Complaint Review: The National Council for Adoption

MOTHERS, MONEY, MARKETING, & MADNESS

The National Council for Adoption usually has something to say about any adoption issue. One would think they should just based on their name. They say that they speak for mothers who relinquished children to adoptioon, but they silence them on the their Facebook page. They ignore the cries of 6 million US adult adoptees who demand access to their orioginal idenity. They try to control all things adoption and shut up the people who have lived it, for a profit. They are not a benevolent government authority. They are a paid lobby group.

After all National Council makes it sound as if an official governmental appointment was made. That they are the official US stance, made after long thought out meetings by a Council, on all things related to adoption. Alas, that is just a well thought out play on the name made to make one think that is what they are.

By their own Mission Statement, they are something else:

Founded in 1980, the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) is a research, education, and advocacy organization whose mission is to promote the well-being of children, birthparents, and adoptive families by advocating for the positive option of adoption. NCFA is an adoption advocate and expert in the halls of power and the courts of public opinion, on behalf of all parties to adoption and its member adoption agencies around the country.

Its very clear, as noted in the bolded emphasis, that their self appointed job is to promote adoption and that promotion is benefitting the adoption agencies. They are a lobby group, pure and simple, bought and paid for to use their power and resources to sway the public in such a way that adoption is seen as positive. How they do such things is no mystery.

It makes sense to wonder were their money comes from. Just over 1 million of the NCFA funding comes from public support. This does not including another 50 plus thousand that comes from membership dues. Once again, the National Council for Adoption members consists of non-profit adoption agencies. The Gladney Centers for Adoption and Bethany Christian Services are all members.

The NCFA is also privately funded by various moral majority groups such as the Family Research Council who champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society. values human life and upholds the institutions of marriage and the family. Pro-life organizations and the LDS church also support the NCFA viewpoints as they all mesh together in some absurd God fearing way.

Being a lobby group it makes sense to see what the NCFA invests in their legislative efforts. In their own words they provides strategic policy briefs, expert testimony at legislative hearings, personalized briefings on adoption issues, conferences, grassroots leadership, and monitoring and reporting on adoption-related legislative activities. Policy makers in all levels and branches of government, look to NCFA for leadership and analysis of adoption policy issues.

That amounts to a controle propaganda campaign to convince Americans to recognize Adoption as a loving option, more people need to be able to afford to adopt, privacy is desired and mothers need to be protected from bad fathers who might force them to parent unwanted children They spent their lobby money wisely as the NCFA did convince the government to sponsor the Infant Adoption Awareness Initiative.

Bottom line is that the NCFA spends lots of money telling Americans how adoption is a positive option. Where did they get that idea?

Since the NCFA was created in order to advocate for the positive attributes of adoption, it stands to reason that a negative feeling regarding adoption had to be the predecessor. Listed in their 2005 expense category is their research costs of $239,932.00 and the NCFA has a long history of conducting research on what makes mothers think warm and fuzzy thoughts about adoption.

They do it often in cahoots with their pals, The Family Research Council, who gets credited for publishing the The Missing Piece.

Back in 2000, the Missing Piece found that adoption was associated as a painful sacrifice that no mother should be asked to make. Adoption was thought to be a lie, abandonment, harmful, deceptive, and painful They then put their heads together to try to figure out how to make mothers view adoption differently so they would look into the loving option and the IAATP was born. This time around the NCFA went more achedemic, hiring CharlesT Kenny, PhD to author their newest publication. They needed new understandings into the dynamics of birthmothers decisions that will facilitate better presentation of the adoption option in pregnancy counseling and through the media. Dr. Kenny who just happens to be, president of The Right Brain People., had just the way to conduct this important research.

