resources that'll help you get your own apartment and help you get a car and help you get through school.

Like, i probably would have made a different decision or even the young lady that you speak about where she says all she needed was a thousand dollars to get her out of the situation that she's in and it's like my mind just kept coming back to you you just feel like you are stuck and there's no other option when in fact if there were if there was help or resources out there a lot of women wouldn't have to do and do this and make this decision and i feel like they say selfless it's so selfless to do this but it's like you're ignoring the desperation part because it is selfless And I'm not saying it's not selfless, but it's forcing me to be selfless because I'm desperate, because I'm in a desperate situation.

And so it's like they-it's a survival.

It's a function of survival and how you the only path that you saw to care for your child.

Right.

And I think it's important to remember, you know, I was, I was speaking with a birth parent once, um, and she was like, Well, I actually didn't, um, I didn't relinquish my daughter because of poverty.

It was just because like my home my parents wouldn't have been safe to bring her home to.

I can relate to that.

And

what I said was, well, was it safe for you?

And she's like, oh, no, of course not.

And I was like, well, then we've already failed.

Yeah.

Right.

Like you were a child too.

And so I'm not saying that adoption is always this bad, terrible thing.

Right.

I am saying we view adoption as good, as an individual good, as a social good, when in fact, I think we should view every adoption as a failure to care for people somewhere along the way because it wouldn't be necessary if they were cared for if we were cared for yeah if you all had been cared for the way that you needed to be you might have been you might have felt like you had what you needed to care for your daughter and it's interesting too because uh i remember talking to macy the first reunion we had and she said i i you know i'm so proud of you guys you guys did such a great thing and you know if i didn't have my family if i didn't have my parents in the life i had i probably i might be where you are.

And then it kind of hit me and I remember being like, wow.

So, like, all I, you know, all I needed was support and a family and like your lifestyle and it would have been different.

It's just, it's an interesting kind of perspective when you look back at it.

I think it's different because obviously we're older now.

So we look back at when we were making that decision and all the things that went into kind of just like telling us what was best, even though in our soul, we,

in our soul and how we felt didn't match what the like logic they were telling us and I feel like as kids being 16 we should have someone should have just came in and gave us more information that's not coming from the agency itself like some you know so I feel like the lack of resources even in that regard is kind of we're lacking there you know this labor day gear up save big and ride harder with cycle gear from august 22nd to september 1st score up to 60 off motorcycle gear from your favorite brands our pm members get 50 off tire mount and balance with any new tire purchase Need to hit the road now?

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I think that the narrative that they, again, that they told on the show that you guys were more mature.

than your counterparts who were parenting, right?

That you were more selfless, right?

And I do think that there is something self-sacrificial about what you did, but I also don't think it would have been selfish for you to want to keep your child.

Like, I don't think Macy or the other girls were selfish for wanting to raise their own children.

And I do think that it required other sacrifices of them over all parenting requires sacrifices and compromises in that way.

And so this...

This particular idea that adoption is always like the highest form of love that you can give your child if something is lacking in your own lives to make parenting feel difficult or impossible.

That's this really, it's this really insidious narrative that doesn't look at the complexity of like how we care for families more broadly.

And also, why are we not focusing on that aspect more?

We're focusing on this.

Adoption is great.

This is the solution, but we're not the solution to what problem?

This problem.

Like transferring babies from vulnerable and poor families to middle class and affluent families, that's a really lazy way of thinking about how to care for children.

Right?

Exactly.

And it means that you don't need to think about how to create a meaningful social safety net.

You don't need to think about dealing with challenges of incarceration or addiction or other things that might be keeping families in a really stuck place, right?

Those are big social problems that it's really hard to find policy solutions how to tackle.

And if you can just be like, well, we'll just move these kids from this family over here to this family over here.

And this family is pretty affluent and they're stable and they're in their middle-class neighborhood with their well-funded public schools, like problem solved.

And I remember you talking about that in the book, little pieces of that.

Like, how does that even make?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think what you said earlier about the one woman who said, I only need $1,000.

I only needed like $1,000 to keep my child, is what she said.

And people come back and they're like, well, it takes a lot more than $1,000 to raise a kid.

And I'm like, look, I have three of them.

I am aware.

Right.

You all are aware.

What she's saying is she needs $1,000

to have enough control over her life to make a different decision feel possible.

Right.

$1,000 for a security deposit on a new apartment so that you can leave a boyfriend who you don't think is going to be a safe co-parent.

Right.

$1,000 so that you can move out of your parents' basement when your parents are saying, don't bring that baby home.

Right.

$1,000 for a crib and a car seat so that you feel like you have a space in your life for this baby and you have the bare minimum to be equipped.

They're going to need a lot more support long term, but it's that amount of money that's the tipping point to make another path feel possible.

Yeah, because it wasn't like she was like a loser, she was working a job, she was taking care of herself, she was doing all the normal things, she just needed a little extra help to get her out of a situation or to set her up for a better future.

When

you know you have

adoptive parents who are spending all this money for to an agency, and it's like, wow, when you know, she only needed $1,000 to help her situation to where she would be able to parent.

It's shocking.

Especially compared to what the agency gets as far as funds go, money

to have the baby be adopted.

It's like, wait a minute, why are we not funneling these funds over here when it could be over here when $1,000 was all it took for her to not make that decision?

Or even the other young lady that you speak about in your book,

where she speaks on like like her hardest thing for her was not having her own car seat and having a truck how am i gonna fit a baby in a truck and i don't have a car seat like that was heartbreaking for me like just to think that this lady feels like she has no other options because yes she's living with somebody else which who knows that could have been okay but her her main fear was i don't have a car seat and how am i going to fit a car seat in a truck right exactly like how am i going to get the baby home from the hospital so sad um and that's a problem we should be tackling it's so and it is so easy to tackle yeah so easy to tackle right and i think um

you can look at the tens of thousands of dollars that prospective adoptive parents put into adoption right and i think a lot of a lot of adoptive parents are told that the money that they spend on adoption goes to supporting their child's birth parents like during the pregnancy which is which is not true.

