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

Summary

Cate & Ty Break It Down: The Complexities Of Adoption – Money, Marketing, and Ethics with Gretchen Sisson

Release Date: April 16, 2025

In this compelling episode of Cate & Ty Break It Down, hosts Catelynn (Kate) and Tyler (Ty) Baltierra delve deep into the intricate world of adoption with Gretchen Sisson, the author of Relinquished. Drawing from Gretchen's extensive research and her book, the trio explores the multifaceted issues surrounding adoption, including financial pressures, marketing tactics, ethical dilemmas, and the emotional complexities faced by birth parents and adoptees alike.

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1. Introduction to Gretchen Sisson and Her Work

The episode kicks off with Kate and Ty introducing their guest, Gretchen Sisson, and expressing their enthusiasm for her book, Relinquished. Kate shares her personal journey as a birth parent, highlighting how Gretchen's research has illuminated the often obscured realities of adoption.

Kate [00:30]: "I feel like as a birth parent, I kind of went through a fog of my own... it's very eye-opening to listen to all the different stories and the statistics."

2. Historical Context: The Baby Scoop Era and Georgia Tann

Gretchen provides a thorough historical overview, discussing the Baby Scoop Era from the post-World War II period until the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. She highlights the role of Georgia Tann, a notorious figure who orchestrated coercive and secretive adoptions, influencing policies that still impact adoption practices today.

Gretchen [02:56]: "Georgia Tann... she had this kind of evil brilliance... she could kind of shape the policies that were around that."

3. Media Representations vs. Reality

The conversation shifts to how adoption is portrayed in media, specifically critiquing the film Juno. Kate and Ty express disappointment over the misleading representations, contrasting them with the harsh realities faced by birth parents.

Kate [06:00]: "I was gonna say, like, Juno is just the biggest lie."

4. Adoption Agencies: Money, Marketing, and Coercion

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the unethical practices of adoption agencies. Gretchen reveals how agencies prioritize marketing to attract birth parents rather than genuinely supporting them.

Gretchen [17:19]: "A lot of adoption agencies... are spending more on marketing than they are on attorneys... and certainly more than they're spending on support."

Ty and Kate share their personal experiences, noting how agencies often present adoptive families in idealized ways, exacerbating feelings of inadequacy and coercion among birth parents.

Ty [17:03]: "Why are we not funneling these funds over here when it could be over here when a thousand dollars was all it took for her to not make that decision."

5. Financial Dynamics: Adoption Costs vs. Support for Birth Parents

The episode delves into the disparity between the funds spent on facilitating adoptions and the minimal support provided to birth parents. Gretchen discusses the $16,000 federal tax credit for adoption, questioning why similar investments aren't directed towards assisting birth parents.

Gretchen [25:28]: "The federal tax credit for an adoption is $16,000... If we were putting a similar investment into just a child tax credit that was accessible to families, these adoptions wouldn't be happening in the first place."

6. Ethical Concerns and the Commodification of Children

Gretchen argues that the current adoption system in the United States is inherently unethical, driven by capitalist motives that commodify children and exploit the vulnerabilities of birth parents.

Gretchen [62:24]: "As long as children are a commodity in this equation, there isn't an ethical way to do that. There's no ethical way to commodify a human being."

7. Open Adoption: Intentions vs. Realities

The hosts and Gretchen explore the concept of open adoption, discussing its intended benefits versus the actual experiences. While open adoption is promoted as less traumatic, Gretchen points out that without proper support and legal enforceability, it often fails to protect the interests of the child and birth parent.

Gretchen [37:02]: "Open adoption... can mean a huge range of things. It's not legally protected... it's really at the whim of what the adoptive parents want."

8. Policy Implications and the Need for Social Support

Gretchen emphasizes the necessity of shifting policy focus from facilitating adoptions to supporting and preserving families, advocating for a robust social safety net that addresses the root causes leading to relinquishment.

Gretchen [50:05]: "What do children actually need? How can we keep children in their family of origin and make sure that that is a safe place?"

9. Personal Reflections and the Path Forward

Kate and Ty reflect on their own adoption journey, underscoring the emotional toll and systemic failures that made adoption seem like the only viable option. They advocate for broader societal changes to support parents better and reduce the need for adoption.

Ty [55:19]: "Adoption wouldn't exist if we didn't fail."

