And Then There Were Three

Guest Post by Laura Deurmyer for Adopt-a-tude


We are once again a family of three. Our most recent foster child went to live with relatives, reunited with his baby sister. He's getting the help he needs from his social workers; he's going to counseling. He'll be OK. He'll be safe.

We'll be OK too, but it's taking a little adjustment time. And to make the move even more jarring, my husband and I have determined that it will be our last foster placement for a while.

To be honest, I have such mixed feelings about the whole thing that I don't even know where to start writing.

I feel guilt most strongly. We're going back to being talkers, not doers. Sure, we'll still support children's rights and policies that protect them against abuse and neglect. But words matter little compared to deeds. I know that; my husband knows that. And our son will know that too.

Then there's relief. For the first time in months, our son and I can have a mom-son moment without a little voice plaintively interrupting “Aunt Laura!” Just as kids sense an adult on the phone and immediately move to get attention, our foster son sniffed out any attention that I was paying to Jacob and immediately moved to get his share. The little guy virtually velcroed himself to my side whenever he was not at school; he lived on my lap, in the chair beside me, pulling on my arm. Just being able to hold Jacob’s hand or being able to sit by him at breakfast seemed like a shiny new experience last weekend. But I feel guilt that I feel relief. Guilt again.

Strangely, there's hurt. When our foster son got the news that he was going to live with a relative, he was thrilled. He let us know in no uncertain terms that this would make him really happy. That he would not miss us—or our many rules—and that he was outta here. His attitude was basically, “Pack my stuff—all my stuff—and make it snappy!” It's childish of me, I know, but his eagerness to leave us hurts my feelings. Just a little. What happened to his intense protestations of love? Of course, I feel guilty that I feel hurt.

Naturally, there's worry and sadness. Will he be safe and loved? When he gets home from school, will there be an adult who will do his homework with him? (He loves school and loves homework.) Does he know that we really love him, that he is worthy of being loved? He demanded so much attention and gave so much affection in return; despite my relief at being free of the constant pressure, I feel a strong sadness at the thought of never hugging him again.

Quite aside from the emotional end of things, there are other changes that our re-configuration back to a family of three entails. I miss the kids’ laughter echoing down the hall from their room. I miss their silly conversations in the car on the way to school. I miss how they made their way to the cafeteria for breakfast each morning, “big brother” Jacob proudly guiding his pal through the parking lot.

On the other hand, I don't miss the constant smell of urine in the bathroom, generated by the pee that went everywhere but in the toilet, and I can't say I'm displeased that I no longer have to clean the bathroom every night before bed. The Geo-Trax train parts all over the floor are something I can live without too. Also the pouting/ crying/ lying sessions that occurred with some regularity. (I understood why he did those things, I just don't miss them.)

With our under-forty population in the house down to just Jacob, I also realize how much drama and stress our foster son created. The time-out corner is no longer continually warm. We don't have to watch out the window vigilantly to make sure that no one is getting physically attacked in a sudden bout of acting-out violent dreams, memories, or fantasies. Bedtime is a snap.

I feel sure that Jacob is sad; he is trying to be very adult about it. It twists my heart when I ask him if anything is wrong and he answers with a pained smile that doesn't reach his eyes: “I'm OK, Mom.”

Though his Dad and I told him it was fine for him to cry, fine for him to miss his “brother,” he isn't allowing that for himself. He plays quietly with his toys when he's not outside with the neighborhood kids, but much of the joy of playing cars or knights or pirates comes from interaction with another child. Thank God we live in a neighborhood full of kids who play together.

In deciding to make this our last placement for the foreseeable future, my husband and I discussed why were were fostering. I realized clearly that one of the biggest reasons for me—a disturbingly important reason for me—was that I had always wanted a second child. I wanted a sibling for our son. We had combined this semi-subconscious want of mine with my husband's feeling that we could be doing something to make the world better and wound up foster parents.

My selfish motivation is not what is required for embarking on a life-devoting labor of love like fostering. Instead, it is a reason that was all about me and not at all about the children or my family.

I still feel that our family could play a role in helping children. At some future point, I may be able to shift my heart again from what I want—fulfilling my view of what a family "should" be—to what the kids need. Meanwhile, the look in Jacob's eye at losing yet another “sibling” confirms our decision that we're not at that point right now.

We've helped several children get through very hard times in their lives. We love them all. We have a wonderful child of our own who is the joy of our lives. For now, that is enough.


This post has been cross-posted on Laura's blog at Open Salon.

Who Gets Baby Emma: Her Single Daddy or Her Married Adoptive Parents?