If you look at like you can look a lot of adoption agencies that are non-profit, you can look at their tax returns.

A lot of them are spending more on marketing than they are on attorneys at all, and certainly more than they're spending on support for their parents.

I never saw a dime, yeah.

No, not that I would want to, you know, but I give no, but I have seen the and it's all marketing.

I mean, which I thought was

really interesting.

Okay, wait a minute, so you're actually spending all this money on marketing to market to get women.

That's and to be clear, to be clear, they're not trying to market to find adoptive parents, right?

They have way more adoptive parents, right?

There's up to 45 prospective adoptive parents for every baby available for adoption.

The marketing is to convince pregnant people that they need to look at adoption, right?

To target them.

And we, you know, I talk in the book about how they do targeted Google ads, or if you Google like help for single moms in Michigan, like you're going to start to get ads for adoption agencies.

You could not, you could be Googling something that has nothing to do with adoption, but they'll buy, if you're like, how do I get enrolled on WIC in my hometown?

Like you're going to start getting ads for adoption agencies.

And if you're in a really vulnerable place in your pregnancy, right?

If you're

struggling to figure out where the money is going to come from, where the stable housing is going to come from, your own parents aren't supportive or aren't able to be to support you.

You know, you're struggling to finish school, whatever is going on in your life.

And then you get these profiles of the adoptive families, and they're married and they have a gorgeous home.

And they have their, you know, they'll say in the profile, like, well, our parents can't wait to be grandparents.

And it speaks directly to what you are missing in your own life.

It's exactly how.

And that's exactly how it comes across to us birth parents.

Same thing when we were looking at profiles.

It was, it was like, oh my gosh, it's a two-parent household.

Should be able to be a stay-at-home mom.

They have a beautiful dog.

They go on vacations.

They go to the house.

Yeah, they go on vacations.

Like, completely opposite of what I was feeling in that moment and what we were going through.

Yeah.

And honestly, I remember we were looking through the profile books that the agency gave us, and we were like, I mean, they all look really similar, like, like which, yes, like they all, yeah, like so they're almost like exactly the same.

Maybe she's water skiing, but you're skiing on snow and she's skiing in water, but it was the same, so it was interesting how we're going through all these profile books, and we're like, we don't even know, like, they all feel very similar, but these guys kind of feel like the best fit.

And I just remember thinking in my head, like, this is so weird that so many of the same people want these babies.

I don't know, it's just, it's interesting looking at back now, obviously, as an adult, but it's, it's, uh, they're so similar.

Yeah.

So similar.

I actually, um, I actually worked on a paper with a colleague of mine, Jessica Harrison, looking at the similarity of these prospective parent profiles and like the emphasis on travel, the emphasis of being a stay-at-home mom, the emphasis of like, like how they always have pictures of them with kids, even if they don't have children, right?

Like, these are our nieces and nephews.

We can't wait to have our own children or here are our best friends' kids, right?

Like, they really put themselves into that role, which I understand, right?

If you are looking for someone to care for your child, like you want to see that they love kids, right?

But like it ends up being so, just so similar

and really upholding this really specific idea of what family could and should be and what is aspirational for a child.

And also it comes across as this is what's worthy.

If you're a parent, if you want to be a really great parent, this is what makes you worthy of being a great parent, having this house, having this, you know, all these connections and all this finance and just a parent household.

Yeah, and just all that kind of stuff.

And it really, in a way, looking back, it feels like you're almost purposely preying on my insecurities as a birth parent because I wouldn't even be looking at these books if I had that house, that financial stability.

So it felt, it just, yeah, it feels, and that's why I kind of feel like pre-birth matching is not an ethical thing to do, in my opinion.

I just don't think it's, I don't think it's right, I guess.

because I look back at now and the fact that, you know,

adopted parents even go to the hospital

in the middle of that intense situation, it's like,

why are we doing that to these birth moms who are

the most vulnerable thing ever emotionally?

You know, because then when they're there and if they're there and you are having thoughts of changing your mind, then it kind of makes you feel guilty.

Like, oh, but they're here and I don't want to hurt their heart or break their feelings.

And I think that's what it comes down to is that like, even if you were to, even if we were to change our mind, it was our right to do so.

Like

we, and we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have been selfish to do that, in my opinion.

And I think back then we were getting fed the opposite message that no, you would be selfish if you changed your mind because you're going to break this family's heart and you're going to, you know what I mean?

So it's, yeah.

One of the mothers I interviewed talked about the her son's adoptive parents already had already adopted a child.

Oh, okay.

And they went, she went out to dinner with them and their son, who they were raising.

And he like drew a picture of her, like with the, with her belly, her pregnant belly and the baby inside.

And she's like, and he's like, look, that's my little brother in there, you know?

Like,

just this sense of like obligation.

She's like, well, I can't break this five-year-old's heart.

Right.

Like, what, you know, this, this obligation to this whole family, I think was real.

And I also think.

I have spoken with a number of mothers who they're not in the book, but who have come to me after who said, you know, I had second thoughts and the agency said that I would owe them for the cost of my medical care that I received during pregnancy if I changed my mind.

Wait, the agency told them that?

Or attorneys who say, if you change your mind, then you're committing fraud and we gave you this housing support during your pregnancy.

And so if you change your mind, you need to pay us back for that.

Wouldn't that also be coercion then?

So is that legal?