Using Mothers who had previously surrendered as guinea pigs, the Right Brain folks advertised for mothers to come forth for this research from Texas and Chicago areas. They paid 51 mothers $100 each. Mothers did not know what they were being question for or who the final client was. They report being blindfolded the whole time, making them relive the trauma of their experiences so that the researchers could take an inside look at the psychological pressures that come to bear when a women decides how to address the painful question of abortion, adoption or motherhood.and understand more about how the counseling process can affect women's choices as they decide their futures." The results of this research became the grand NCFA publication, Birthmother, GoodMother: The Heroic Story of her Redemption

The findings conclude that: After working through their fears and conflicts, birthmothers choose adoption because they believe that it is best for their children. They realize that adoption is not abandonment; it is a loving, responsible act. By choosing what is best for their children, birthmothers see themselves as good mothers. Instead of feeling like bad mothers for abandoning children or "giving them away," they now begin to see that placing their children with loving couples is what it means for them to be good mothers. They redeem themselves, transforming their mistakes into positive outcomes. Adoption allows them to recover their self-esteem, restore their identity, and renew their dreams and goals.

This can be seen as a total polar opposite of the way mothers had been viewed and treated in the country. In the past, mothers were shamed into surrendering their children if born out of wedlock and given no choice at all. "Illegitimacy is taboo in our society.

A child born out of wedlock carries a stigma for life, while his unwed mother is often treated as a social outcast - an irresponsible, sexual delinquent who must be forced into seclusion as punishment for her flagrant violation of our most sacred principles." Forced by their own families into maternity homes, ostracized by society, denied employment and a place to live, mothers signed away their children because they were bad girls. There was no redemption, just secrecy and false stories moving on and getting over it.

As society changed and it became impossible to openly treat women in such ways, the adoption industry had to find another way to keep fresh babies in the coffers. No longer could they be forced nor shamed into it, mothers had to be convinced that surrendering a child to adoption was a good idea. That becoming a birthmother meant being a Good mother. What has been embraced by the adoption industry is the concept of owning the decision to surrender. Adoption, if viewed as a choice even if there is lack of other viable options, becomes completely the mothers responsibility. Creating an Adoption plan is said to be empowering.

 " We actually influence [her] choices because by our questions, by the considerations we place before [her], by our examination together with [her] of [her] feelings and impulses and their relation, implicit or explicit, to social expectations, we attempt to affect [her] decision to act in ways that are compatible with society's standards and values... [Her] choice... may well be affected by the caseworker's holding [her] to careful considerations of [her] immediate drives and wishes in relation to social expectations and the adjustment [she] seeks, which is adjustment in [her] society. Perhaps this pervasive influence of the 'social' consideration has marked our major difference from other forms of helping or therapy."

In the end, it is portrayed that adoption professionals are only asking the hard questions that need to be asked and asking for all to support the mother as she makes her decision. In this way, if adoption does turn out to be a negative or regretful situation, the mother has no one but herself to blame. The IAATP is a training course instructing professionals on how to do this effectively.

Adoption professionals are encouraged to develop techniques to clarify concerns that arise in a crisis pregnancy such as what their long term goals are, imagining life as a single mother, examining their current support structure, having them imagine how life would be with a six week old, never sleeping, colicky baby and homework, how they might feel knowing their baby had a loving caring, two parent home, etc.

Apparently learning to adequately council a mother with theses questions Helps clients gain insight into their own beliefs and needs, and helps counselors assist their clients to act wisely in preparing for the birth of their babies.

It also seems to that having less than perfect answers would sway a mother to think that her baby would be better if loving placed within the traditional God-ordained institutions of marriage and family .

That all falls right within the doctrine of the Family Research Council, the NCFA, various Pro life and rightwing group agendas. To recap: An Adoption Agency lobby group uses federal grant money to hire a research and marketing firm to probe into the minds of mothers developing a birthmother brand development to sell to the consumers in order to promote a more positive public perception of adoption so that more mothers will make the loving choice to be separated from their babies fulfilling the needs to the clients, the agencies.

Those who have suffered by the hands of the National Coucil for Adoption will NOT be shut up! They cannot silence birthmothers. We do not need the portection of the NCFA. They cannot stop adoptees form speaking out. They have a HUMAN RUIGHT to their truth!

The Truth shall set us free.