Guest Post by Laura Deurmyer for Adopt-a-tude

I bring two distinct and sometimes warring perspectives to bear on media accounts of adoptions. I am an adoptee—adopted at birth during what is known as the Baby Scoop Era. I have also been a foster parent who tried unsuccessfully to adopt a baby I loved.

If women are to have a real adoption option when confronting an unplanned pregnancy, we must take adoption questions and issues seriously as a society. We must stop treating adoption as the next human-interest story or as a tear-jerker movie of the week. 

The baby Emma Wyatt story featured in the Washington Post and the New York Times recently interested me as much for what it didn’t say as for its unmistakably fascinating facts. What set it apart and got it featured in the Post and in the Times and ultimately on Good Morning America rather than simply in a few obscure adoption blog sites, was its play on the Dr. Phil show.

The basic story—birth father who wants to raise his own child is denied that opportunity by birth mom who places the baby for adoption against his wishes—has been played out numerous times in recent years. It’s a common enough problem that there are whole websites devoted to helping unwed birth fathers retain custody of their children. Several of the players in the baby Emma story—the adoption agency, the lawyer, the state of Utah—feature in more than one of these tales.

(Note: One website that does catalog and discuss problems with adoption is poundpuplegacy.org. Although I don’t agree with much of that site’s seemingly anti-adoption bent, I have linked to it in this story because it clearly lists and explores problematic cases like baby Emma’s.)

Even in major media coverage of the story, a rational discussion of adoption policy or a thorough examination of states’ roles in voluntary placement adoption is mostly lacking. Instead, the story has devolved into the heart-wrenching tale of a father’s loss with class-warfare overtones.

Emma was born in Virginia and spirited away to Utah—a state that makes it notoriously difficult for unwed dads to asset their rights—for adoption immediately after her birth. Virginia courts have sided with the father, John Wyatt, and have ordered the little girl to be returned to him. Utah courts have thus far maintained that John Wyatt did not comply with their regulations for asserting parental rights and that the adoption should stand. 

There has been no intimation that the child would be unsafe either with her adoptive parents or with her natural father. John Wyatt works at a nightclub; he is twenty-one. The adoptive parents are established, successful college-educated mid-career professionals who are very economically stable, married, and no doubt desperately in love with this little girl after raising her for almost a year. 

Much of the news coverage of the story sides openly with John Wyatt, and I would have to agree with that. However, the idea that Emma might be better off with the more economically advantaged and martially stable adoptive parents—the state of Utah’s underlying basic argument—is implied in Lisa Belkin’s New York Times piece on her Motherlode blog, in which she asks:

Who do you think should have custody of “Baby Emma”? The stable married couple who are, as their lawyer says, “the only parents this child has ever known,” or the single 21-year-old nightclub worker who has never seen her, though he certainly has tried?

(Belkin later used comments to clarify that she too believes John Wyatt should have custody.) 

My heart goes out to John Wyatt. He has been trying, since his daughter’s birth, to be a responsible father. Had he been married to Emma’s mom, Emma would likely be with him now. 

My heart also goes out to the adoptive parents. They put their trust in the adoption agency, the lawyers and the birth mom. After having Emma in their homes and in their hearts for a year, they stand to lose a daughter. I know what that feels like—it’s like a death in the family.

Most of all, however, my heart goes out to Emma Wyatt. She deserves to know her Daddy. She deserves the chance to be Emma Wyatt. Perhaps her material future would be brighter in a home with higher net worth and two parents. But she has a birth parent who loves her, who wants her.  Ask any adoptee—that’s all most of us ever wanted—to know that our “other” parents did love us.

For the families involved in this situation, it is no-win deal. Someone will end up devastated. Baby Emma will deal with emotional issues for the rest of her life.

Adoption can be a wonderful thing; it is a gift of the heart. A choice to love. So many children need desperately for someone to choose them. Their birth parents either don’t want them, or can’t get their lives in order enough to parent them safely. 

You will never convince me that an adoptive parent can’t love an adopted child just as fiercely as a “real” parent. Having been both the child and the parent in an adoptive relationship, I know better. 

Though I have wanted to know my birth background most of my life, I have never doubted that my parents—and they are my parents—love me.  Though I knew that raising our baby girl would have had its problems—crack babies can have behavioral issues well past infancy, and we would have had to address racial identify questions sensitively and honestly—I loved her, and love her, with all my heart.

Love aside, adoption is not always the best choice. We should be talking about cases like this in order to shape our adoption expectations as a society. If states like Utah, with its majority Mormon population and overwhelming prejudice against single parenthood are allowed to compromise the rights of parents in other states, that is unacceptable. We need to talk about that.

If as a society, we believe a two-career, multi-degreed, financially successful married couple should trump a blue-collar daddy or a single mom for parental rights, in the best interest of the child, despite that single parent’s desire and ability to raise the child, that is unacceptable. We need to talk about that. 