Yeah, because yes, yes, yes, it's obviously coercion.

it's probably not legal but if you are already in that vulnerable place and you can't afford an attorney and you are confused and you're overwhelmed and you're probably hormonal right like they're using like fear they're using they use this fear and i've there are several cases like that that have come out which i think is is that's part of the broken system here why why are the adoptive parents lowering you know getting a lawyer but birth parents are not having any representation because they're just because they can't afford it like it just doesn't seem it's because they can't afford it which which that comes to the fact of oh because they're more financially set they're more worthy to be parents than i am which is just that's the message you keep getting as birth parents and it's like you look back at it now and it's like even even the for the instance of paying for housing for a pregnant girl that is coercion to me because you're literally saying hey as long as you're carrying this baby and planning to hand this baby over to us we'll pay for your housing well why aren't we paying for helping her get a house now to be a parent you know like it's like

it just doesn't make any sense to me.

And on top of all the private money that goes in, so the money the adoptive parents are putting into the adoption, there's also a federal tax credit for the adoption.

So the federal tax credit for an adoption is $16,000.

Wow, wow.

$16,000 of credit to cover the expenses of the adoptions, which is why adoptions can be so expensive and still be accessible to a lot of people, right?

If we were putting a similar investment into just a child tax credit that was accessible to families, these adoptions adoptions wouldn't be happening in the first place.

I mean, $16,000 is crazy.

It's a crazy

crazy high tax credit.

And the fact that we're choosing for the tax credit to go to that instead of single moms who aren't in crisis, that makes, see, that doesn't make any sense.

Which that would get so far up.

It would.

And I also feel like that, again, is society prioritizing adoptive parents and putting them above everyone else in the situation when I really feel like it's the adoptee is the most important one on this whole thing because they're the most affected by it.

Well, and some folks will say, Oh, but the adoption tax credit benefits the adoptee once they're in the adoptive family.

But you could actually claim the adoption tax credit, some expense of the adoption tax credit, even if the adoption doesn't go through.

Interesting.

So, yeah, then it just renders that point moot, right?

Because you're actually just putting money into the adoption process, it's not supporting the adopted person as they grow up.

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And I think that's kind of like where I think the lines kind of get blurred because one thing that I actually had an instant message recently from a girl in Australia and she said that, um, she's like, you know, listening to your podcast, I never knew that America had this thing where it was like, she's like, you know, over here, she's like, it's like it's illegal to have adoption agencies.

You can't commodify children.

We can't, there's no, there should be no money involved.

It's illegal.

And the fact that I was like, whoa, the fact that.

It's illegal in other countries to even have adoption agencies, period, is mind-blowing to me because obviously that other country realizes we can't commodify children and exchange money for this to happen, which I was like, wow.

Like, so if we were in a different country,

the agency we use wouldn't even be there because it's illegal.

I thought that was really, really interesting because that's a difference between like, how does America?

Because what I wanted to ask you is, doing your research, what do you find that what is unique about America

adoption industry here versus everywhere else?

I mean, a lot.

I mean, domestic adoption, the way we practice it in the United States, is unique in the world.

So, when you look at a lot of like Western European countries,

there's still a demand for adoption, but their adoptions were almost entirely international adoption.

So, bringing children from other countries into

their country because they have a social safety net to a degree that we just don't have in the United States.

And so, if you're poor and you want a parent, you can usually find a way to get those resources.

So, it's like Danish women aren't relinquishing their children.

There's still a really high demand in Denmark for adoption, so they would bring children from Korea, from Africa, into Denmark for the purposes of adoption.

Now, a lot of Scandinavian countries, particularly, have started banning international adoption because of the coercion and human trafficking.

I read that, yeah, yeah.

So, I don't quite know what's going to happen.

Like, the demand for adoption is not going to go away.

Um, but the way that we practice adoption in the United States is pretty unique in the world.

And I think there's a couple of things going on.

One is that it like fits in really well with our deeply capitalist way of solving problems, sub-problems.

And two is that it's really closely tied with religious ideologies in the U.S.

to a greater degree than in other countries.

So adoption is really rooted in.

Historically, it was really part of the Catholic Church, the Catholic charities running these maternity homes like back in the 60s and early 70s.

Today it's really part of the evangelical church in a lot of ways.

And most adoption agencies in this country are church affiliated.

Yes.

And I should say a lot people often push back like, well, adoption agencies are non-profit.

Like they're not making money.

And I'm like,

they can be technically non-profit organizations, but people are still employed because they are facilitating adoptions.

Like those attorneys aren't working pro bono.

Right.

Right.

The photographers that are offering the package to the prospective adoptive parents to create their profile, they're getting paid.

like people are getting paid at every step along the way through the agencies and through all these like ancillary services that have developed around them.

So there is tremendous money to be made, both within and without and around within and around the agencies.

And I think that that's really important to understand is that they have a huge, huge demand for adoption, for adoptable babies.

And in capitalism, when you have high demand, you're very motivated to generate supply.

And in this case, supply is children.

Which is just crazy to me because I think about when people say, oh, it's non-profit, I'm like, yeah, it's non-profit on paper.

But the CEO of these agencies are still walking away with six figures.

I mean, you're pretending that this is not like people aren't living off of this, and they are.

And I think that's the difference is that they are living off of this.

you know, this agency.

And I remember when we were looking at different agencies after the fact, a couple years later, I couldn't find any that were not religiously affiliated.

I couldn't find, I didn't see any of them that really looked legit enough.

I couldn't find any that weren't somehow related or had Christian in their about page.

And I thought it was really interesting because when I looked at some of the studies that,

what's the National Institute of Adoption?

National Council for Adoption.

Okay, so when I looked at the studies they did and then who funded the studies, the highest, the highest donation was from Catholic Brothers Social Something.

I can't remember what the name was, but I remember seeing it at the very top, and they donated a lot of money for that study.

And in my head, I'm like, wait a minute, though, how can we even say that that study is not biased if these

it's funded by religious

play?