10. Conclusion: Rethinking Adoption Ethics and Practices

In wrapping up, Gretchen asserts that the current adoption framework cannot be ethically reconciled due to its foundational issues. Instead, she calls for a paradigm shift towards comprehensive family support and redefined definitions of family structures.

Gretchen [62:46]: "As long as children are a commodity in this equation, there isn't an ethical way to do that."

Kate and Ty echo this sentiment, emphasizing the importance of conversations like these in driving policy change and fostering a more compassionate and supportive environment for all parties involved in adoption.

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Key Takeaways:

• Historical Influence: Figures like Georgia Tann have left a lasting impact on adoption practices, embedding secrecy and coercion into the system.

• Financial Disparities: There's a stark contrast between the funds allocated to adoption processes and the minimal support provided to birth parents, often leading to coercive situations.

• Ethical Concerns: The commodification of children within the adoption industry raises significant ethical questions, highlighting the need for systemic overhaul.

• Policy Shift Needed: Emphasizing family preservation and robust social support systems can reduce the necessity of adoptions, fostering healthier communities.

• Open Adoption Limitations: Without enforceable legal frameworks and continuous support, open adoptions may not achieve their intended benefits, potentially causing additional emotional strain.

For those interested in exploring these topics further, Gretchen Sisson's book, Relinquished, offers an in-depth analysis backed by extensive research and personal narratives. The episode serves as a crucial conversation starter, urging listeners to reconsider and advocate for more humane and supportive approaches to parenting and adoption.

Transcript

[Kate]

Well, hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Kate and Ty. Break it down. Today we have somebody who we are really excited to talk to. I have listened to her book and we are super excited to have her on our podcast today.

[Ty]

Please welcome Gretchen Sisson, author of Relinquished.

[Kate]

Hello.

[Ty]

We're so happy you're here.

[Kate]

No, thank you for coming. It's been a joy and I'm learning a lot from your book. I feel like, I feel like as a birth parent, I kind of went through a fog of my own, you know, and so just like, it's very eye opening to me to listen to all the different stories and the statistics and I really enjoy listening to it.

[Ty]

Yeah. Because honestly, ever since she started listening to it, I actually mentioned it to her. I said, you really should read this book because I didn't even get through more than half of it before. I was like, all right, I have to. You have to read this. And then she does the audio stuff when she's driving so she'll come back home after listening to it. She's like, oh my gosh, did you know? And, oh my God. And I'm like, wow, I kind of see you, like completely getting just more information because as a birth parents, we kind of, we're only fed so much of the, the, the truth, I guess. And so like, like the whole point of birth parents, I think, have our own kind of fog that we go through trying to. You know what I mean? So it was good to read just an unbiased, you know, just fact based thing.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Well, thanks for saying that. And I think that a lot of birth parents, right, your introduction to adoption comes through your agency. Right. And the agency is invested in a really particular idea of what adoption is, who it serves, how it's gonna work. And I think very few birth parents are able to connect with other people who have gone through this. And so I think that part of what putting all of these stories together in one book is it allows you to see these commonalities between your experiences and people who might be coming to adoption from a really different place, but have a similar set of interactions with the agencies or with their child's adoptive parents and how they are negotiating that in different circumstances.

[Ty]

Yeah. So when you were writing the book, like, what was your process like? Were you, did you, I mean, you're interviewing birth moms and just like, how did that, how did that work for you?

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah, well, so when I, when I started doing data collection for the book, I wasn't writing a book. Right. I was just Trying to finish graduate school. Right. So I started doing interviews in 2010, so right around when your first season started airing. And at that time I was interviewing birth mothers who went back to like the late 1950s, like before, like during the Baby Scoop era, they call it kind of that historical period where these really coercive, extractive, secretive.

[Ty]

Is that the Georgia Tan kind of era?

