From this morning’s paper, "Gladney Center for Adoption Announces New Marketing Campaign and Updated Website". Does this headline serve as notice of the industry’s intent?

 

  • BOTZ 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    As a ‘commodity’ baby, which I was, it sends me — once a year — to the darkest possible place. This is that time — August. I was born in July, just for the record. August is the month my adoption was finalized (13 months after my birth). August is the month my mother went back to work after her "non-maternity" maternity leave (one month after my birth). August is when it’s the most ‘real’ that I can never have what should have been — what was — mine. I hate August. It’s been only about 50% of the Augusts of my adulthood that I’ve spent not hospitalized. This is one where I’m not…so far…with huge thanks to my husband who doesn’t ‘get it’ but ‘gets’ me, in all my "glory". Poor guy! He’s really too good!

    Something like this headline/article, even this *idea*, makes me so sick it feels like another one of "those" Augusts for me. I feel bad, too, for my a-parents because I can’t talk to them during August. I’ve never been able to tell them why. I have made peace with the fact that they didn’t have a clue what this would mean/do to me (or my 2 also-adopted siblings) — they drank the kool-aid. They swallowed the propaganda — hook, line and sinker. They even told me and my adopted sibs how ‘hard’ it was to wait for us, how much time, money, invasion, etc. it ‘cost’ them to adopt when "any plain old regular girl" could get herself pregnant. *sigh* Please don’t hate on my folks. I don’t. They didn’t know better. Of that I am (now) completely certain. I feel sorry for them. They didn’t get what they ‘paid for’ either. We aren’t grateful. We were "angry adoptees" as kids/teens. We don’t worship them. We want our natural families. Maybe it’s the depression talking, but that must suck for them. They ‘bought’ (pun INTENDED) all the promises…and only now (with 3 adopted children, one each in his/her 20s, 30s and 40s) do they realize that they were lied to. And they can’t do anything about it. I know they love me. They know I love them. They don’t understand why I can’t call/come around for a while each year. They don’t have the capacity to understand. (Of that I am also certain, after 30+ years.)

    This is probably completely ‘off’ from the question. But the feelings do come over and over me in waves when I read %&*!& like this article/headline.

    Take care!

    ETA: Independent, your use of the term "murdered" nmothers — which I know is also literal in many cases — is so poignant in my case. My mother was murdered. Her body still lived (and lives). She does well, considering. But her spirit was killed. One of the worst moments of my existence came when my mother realized (at my revelation) that my life wasn’t the "sunshine and rainbows" that she had been convinced I would have if she "gave me a better chance". Nothing in my life has ever hurt more than revealing that to her. I had no choice, it was true. And I was not the only one who lost my mother. My 3 natural siblings, who were raised by her, also lost the mom they *should* have had — the mom we all *should* have had. The agency that did my adoption "killed" her.

  • Independant 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    Sick.
    I feel sick but I don’t think people desperate for a baby really care. Too many only listen to the organizations giving them hope for the next best? thing to a biological child. Unfortunately, what its going to take are "laws" to encourage morality and ethics in this industry. Too many people just care about themselves and their infertility issues or making money.

    How low can the people involved in this industry go. Do more murders of nmoms in the US need to happen to get them to wake up.

    I personally feel like they should be the ones placed in the Chinese type labor camps for "re education" along side every nparent arrested and forced to go there just for looking for their kidnapped children who are sold abroad to foreigners.

    I don’t see how anyone involved in these atrocities can live with themselves never mind sleep at night.

    Denial can only run so deep. The day will come where they will be forced out of it. I personally will not care about their self inflicted pain.

  • Mei-Ling 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    They’re not commodities.

    At least in *some* countries.

  • adopt more babies 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    Who cares. Babies need to be saved.

  • Gershom 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    Anyone else bothered by the fact that Gladney pays their top Directors over 100,000$’s annually?

    I am.

    Anyone else bothered that Gladney raked in over 16 million dollars in 2006? I am, oh, but children aren’t commodities right, and these are non profit organizations acting in good will for the better of humanity. roflol

  • LaurieDB 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    The Gladney Center is a business. It is in business to succeed. Simply being non-profit doesn’t mean profit isn’t made. It just means that money made goes back into the business. That can be in the form of high salaries. It can be in the form of more staff. It can be in the form of marketing and advertising. Non-profit doesn’t mean that the organization is getting by on a wing and a prayer.

    The Gladney Center is financially successful. The way it makes its money is by selling its services, which is finding children for its customers. No available children equals no money being made. It is in Gladney’s best interest to make certain there are children available for adoption for its customer base. Children as commodities? Certainly, for the Gladney Center.

  • Gaia Raain 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    The word "marketing". That says it all. Just try and explain THAT.

  • sunny 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    Wait a minute here! I thought the Gladney Center was a non-profit!

    Fancy marketing campaign and website makeover on the backs of babies and their mothers…deplorable.

  • ♥Heather Leigh♥ 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    Sounds like they are selling flippen Big Macks…Why would an adoption agency need a "marketing campaign"? I mean isn’t it illegal to sell babies?

  • amyburt40 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    On one of the Gladney tax forms I saw that they were going to recruit more mothers to relinquish. This kind of marketing is diminishing to adoptees and their families. It pushes us as commodities.

  • grapesgum 9:04 am on February 8, 2010

    I read some of the materials for "birth" mothers. They use blatant indoctrination techniques to recruit pregnant teens into the "birth" mother cult. They claim to help women weigh ALL options, but use lies to shoot holes into any option other than adoption.

    Hopefully, they had to change their marketing strategy because they are running out of women who are willing to be industry breeders to keep the supply of babies up.

    The idea of a human being marketed as a commodity is disgusting. It results in a legal process that strips a person of his/her identity by forcing a helpless baby to live with a "birth" certificate that is a lie.