Pay-to-Play: The Marketing And Broken Promises In Adoption with Connor Howe

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Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Kate and Ty Break It Down.

And today, I don't know if you guys have seen his videos.

I've seen his videos before I even knew him on TikTok and on Facebook.

But today we have a guest, and I wanted to welcome Connor to the podcast.

Awesome.

So known as Adopted Connor on every other my name's Connor Howe.

Like

on social media, it's

Adopted Connor, which is honestly how I, I mean, I saw the video, show it to her.

And I was going to say, you started out really like, I mean, it was fast.

I feel like it was about a year ago I started posting.

Okay, but you already have a lot of followers.

Something like that, yeah.

Your content is like, I mean, it's pretty fast growing, in my opinion.

Yeah.

A lot of people come out in this space and kind of talk about adoption.

What made you want to like

use the platform for that specific purpose?

Yeah, that was my question.

Like, what made you decide that, okay, there's a need for talking about adoption and educating people about adoption?

Yeah, I mean,

I've been like kind of in this space for a long time, but just kind of as an observer, I know a lot of people who are adopted.

I've listened to a lot of people's stories on podcasts and in all kinds of mediums.

And for me, really, like, I,

and it's similar to you guys, like, I was in an open adoption and I've seen so many people share their experiences about growing up and closed adoptions or adoptions that don't look like mine.

And I would read these books, I'd listen to these podcasts, and not everyone was saying it, but there's a big group of people that was saying, like,

you know, here's all the issues that happened with adoption in the past, past tense, but now today, things are so different because open adoption exists and, you know, everything's so amazing.

And I was like, well, I don't really feel like this.

You know, I'd be in these support groups of people that didn't see their parents at all growing up, have never met their parents, don't know their parents' names.

And like, I mean, I had a different experience than that.

I knew who my mom was.

I've seen her.

You know, I can get into my story, but like, I was in an open adoption.

It wasn't like I saw her all the time, but I saw her.

I knew who she was.

She knew who I was.

And I would still feel the same feelings.

I still felt no different than any of the other people that are in these support groups or

speaking on these podcasts.

And I was like, I got to probably say something.

Cause like people don't realize that open adoption isn't the solution that it's been presented as, basically.

Do you feel like you're kind of like almost like under, like you're not really represented?

How you, because people are saying all these things, and you're like, oh, but open adoption.

And you're like, well, I'm in an open adoption.

I still feel all these other shitty feelings.

So it's like, it's almost like, it's almost like underrepresented that

open adoption cannot, it's not always the solution.

And I think that's how, and that's how like they try to play it, right?

Like even for birth parents, when we went into, you know, looking to place for adoption, it was very much like,

open adoption is beautiful and rainbows, and you're going to have all these things and your child's going to know you and not have any questions.

And it's like, well, really, that's not 100% accurate.

Yeah, I mean, I make a lot of videos talking about the history of adoption and even open adoption.

I don't need to get into the whole history of it here, but like it was, it's really a value proposition.

You have a lot of people that are thinking about parenting their children and adoption is kind of the alternative.

And when the number of people interested in adoption was shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking after Roe v.

Wade, the adoption industry was like, well, we're losing money.

We're not in business anymore.

A lot of these.

industry or agencies are going out of business.

They're trying to figure out how do we continue to facilitate adoptions because we don't want to go out of business and lose our jobs or whatever.

And so kind of the next move was open adoption.

It wasn't really this idea of we're going to make adopt people's lives better or the natural parents' lives better or the adopters.

It wasn't about anyone.

It was just a business.

Businesses do what they need to do to survive, right?

And so, like, that was kind of the way it was presented.

But yeah, to your point, the way that it's presented today in the industry of adoption, in the world of adoption, is really like a open adoption is the cure to all these problems.

Like, when I was growing up, it was like, you know, you could have been in a closed adoption and you're in an open adoption though.

And it's like, I kind of have both because i'm also i have a dad in ireland who i've never met and has kept me a secret from his family for my entire life but it's yeah it's even in an open adoption with my mom it's not like everything is perfect not to say that i'm not happy to have her and those types of things but it's definitely not um

I said this in other podcasts I feel like the experience of being a person in an open adoption is very politicized they kind of hold you up as this poster child of like look he's happy and without actually ever asking you if you're happy you know did you feel the pressure from like people like oh I should be happy?

Like, everyone's like.

Because I have an open adoption or because I know.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, I don't really think anyone in my life was like, hey, you have to feel this specific emotion, you know?

But it definitely is one of those things where I grew up and I was the only person I knew in an open adoption.

I mean, even today,

like you said, I've been around this world for like a year publicly and I have a few thousand followers.

I've only met like, I think, one person who's in an open adoption.

Christina, you guys can talk to you soon.

But, but yeah, like it's,

there's not a lot of people and and open adoption has been around since the 70s, been around for 50 years.

Like it's not really as common as it's presented because the industry uses the term so broadly.

It's very different.

It means a different thing in a different stage of life.

If you're thinking about relinquishing your child for adoption, open adoption means the world.

It means whatever you want it to mean.

They literally, I think when you guys were, I saw clips from the show where it's like, you are in the driver's seat.

I think that's like what the exact words were.

Yep.

But obviously, that's not really enforceable in any way, like legally speaking.

And even if you're told that.

Yeah, and even in those legal agreements, they're not like a lot of them.

If you have a legal agreement, it's not like it's always enforceable because you're generally the party with fewer or fewer, like less money, less

power, legally speaking.

And so if the other party has more money or a lawyer on their side that can get the job done, or there's a judge who's like, well, the kid's better off with this new family.

you're not really going to have any, you're not in a position of any level of power.

I mean, not to say that you need power power, but like you have no agency at all.

But again, it's like, it's all this, it's a huge promise.

And then once the adoption is an open adoption, quote unquote, it becomes this thing of like, you hear all the time, even with you guys, right?

Like your adoption closed.

Yeah.

The difference between close and adoption, open adoption was never about contact, really.

It was about close adoption meant that the records are sealed.

The adopted person, the natural parents, the adopters, no one has access to the records.

The whole point was to make them complete legal strangers from each other and make it impossible for the parents and the children to reunite.

That was essentially really the purpose of closed adoption.

So when they like opened it, they didn't really open the records.

There's still most U.S.

states, if you're an adopted person, you can't actually access your own legal, you know, vital records, your original birth certificates.

Even if it's considered open adoption, it's still sealed?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know exactly how it works in every single state.

Everything's different.

And there are, like, you can have adoptive parents who are like, well, we want the birth certificate.

So you can't, like, I had a copy of mine,

but it wasn't a legal copy.

And I had to still go to the court and petition a judge, even though I had the document in my house to get a certified copy of my original birth certificate to get my citizenship in Ireland when I was doing that.

Wow.

Oh, weird.

So they didn't like trust your data.

That's confusing.

You still have to get a judge to sign off on it in California because it's not an open record state.

There's only, I think, 15.

It's somewhere between 15 and 20 states where adopted people have access to their birth certificates.

And it's not like a politically partisan thing.

like i think like new york you're able to get it alabama you're able to get it but then california you can't get it and like a bunch of conservative states you can't like it's not really adoption is such a politically like

uh bipartisan issue really where everyone in politics is like adoption is great we just should keep the status quo basically so adopted people have been advocating for their records to be unsealed for like at least 50 years and it's still kind of one of those things that they're really struggling to to get people on their side with.

I mean, it's a huge deal.

But yeah, going back to the open versus closed adoption thing, that's my point is that's the issue, right?

It's the records being sealed, not this openness agreement.

And the openness agreement, again,

it's self-serving.

It's open when we want it to be open.

But then when we say the adoption closes, it's really a way of the agency saying that that's not like that, that it's a failure of the adoption rather than a built-in feature of the system.

Because ultimately, open adoption just means you have access to the piece of paper.

And they want it to say it's closed because then it's a promise like being broken, really.

But it's like,

it's hard to explain what I'm trying to say.

No, I can't wait.

I get what you're saying.

Open adoption, though, is so I almost feel like it's subjective to whoever agency you're using, whatever.

It's so nuanced and so broad that you said that.

Like, I remember when we talked to our adoption counselor, and she mentioned that the only difference between open and closed is face-to-face contact.

Yeah.

And then that's not even true.

No, it has nothing to do with that.

No, and that's not.

You can have a closed adoption and know your parents.

Yeah.

think see that's interesting but we're not told that when we're

most people don't um even most adopted people i don't think understand that that really the open versus closed is a legal thing i mean that's like the the reason that open adoption became a thing was because of the sealed records issue there was a bunch of adopted people in the 1970s that were advocating extremely hard especially in the state of new york to open records they founded groups like bastard nation and a bunch of other legal advocacy groups to try to unseal their records and there were a bunch of adoption social workers that were like, yeah, this is kind of dumb.

In fact, like, I think when they actually proposed the concept of open adoption in the 1970s, they wrote something along the lines of like,

why do we have to, why does like, and I'm paraphrasing here, but they're like, why does, why is this idea of this family building that we're creating built on this foundational idea that these children are losing their birthrights?

The birthright was like what the word they use that I remember very distinctly.

And they said like, you know, they even brought up like ohana means family like in Hawaii kind of thing, like not like in the Lilo and Sich sense, but they talked about that there are all kinds of of ways to like create families or build families or whatever where you don't have to legally sever the child's connection to the child's family.

And that was a huge part of why they were trying to create this opened optioning.

Again, that had nothing to do with visiting.

I mean, I'm sure they would have liked for the child to visit their families if that's something the child wanted to do, but ultimately it really had to do with the records being sealed versus opened.

And again, yeah, I mean, theoretically speaking, you can have a relationship with your with whoever you want to have in a closed option if you find each other.

You know, it's still a a closed it option.

You still don't have your records, right?

It's it's all about the records, but the openness agreements and like that whole side is a very kind of like they want to play it both ways where it's open when it's convenient for us, but then it's not open versus closed when it's not convenient for us, basically.

Right.

Well, like I always say, we talk about all the time, but you know, getting older, I'm like, if the open adoption, because open adoption has this agreement, and I think it looks different for all agencies that do it.

So this agreement, though, is not legally enforceable.

So in my opinion, it's just a piece of paper in the middle of a bunch of legal documents.

So, in my opinion, it's like, so there's no other way to classify that agreement as coercion.

It's literally a way of just saying, this is going to look way better than, you know, it's okay, it's going to look like this, but it's not.

So, if it's not legally enforceable, then what else is this piece of paper?