So it's like, yeah, it's murky.

It gets murky.

Like you said, the capitalism behind it all is just.

I think that's what separates us from other countries.

And I think people don't really understand the fact that when I say a $25 billion industry, they're like, well, wait, what?

How is that possible?

And I'm like, well, here's how it's possible.

And it's almost like getting people to understand

the way that this industry works.

It's like they have to go through like a withdrawal step.

They get to like break them all down very slowly to them because they have this idea that it's a specific thing.

And then when you throw numbers out there like that or facts, they kind of like they really hesitate to accept it.

Because we believe, again, it just gets back to this idea that we believe adoption is good.

And nobody has been given space to like have a more complicated conversation about that.

And I'm not saying that people can't have good experiences within a bad system.

And I'm sure you all hear from

adopted people and other birth parents who are like, I had a great and empowering experience.

My first response is always like, okay, I'm really glad that that's what you're experiencing.

Like, let's see where you are in 10 years.

Because I talked with a lot of mothers who were like, this is amazing.

This is great.

This is going to do so many amazing things for me and my child.

And 10 years later, they were like, this adoption never needed to happen.

Right.

And so if you're having a good experience right now, like, let's let's see how you feel as your child gets older, as things change.

And also those negative experiences don't, or those positive experiences don't negate the negative ones.

And I think they kind of like use that.

Well, that you're, you're trying to bash adoption.

You're trying to make it all bad.

And I'm like, I'm not, though.

I'm, I'm just giving you a different perspective that kind of goes against, obviously, what your experience was.

And I feel like I'm very, I always say I'm very glad that you had a positive adoption experience.

Now we need to work on making every adoption experience that positive.

If it's, that's the goal.

Like, you know, that should be what the goal is, not to, to, you know, almost minimize the negative experience because you had a positive one.

That's, yeah.

And one mother that I interviewed for the book who had a pretty good experience, I think is how she did describe it.

She was very, very close with her daughter's adoptive parents.

She was very close with her daughter.

She went on like family vacations with them.

I remember there was, she told me a story one time when her daughter was like nine or 10 and she came up to her and she was like, can I call you mom?

And she's like, I don't ask your other mom if you can call me mom.

And her mom was like, sure, you can call her mom, whatever.

And her daughter kind of tried it on for a while.

I was like, that feels weird.

Went back to calling her by her first name.

But like, you have this interaction that shows, one, her daughter has full access to her.

Yes.

Comfort asking her these candid questions.

Her adopt, the adoptive mom doesn't view.

her motherhood as a threat to their family.

Yeah.

Right.

Everybody is fully comfortable, open, and they're centering the child.

Like, yeah, you want to call her mom?

Try that out.

See how that feels for a while.

Like, it's up to you.

This is your adoption.

This adoption was designed to serve you as the adopted person, and we want to continue to center that.

And so she would say, I had a good, I had a good experience.

But when I asked her, like, what would you change?

Is there anything you would change about the system of adoption?

She's like, oh, so many things, right?

We didn't get support from our agency.

There's too much money involved.

Like, nothing was centering my child.

And she's like, I got lucky, right?

The people who adopted my daughter were incredible people who were very down to earth did not feel threatened by me right and she's like luck is not you don't build a system on luck right right she's like the system is still deeply deeply flawed even though i had a good experience coming out of it because you can't base policy on luck.

You can't base policy on individual relationships, right?

You have to set up a system that's designed to care for people long term.

And this one does not do that, even if some people can pull a good experience out of a bad system, right?

Or get lucky.

Yeah,

we always tell them that, like, you know, you're the exception.

You're not the rule, though, for having that great experience.

Because I have, if I had to weigh on a scale of the negative versus positive, I mean, the negative is just so, so much heavier.

So it's like, you can't, you know, you're, you are lucky, but you shouldn't, we shouldn't have to be lucky in this industry.

You shouldn't have, there shouldn't, there shouldn't be you know, necessary for you to be lucky or not.

It should always be like that experience that you talked about.

The reason why I believe that sounds so positive is because it was centering the child, and there was not, you're not allowing the insecurities

or fears of adoptive parents kind of override what the child wants.

Well, and it sounds like those adoptive parents put in the hard work on themselves, which is very important.

And I also want to, I think it's important to applaud adoptive parents who do operate that way.

Like, that's that's your intentions are pure.

You must have had some kind of, you know, you must be trauma-informed in some kind of way.

And that's important.

I also feel like, you know, there's, I know there's screening that is done for adoptive parents, but I believe there could be more education or ongoing.

Ongoing, yeah.

Every few years, you have to take some new trauma classes or, you know, but that's the kind of thing.

Like when we talk about open adoption, right?

And like, what does it take to make a good open adoption work?

You need to have, if agencies are going to sell the idea of open adoption, which they have to, because very few parents would relinquish at all if they were, it was a closed adoption.

Didn't you say something about that in the beginning of your book, too, about how far like where baby, there was like there were tons of babies and there was like no babies.

And then they were like, oh, what if we do this open adoption thing?

Yeah, so in like the late 80s, early 90s, they introduced this idea of open adoption because like no women were relinquishing and there were fewer, you know, as contraception birth control got more widely available, as abortion became more widely available, like you were just having fewer people carrying

unplanned or unintended pregnancies to term.

Yes.

And so they needed to capture because of the market demand, they were like, well, how can we make adoption more palatable to pregnant women who are in a vulnerable place?

And the idea was open adoption, right?

You're going to have more contact.

You're going to be able to have contact with your child.

And openness is

protective.

of some of the worst kinds of trauma that can come out of adoption.

So closed adoptions are generally more traumatic than open adoptions because these, a lot of the mothers that I interviewed who were in closed adoptions, like, they didn't know if their child was alive, right?

They didn't have, I mean, they literally had no idea.