Adoption should be easy, when the circumstances call for it. It should be virtually impossible when we are taking children away from biological parents against their will absent abuse or neglect. 

Some states are toying with the idea that they can choose not to follow federal law in selected matters; now is the time to codify exactly what we can and can’t stomach in the adoption process as a society. Otherwise, states with a hard-right theological bent might move even farther in the direction Utah has taken, with disastrous results for children and families.

Fostering and Taxes: How We Parented and She Gets Paid

Guest Post by Blue in TX for Adopt-a-tude

Blue in TX originally posted the following piece in Open Salon, where it created quite a furor. This is her personal take on a financial aspect of foster parenting that surprised and disheartened her. As she says after the back and forth at Open Salon, "the jury is still out" about fostering and taxes. Her situation may not apply to other families in other states. She and Adopt-a-tude welcome comments that provide more information and help demystify the finances of fostering.


The going rate for a kid in the United States is $4,600 and change to families making $110,000 or less in 2009. At least that's what my tax prep computer program is telling me. (A $3,650 dependent deduction plus a $1,000 child tax credit.) So, the mightier your uterus, the bigger your tax break.

My uterus is weak and puny and has produced only one child. But we foster parent, and one of the ways the government compensates foster parents is by allowing us to claim tax deductions and credits for our charges as though they had popped out of our own baby-makers. Or so we thought.

So, I set about doing our taxes to include the little boy who spent a little more than half the year with us in 2009. No big deal, right? Wrong.

According to our case worker, the only time you get to claim a foster child as a dependent is when the state has forcibly wrenched the child away from his or her natural family. Voluntary placement kids are still deductible by their natural parent(s).

Many kids in foster care are in care because their parents voluntarily gave them up—either because they could not afford to feed and house them or because they are in prison, or because they just don't want to be bothered.

One of our friends fosters two little boys who were voluntarily placed at birth. They are both six years old now. For six years, our friend has fed, clothed, loved, Band-aided, taught, and honored these children, apparently all without being able to deduct them as dependents. To a single mom on a high school teacher's salary, that's a huge disadvantage, financially.

A couple of years ago, when our finances were less tight and we had not even dreamed of a child, I would have thought "how crass—griping about a tax deduction instead of thinking about helping a child." I still feel somewhat like that—we won't stop fostering if we can't claim tax deductions; in fact, if the government revoked all tax deductions and charged people for kids instead, we'd still have had our own son, and been just as grateful for it.

I just have to wonder what we are trying to achieve as a society with the policies we have set around children and taxes.

On the one hand, we have a problem with more demand for social services than we have the will or the heart to budget for. The more impoverished the kids, the more demand. Worldwide population growth is an environmental concern on many levels, from food scarcity to global warming.

But instead of teaching family planning in our schools and encouraging young people to have fewer rather than more children, we offer the single biggest tax incentive available to average people (outside of the mortgage interest deduction) to those who procreate the most. And we discourage families from taking care of kids whose own parents can't care for them by denying that tax deduction to at least some of those caretaker families.

The little boy we had in our home was moved to another foster family because he was behaving threateningly towards our son. He's a great little boy and is now in a home with his natural sister, where his behavior is exemplary. He and our son still play together. We would have cared for him even had we known from the start that we would not be able to claim him as a dependent.

His mom has five children. She was broke and homeless and living in her Escalade when she placed the kids in care. Now she's broke and living with some guy with whom she reportedly smokes dope and goes to bars when she's not in hairdresser classes.
 
She sold the Escalade and bought a little BMW 5 series with the proceeds. My heart broke for the eldest child when she first saw her mom's new car. She's a precocious seven-year-old and can count well enough to see that three car seats, two booster seats, and Mom will not fit in that car. Since the mom can claim all five children despite them being in other homes more than two thirds of the year, she should get a handsome sum back from the government after she does her taxes. Hopefully, she will use the money to get a more suitable car and put a deposit on an apartment.

That's our case worker's hope anyway. I'm not holding my breath.

Foster parenting is wonderful and terrible. Amazing children, amazing love. Monotonous paperwork that goes on forever, home inspections, CPR classes, licenses, continuing education. Getting attached and having to step aside for a natural family member. Getting attached and having to admit that there are some behavior issues that you just can't handle.

Voluntary placements get turned away by our agency regularly because there is no home to place the child in. I wonder how many families won't take voluntary placement children because of the tax rule giving the deductions/credits for voluntarily placed children to their natural parent if they choose to claim them. Personally, I think that we foster parents who've actually cared for a child during the greater part of the year have earned the $4,600.