I could go on Microsoft Word right now and type up, you know what I mean?

And me and you can make an agreement.

And why put it in the middle of a bunch of legally binding paperwork, too?

You know, it's very, it's very deliberate.

Oh, it is deliberate.

It is deliberate.

And my thing is, is that like, if people don't understand that adoption is just a legal,

it's a legal thing.

You can do so many things without having to legally adopt.

So I think people are like, oh, adoption is this, adoption is that.

It's like, no, adoption is a court proceeding.

It's a legal.

You're transferring rights.

That's literally all it is.

It doesn't mean anything other than that.

I think we built it to be this weird.

like industry thing in this country but it's supply and demand and i think it goes back to like if people would just look at other developed countries and look at i i encourage everyone to do like

Google Australia adoption.

Yeah, I think it's right.

Americans, we're so in our own little box, our own little reality that we can't even imagine what it's like in other places.

And it's like, well, they don't have adoptions because their social economic systems are different there.

You know what I mean?

They take that.

Social safety nets basically eradicate the need for adoption.

And even people don't realize that American, like adoption, people believe that adoption dates back to biblical times because of the way that,

you know, oh, Jesus was adopted, Moses was adopted, all this stuff.

But if you actually look at the legal process of adoption, like America was one of the first countries to ever actually put adoption in its laws.

The first adoption law was passed in this country 80 years after this country was founded,

more or less.

And yeah, adoption in itself, like the way that we look at adoption didn't really exist until the 1920s, like in terms of like taking a child and putting that child with like complete strangers and

I look at the act of adoption as the actual like erasure of the original birth certificate, putting it behind the seal, and then giving them a new birth certificate that says you're born to these people that didn't give birth to you.

That's the act, right?

Everything else is external care.

It's a very broad like umbrella definition.

You can have guardianship.

You can do foster care.

You can, grandparents can raise their grandkids or step parents can raise their stepkids and they can call themselves mom and dad, whatever it is.

That's no different than adoption except for a piece of paper, right?

So it's, yeah, it's a very weird kind of like history.

And you can say all this stuff by the way the people listening that you can say all this stuff and have perfectly normal relationships with the people in your life have a perfectly normal life I like to look at adoption really just as a as a system because that's what it is It's a it's like I'm a marketer.

I look at it from like a marketing perspective of what are the promises being made

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If the promises are being made and not enforced or kept, like that's something that should change.

Like, why should we not enforce the own standards that we're kind of promising to people?

And again, I say all that, you know, I had like a pretty normal open adoption, quote unquote, for

based on the very few experiences I've heard.

But yeah, it's like, it's...

It's just a very complicated thing.

And I feel like people really don't understand that it is much more of a way of trying to convince people that adoption is not as terrifying as you think it is.

Giving your kid to a complete stranger isn't nearly as terrifying as you think it is.

It's a way of really kind of trying to mitigate those fears.

But again, you really have no idea what's going to happen.

No, you don't.

I was fortunate enough to have a relationship with my mom for my whole life.

Like my mom could have easily not been in my life, just like you guys haven't been in your daughter's life for whatever circumstances, right?

I think people find it so easy to blame individual people in the way that things get mixed up like that.

And obviously, I have my feelings.

I'm sure you have your feelings.

Everyone has their feelings about the way things look in open adoptions, whether they like, quote unquote, work out or don't work out.

But ultimately, I feel like if a system is like claiming to be a system of child welfare and it's making promises to the children, to the natural families, to the adoptive families,

why do we have a system with such a high failure rate where there are so many people, whether it's the people like me, the people like you guys, the people like the adopters, that are unhappy, that are like, this was promised to me and it wasn't what I thought it would be.

You know, even my adoptive parents, like, I have a good relationship with them, but I've asked them, like, If you knew what things are the way they are now, like if you could, if you had like a portal into the future and you could see the the way things are like

would you want everything to be exactly the same and my mom's like no like i wish you didn't have to be adopted you know and it's like even and to me that like it it that sounds like something to someone who probably isn't adopted that would just feel like it cuts deep right like wow you didn't want to like you don't want to but to me that was so like refreshing to hear like oh my gosh you understand

because like when i was four years old i remember my mom tells me like that

I came up to her and I was like, I wish I came out of your tummy because I wish I wasn't adopted, you know?

like, but a lot of people, I've heard a lot of adopted people say things like that.

It's, it's a, at as young as four, that means there's some kind of

I've known my whole life that there was something, everyone in my life, well, my, in my adoptive family, everyone, we've all known there was something that like just didn't click.

Like, and it's not an insult to them.

It's not an insult to my mom, like to my, my natural mom, to anyone.

It just

people present adoption as this solution and it just makes you quote unquote normal family and maybe for some people it does like i'm not here to say that the quote unquote happy adoptive people who want to shut me up and say well you're just one person look if if i'm not here to say that 100 of experiences are negative but if there is a high rate of failure in anything the goal should be to make that the failure rate lower by whatever you know whatever means we have to to make the failure rate lower well it shows that there needs there needs to be change because every you know until like me and ty have said until every adoptive person or adoptee says like it was great.

I didn't struggle with anything.

I was, you know, then we still have work today.

Yeah.

And really everyone should be happy.

I mean, adopt people might not like to hear me say that, but it's like, I mean, I really believe like the system is making promises to three groups of people.

Right.

And so like, why should not all three groups of people be as happy as they can be?

And yeah, I just feel like it's one of those things.

Like, yeah,

I don't want to just harp on that.

But yeah, it's very like, I wish the system could change like to serve adopted people.

And really, I think one thing that's super telling is like you guys speak out, I speak out.

A lot of people speak out about adoption in whatever ways they do, right?

And I feel like it says a lot that I've gotten so many responses from people, positive, negative, probably 90% positive.

When I say I have a lot of negative things to say about adoption, I have people who adopted, who have adopted kids that are like, I'm really glad you're saying what you're saying.

Like, it says a lot that we are so public about our experience.

Your experience is so public of like the agreements being broken.

Point the finger at whoever.

I don't care.

It doesn't matter.

The point is that

I say what I say, you say what you say.

And where are the adoption agencies coming up to us and being like, what do we need to do to be better?

No one holds themselves accountable in this business.

And that's really why I do what I do is because I feel like, you know, in the same way that if someone makes a documentary about, you know, some business that's doing terrible things that harm the environment or harm people, like my goal is to change the industry to serve people or to take that industry down if it doesn't serve people.

But ultimately, like my goal is for people like me to grow up like with the best possible circumstances.

And I want everyone to be happy, right?

I want the people like you to be happy.

I want the people, like I want everyone to be happy.

I think there's so many people that it gets lost on.

He's just one guy and he has a negative experience and he's, you know, like hates his life.

Like I, I mean, I definitely have issues like mentally, but it doesn't mean that I'm not also just like a normal person trying to make the world a better place in the way that I'm trying to do it.

Well, I think people all the time say that though, oh, well, you're just your one negative experience doesn't define everything.

And it's like, well, neither does your one positive experience either.

Yeah.

So it's like that, that, that constant, like almost comparison is just it's irrelevant.

I think it, I think it takes away from the real purpose of what people are trying to do.

So it's like, stop comparing.

And I see this a lot between, I guess, the most discourse I was not expecting was actually adoptees against another adoptees and how their experience, you know,

or this one is.

And I'm like, wow, how is it?

We really like to eat our own.

Like, how is that?

Right, what's up?

When I feel like everyone should have the same goal, which is what you said, is everyone should get what they want out of this system that they enter into, whatever.

And I think that goes down to, like, I mean,

it's a promise that can't be kept in a lot of situations if people are not willing to do what they need to do.

And I also feel like I tell her all the time, I said, I feel bad for my daughter's parents.

They went into adoption too, having certain expectations with whatever.

And promises.

And promises made to them.

They didn't get the experience they wanted.

And that's not fair either.

So it's like, I'm not saying like, oh gosh, someone's going to clip that.

You're not saying that they're unhappy with, it's just that it's, yeah, everyone is, people make very tangible promises about what your life is going to look like.

And that basically having an adopted kid is the exact same thing as having a biological kid.

And maybe some people in the world can close their eyes and convince themselves that I'm no different or my child is no different.

And to those people, good for them.

You know, if really, if people grow up and they live their lives and they have, they're just like a normal person, they were never adopted, great.

You know, I never felt that.

And I don't feel like a lot, I think there's a lot of people, at least people that I've talked to, that don't feel like that.

And I feel like the question is, if, if there's enough people that don't feel like that, and we've, the industry has changed enough to the point where we're acknowledging that they're not exactly the same and that's okay.

Okay, well, what else can we do?

Because there are a lot of people now that when they realize that we're not the exact same, that that creates a lot of just your life is different, right?

Like complexities.

And yeah, I just don't really think they're doing a lot to really address that.

Well, I kind of think it's a disservice, though, in a way, to say,

or even to have that expectation of like, oh, well, nothing's different than this child than adopted.

Well, it's a huge, there's a huge difference.

I mean, like, to pretend, I think it's really damaging and a disservice to pretend.

That was the entire industry for about 50, 100 years, probably.

They would literally match children with people who looked as closely to the children.

Like they would try to physically match children with their adopters.

And I mean, there's a whole history.

There's a whole history of racism and adoption.

Until after the civil rights movement, adoption agencies would not facilitate adoptions of black children at all.

And if they did, and there's a child that was like, let's say, 15% black or whatever, and it turns out they're black.

like five years from now, the adoption agency, they didn't just have a return policy where it's like, you can send this kid back.

They would actually go to the adoptive family and be like, hey, we need to take this kid back from you because it's a social injustice for you to be raising a black child, basically.

Like, you don't, you deserve a better child or whatever.

I mean, that sounds really bad, but that's the history of adoption in America, the history of racism in America, too, obviously.

And there were people that have adopted, you had adopted children that were like, well, we don't, we love this child.

We don't want to give this child back.

And they'd be like, all right, but you know, we got to keep an eye on you guys, basically.

Like, that was a very, very, the majority of history of adoption in the U.S., black children were not allowed to be adopted.

And obviously, people who wanted to adopt who were black were not involved in the process at all because they couldn't adopt white kids.

And that's, I mean, people wonder why so many black children, like, whatever, like the whole adoption, black people versus white people thing.

It's, there's a giant history of segregation and racism and eugenics in adoption.

I mean, the adoption connection to eugenics is insane as well.