Some of them didn't even know if they had had a boy or girl because the baby was just taken away from them.

The records were sealed, right?

Like, they were, it was just this black box.

And they, you know,

even in,

even in adoptions today, like, you can know your child is safe if nothing else, right?

So, so openness is protective against some of the darkest kinds of trauma that can come out of closed adoptions.

But openness isn't a fix on the system, right?

And I think open adoption, like as you all know, can mean a huge range of things.

Like,

I've talked to mothers who are getting like pictures from the agency a couple times a year.

I've talked to mothers who are going on family vacation with their kids, adoptive families, or are babysitting for their children's or for their children.

Yeah.

And

so you have this huge range.

It's not legally protected.

It's really at the whim of what the adoptive parents want.

And even in some states where there's some legal protection for openness, usually it requires like going through mediation first.

And if the adoptive parents refuse to do that, like a lot of these birth parents can't afford an attorney.

So like legal protection means different things and doesn't often have very much enforceability to it either.

Yeah.

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I think it's interesting that you point out the fact that, you know, even in the states that they do have this legal protection for openness, it's still not, it's still not like, you know, legally enforceable to the point where I could get the adoptive parents in trouble or I could, they have some kind of consequence.

It's not like we can force this adoptive parents to, you know, open and keep it open.

It's like, so and i also think it's interesting because if if if openness was legally enforceable then i think things would look a little bit differently i don't know if they would look any less dramatic but they would look a little differently because when we talk about you know uh coercion when it comes to uh women relinquishing it's like you know When our agency said, here's your openness adoption agreement, here's the paperwork.

We're going to put all the wants and needs and whatever desires, and we're all going to sign it, but it's not legally enforceable, then what is the paperwork?

paperwork well like it's it's almost never legally enforceable yeah yeah but but also what it would take to get that to work like over the next 18 years and beyond in different ways are like counseling

you know working through uh conflict resolution

being continually trauma informed, involving the child as they grow.

Like the adoption agency can't just be like, here's your openness agreement and here's your TPR and like

go, good luck for the next 18 years.

That's what they do.

That is what they do.

And rather than how can we be present to ensure that your relationship here is successful and centering the child and what they need, which is going to change.

Yeah.

And you don't have agencies offering that kind of support.

And so, like, I remember one mother I talked to, she's like, I thought they told me that they had post-adoption services.

And she thought that she was going to be getting the support that she needed throughout the open adoption.

And she got like three therapy sessions in the first year.

And then they were like, well, that's it.

Right.

Like there's this idea that like post-adoption services are ongoing.

Ongoing.

I don't think we've ever, we didn't get any post-adoption.

I don't even think we had one required a therapy session.

I don't think so.

I mean, I do think, I do think like we could always like call Dawn and talk to her and ask questions.

She would help us process, but I don't think there was any like.

But an unbiased, not connected, right?

Yeah.

But to me, even with you know, agencies coming out with open adoption, I honestly, to me, that still feels like it's just a coercion tactic for women to make them feel like you know, you're gonna have more involvement.

Well, that's kind of my whole point.

Because they weren't getting any babies.

And if the paperwork's not legally enforceable, then what is the paperwork for the birth parent perspective?

Like, what is this paperwork then, if not a coercion tactic to get you to make it easier for you and more safe and comfortable for you to relinquish.

And I noticed in like our culture in the United States, a lot of people that aren't involved in the adoption world,

we see the question all the time: like, get a lawyer.

Why can't you take them to court?

Why?

And I'm like, a lot of people do think that it's like legally binding.

And it's like, no, the only legal thing we ever did was sign our rights over to them and stop ours.

That was the only legal thing we ever did.

And once you've signed your parental rights away, you have no legal relationship to your child.

No.

And

the family that has been created by the adoption, they have all the legal rights.

And so everything you do is at their whim.

And even if you do challenge it, like good luck getting in front of a judge.

Yeah.

Like, you people who are legal strangers to this child have a right.

And like, then what kind of openness is it going to have?

Like, if they're, I mean, I can't even imagine the scenario where a judge would be like, yeah, you have to allow a visitation.

Like, okay, that's not a good that's what i say any

less traumatic

right like this you know um

and most most parents can't afford a lawyer no like this is an expensive process and i also feel like people look at adoption as being this whole general thing when really in reality it's a legal transfer and termination of parental rights and it's that's it and so when people ask well what what's the alternative and it's like well there's there's guardianship there's there's there's fostering there's so many different things that you could do if you really cared about just helping this child or whatever.

Adoption is not necessary to provide safe external care for kids who need it.

So

people don't really understand that when they're like, well, and we also get a lot of hate as far as well, you signed your rights while you knew what you were doing.

And it was like, yeah, we were 16 and we.

And you didn't have your own lawyer.

Yeah, I didn't have my own lawyer.

And the only counseling you gotten was from the adoption agency.

And also, people like to assume that we had to get a guardian to light them

because her mom didn't didn't agree and wouldn't sign because she was a minor.

And so people are like, oh, well, you had a lawyer.

No, a guardian lightum is not a lawyer.

It was like, I had a guardian eliteum for like an hour and it was just to sign my rights away legally.

And then after that, she was gone.

And in many states, pregnancy is considered an emancipating event for a minor.

So in some states, you wouldn't even have that.

Wow.

Which I think is a little.

Yeah, that's insane, right?

If we're gonna, and if we're going to like,

that's, that's crazy to me that they're not, um, there's some states states that you don't even need a guardian of light on like how is that that's they're children like relinquishing children like how where are they and even the women and even the women that aren't children it still is not okay it's just kind of the whole the whole i think the whole industry is just you all you signed your papers you had to leave the hospital to sign your papers right yes right because you signed in like the parking lot am i remembering yeah we handed her off in the parking lot yeah because the hospital didn't agree they said this is too this is too legally well it's not legal and my mom wouldn't sign the paper right so they're like So in

some states, you can't sign in the hospital, or you can't sign within 48 hours of birthright.