[Gretchen Sisson]

It's out. So Georgia Tann was, was earlier than that. Oh, yeah. And so for folks who don't know, Georgia Tann was this baby broker basically who worked out of Tennessee, and she basically stole children to place them for adoption. And she's the one who led the fight to seal birth certificates, to really introduce secrecy around adoption. And she was really. She had this kind of like evil brilliance where she would facilitate adoptions with really powerful people. So, you know, we're here in New York. She facilitated an adoption for the governor of New York and then got him to steal birth certificate records. A lot of celebrities adopted children through her. So she had a lot of power and she could kind of shape the policies that were around that. So she's, she's a really interesting historical character who has. Who almost single handedly shaped a lot of the practices that still determine what adoption looks like today. But the Baby Scoop era was a couple decades later. It's really from like the end of World War II until the Roe v. Wade decision in 73. And that was a period that was the baby boom. Right. So a lot of people were having children. You had a lot of men who were coming back from war who. It was the first time that men were really open about male infertility because it was a war injury, then you could acknowledge it a little bit more. Oh, of course, not a lot, but like more than never. Right, right. And you also had these really traditional ideas of family. Right. Where the, the focus during the 50s and 60s was really on this nuclear family. You needed to have two married parents. That was what family needed to look like. There was a high value place on having children. And so all of a sudden you had this really high demand for people who wanted to adopt. And you had this really specific idea of what motherhood needed to be. So if you were a single mom, particularly if you were a white woman who was married before or who was pregnant before she was married, you would be sent to a maternity home that were. They were usually church run by the Catholic Church and they would basically take your child at the end. So these were very coercive adoptions. There's a really excellent Book called the Girls who Went Away by Ann Fessler, who herself was a baby scoop era adoptee that looks at this period of adoption in the maternity homes. And so that was. That was the baby scoop era. And then after Roe v. Wade, when abortion became more accessible for more American women, then you really had a decrease in the number of domestic adoptions. So Anne's book had come out in 2006. Juno had come out a couple years later. Your season started airing. And I was seeing all of these ideas about adoption in the cultural conversation that didn't really reflect the reality of the women that I was interviewing.

[Kate]

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

[Ty]

It was. It's the worst.

[Kate]

You know what I mean? Like, it is the worst image of, like, what birth parents go through. It does not look like that, feel like that. Nothing.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Well, I think, you know, and. And that was when I started. That was really when I. What I wanted to look at. Right. Cause as a sociologist, what I wanna study is the gap between what we believe to be something and what the actual experiences look like for the people who are living it. And I had looked at that. I actually came to this work after studying teen pregnancy and young parenthood broadly. And so I was working with a group called the alliance on Teen Pregnancy. I was working with these incredible young moms. And they were all really into 16 and pregnant when it came out, obviously, because this is what they're living, and they want to see these stories that are being told about their lives. About your lives. Right. And when I saw the way MTV was telling your story, right. I think that there's your real story that you all lived, and there's a story that MTV wanted to tell about you through the show. And the way that they wanted your story to fit the broader arc of what they were doing with 16 and pregnant. And they were very clear, Right. They basically wanted 16 and pregnant to be sex education for a generation of people.

[Kate]

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

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right. And I remember, like, there's a moment, I think it was Macy, where she talks about, like, how it's really hard work, but she likes the work, right. She likes the work of caring for Bentley. And that was a really rare moment where it actually let her have control of the story to be like, yeah, some parts of this are really hard. Some parts of parenthood are hard if you're 16, if you're 26, if you're 36. Right, absolutely. But, like, the labor of parenting has its own value and its own reward. And for some reason, that moment really struck me. And that was part of why I wanted to continue following my research participants and to see how their feelings about the adoption changed over time, to see whether this, these stories that we were telling about adoption actually resonated as the adoptions went on.

[Ty]

And did you see the kind of a big change? Like you interviewed him here and then you interview him later on and you saw a big kind of a shift in their, you know, beliefs or ideologies surrounding it?

[Kate]

Because I feel like even me, for a birth mom, like, in the beginning, you know, when we were making this decision, I do feel like it was a lot of me kind of like brainwashing myself in a sense. Now that I'm looking at it, you know, as a 32, 33 year old, it was a lot of like, I'm doing the best thing for her. She is. It's better that she's not with me. I get to choose her life, all of the things. And now that I'm older and I look back on things and I'm like, wow. But it's really hard and it's hurts and I miss her and I want to be a part of her life and I wish things could be different, like, and my beliefs and everything have shifted over the years. So I think it's common that a lot of birth parents, their beliefs would shift.

[Ty]

And I also feel like that was kind of like something that it would have been really beneficial if we had talked to one birth mom, because before making the decision that was 10 years down the line or whatever, or we would have got any statistics on how adoptees handle their own trauma and what, what it's like for them, or if we had one adult, one person say, hey, you know, there's resources, there's things, you know, I just feel like it could have been so different. But, like, I think that goes to kind of go into like the birth parent, you put yourself in your own kind of fog. To justify what?