And yeah, I mean, like, ultimately, it's always been kind of this pay-to-play system, and they would try to find the most beautiful children to give to people.

And they would try to match children with people who looked exactly like them them so that they never, like, the whole concept of like telling adoption is a big thing for a really long time, too.

Like, and people today will be like, Well, I've always known I was adopted.

My adoptive parents are so great.

It's like, I mean, that's kind of been a norm for like 50 years now, but for many years of adoption history, it wasn't a norm because, again, they would match you to people who supposedly looked like you had the same intellect as you.

And actually, before it was matching by intellect and genes and stuff, it was matching by race or by religion.

So, there was a huge like early 1920s to 1950s.

It was was like Catholic kids go with Catholic adopters, Protestant kids go with Protestant adopters, and the whole, like, I don't want to get super into adoption history, but the whole orphan trade movement, Google orphan trains, it's very interesting because it was literally like a Christian versus Protestant thing.

They're like, we have all these Catholic kids or all these Protestant kids and we want them to end up with the Protestant families of the Catholic families because they don't want to, they want to make sure that there's a, like they want to be their number,

their group to be a bigger group of people in the United States.

Like Catholics want more Catholics, Protestants want more Protestants.

There's this big war over like we need the children to be ours.

We don't want them to go to this, you know, other family that's going to indoctrinate them with the Protestant, whatever.

Which I think, honestly, people will say a lot of times, but it's like, you know, the truth of the matter is religion has a huge part to play in the whole system and how it all works.

Well, and I feel like with adoption, there's so many, like, you can get into so many black holes of adoption.

Like, if you start, just like you were talking about, the orphan trains and the religion and the black babies versus white babies, like there's if people were to educate themselves fully on certain things, like it's crazy.

That's why I do what I do.

I'm trying to simplify it for people so that you don't have to read all the books that I'm reading.

No, but I love, I love that you are, but that's one of the things that I love about your, your videos and stuff like that is because you come, you come at it with an education, an educational pull where it's like, you've done the digging, you've done the research, you are an adoptee, and it comes comes off very educational with like facts and proof to back it up.

I mean, I appreciate it.

It's just a special interest, you know, and I feel like people, I feel like if the, I think there's so many people that are in the world of adoption that are well-meaning people that don't even understand the foundations of the industry that they've created, the monster they've created.

Again, people can have good dogs.

You can say that an industry is bad and people can have, you know, whatever experiences they have.

Ultimately, it's a question of like, you know, when private infant adoption, which I would not classify as any version of child welfare, when you're spending, you know, these adoption agencies are charging 10, 15, $20,000, not just to facilitate an adoption, they're charging $50,000 to $100 for that.

They're charging $10,000 to $15,000 to $20,000 just for marketing.

So that is like, it's crazy to think that, and they get their product for free

and they...

They charge the they put the burden of the cost of marketing onto their consumers, right?

Like, so the reason that adoption is as expensive as it is is because they are spending

an unfathomable amount of money on marketing and they're passing that cost on to the people that are adopting children.

Which in a moral standpoint, isn't that weird?

We're marketing to women in crisis to relinquish their children.

We're marketing for that is so strange.

It's a very like it's

okay calling all parents.

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I mean, again, I'm a marketer probably like 10 years.

What's one other industry where you're not marketing to the person buying the product?

You're marketing to source your product.

It's a very weird, weird, shady thing.

And if you actually see the ads, it's like, I think, you know, I think really anyone who is hoping to adopt or curious about adoption, if I could say one thing to anyone, it would be.

If you're curious about an adoption agency, go look at the ads they put on the internet.

You will be surprised by what they say.

I promise you.

Because there are, and look I'm sure there are some adoption agencies that are not promising money to people, but there are a lot of adoption agencies who some of them will give you the money to people.

They'll fly you to another state so that you're away from your family and friends and you're in this housing and the only way to get home is to take a Greyhound bus.

But there's also, which like, obviously that's just there so that you feel like I have no other choice.

Yeah.

There's also agencies that will say, cash for birth moms question mark.

And it's like, but they're not even giving money.

they're just trying to suck like they know that everyone else is promising stuff and so they're like well we got to promise stuff that's kind of the history of adoption is really yeah it was a it was a battle between black market adoption and the quote unquote like good people who are like actually trying to make a difference and you can see throughout adoption history so many people who are well-meaning who are like how do we compete with the black market we got like to to to make sure that adoption is a quote-unquote good thing we got to compete with the black market and it's like was it never a question of like maybe we just legislate away the black market and try to make it a more, you know, healthy process for everyone involved?

But even today, I mean, you can, on the buy side of adoption, like now it's super popular with influencers to go through they call like adoption consultants, which You basically,

it's a very complicated process, but basically they have on one side you have consultants, on one side you have like a facilitator, and then the adoption agency is kind of in the middle.

But if you're on the buy side, like the consumer side, you're only dealing with these consultants.

You're not dealing really with the agency.

You're not really dealing with the quote-unquote birth mom.

And then on the facilitator side, you have a birth mom who is only really dealing with

the facilitator.

She's not really dealing with the agency.

She's not really dealing with the hopeful adopters.

And maybe they have like, if it's an open adoption, maybe they see each other once or twice or whatever.

But it's now this totally fragmented process, basically a way of creating more money, introduce, like making a more profitable thing because these people can charge more, these people can charge more, and the adoption agency is kind of just like in the middle.

But it's a very like, if you're looking at it from the consumer side, you can go and adopt a child without having to go through a licensed adoption agency because

you're not working with the agency.

You're working with people who are like matchmakers who are then working with the agency who are working with these people.

Yeah, you said consultant.

What does that mean?

What do you mean by adoption consultant?

Is that different from adoption counselor?

Is that different from

a consultant is like a separate entity.

They're not a licensed adoption agency.

And there's actually last year, the Federal Trade Commission sent out a warning letter to a number of adoption consultants.

Anyone can Google this.

But yeah, I mean, now it's very common with influencers.

I've seen influencers literally promote adoption consultants by name on their social media.

And those are the people that are doing the shadiest types of adoption.

These are the people that are making it.

It's not their job, exactly.

The adoption consultant contacts the agency.

The agency contacts the adoption consultant has a list of agencies that they work with, basically.

It's just a way of putting another middleman into the process.

And it's kind of like the semi-open adoption thing.

People don't realize the semi-open adoption just just means that you have a middleman that's in between you and then you know brand free so whatever dawn is your that's the dawn being there is the is what makes it semi-open that's the only difference between that and open adoption basically but the the when it comes to the consultant stuff it's basically like that you have two entities and then you have the agency in the middle but no one's really working directly with the agency this side's working with this side the other side's working with the other side well none of it's regulated If they're all, I mean, that's weird.

And what's really, I made a video on this a while ago, but it really is telling.

There's, I, you know, I like to do Intel on my enemies, and I listen to all the like adoption industry podcasts.

I listen to like the consultants.

I listen to the agencies.

And there was one adoption consultant who

on video said, you know, I've worked with a lot of adoption agencies.

There's only three adoption agencies in the entire country that I fully trust.

And I'm like, well, you work with more than three adoption agencies at a time.

So what does that say about you?

And then also, what does that say about this process that you are willing to say that there are so many agencies out there that you are unwilling, like that you think that I don't like working with them.

I mean, I'll work with them if I have to, but like, it's very like you're introducing just more.

The consultant thing is too difficult to explain.

Like, it's weird, though.

You're charging money to it's just another, it's another person to take a cut out of everything, basically.

Well, and it makes me think back to like, I saw your video about

what's her name?

Bobby Brown.

Oh, Millie Bobby Brown.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how she adopted a baby.

Yeah, I don't know if she was the consultant, but it's that's well, right, but I saw a lot of people attacking her

as far as the fact of her being at a young age and being able to bear her own children.

Yeah.

I saw her getting a lot of hate for that.

And then I do.

That's also her privilege, too.

I mean, right.

That's what I'm thinking.

Like, when you, you know, it, well, right.

And I saw her getting a lot of hate for that.

And then also, too, it makes me think of, I saw things coming out about, what was it, Angelina Jolie's daughter or something, and her birth mom was actually alive and not dead.

But I don't know.

So it just makes me think of all these like rich people or influencers adopting babies.

And it's like, hmm.

Well, the thing about it is, though, is that, and people will, on the other side of it, will say, it's so difficult.

Me and my husband have been trying for so long.

We can't get approved, but yet Millie Bobby Brown is right.

Yeah, that's where I feel like that's where the outrage really should be.

It's very interesting that if like people who are hoping to adopt or thinking about adopting one day will look at Millie Bobby Brown adopting and they'll be like, wow, she's just like me.

Like, I want to adopt.

And I'm like, you do realize she just cut you in line, right?

Like, for every infant that becomes available for adoption, there's 45 people, like, plus their plus ones, if they have a plus one, you know, spouse or whatever, um, that are waiting to adopt.

So, so it's like it is a very, very, very low supply, very, very, very, very high-demand industry.

Yeah, and it says a lot that like, yeah, influencers, celebrities could just cut

money.

Because they have money.

No, but that's what I'm saying, though.

But if money wasn't the end-all-be-all game, then that wouldn't happen.

So, that's proof, in my opinion.

That's, it's just, there it is.

It's just pay-to-play.

That's really what it comes down to, and people don't really understand that.

I mean, like, if you guys wanted to adopt today, you'd have a lot easier time than me, you know, and just because you're visible, you have money.

Like, and it's it is a difficult thing to reconcile because ultimately, again, it's like, is adoption supposed to be this pay-to-play game?

Like,

what does it say about a system where people will wait for five years and then other people will wait for five weeks or five months?

Right.

Um, it's a class

issue, really.

And it's class.

It says so much more that, like, in adoption, for decades and decades, I mean, we already talked about the racism and discrimination.

I mean, they would exclude people for whatever reasons.

You're single, you want to adopt?

No.

You're black, you want to adopt?

No.

You're gay, you want to adopt?

No.

But for whatever reason, and we still see it all the time, people are abused or murdered by the people who adopt them.

It's like, you really can't filter out anyone.

Like, you discriminated.