But when I ever asked them, they're like, Yeah, I signed my papers in the hospital, or I signed my papers in the parking lot, or I signed my papers.

And I'd be like, Do you know what you signed?

Like, do you actually know what you signed?

I don't.

And a lot of times, and again, I'm not an attorney, and this varies a lot by state law.

A lot of times, you're signing two things.

You're signing custody of the child over to the agency who then assigns custody to the adoptive family, the prospective adoptive family, right?

And you're signing a waiver

to be informed of ongoing legal proceedings,

right?

So

you probably wouldn't have been given a notice when like their adoption finalized on their end, right?

Right.

And so you are basically saying, I don't need to be informed of what happens to this child after this.

And so then they can proceed legally with the adoption, basically without letting you null know what's happening.

Which is crazy because they also tell you, like, you have 30 days to change your mind.

But if you're signing something at that hospital, does that like null and void that?

I wonder.

Well, if you're not informed that that's that that's happening.

Right.

And I think people also misunderstand the revocation window, which is that period where you can change your mind, where in some states, the revocation window means that you have to go before a judge and prove that like that's how you revoke is that there's a hearing to determine if you are allowed to revoke and the judge determines it's not just like you change your mind you get the baby back in a lot of states

you change your mind you have to go to the judge and you have to say like oh this baby who's been with this family for two weeks um this family who has more money and more capacity and more support and a better job like that that actually I should get this but you have to like demonstrate your parenthood which is crazy that you'd have to actually fight to a judge to prove that I'm worthy to have my own baby back yeah like that's that that's I think what the point is that you don't understand that the revocation period I actually fight for that it's not something automatically given to me as a birth parent.

And again, that varies like a lot of the date, but like a lot of people are like, well, you can just change your mind.

Or like, oh, if you can demonstrate coercion, like you can get the baby back.

And I'm like,

you would have to prove a lot of things and even for the coercion.

That we signed, the paperwork that we signed in the hospital.

We don't even know what that said.

I've asked, like, what, what, what did we sign in order for that transfer in the parking lot to even happen?

And I still haven't gotten the answer.

I don't even know what that was.

I'm assuming it was what you said because we have to sign two different forms.

And then I had to actually go get an affidavit of parentage to be considered the legal father that I had to say.

So it was a whole, and I look back at it now.

I'm like, why wasn't any of this like explained?

I just want to know why the adults in our lives didn't say,

what are you signing?

We need to get a lawyer.

Somebody needs to read this, or I need to read it as a parent.

Yeah.

I mean, some states do require relinquishing parents to have their own attorney.

Like, outside

their own attorney.

Well, like outside of the agency.

I mean, no, right.

Like the agency can sometimes still pay for it.

Right.

See, that's like, I would want somebody like

outside.

But, but that's like, that's something that you can create policy on.

And

you can't sign this contract without a lawyer.

Right.

Some states do require that.

Most of them do.

Good.

It needs to be a lot of people.

And so I'm just saying, like, some of these things,

there's a fix for.

Right.

It's fairly straightforward.

And we still have chosen not to do them.

Right.

Which is weird to me.

So that goes to say that, like i mean society we're looking at this from the wrong angle yeah like i think we're looking at this adoption as as a fix to certain solutions like oh poverty kids and oh my gosening all this stuff but it's not we're not looking at we're looking at it from the wrong angle this isn't the solution i

i remember once i i was on a call with um the legislative team for United States senator, right?

This is big, big leaks, right?

As far as policy.

And we were talking about the federal policy, the federal tax credit for adoption and some other adoption pieces that were coming up.

And I just said, it feels kind of odd that this senator is like so supportive of some of these policies

around promoting adoption feels inconsistent with other of her policy priorities.

And they're like, well, she views this as an LGBTQ equity issue because a lot of gay and lesbian families adopt.

She views this as consistent with her support to make IVF and infertility more affordable.

So she wants adoption to be more affordable.

And she wants adoption to be more accessible for middle class families.

And I said, you just said three things about what adults want and nothing about what children need.

Right?

Apps, yes.

And I think that that

is a paradigm shift that we need to make.

What do children actually need?

Right.

How can we keep our first goal should be how can we keep children in their family of origin and make sure that that is a safe place and that's going to mean investing in families creating a social safety net and i'm not saying every parent can care for every child that they give birth to but how do you support them on a path toward parenting if that is what they want which most of the time it is it is because and the so the goal even my policy is should be family preservation not to

not to give these adults the chance to be parents.

It should really be focusing on the kids because that's who's the most effective in this.

And it goes to show that

I think the biggest problem is that

we're just putting the wrong people as a priority in this whole adoption triad situation.

The adoptees at the bottom, birth parents at the bottom, adoptive parents at the top.

And it's like,

why are we doing this?

It doesn't make any sense because

it's not really helping any of these children the way that they think it is.

Yeah, I mean, I think that we just have this tendency to like oversimplify it because

we do not live in a world where we want to understand the complexity of adoption.

We want, you know, we believe adoption is good.

We want adoption to be good.

We want adoption to serve children and families the way that we believe that it is.

And I think we fundamentally misunderstand.

the ways that we're failing people when we continue to be invested, invested like on a cultural level and that we believe, like, we believe that this is good, like that type of investment, but also financially, deeply invested in this system, too.

Yeah, which is crazy because I feel like you know, it's it's just a lot of the things that I and honestly, a lot of the pushback that we get because we're getting the worst backlash we've ever had in our whole lives.

16 years on TV, you think we get it, we think we've seen it all.

We've never seen this much negative.

We started talking in a different light of adoption.

I mean, it was like the floodgates open, and people just came after us.