[Kate]

Or to heal.

[Ty]

Yeah, to heal. Because you're going through so much pain. It's like, how do I even make sense of this pain? Well, I'm just gonna craft it in a bow of it being really selfless and being great and. And also I feel like, you know, we were told so many times when we were thinking about it that the best thing for you can, the best thing you can do, the best parent that you can be, is to not be a parent at all.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Ty]

And we just kept getting that message and it was like it made sense. When you're saying it out loud. But it didn't feel like that. It felt like, oh, it just. And I almost felt like we didn't feel like we could even express the hesitancy or the how it made us feel because it was like, no, logically, you're right. You know, we don't have resources, and if we want to be the best parent possible, we can't be a parent at all.

[Kate]

And I came home because just to piggyback off what he said, I came home the other day from getting my hair done, long drive, whatever, and I walked in the house and I said, you know, listening to relinquished, I felt like my mind kept coming back to this one thing of just that women are feeling like they have no other option. It's not like they automatically are going to. Like they want to place their. Their child for adoption. But the main thing I kept getting from your book was there's no help.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Kate]

There's no resources. Because when I look at my own adoption, I'm like, yeah, if somebody would have said, like, here's resources that'll help you get your own apartment and help you get a car and help you get through school. School, like, I probably would have made a different decision. Or even the young lady that you speak about where she says all she needed was a thousand dollars to get her out of the situation that she's in. And it's like my mind just kept coming back to you just feel like you are stuck and there's no other option. When, in fact, if there were. If there was help or resources out there, a lot of women wouldn't have to do it, do this and make this decision.

[Ty]

And I feel like they say selfless. It's so selfless to do this, but it's like you're ignoring the desperation part because it is selfless. And I'm not saying it's not selfless, but it's forcing me to be selfless because I'm desperate, because I'm in a desperate situation. So it's like they.

[Gretchen Sisson]

It's a survival. It's a function of survival and how you. The only path that you saw to care for your child. Right. And I think it's important to remember, you know, I was. I was speaking with a birth parent once, and she was like, well, I actually didn't. I didn't relinquish my daughter because of poverty. It was just because, like, my home with my parents wouldn't have been safe to bring her home to.

[Kate]

I can relate to.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And I. What I said, was, well, was it safe for you? And she's like, oh no, of course not. And I was like, well then we've already failed. Right? Like you were a child too. And so I'm not saying that adoption is always this bad, terrible thing, right. I am saying we view adoption as good as an individual, good as a social good, when in fact I think we should view every adoption as a failure to care for people somewhere along.

[Ty]

The way because it wouldn't be necessary if they were cared for.

[Gretchen Sisson]

If we were cared for. Yeah. If you all had been cared for the way that you needed to be, you might have been, you might have felt like you had what you needed to care for your daughter.

[Ty]

And it's interesting too because I remember talking to Macy the first reunion we had and she said, I, I, you know, I'm so proud of you guys. You guys did such a great thing. And you know, if I didn't have my family, if I didn't have my parents in the life I had, I probably, I might be where you are. And then it kind of hit me and I remember being like, wow. So like all I, you know, all I needed was support and a family and like your lifestyle and it would have been different. It's just, it's an interesting kind of perspective when you look back at it. I think it's different because obviously we're older now, so we look back at when we were making that decision and all the things that went into kind of just like telling us what was best. Even though in our soul we it in our soul and how we felt didn't match what the like logic they were telling us. And I feel like as kids being 16, we should have, someone should have just came in and gave us more information that's not coming from the agency itself like some, you know. So I feel like the lack of resources even in that regard is kind of, we're lacking there.

[Gretchen Sisson]

You know, I think that the narrative that they again they told on the show that you guys were more mature than your counterparts who were parenting. Right. That you were more selfless. Right. And I do think that there is something self sacrificial about what you did, but I also don't think it would have been selfish for you to want to keep your child. Like I don't think Macy or the other girls were selfish for wanting to raise their own children. And I do think that it required other sacrifices of them. Overall parenting requires sacrifices and compromises in that way. And so this, this particular idea that adoption is Always like the highest form of love that you can give your child. If something is lacking in your own lives to make parenting feel difficult or impossible, that's this really, it's this really insidious narrative that doesn't look at the complexity of like how we care for families more broadly.