You just, you did discrimination for like 100 years, but you're not willing to discriminate against for for some like you have 45 couples waiting for every baby you can't take that number down from a million to a hundred thousand or five hundred like five hundred thousand like it's just kind of crazy and it's like yeah i mean going back to the open adoption thing i mean you get families who want like will lie and be like we'll do the open adoption well we're we're happy to do that because we want what's best or whatever And I'm not saying this about any particular people, but like there's some people who will make, who will say that and they never have that intention from the outset you know and it's like

how is this like how is letting people who are going to like consciously break promises adopt children like

well i actually had an adoptive woman write me uh she was a perspective and now she's not anymore but she's like you know um listening to your podcast and talking about it and stuff i i went to the agency and uh she looked at a couple different agencies and she said that she

got matched or whatever and they said that you know she wants an open adoption and she's like okay and she's like and then the

lady told her, like, but you don't have to really do it,

and she was like, I and I, and I thanked her for writing me because I was like, Thank you so much for being honest.

She's like, I walked out of that building that she should get her on here.

She's like, and I felt, yeah, I felt sick because I can't believe that she just told me that I, it's okay, don't worry about it.

Yeah, you can tell them that, but once you leave, you don't have to you don't have to, and she's like, She's like, I, and she's like, Now, now, now

she was a good person, and I said, I said, You are, you need to be louder about it because I don't think people understand that that's how kind of how this whole thing works.

What I think comes back to people saying, oh, well, adoption is only bad when it's closed and it's better not because it's open.

Well, Connor, you, you are an adoptee from an open adoption.

So what was, what was it like?

When did you first?

Yeah, what is your journey?

Yeah,

I mean, I grew up open.

So my mom was in Ireland at the time when she was like a teenager and got pregnant.

My dad was like not interested in parenting from what I understand.

So she flew back to the U.S., eventually decided to relinquish me for adoption.

Open adoption, born and raised in San Diego.

My mom, for a few years of my life, was in San Diego.

She started moving around as I got older.

But yeah, basically, I saw her like once a year.

It was kind of like Carly.

I mean, it was like pretty similar.

Like, you,

it's always kind of like supervised.

The kid is never really the one that's like making the plans.

It's usually like the adopters, or maybe sometimes they're working together to kind of set something up.

The adopters, the natural parent, whatever.

And yeah, I mean, even as I got older, I like, it's really funny.

I've been talking with my adoptive parents about, oh, I want to write a book or I want to, I don't know, I just want to get all the papers basically from when I was a kid to

like, if I want to write a book, which is going to be tough because I destroyed all of my journals when I was a kid because I didn't want anyone to know how I felt about all this adoption stuff.

But my adoptive mom like gave me this,

they took me to get this psychological evaluation when I was in fifth grade.

No reason.

I mean, like, I was kind of on the spectrum, but also, like, I am kind of on the spectrum.

But I think it was very much the, like, he's not happy, what's going on.

Um, because I was like, fucking, sorry.

We swear on comment here.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I was a high achiever, like, super high achiever in school.

Like, on paper, I was a great kid, but I was miserable, and I was making everyone else's lives in my home miserable as well.

Like, I'm screaming all the time, meltdowns all the time.

My brother and I were very physically violent with each other.

And I think that they were like, we want to be happy.

Like, what are we going to do?

They tried sending me a therapy.

They tried everything.

Like, they tried.

Is your brother also adopted?

No.

Oh.

Four months younger, too.

It's very weird.

Four months younger, is that what you said?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Weird.

So, yeah, basically, like,

I've, as an adult, my like, in the past year or two, I get this paper, these papers back, and it's like, on the papers, it says, like, we talked to Connor's adoptive mother.

Connor hasn't seen his biological mother in four years.

He would like to see her.

And I'm like, I went four years without seeing my mom.

I don't even remember that.

I asked my adoptive family like do you guys remember this they're like no I don't know I don't remember that I asked my mom about that she's like I don't really remember that I'm like so everyone just kind of like has amnesia about the fact that I went like four years out seeing my mom like that's a huge deal you know huge deal um so yeah like I saw my mom for the first couple like I have pictures with her like the only Christmas I ever spent with my mom I don't remember because it was when I was a baby you know um

and then like as I got older Yeah, I saw, I guess I saw her about once a year, I would say.

Like she was in my high school graduation.

She like, I, she walked me down, both my moms walked me down the aisle at my wedding like I as I turned 18 really I was like very interested in knowing my mom as best I can I have a bunch of technically half siblings but I have a bunch of siblings um that are like high school age college age a little older um

and and yeah like uh I've always kind of like felt that connection with my mom just in a very profound tangible way I've always you know had that connection my siblings as well and I also think a lot of that connection comes from this like not being able to just like your mom's not at your fingertips but like my mom is just just a picture on my on my nightstand and that's all i have of her um and it really like people talk about open adoption like it's great and and that like but it really creates this like you're sitting you're a kid and you're just fantasizing about what again just for me don't want to speak for anyone else no but it's very common it's very common um that i'm just fantasizing about my mom and thinking wow like what would my life look like if i was living with her or if i got to see her more or just there's a million i have a million different parallel universes that my life could have been different they talk like in betty jean lifton's book from like, I think the 70s or 80s, she talks about the ghost kingdom.

She's like one of the first adoption, adopted people who's like a pioneer, right, of like talking about adoption.

The ghost kingdom being like, I have this parallel universe that looks totally different if one thing is different, right?

If my dad parents me with my mom or my mom parents me on her own, like, and yeah, when you're, I'm a kid, I'm just fantasizing about like, what is, what could this be like?

And then obviously you get into a reunion and it's not as easy.

It's not as simple as that.

Doesn't mean it's bad, but it's just complicated.

And yeah, I mean, as like, as I got older, it really, really, really started becoming more of their family.

I would say in the past, like, once my kid was born, I basically had a midlife crisis.

I started really thinking about this adoption stuff.

But I've always, like, I mean, when I was in college, I, I guess I wrote, I found this the other day that I had, like, I wrote a paper or I gave a presentation on adoption.

I said, adoption is trauma when I was like 18.

I have no idea how I knew to say that.

But yeah, I got older, I started like really making it a priority.

Like, I want to be part of my family.

Like, I will always be a black sheep in both my families.

Just for me, can't, again, only speaking for myself, like I always feel like adoption kind of makes you the black sheep whether you want to be or not.

Some people might feel differently,

but I was like, I want to be more a part of this family.

I grew up and it's like, this is your birth mom.

This is, you know, her name.

These are your half siblings.

The language in adoption tells you that these people are family and these people are not.

Wow, interesting.

Yeah, when you put it like that, like the labeling.

I always wanted to call my mom mom, but it was so like an, it was such an uncomfortable proposition because it's like, are people going to think I'm betraying my adoptive family by calling my mom my mom and my brother my brother, my sisters, my sisters?

Um,

but yeah, when I had this midlife crisis, my kid was born, I started thinking about all this stuff.

I started listening to all the podcasts, reading all the books, really digging deep into all this stuff.

And I was like, I gotta, I gotta connect with my mom.

I gotta connect with my Irish side.

So I've been doing all that stuff.

And I mean, yeah, I mean, at this point, it's like my mom just moved back to San Diego.

So I like, I'm very much like, I'm a part of both of my families.

Like, they're pretty equal in my eyes.

I mean, obviously, I have, there's certain people in both my families that I gravitate closer to for whatever, but like I have good relationships for the most part with everyone in both of my families.

Well, going back to when you were younger,

because I think it's interesting, especially with you having an open adoption, do you remember like having these visits with your birth mom and like the feelings or emotions it brought for you up for you after like you had to say see you later or goodbye?

Yeah, it's always been a very, very, very painful thing to say goodbye.

And I remember very distinctly, like, I don't remember exactly how old I was.

I was probably in elementary or middle school.

I remember going to a Red Robin with my mom, and like, she gave me the whole like speech.

I mean, she had told, I always knew I was adopted.

I always, like, my mom was never, like,

she never withheld anything from me necessarily.

But, like, I remember her telling me my whole story, like how she got pregnant, she was in Ireland, and this is all I know about your dad, and blah, blah, blah.

And I just remember, and she tells me too, like, you just looked so uncomfortable, you had no idea what to say.

And I was like, yeah, I don't know what to do.

And, but at the same time, like, I love my mom so much.

I've always felt this tangible connection to my mom that I just don't feel in my other family.

And it's not like an insult to them.

They, for a very long time, they were very like hurt that like we didn't have that connection.

Like when I was young.

But as I get older, it's like they understand it.

Like when I bought the primal wound on Amazon, my adoptive parents were like, because I use my mom's account.

My mom saw that I bought the primal wound and they read it.

Oh, good.

And then like, oh my gosh, like we all, I had a blow-up fight with my mom in a Starbucks parking lot.

I had a blow-up fight with my dad in a deli.

And then it was like, about the primal wound book?

Like, I don't know if it was about the book, but it was like right after they read the book.

I had a massive fight with both of them, each individually, both in public.

And then after that, it was cool.

It was like, I like,

things with them were so bad for so many years of my life.

Like, when my wife and I first started dating, my wife is like, Honor, I hate like when we go to your parents' house, I'm so uncomfortable because you are not you when you're at your parents' house.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

I what does that mean though?

Because she obviously knows you better than me.

Very withdrawn, very like I didn't want them to see me happy.

I didn't want I felt like if I was if they saw me happy, it would be this like credit to I don't know.

I felt like it was a very much like

Again, I've always felt like this kind of poster child.

Like if I'm happy, that says something about my like adoption or experience or life.

And I just, I didn't want to make them mad or anything, but I didn't feel comfortable being vulnerable like that in front of them really ever.

Did you feel like you could be vulnerable with your.

I mean, like,

I didn't really know her that well.

I could complain about things to her that I couldn't complain about to my other family, you know?

But

I don't, I've always been, I think I've always had struggles with vulnerability in general.

But I will say that, like, again, after I read this, the primal wound, after they read it, they didn't get 100% of it, but they...

They got it to an extent that like...

Helped them understand more.

When I say that, like, being adopted sucks, they're not like, you can't say that, don't be such a victim.

I mean, that was like my life for many, many years.

Oh, wow.

Now it's like victim.

Yeah.

Don't have the victim mentality.

That was like a big thing.

Um, which is whatever.

I mean, I don't blame boomer parents for being like that.

Yeah, but then also to me, it makes me under, it makes me think of like, well, you're not educated then about what adoptees go through.

They don't, there's no, there's no mandatory education.

I mean, they are like, oh, yeah, we went to this like seminar where an adopted person and a birth parent and an adoptive parent were a lot of people.

It's not reality, though.