And I, I just keep, we just keep talking about it.

I'm like, listen, this is an unfortunate, necessary, muddy, messy part before it gets to the good part, you know, hopefully, which is policy change, which is, you know, and just educating people like about statistics and, you know, all of the real things involving adoption.

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So, like, through you doing all of your research and all the things for your book,

I wanted to know:

did you find any adoptions out there that didn't involve some type of coercion?

Well, it depends on how you define coercion.

Okay.

If you define desperation as coercion, then no.

Okay.

Right?

Because adoption is always a, I always say, you don't convince women to give away their children unless they believe it's necessary for their salvation or their survival.

And the salvation is obviously where you get into the religious part of it, where people believe that they have committed a sin by having sex, by being pregnant, you know, with being, by, well, they're not married or whatever the circumstances are, and that, like, this is how they're going to save their child and themselves is through adoption.

That exists for a meaningful subset of parents who relinquish.

But survival is the big one.

It's how I can't afford this child.

I don't feel safe in my life.

I don't have stability in my life.

I can't give that to my child any other way.

And I think that

some mothers faced very outright coercion.

Some were merely manipulated.

But what allows the manipulation to take root is that

function of like, how am I going to survive?

And how am I going to ensure that my child can survive?

And I think that that's a little different than like the coercion, which is sometimes like super blatant.

Right.

But a lot of this like marketing pitch wouldn't work.

The marketing issue.

Exactly.

Or if you're not in a deeply vulnerable place.

And that's why I say, like, we've already failed in some of these circumstances.

If people are like, well, if there's a mother who's homeless, like she can't parent.

And I'm like, you know what?

That's a problem.

Like, you're right.

Why is she unhoused?

We've already

failed as a society to care for her as a person.

Yeah.

And find a path to stable housing and food stability and like all of those things that she would need to be successful.

But I want that for her as well as for her child.

Right.

And so I think that that is part of it.

And maybe she can't parent right away.

Maybe that's going to take time.

Maybe that's going to take six months.

And we always need more people who want to care for children.

But foster care and crisis care is not set up to maximize the odds that her child's going to receive good, safe, trauma-informed care that keeps her child connected to her while she gets on a path to stability and then reunites them.

Like nothing about our current systems are designed for that.

Which I also feel like it's in a way, it's like adoption wouldn't exist if we didn't fail.

Right.

Adoption is always a reflection of failing at some point.

Yeah.

Right.

And we, that's why, when we celebrate adoption as like this good and beautiful thing, I view every adoption as

a failure to meet someone's needs

before that point.

Because would it be necessary?

It totally makes sense.

You know, it wouldn't even be necessary for these.

Yeah, because like I said, just listening to your book, I kept just the same thought in my mind every time I would listen to a new chapter.

And I'm like, it comes down to resources and no help.

Like, most of their stories was just like, no resources, no resources, no, no help, no support.

I was just like, my God.

Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's like, I think people get confused where it's like, they think that these

birth moms are just so gung-ho.

They want to do this adoption.

It's like,

it's like, what percentage did you find that were birth parents actually wanted to parent versus like all like, you know what I mean?

Like, they're having.

I mean, almost all of them wanted to parent.

I mean, maybe, like, I mean, I've interviewed hundreds of birth parents at this point.

I think maybe like two or three were like, adopt, like adoption is my first choice.

Yeah, but I noticed when you were speaking, most of them, that was not their first choice.

I mean, the re and this like gets into the abortion politics

part, right?

Because most of the mothers who relinquished didn't consider getting an abortion and didn't want to have.

They continued their pregnancies because they intended to parent.

And so people always say, like, well, what about all these unwanted children now that we have abortion bans?

And I always say that most of the, most mothers who relinquished weren't trying to get an abortion.

Right.

And also, most women who are trying to get an abortion, if they're denied care, over 90% of them are parenting.

Yeah.

This is a very, like, this, this is a very, it's a Venn diagram with a very small overlap.

And we think it's a circle, but it's not.

Well, people, people actually say that all the time.

They're like, oh, well, well, if abortion is not here, we'll have more adoption or whatever.

They kind of keep it.

I mean, you'll have, you'll have some more.

Yeah.

But you'll have, like, but that's only because so many people need need and want abortions in this country.

And there are so few adoptions that, like, even if a very small proportion of people who can't access abortion care end up relinquishing, that's still a meaningful increase for adoption.

Right.

But it's not, like, it's not going to be this flood that everyone thinks that it is.

I mean, we have around a million abortions in this country every year, and you have about 20,000 private domestic adoptions of infants.

Like, these are

on the same scale.

Yeah.

So that right there is proof that it's not.

Yeah, it's just

like, and

abortion has always been more common than, like, so even when we look back at like the baby scoop era, right?

Before Roe v.

Wade, abortion is illegal everywhere in this country.

Adoptions are at their absolute peak, super coercive, secretive, extractive adoptions happening.

Even then, there were five times as many abortions as there were adoptions.

Now, the data on like illegal abortions, like a little fuzzy, but like it's an order of magnitude difference, right?

And so what that means is that most people who are continuing their pregnancies, they're doing so because they want a parent and they get to a point in their pregnancy where that doesn't feel possible.

And, you know, I opened the book with Haley, right?

And Haley, she was 19.

She actually already had a son.

She had a son when she was 16 that she was parenting.

She was pregnant again.

And when she was pregnant the first time, she had like felt really proud of herself.

She got her life together.

She got really good grades in school.

She graduated high school.

Well, like she was, she had used pregnancy as like a galvanizing way of like, I'm going to get myself together for this baby.

So when she got pregnant again, she was determined to do that again.

She went back to school.

She's like, I'm going to get a degree so I can get a better job so that I can take care of this baby.

Like we are going to make it.