[Ty]

And also why are we not focusing on that aspect more? We're focusing on this. Adoption's great, this is the solution, but we're not. The solution to what problem? This problem.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Transferring babies from vulnerable and poor families to middle class and affluent families. That's a really lazy way of thinking about how to care for children. Right, Exactly. And it means that you don't need to think about how to create a meaningful social safety net. You don't need to think about dealing with challenges of incarceration or addiction or other things that might be keeping families in a really stuck place. Right. Those are big social problems that it's really hard to find policy solutions how to tackle. And if you can just be like, well, we'll just move these kids from this family over here to this family over here. And this family is pretty affluent and they're stable and they're in their middle class neighborhood with their well funded public schools, like problem solved.

[Kate]

And I remember you talking about that in the book Little pieces of that, like how does that even make. Yeah, yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And I think what you said earlier about the one woman who said I only need a thousand dollars, I only needed like a thousand dollars to keep my child is what she said. And people come back and they're like, well, it takes a lot more than $1,000 to raise a kid. And I'm like, look, I have three of them. I'm aware. Right, you all are aware. What she's saying is she needs $1,000 to have enough control over her life to make a different decision feel possible. Right. $1,000 for a security deposit on a new apartment so that you can leave a boyfriend who you don't think is going to be a safe co parent.

[Kate]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Kate]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

$1,000 for a crib in a car seat so that you feel like you have a space in your life for this baby and you have the bare minimum to be equipped. They're going to need a lot more support long term. But it's that amount of money that's the tipping point to make another path feel possible.

[Kate]

Yeah. Because it wasn't like she was like A loser. She was working a job. She was taking care of herself. She was doing all the normal things. She just needed a little extra help to get her out of a situation or to set her up for a better future. When, you know you have. You have adoptive parents who are spending all this money for. To an agency, and it's like, wow. When you know she only needed a thousand dollars to help her situation to where she would be able to parent.

[Ty]

Is shocking, especially compared to what the agency gets as far as funds go, money to. To. To have the baby be adopted. It's like, wait a minute. Why are we not funneling these funds over here when it could be over here when a thousand dollars was all it took for her to not make that decision?

[Kate]

So even the other young lady that you speak about in your book where she speaks on, like, her hardest thing for her was not having her own car seat and having a truck. How am I gonna fit a baby in a truck and I don't have a car seat? Like, that was heartbreaking for me. Like, just to think that this lady feels like she has no other options because, yes, she's living with somebody else, which, who knows, that could have been okay. But her main fear was, I don't have a car seat, and how am I going to fit a car seat in a truck?

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right, Exactly. Like, how am I going to get the baby home from the hospital?

[Kate]

So sad.

[Ty]

And that's a problem we should be tackling.

[Gretchen Sisson]

It's so. And it's so easy to tackle. So easy to tackle. Right? And I think you can look at the tens of thousands of dollars that prospective adoptive parents put into adoption. Right? And I think a lot of. A lot of adoptive parents are told that the money that they spend on adoption goes to supporting their child's birth parents, like, during the pregnancy, which is. Which is not true. If you look at, like, you can look a lot of agencies that are nonprofit, you can look at their tax returns. A lot of them are spending more on marketing than they are on attorneys at all, and certainly more than they're spending on support.

[Ty]

Oh, yeah.

[Kate]

I never saw a dime.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah.

[Kate]

No, not that I would want to, you know, but I get.

[Ty]

No, but I have seen the. And it's all marketing. I mean, which I thought was really interesting. Okay, wait a minute. So you're actually spending all this money on marketing to market to get women. That's.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And to be very clear, predatory. They're not trying to market to find adoptive parents.

[Ty]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

They have way more adoptive parents. Right. There's up to 45 prospective adoptive parents for every baby available for adoption. The marketing is to convince pregnant people that they need to look at adoption. Right. To target that. And we, you know, I talk in the book about how they do targeted Google Ads or if you Google like help for single moms in Michigan, like you're going to start to get ads for adoption agencies. You could not, you could be googling something that has nothing to do with adoption but they'll buy. If you're like, how do I get enrolled on WIC in my hometown? Like you're going to start getting ads for adoption agencies. And if you're in a really vulnerable place in your pregnancy, right. If you're, you are struggling to figure out where the money is going to come from, where the stable housing is going to come from, your own parents aren't supportive or aren't able to be to support you. You know, you're struggling to finish school, whatever is going on in your life. And then you get these profiles of the adoptive families and they're married and they have a gorgeous home and they have their, you know, they'll say in the profile like, well our parents can't wait to be grandparents. And it speaks directly to what you are missing in your own life that you want as a child.