But it's like the agency is finding the people that they right

no one's ever asked me to go speak in an option agency and I'm not telling hey I'm you know if you're I will speak to whoever right but I don't like I understand why they're not interested in having me speak to that right but again people don't realize that like if they're hand selecting these people it's not like they're just throwing their they're casting their net into this wide you know group of people and just like whoever they pick up they pick up no they're gonna pick up the people that make adoption look look good for them which is also going back to marketing.

We got to market this thing to make it look really great.

Yeah, and it's again, it's like, how is this child welfare again?

Like, how, why?

It doesn't make sense.

Some of these adoption agencies have a million dollars plus in investment income every year.

It's like they're doing the Ponzi scheme.

Like they're doing the hedge fund thing, just like all the colleges and all these big businesses that are just pouring a bunch of money into investments.

And it's like, why are we, why are you guys, you guys are making all this stuff?

Oh, family preservation, helping us.

Putting all this money.

Yeah, if this is about like preserving families, and again, open adoption was a concept that was originally designed to preserve families i mean not in the sense that they still were like well we still got to make our like we still got to do our thing and facilitate these adoptions but maybe we can do it in a way that doesn't completely just cut the the connection between the adopted person and their their their the family they came from because like on paper like i'm not legally relate related to my like sisters or my brother or my or my mom you know and it's like

it is what it is like it doesn't really yeah but that's important to people

but and some people that might, yeah, some people that definitely might matter to, but it's like, I mean, in that sense, it's just weird.

Why is my kid not related to her aunts and uncles or

her grandparents because of a transaction that happened in the 1990s?

Like, it's just why, what is so threatening about having two like families on paper in some whatever sense of the term that looks like?

You know, people have stepparents.

People have more than two legal parents, quote unquote, in all kinds of arrangements.

But But in adoption, it's always a matter of like exclusivity in the terms of like parenthood basically.

Well, throughout your open adoption, did you have like, did you have the freedom to contact your birth moment when you wanted?

I mean, like, I don't, I wouldn't say that it was restricted, but like, I didn't feel comfortable like talking to her.

I didn't have her phone number.

I didn't know where she lived.

I would, like, man, I was thinking about this yesterday, and this sounds really, really dark, but I was watching this movie that really triggered me.

I was watching the accountant and I saw this kid having meltdowns, and I was like, oh my gosh, I had all these meltdowns as a kid, and now it's just like clicking clicking with me.

Again, it sounds really bad.

It felt like I was in like a hostage situation where my mom was like kidnapped.

And every time I got like a picture of her, or I got like a present from her, or I saw her like once a year.

That's like proof of life.

Like your mom's still alive.

And I have this dad out there who I know nothing about.

I don't know if he's alive.

I have to check Google like once a month to see if my dad's still alive because it's like his obituary might show up any day.

You know, I've never met him.

But that's, it's very like, I wasn't even pen pals with my mom.

You know,

I was a pen pals with my, I had like an adoptive aunt that lived in Minnesota who I was like pen pals with in school.

I talked to her more than I talked to my mom.

I didn't know her that well, you know, she was just my dad's sister who lived in Minnesota.

Like, I saw her once every five years.

Like, it's weird to know that, like,

yeah, my adoptive family cared, but not enough to really make,

I shouldn't say them.

I don't know.

For whatever reason, it wasn't a big enough priority in my life for that connection to exist.

And I think that people wanted it to exist.

I believe that, like, again, I said my, I didn't see my mom for like four years.

I don't know why that is, but if I had to guess, I believe that my adoptive parents got really bad advice from like a therapist or some sort of professional.

And nobody's ever, have you ever asked the question?

Nobody has ever explained why.

Oh, yeah, you said that they supposedly didn't.

I don't really think they do.

They're all

like, it's just one of those things.

Like, I, yeah, I really think that there's one thing people also talk about in adoption is that it's like adoptive people are much more likely, and by proxy, the people connected to us, our natural parents, parents our adoptive parents uh are much more likely to to end up in a therapy you know a therapist office i think it's like three three times more likely if i remember it right and i want to say that the typical therapist and this is from the book adoption therapy i'm paraphrasing i don't remember the exact number but i believe it's like 85% of undergraduate psychology students learn about adoption for like 10 minutes or less in their coursework throughout four years of school.

And then I think it's 65% of graduate students learn about adoption for 10 minutes or less throughout those four years of coursework.

So you have a bunch of therapists who, you know, I was growing up going to therapy and my therapist had no idea what to say.

You know, I'm pretty sure I had a therapist that was like, oh, well, that happened a long time ago.

Like, wow.

What?

But what I'm hearing from you too, like, so being like in an open adoption, getting to see your birth mom, you know, like once a year or whatever, and then having to say goodbye, knowing you have siblings, it sounds like it was...

painful for you.

It still is.

You asked me that earlier and I kind of forgot to get to it.

The goodbyes are terrible.

Like I was saying this last night.

And And see, and that's what makes me wonder because I've always wondered, like, I've talked to Ty about it, and like, every time we would say bye to Carly or whatever, and we would be physically upset and just emotional for days.

We would hold it.

And I would always ask him, like, do you think she feels this?

I mean, I don't want to speak for Carly.

No, I know.

Yeah, but I will have to say that.

I'm not saying you were.

But I will say that for me, like, it is, in my experience, it was very painful.

And I also think that there's a lot of adopters, for better or for worse, I think in many cases, for better.

Well,

being well-meaning, not necessarily for better, yeah who who see this child who is so distraught after seeing their parents and think wow they they they must like they shouldn't be around their parents because it really makes them upset but it's like how they could like you said not for like doing it for good but they were thinking like oh it causes a lot of distress or whatever yeah because it's like you it's again it's proof of life right but then your mom is kidnapped again for the next year or whatever and so it's like it's very much like a again I really am not a finger pointer and I've when I was younger I was much more of a finger pointer than I am now I was I would have been very happy to be like my parents blah blah blah it's very much like a uh it's very difficult to to leave yeah I mean every time I see my siblings and my every time I see my mom it's like I I don't leave until someone's like all right you know like I can you get the hint you know

like and and uh or my kid has to go to sleep or something like but even then I'll stay up past their bedtime to spend time with them like I was seeing this to Christine Christina last night like it's so bad I get to the point where I'll leave my like my I'll be at my my grandma's house with everyone.

And I'm like, I really got to take a piss.

And I'm like, I don't go to the bathroom when I'm with them because that's time I'm losing with them.

You know, like, it is, every single minute matters to me down to the second.

And to leave is such a bitter, you know, feeling for me.

And yeah, I mean, I would love to know how it feels for my mom or for anyone.

Like,

that's one of those things that's like very taboo to talk about, I feel like, in adoption.

And on top of that, I think also, like, the goodbyes are really hard.

And I think also the reunion is just really complicated in general.

You know, like I am, I don't want to speak for my mom, but I would imagine that I am a living reminder of like the hardest moment of my mother's life, you know, and my mother is a reminder of the most like painful part of my life.

That's adopt, that's open adoption.

That's best case scenario.

That's me seeing my mom.

More than 99% of adopted people saw their families.

I've even seen my mom.

You know, most of it, a lot of adopted people, if not most, don't know who their parents are, don't know their names, have never met them, have no ability to meet them even if they want to you had that accident it's so complicated the reunion you know

that's the best that's like people talk about me and they're like well he must have just had bad parents or he's just bitter or he had a bad experience like i had like a best case scenario adoption i'm not saying i i'm happy about it it's incredibly painful and complicated and difficult it's hard how do you navigate a relationship with someone when your your relationship that person is built on a foundational like massive trauma that both of you have experienced

how did your parents handle like when you had to visits were they so they obviously they would hang out with you when you were you know with your bio mom and then like I think when I was younger they did and then as I got older they were very much like you can kind of do your thing like I remember they paid for me to fly up to visit her when she was living in Washington when I was like you know high school or college

I flew to visit her when she was living in Italy like they've been very supportive they have given me a lot of money to just go spend time with my mom and my mom's really like my mom treats me like a son too.

I mean, when she was moving away from San Diego, she like years ago, now she's back in San Diego, but when she's moved away years ago, she like gave me her old car because she was like, well, I'd rather just give it to you than try to sell it.

Like, right.

Like, I really do have like a familial relationship in whatever way that looks like being adopted with both of my families.

I really have like a quote-unquote best case.

Like, I'm not just saying that to make what make myself sound more credible.

Like, I really do have like a very, very like, it's just complicated.

I don't even like to say positive because it's again it's like how do you right how do you say that this is a positive thing when it there's so much pain involved and there's so much complexity and it's like a homework assignment that you have to finish that like no one has taught you the lesson like how do you navigate reunion when the adoption agency is not telling you here's what to do you don't have therapists who have any idea what to say for the most part i mean look if you're adopted or you're involved with adoption google the adopte what is it adoptee therapist directory you can find a bunch of adopted adopted people who are therapists and i don't i don't i can't promise that all those people are perfect.

Obviously, there's like better help and your sponsor.

There's

a lot of people that are trying to become more adoption competent.

And also, you can always just, if you have a therapist who doesn't get it, get them a book or be like, hey, can you please read the primal wound and see if you understand it?

Because there are so many therapists out there that don't understand it.

And there's not a playbook.

And so you get to this point where...

Everyone else has a playbook.

How do you navigate like life when you're 30 years old and you're having fights with your mom for the first time?

Because the first 29 years of your life, you had no vulnerability in your relationship relationship with each other, you know, and like,

or your siblings or whoever, right?

It's, it's, it's creating a relationship with someone when you're an adult, but, but, like,

you, you miss out on

29 years of life there.

It sounds to me like it's just

confusing, painful,

not knowing how to navigate it at all because you don't know.

And

wow.

Well, especially when adoptive parents also, like, if they're, if they're clinging on to this idea that it was the best and it was, it was all, I mean, it's hard to break that.

And I've seen it online, even with comments.

Like, I adopted, my baby's fine.

They love it.

They don't want anything to do with their biofilm.

They don't want to look for them.

And I'm like,

yeah.

And then

I'm like, yeah, but the more I talk to adoptees, the more I see this very common thing of like having to emotionally monitor everyone constantly and making sure I'm using the right language.

You're going to be consciously.

Yeah, they're not aware of it, but they're like, I mean, like you said, like, I had to, you know,

when I'm with them, I have to, you know, okay, like everything's fine.

If If I'm happy, it represents this.

And it's like.

It's all by design.

It's all by design.

Because if you educate people about the trauma that adoption entails, and again, it's a trauma.

People come home from wars and say that they don't have, like, I don't, I don't, I'm not, I don't, I didn't experience any trauma.

That's fine.