And she told this story about

she was parked in the parking lot of a grocery store because the grocery store had free Wi-Fi that she could reach from her car.

And her son, her four-year-old son, is asleep in the back seat.

She'd like got him settled and she's using the store's free Wi-Fi so that she can do her homework for school in the parking lot.

And she just had this breakdown and she's like, I just can't do it.

Right.

And that, like, that's the moment where the adoption happened, right?

Is where she didn't have any support.

She didn't have any people around her saying, you can do this again.

She had another child that she needed to figure out how to care for.

Like, the question of like abortion, like, no, she's in her third trimester.

She wants this child, right?

Like, people want to put abortion politics on these stories.

And I think they're a relevant part of understanding them but like this is not no no part of that is a is what's happening here what's happening here is you have this young mom in crisis who wanted to make it work and couldn't yep and that's that's where adoptions are happening yeah and i loved that how you described that in your book about just how people yeah they're not just automatically jumping to adoption most of them want to parent and the ones that maybe wanted to get an abortion showed up said oh you're too late you know you're so many so many many weeks.

Then they're like, all right, well, then I'm going to parent.

Like their mind doesn't automatically go to adoption unless something significant happens.

Well, I also think it comes down to people believing that if they're against abortion, oh, well, let's elevate adoption and then it'll eliminate abortions.

And we know by numbers, it's just, that's not the case.

It's never was a case.

And I, you know, I...

I'm on the faculty at the University of California in San Francisco.

And

it's, I'm in the OBGYN department there.

Like, I'm, I'm very clear throughout the book.

Like, I believe that access to abortion is a right.

Yeah.

And I believe that that is what we need to create healthy families and communities and women as individuals.

So, like, I'm very clear on that.

And if then there are some anti-abortion people who like, we're like, well, then I'll just throw the book out the window, right?

Like, if you're, if your values align with me.

But I actually believe that if you are uncomfortable with abortion or if you're opposed to legal abortion, the lesson of this book is adoption is not the answer.

Correct.

Right.

Right.

The common ground that you,

we have tried to make adoption be the common ground in the abortion debate.

The common ground is parenting.

Yes.

It is.

And supporting women.

Supporting people who want to parent.

Yes.

Which is what our main priority should be.

That should be the main focus, you know?

So I had a question, though, about like...

Do you believe after interviewing all this and getting all the data, is there any ethical forms of adoption that you can see?

Yeah, I mean, that's the question that I get asked a lot.

Do you?

Okay, I was answering.

And no, no, and that I, but I think that's the question.

That is

like, where do we go from here?

Right.

And I remember one reporter who asked me that question, and I think I literally just did the same thing I did here where I was like,

and she transcribed, like, in the interview, she said, long pause.

Oh, wow.

And I like, right, because it's always like, where do you go from here?

Right.

I think that the system of adoption that we have now, one, commodifies children, two, is premised on inequality.

And I don't believe that on those two premises, you can build an ethical system of adoption.

Right.

I believe that

we need to think more broadly, not just about how we support families, but about how we care for children.

And so, as long as children are a commodity in this equation, there isn't an ethical way to do that.

There's no ethical way to commodify a human being, and there never has been.

You can't really build on that.

Right, if you can't do this, if that's where we're starting, you don't get to an ethical system.

I think that there are ways of thinking more expansively about what family means, what it looks like, and how we care for kids

that aren't always going to be in their nuclear families.

But I don't think that the current system that we have makes ethical practice possible.

I think that you can have some forms of adoption that reduce harm, that center the child, that are trauma-informed, that provide lifelong support, that are uncoercive, that try to address the root causes.

Like, I believe that you could have a system

that cares for people much more deeply than the one that we have now.

But I think that ultimately you have to address the root inequities at the system before you can build something that's truly ethical.

Yeah.

So there needs, you know, I agree that there needs to be lots of change.

Yeah.

And, you know, if there isn't people talking about it and putting stuff out there, then there's never going to be change.

And that's kind of why our whole point of the podcast, even having people on like you, is that like, it's just not being talked about enough, clearly, or else we wouldn't be seeing the pushback that we're seeing socially.

I mean, it's, it's, uh, it just, it's a conversation that needs to just be talked about.

And we need to talk about the alternatives to adoption, like kinship and guardian.

There's so many different things that could that could be,

you know, even funded more and just made better.

And that system could make better.

So, that adoption doesn't need to even exist if this stuff is

done better.

So, yeah.

So, honestly, I think my thing for people that are listening or are watching, and maybe you have questions about adoption, you know, maybe you want to know about the statistics or learn some facts.

Definitely, I highly suggest reading Relinquished.

Um, Tyler was the first one to read it, and then he was like, You need to read it, and I

and then I listened to it, and I was like, Whoa, this is so eye-opening, and it makes so much sense.

And just the factual stuff in it really helped me a lot.

So, I think that it is a very good read, or if you want to listen to it.

Um, but I just want to say thank you for coming on and just kind of chatting with us.

And where can people find you?

Where can they buy the book?

Yeah, um, we can buy the book anywhere books are sold.

Preferably your local independent bookstore, but you'll be able to find it anywhere.

It's out there in the world.

I am on Instagram at gretchen.sisson.

That's probably the best social media for me now.

Also on Blue Sky, same thing.

I'm not on TikTok.

I feel like I maybe aged out of TikTok, but I know that there's a lot of really exciting conversation happening there.

There is.

A lot of incredible adoptee voices.

And so

I would encourage listeners to really, and I know if they're listening to you all, they already are probably, but like follow along to adoptee voices

on your social media platform of choice, because I think that is what's actually going to lead the conversation forward in the most critical way.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just search adoptee talk on TikTok.

Yeah, adoptee TikTok.

Oh,

yeah, it's on there.

Well, thank you so much for

really excited to talk to you and love the book.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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