You might have PTSD and just not realize it, bro.

But like, trauma is trauma.

Like, everyone experiences trauma to some extent.

Adoption is a traumatic experience for everyone.

Well, mostly, I would say the adopt people, the natural parents.

But like, I mean, also people have experienced infertility and that's what leads them to adoption.

The system in itself is predicated on this idea that we just don't acknowledge that part until once the papers are signed.

And then, once the papers are signed, we can be like, okay, yeah, it's trauma, and let's find a therapist and all this stuff.

But really, the reason they can't acknowledge it beforehand is because it makes the transaction less likely to happen, right?

You know what's crazy about your statement right there, too, is that I went years,

okay, without even realizing that

our relinquishment was trauma.

I was literally in an inpatient facility.

I put myself in this facility because I was wanting to unalive myself for a very long time to where it clicked when a therapist, we had this whole conversation about, you know, us relinquishing and stuff.

And she was like, that is trauma.

And, you know, Carly was probably eight, nine years old at that point.

And I remember calling Tyler and being like, I never looked at it this way.

Yeah.

And you lived through so many years of your life, like in this just like haze.

And like,

I couldn't even imagine that.

What could our lives look like if we had access to therapy 20 years earlier right now like why is it like there's shout out Lynelle Long there's an adopted person in Australia who I don't I think she I think it still exists she was able to get the government of Australia to like give like money to people to go get therapy like if they're involved in adoption like that if you're adopted you get free access to therapy I don't know for how long or how like It makes sense.

Adopted people and our parents, our families are so much more likely to end up in therapy.

All these adoption agencies know it.

Everyone involved in adoption knows it.

They all know it.

And no one really knows that.

They don't tell you that.

They don't say you that they don't say anything.

They don't give you access to resources.

Their new innovations are just trying to find new ways to get people to relinquish children.

They invest like 99% of their resources into how do we just drum up new business.

And it's like, how do we call adoption?

Again, I understand that not all adoption is private infinite adoption.

How do we call private infinite adoption an institution of child welfare when we are spending billions of dollars on marketing.

We are like, it is, it's extortionary.

The amount of money that people have to give to this adoption agency to to

get a child, like people don't realize.

Man,

I would run ads for like a truck, let's say, right?

Like a Ford F-150, just a random truck, let's say.

On average, a company like Ford is going to spend like 500 bucks on marketing to sell one of these trucks.

These adoption agencies are spending 10,000.

And these are old figures.

$10,000, let's say,

on average that they're charging an adoptive family, regardless of whether they spend $10,000 on marketing for this particular child.

But they're estimating that on average, they're spending $10,000 per child on marketing or per mother to relinquish their child.

That is 20 times as much money to get a child than it is to sell a car that is going to sell for, in many cases, more than the child is going to sell for.

Wow.

It's crazy.

It's the most inefficient use of money ever.

I mean, marketing is just, marketing is such an efficient use of money for so many businesses.

And adoption agencies spend such a perplexing amount of money on marketing.

And it just goes to show, first of all, how deeply unpopular adoption is as a choice.

It says a lot that it takes so much when both of you, like, I mean, I see.

the video of Carly being born and it's like the nurse is like, oh my gosh, the nurse saying,

here's a baby fresh from God.

It's like,

I don't know if that's by design, but there is like,

when you look at adoption, so much of this process is just designed to create adoptible children i mean it is it is they they're actively seeking people out and if you look i mean i made a video the other day if you look at the spanish language ads for adoption right now in the united states they're targeting people who are not here legally they're saying you don't need to have papers they're literally like they do all the same stuff all the same like you know we can pay we can give you free housing we can give you rent we can uh you can get paid all this stuff which some of it is true some of it's lies but on top of that in spanish they're they're literally putting ads.

It's like, no paper les necesario.

Like they're, they're literally targeting specifically people who are not here legally because they probably, you know, they're praying.

They've figured out that that cohort of people,

you know, is a valuable cohort of people to them because maybe they think that their kid's going to get citizenship through adoption, which, yeah, but that kid won't be connected to you anymore.

Like there are all kinds of just...

things like this where it's like how why you look at that again you look at the ads and the ads will tell you everything you need to know about an adoption agency.

It's really, really, really, again, I don't want to say that every single adoption agency is from the devil, but the majority, I've looked at the, you can find the ads of any,

give me any adoption agency, I'll find you their ads.

You can, no, they're kind of just, they're just disturbing.

Yeah, they're literally disturbing.

The billboards I see sometimes,

oh, the billboards, too, yeah.

Yeah, and this is so, and I guess that comes down to like when people ask, oh, is there any way to do this?

And I'm like, well, as long as you are.

Why are we making money off these transactions?

It can be medical.

Foster care, you're not, you're not.

People don't, people, it's crazy that there's so many people lining up to adopt infants privately, but you can adopt from foster care.

It costs you basically nothing.

Right.

And I think, I think it's important.

And I'm not a big proponent of foster care at all.

Right.

But no.

Again, if you really are looking at it from a purely financial sense, and this might blow your guys' minds.

What is the benefit of relinquishing a child privately versus relinquishing a child in foster care?

Your child's going to end up at the home in either case.

There is an endless demand for adoptable infant children, whether it's in private or in foster care.

In foster care, your kid is going to know where your kid comes from.

There are certain guardrails that exist in foster care.

Even if you're like, I want this kid adopted as soon as possible, like

everything like a private adoption.

Private adoption doesn't offer anything to these women that foster care doesn't.

But the reason so many people relinquish their children through the private adoption system is because these adoption agencies are seeking them out.

If adoption wasn't this predatory business,

these agencies, if it really just costs $50,000 to get a lawyer to sign papers, which we all know is BS,

why is everyone relinquishing through these private adoption agencies instead of relinquishing through the state?

Well,

the foster care system has such a bad reputation.

It gets the rapid power.

And people are so afraid of it.

I also, I think it's important to talk about the difference between private infant adoption and foster care adoption because, you know, to me, it all comes down to

if a family is looking to adopt a child and they can't have one biologically, whatever reason it is,

and they want to be a parent, it's a lot different than wanting to help a child in crisis through foster care, which I think is like people are like, oh, well, don't adopt through the private industry or adoption industry, adopt through foster care.

Well, listen, it's your intention though.

If your intention is to be a parent and I want to have a child and raise and be a mom or be a dad, then you should not go adopt from foster care because that system is designed for children in crisis and to eventually have reunification.

It's the same thing, though, really.

You have a bunch of vulnerable children who deserve connections to their families when when it's safe which is 99 of the time people might not like me saying that but it's like you can have connections with a drug addicted parent and it beat it's it you can manage that relationship in a safe way i mean obviously i don't have to tell you it's not necessarily always going to be like you don't need to be raised by that person necessarily but you can safely facilitate these connections between children and the families and communities that they come from

It almost makes me better question.

Have you ever asked your adoptive mom, why didn't you adopt through foster care?

I mean, no one's really thinking about that you know what i'm saying

well and i because i think like me and you have said a few times too is like almost that it's because when you search this the first thing you see is is an agency well right and i feel like people think that they're getting this infant so it's just a blank slate why why not make it why not why not keep your kid for three weeks and then you can always just Give your kid to the adoption agency.

Yeah, it's not going to happen.

And of course, it's out of fear of like, you know, well, I don't want to get too attached to my kid or whatever.

But that fear is organic and natural and that maybe you're afraid of naturally connecting to the child that you have.

To fear something so biologically natural and organic, it's like, and I think the adoptive agencies prey on that fear.

I think they try to create that fear really of like, it's going to be painful for your child to be separated from you when they're older when actually they've done so many studies throughout the years and really the age of that separation doesn't matter.

No, it doesn't.

It happens right there.

Right then and there.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Like have you, have you, so have you talked to like your biological mom and does your biological mom have any relationship with your adoptive mom?

Yeah, they know each other.

I mean, they're not like best friends or anything, but they definitely have talked to each other.

Throughout your life, do you seen them communicate with each other?

You've witnessed them.

Yeah, I mean, we haven't all been in the same room very often.

I mean, definitely at my kid's birthday.

Did you have a moment and stuff that you had growing up?

I mean, I didn't have a lot.

I mean, I saw her a few times through my childhood.

As I got older, it became more of me and her.

Okay.

Yeah.

When I was young,

it was just her.

But I think they, that's the thing is they built this trust.

Like, a big thing is trust.

Like, I mean, a lot of adoptive parents are very reticent to kind of allow, allow the child to, like, go unsupervised.

Trust me.

And it's like huge.

And it's like, I mean, it really says a lot that, like, why am I not allowed to make that choice?

Right.

Right.

But yeah.

Yeah.

That's just kind of an option for it.

But did you ever feel like you could make that choice on your own?

Or did you, because I think a lot of adoptees, when I, when I ask certain questions, they go, well, I, I wanted to, but I, I, I, and I, and they, my parents never told me that I couldn't, but I never felt the freedom.

Yes, it's fine.

You know what I'm saying?

It's because you want to, you're, you're trying to make everyone happy.

And you're, I, the way I describe it is you're like in the middle of a scale.

And if you go in one direction, the other side, there's weight taken off the other side, right?

You're always kind of afraid that going in one direction is going to hurt the other side.

What a lot of pressure to put on a kid.

So much pressure.

Yeah, and it's obviously no individual person is doing that, but just the transaction of adoption.

How do you have, yeah, it's just very, very like, how do you create a dynamic where that doesn't exist?

And obviously,

things are quote unquote different.

I I don't know how different they are today than they were when I was born.

Honestly, for so many, so many years, adoption agencies have been saying, well, the past is the past.

We're doing things differently now.

I mean, they've been saying that since like the 20s.

I mean, I don't really know

how different things are, but I will say that like, I mean, I have seen people

supposedly that it's real where people are seeing their parents more than I was seeing my mom, which is great,

if that's what they want.

Yeah, and

I think it varies.

It takes a very like certain type of person who is is willing to kind of acknowledge that this matters to the child or this matters to the child's parents.

At the end of the day,

adoption in itself and child welfare, again, this might be a hot take for people.

I know people have a lot of hot takes or opinions about foster care.

Foster care and adoption and orphanages, any form of like external care, it doesn't exist solely for the child.

It is a way of the government to care for a family that needs help, right?

A kid in Asia that's living in an orphanage most of the time has living parents who will visit them at the orphanage sometimes or who are trying to get their kid back, but ultimately can't pay the bills.

And so the kids living in the orphanage, the orphanage is like, you know, extended daycare for a really long time.

The only difference between an orphanage and a foster care is just we're like, we don't want a bunch of kids living in one building with a handful of adults.

We want all the kids in one, in a family setting, right?

That's the only difference.

The goal for all of these kids is to go back to their families until that goal becomes adoption.

Obviously, there's kind of political politics involved in those decisions being made.

But adoption is, yeah, it's just different.

It's like

we're not looking at this through the lens of how do we help a family?

How do we serve a family?

We're looking at it whether it's foster care or private infant adoption.

We've separated the child from the family in our heads

as a society.

This child is now a floating child and the family, we can kind of try to facilitate that connection.

But ultimately, what matters is the child and no one else.

And I'm not here to say that like people like like you guys deserve like i think the child should be the primary person

but i really do believe that like why why should we not care about the family like why it says a lot about america that we are so willing to separate these families and to i mean we have how many people do we how many how many rich people complain about homeless people living on the street in this country you know we don't like we don't really We are very willfully blind to a lot of the injustices that are happening.

And I feel like people who are suffering from from addiction, people who are, you know, dealing with, uh, you know, dealing with housing insecurity or poverty or whatever the resources issue.

And again, not every single adoption is born of that, but the extreme majority of adoptions are born of that.

How many of these issues would be solved if we looked at these children and their families as a unit?

I mean, again, you can do it without looking at the family unit as a family unit.

But how do we, why do we not look at these families and say, let's try to resource these people before we just invariably separate them, legally speaking.

No, destroy that connection.

And then, by the way, subsidize adopters with a tax credit of $17,000.

Right.

Which is so

strange to me because I think even that tax credit alone shows

who society is prioritizing here.

There's a good book.

And it's prioritized.

I mean, how can you say anything otherwise than that's what they're prioritizing?

Because, I mean,

it's their desire to be parents or whatever their reason is.

And that's why I always feel like I keep, the more we talk about this, I'm just like, intent, intent.

And if your intention is to be a parent and you want to be a mom and you want to do this and you can't have a child, well, then I think you should deal with that trauma right there, that loss, that grief, before even thinking about any of the solutions, quote-unquote solutions that we have available through adoption, whatever.

It's like, no, no, deal with the fact that you cannot have your own children.

Yeah.

And I think it's more specifically to private infant adoption.

I think.

But it's the fact that we're prioritizing adoptive families, which really in majority of the cases, they have more money, they're more financially stable, they have more resources, but yet we're still prioritizing them over the poverty.

Well, it's not even just that we're like, we're resourcing them.

There's a really good book called Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond, where he talks about the basically in the United States, we give more welfare to rich people than we give to poor people.

That's

the political reality.

Mortgage deductions, like tax deductions, family tax credits that only

corporate go-ups alone are not.

Yeah, corporate go-ups.

It is like we live in a very backwards country when it comes to a lot of policies in general but especially I mean

you know hey call my wife here we go call my wife after this I got my Irish passport all right perfect let's go I'm down

me too

but yeah like it's it's it's really a system like this is what happens when you turn your child welfare system into a marketplace yeah privatized adoption is a marketplace and greed and it's I don't want to point the finger at any individuals that are involved but I when I share what I share I really hope that people who are listening can be like it is weird that we are selling children.

And I say that and people are like, I know.

Well, your mom's not selling.

Like my mom will be like, oh, I didn't sell you.

And I'm like, yeah, you didn't, right?

You gave me for free to someone who sold me.

Who sold you?

And like, I'm not saying that is an indictment of my mom or my adoptive parents.

Like,

it's just the way that the system works.

And it feels weird to know that I was sold for $12,000.

And that was like a discount compared to some of some of these kids.

I made a video a long time ago, like a few months ago, I should say, that did pretty well.

And it was just, I got a bunch of adopted people and I was like,

how much were you sold for?

And we all just were like, I was sold for this.

I was sold for this.

And it's like, some people were sold for like $50,000, $100,000.

Some people were sold for like $8, you know, and it's just like...

What's the right like it feels weird no matter what the number is but also what's the right number to like write

when you're an adopted person and look I like people will say oh why are they even why are their parents even telling?

It doesn't matter.

The point isn't the fact that there's a number on my head.

The point isn't the number on my head.

The point is that there's a number on my head at all.

I don't have to know the number on my head to know that there was a number on my head, right?

Like I know that I was sold.

I knew that I was sold.

Yeah, so it's just very...

It's very bizarre.

It's a weird feeling.

And again, like, I mean, there are ways to do, like,

you can keep a lot of the good parts about adoption and get rid of the bad parts and make the system better if you're not a believer in abolition or whatever.

But we don't do that.

We don't.

We don't

have any interest in looking at it differently.

If you learn about it and then you come to the conclusion that, oh, no, the system doesn't need to change at all, then we have a big problem.

I think you're part of the main problem because if you look at the system

and actually admit to yourself and say, oh, it's fine, it's the way it's good.

The way it operates is great.

It's like, then you, you are crazy.

And I think you have that's America, bro.

How many people need to suffer before we care about it?

And it's like

you guys are in Michigan, like Flint, water, like how many people, how many people need to suffer until someone

will consider something an issue in this country?

And yeah, unfortunately, like there, like you said, there's no shortage of people that will say, well, I had a good experience, or this person I know had a good experience, or X, Y, or Z.

People really don't have any interest in fixing systems that haven't wronged them.

But that's, I mean, that's just empathy, right?

Like, it's like understanding, like,

if people are suffering, I don't want them to suffer.

I don't want anyone to suffer anywhere.

Right.

And it's very frustrating when some of those same people who are like, well, you know, it's not hurting me or whatever, but then, okay, you're blind to this injustice, but then you want me to care about this other injustice that's happening.

And it's okay, you have selective injustice, you know, feelings.

And it's like,

I think most adopted people, like, if they're in an open adoption or, or even just an adoptee learning about all this stuff, what's the one thing that maybe you wish you would have done or tried earlier?

Or what would you tell them?

From whose perspective, adopted person?

Yeah, like what would you, so another adopted person's like, oh, I've been having these feelings.

I've been wondering about my family origin.

I feel uncomfortable, whatever.

What would your advice be to them the next step?

I think it's really good to listen to other adopted people speak.

Like your podcast, obviously, another, I don't know if it's competing podcasts, Adopte's On.

Haley's been doing that one for a long time.

Get access to what adopted people are saying.

There's some good books, and Hefferin's You Don't Look Adopted, Nicole Chung's All You Can Never Know.

Read, like, listen to it.

And this is good advice for anyone who has any connection to anyone involved in adoption.

Understand, to understand like what it's like.

No one will ever understand what it's like to be in someone's shoes that they can't walk in, right?

I don't understand what it's like to be in a black man's shoes.

I don't understand what it's like to be in your guys's shoes.

But like you can kind of understand some components of it, right?

And adoption is such a foreign concept to most people.

You hear so many people say love doesn't, or blood doesn't make family, love makes a family.

And it's like, I understand that you have good intentions when you say love makes a family, but when you say blood doesn't make a family, that is, that only, that part of the phrase only exists to tell me that me and you aren't family, right?

Or me and my mom aren't family.

You and your daughter aren't family.

That, there's no good intention behind saying blood doesn't make a family if you're unless you're talking about oh i have a terrible dad and i'm just trying to say that about my dad or whatever right but that

saying exists to create distance between us right and so when it comes to an adopted person or somebody who wants to understand adopted person listen to us right like read these books listen to these podcasts try to understand what it's like because it's so easy to say well if i was an adopted person blood wouldn't matter to me and it's like you don't know that right

you looked like your parents you didn't have the questions that i had growing up you didn't have this experience.

And it's the same goes with natural parents, too.

You know, like as an adopted person, it's very easy for me to have compassion for myself, but kind of only look at my issues and not the injustices that the other people in the constellation of adoption experience.

And same with adopters, too.

I mean, again, like adopted people, I think there's some people that are really like, you shouldn't have compassion for people who adopt at all.

And I'm really one of those people where it's like, I want to have everyone on our side.

If we want to get birth records, like if we want to get birth record access, we need every, like we need

to be like, I want my kid to have her his papers or her papers, right?

We need natural parents to be like, yeah, the adoption agency didn't promise me anonymity 30 years ago, like you're saying they did.

Or they did promise me anonymity, but I don't care because ultimately my kid's more important than my, you know, comfort or whatever.

Like.

Everyone needs to care and everyone needs to be an ally to each other.

And it's very disappointing to see so many adopted people going at each other's throats in general.

And really a lot of adopted people, yeah, I mean, I don't want to be like the whatever on my pedestal and judging everyone else, but I really wish there was more kind of attempts from within this whole community of people to try to make the system better rather than to, you know, indict someone like you or like me for pointing out that like this system shouldn't make these promises if these promises aren't enforceable, right?

It's not

to say like anyone involved in adoption can have regrets about any part of being adopted or relinquishing a child for adopting for adoption or adopting a child if that regret is related to a tangible promise or guarantee that was made that was broken, if I buy a burrito and the burrito and I ask for no sour cream and there's sour cream in my burrito, I'm going to have a complaint about it.

You shouldn't tell me, oh, well, you know, you got a burrito, just be happy and eat your burrito.

It's still warranted.

I asked for,

or, hey, we,

some ad that I see that's like, we have the best, you know, tacos in town.

I eat the taco and it sucks.

Well, you told me it was gonna be the best tacos.

I have to not be mad about it.

You made that promise to me.

Right.

Right.

It doesn't, like if we're going to make these guarantees or these promises or whatever, I mean, I have issues with promises and guarantees being made in general.

Why are we, why, why in adoption are we saying what your future is going to look like when if my kids are going to be born in a few months, I'm not going to have a doctor telling me this is what your kid's going to look like and your little kids like.

But you know why?

Because it all comes back to, it all circles back to greed and whatever.

Yeah, why else?

Wanting to do something, you know, sell it, basically.

Yeah, who else, who's going to be comfortable with this transaction if they don't have some sense of like, oh, my kid's going to be okay.

My kid's going to be happy.

And I'm going to see my kids.

Because if they told me the real struggles and the real truths, I would have probably made a different decision.

You know what I mean?

Well, I think me can always talk about if we would have been, if we would have even, we would have been fully educated.

We would have been fully educated about

anyone except us, right?

If we are wronged by a system, we don't like, like, we don't like that the system wronged us.

It doesn't have to do with my parents wrong.

No, no, nothing else.

You know,

it's just the system shouldn't make promises if they can't keep those promises.

Yeah, I agree.

Especially when it affects everybody.

Yeah, of course.

It affects your kids.

Your kids' kids.

I mean, the whole unit.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I have to say this because I'm on your podcast.

My biggest pet peeve with the people that talk about you guys and the show and all that stuff is when people are like, well, Carly,

or no, they'll be like, well, Caitlin and Tyler are trying to indoctrinate their children into seeing Carly as their sister.

I'm like, uh,

they are littler than her.

And you know what's crazy to me is like they are littler and way younger than Carly is and they've grown up knowing her and seeing her.

And you know what I mean?

So for them, it's natural.

It's like, I'm not trying to indoctrinate them.

I had both experiences.

I don't need to indoctrinate them.

I had a sister who, I have a sister who's like three years younger than me, and we really didn't really grow up together.

Like, I like, I saw her maybe once or twice before high school, before she was in high school.

Yeah, we like, and she, I mean, I don't, like, she was my sister, like, we weren't really brother-sister.

And now we're older and it's like, she's still my sister.

I love her to death, but it's not, we're not as close as my younger siblings who were a part of my life.

And it was like, this is your brother.

Let's, you know, facilitate this relationship.

And I, even my young, I have all three, right?

My oldest, my oldest sister was like, we kind of weren't siblings growing up.

I have my middle

two siblings who are twins.

And they,

I saw them when they were really young.

Like I have a picture of me and they're like, not necessarily babies, but they're like toddlers maybe.

And they don't really, I don't think they had conscious memory of that.

And then around the time, I think they were eight, if I remember right, my mom is like, let's go to the zoo.

We're like going to laser tie.

They were in town.

We were just like all spending like a weekend together.

And my mom, or someone, I think my mom told me that like my younger brother was like, I always knew I had a brother.

I always wanted to have a brother or something like that.

Like he was eight.

And then like then all of a sudden now I'm his brother.

So I had that experience too of like kind of brothers, kind of not brothers.

Or it gets introduced kind of early, but not super early.

And then I have my youngest sister who I really started getting to know when she was like three.

And we're like, I love her.

Like, she is my ride or die.

I mean, all my siblings are, but like, my, my youngest sister and I are like, she's just, yeah, like, I love her.

You had the freedom to follow that relationship from an early age, though.

The fact that people will say that it's like indoctrinating family.

What is so bad about having more people in your life who love you?

Like, that's the part I just don't understand.

What is the problem with that?

I don't understand that.

Also, I don't get it.

I'm not going to indoctrinate my children.

I'm honest with my children, and they know that they have a sister out there.

Honesty, that's a huge thing.

Going back to the adoption agency thing, it drives me crazy that there are adoption agencies.

I saw an influencer post something the other day that she was like, and look, I'm not a fan of hers, but I will say, you know, she says birth mom.

I'm not a fan.

I'm just like, what's wrong with calling your mom your mom?

But she was saying that when I was going through these adoption consultants,

they were saying, oh, well, someone was asking her, what does he call you?

And

what does he call his birth mom?

And, well, he's going to call her birth mom.

He's, he's like a baby right now.

And she was like, the adoption agency said he could call it her birth mom.

He could call her her tummy mommy, which is gross.

And then they said he could call her her aunt.

And I'm like, oh, what's that?

Wait, wait.

So we have people facilitating adoptions.

And for so long, it was like open adoption is too, the people that were anti-open adoption, there were a lot of people anti-open adoption like the 70s.

And even to this day,

there were a lot of people that were like, it's too confusing for the child.

Like, we should just

confuse them more.

How is that?

How is the answer to confusion?

Yeah, let's just make up a different relationship.

We'll pretend they don't exist at all.

And people will say, oh, well, well, there's like auntie.

They're not saying call her like auntie, like everyone's auntie.

No, they're saying call this specific person your aunt.

Like,

because it's less than mom.

That's the whole thing.

It's serving not anyone except the consumers.

And I'm not saying that that comes.

I think in many cases it comes at the expense of adopted people.

But really the question is,

why does the adoption agency only really serve one party?

Why does it not serve all three why does the why like why did you guys not have a lawyer you had a guardian and i lied them or whatever but that's not

like that's not a lawyer and it's paid for by and it's paid for by the people who are who are

in most cases i don't know what your circumstances but in most cases if there is a lawyer or a gal involved it's paid for by the hopeful adopters so you're putting a position this lawyer or whoever in a position where they're being paid for the people who want this transaction to happen it's a huge conflict of interest like or

Or you don't have one at all, which is also like, I mean, you deserve legal representation.

So how do you get an independent lawyer to represent someone who can't pay for that lawyer

without having this other party pay for it and create this conflict of interest?

It's kind of an unsolvable problem in adoption, and no one's ever really addressed it.

But yeah, that's the thing.

This whole system is really not, like, it is.

And adoption numbers have been plummeting for years and years and years, ever since the 70s.

It's going to go away, probably, even in the U.S., who this country desperately desperately doesn't want it to go away.

It's just not, the more and more people realize it's not the, you can't, you can't, the promises of open adoption are a lot easier to make when there aren't tangible results, like people like you and me and whoever saying, well, it wasn't like...

Not even that it's bad, but just it's not, you can't trust empty promises like that, right?

Like people were already completely disinterested in it, like largely speaking, you know, for many, many years.

And it's, yeah, it's the restricting abortion rights even will not increase the number of adoptable infants.

Like it's it's data short.

Maybe the number will go up because there are so many, so many more babies being born, but it doesn't the

issue with the whole adoption versus abortion thing is the people who are choosing to choosing, in many cases, people aren't making that choice.

They're being coerced and don't realize it, or they're being coerced and realize it.

But like the people that are willing to treat their children for adoption, adoption is never their number one choice.

No one's the number one choice is ever adoption.

Adoption is a choice for choiceless people.

And really, like, I mean,

for everyone, adoption, the reason people are so threatened by us talking about adoption is because it's everyone's emergency failsafe.

Like it's there when the plane lands,

when the plane is crashing, it's your emergency life raft to jump onto.

Like I can't have a kid, but adoption is always there in the back of my mind of like, if I can't have a kid, and you're trying to take that away from me by saying that adoption is not great or whatever.

And it's like, I mean, look, it's not about you, right?

Why is it

about

why is it about the people that are not like that are adopting and not the people that are like like the families that are in like that this is this process is designed to help?

Because adoption is supposed to help the family.

That's what I'm saying.

And my whole thing is that as long as adoption serves,

it runs and operates as a service for adults to become parents, I don't think it's ever going to.

It's not a fan.

Yeah, it's not.

It was never supposed to be a family-building service.

In fact,

in the early history of adoption, like 1920s,

which, again, only 100 years ago.

It's a long time, but it's also not a long time.

Not a long time, yeah.

Health professionals were really the guiding experts in adoption, and children were not being separated from their mothers for like three to six months because they were like, you need to breastfeed your kid, you need to do this.

And also

the government, the government was like, we want you to,

we're hoping that this incentivizes families to raise their children.

Like,

we want to make sure this child has the

post-birth support from their mother.

Like the breastfeeding was really important.

Obviously, I don't think formula was really around yet.

But also, like, yeah, they wanted the bond, like they wanted that the child, we don't, in the same way, you've probably heard this before, like, we don't separate puppies from

their parents for, you know, several months.

Weeks or whatever.

Yeah, weeks and weeks or months.

Kittens, the same, like, we don't deal with animals, but we do it with infants.

And it's the whole idea, adoption was guided by health professionals who were like, yeah, we should keep these children with their mothers.

And then, look, if things have to happen, they will happen.

But ultimately, it's guided by health and it's guided by a deep, deep desire to keep families together.

Really, until like the 1920s, 1940s, I would say that's when things started to change.

um well i feel like that's where it needs to get back to but um

yeah well i feel like we could talk about this forever

and ever and ever and ever no it's very interesting to me no i love it i think it's very interesting it's when we get an adoptee who's had an open adoption experience.

Like, yeah, so that's why we were so like wanting this to happen.

Yeah.

And I just want to say thank you for coming on and being vulnerable and willing to talk about, you know, and gosh, I feel like I've learned a lot from you and I feel like other people can too.

And I think think it's an important conversation to keep having.

And so for people that don't know where to find you, where can people find you?

I'm Adopted Connor.

I think like Adopted underscore Connor on most social media.

Yeah, I post like three minute videos usually-ish on like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram.

I'm working on YouTube too.

I'm trying to start making some longer form videos on YouTube.

So if you're interested in like the, again, this might not be for everyone.

Not everyone's interested in the deep dive on adoption.

But if you're interested in the history and all this this stuff, you know, YouTube

adopted Connor.

I post all my short, like, all my short-form content there too.

But that's where I'm really going to start posting, hopefully, some more long-form videos, including a video about, I'm pretty sure, about you guys and Carly and just my thoughts on that.

I already have all the clips and stuff.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

Which

I'm not on the payroll, guys, okay?

Put me at 20.

No, it's, I just am interested in this stuff.

You know, people have always been asking me to talk about you guys.

So I'm glad.

And I want to say too, like, I'm really appreciative you guys are drawing attention to this.

And really, like, like, to put yourself in the crosshairs the way that you guys do.

Like, I mean, obviously, I'm sure people have their own personal reasons for not liking you guys outside of the whole adoption stuff, which whatever.

We're all human, right?

But the fact that you guys are willing to have these conversations knowing that this could jeopardize things potentially with people or that this could make you guys, you know, targets of online hate and stuff like i know what that's like and it like it really means a lot to me and a lot of people i mean again i'm sure there's people that does mean a lot to.

It really means a lot to me and a lot of people that you guys are having these conversations and being vulnerable because

yeah, I really care about this.

I think all of us just want things to be better for people like me and people like you.

And for you guys to do it with such like such a huge platform that you have, it really means a lot because, yeah, people have been adopting, people have been trying to have these conversations for 50 years and it just has not resonated the way that it's starting to resonate, I think, a lot.

Very much thanks to you guys.

So yeah, thanks, Connor.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Well, thank you guys so much for listening.

Don't forget to like, rate, and review, and go give Connor a follow.

He's very educational.

Yeah, does very good videos.

It can be triggered for some people, but yeah,

if you can withstand it, that's true.

Well, that's okay.

Being triggered sometimes brings change.

So we'll catch you guys next week.

Thanks so much for

coming.

And we will talk to you guys next week.

Bye.

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