[Kate]

And that's exactly how it comes across to us. Birth parents. Same thing. When we were looking at profiles it was, it was like, oh my gosh, it's a two parent household to be able to be a stay at home mom. They have a beautiful dog, they go on vacations. Yeah, they go on vacations. Like completely opposite of what I was feeling in that moment and what we were going through. Yeah.

[Ty]

And honestly, I remember we were looking through the profile books that the agency gave us and we were like, I mean they all look really similar. Like, like which.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yes.

[Ty]

Like they all, yeah, like so they're almost like exactly the same. Maybe she's water skiing, but you're skiing on snow and she's skiing in water. But it was the same. So it was interesting how we're going through all these profile books and we're like, we don't even know. Like they all feel very similar but these, these guys kind of feel like the best fit. And I just remember thinking in my head like this is so weird that so many of the same people want these babies. I don't know, it's just, it's interesting looking back now obviously as an adult, but they're so similar.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah, so similar. I actually, I actually Worked on a paper with a colleague of mine, Jessica Harrison, looking at the similarity of these prospective parent profiles and like, the emphasis on travel, the emphasis of being a stay at home mom, the emphasis of like, like how they always have pictures of them with kids, even if they don't have children. Right. Like these are our nieces and nephews, we can't wait to have our own children. Or here are our best friends, friends, kids, right. Like they really put themselves into that role, which I understand, right. If you are looking for someone to care for your child, like you want to see that they love kids. Right. But like it ends up being so, just so similar and really upholding this really specific idea of what family could and should be and what is aspirational for a child.

[Ty]

And also it all, it comes across as, this is what's worthy if you, if you're a parent, if you want to be a really great parent, this is what makes you worthy of being a great parent. Having this house, having this, you know, all this connections and all this finance and just. Yeah. And just all that kind of stuff. And it really, in a way looking back, it feels like you're almost purposely preying on my insecurities as a birth parent. Because I wouldn't be looking at these books if I didn't, if I had that house, that, you know, financial stability. So it felt, it just. Yeah, it feels. And that's why I kind of feel like pre birth matching is not an ethical thing to do in my opinion. I just don't think it's, I don't think it's right, I guess because I look back at now and the fact that, you know, adoptive parents even go to the hospital in, in the middle of that intense situation. It's like, why are, it's, why are we doing that to these birth moms who are, you know, most vulnerable thing ever emotionally?

[Kate]

Because then when they're there and if they're there and you are having thoughts of changing your mind, then it kind of makes you feel guilty. Like, oh, but they're here and I don't want to hurt their heart or break their feelings or.

[Ty]

And I think that's what it comes down to is that like, even if you were to, even if we were to change our mind, it was our right to do so. Like it, we, and we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have been selfish to do that, in my opinion. And I think back then we were getting fed the opposite message that no, you would be selfish if you change your mind because you're going to break this family's heart and you're going to. You know what I mean? So it's. Yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Ty]

Okay.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And they went, she went out to dinner with them and their son, who they were raising, and he like drew a picture of her, like with the, with her belly, her pregnant belly and the baby inside. And she's like. And he's like, look, that's my little brother in there. You know, like, like just this sense of like obligations. Like, well, I can't break this five year old's heart. Right. Like what, you know, this, this obligation to this whole family I think was real. And I also think I have spoken with a number of mothers who, they're not in the book, but who have come to me after, who said, you know, I had second thoughts. And the agency said that I would owe them for the cost of my medical care that I received during pregnancy if I changed my mind.

[Ty]

Wait, the agency told them that?

[Gretchen Sisson]

Or attorneys who say, if you change your mind, then you're committing fraud and we gave you this housing support during your pregnancy and so if you change your mind, you need to pay us back for that.

[Kate]

Wouldn't that also be coercion then? So that legal?

[Ty]

Because.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yes, yes, yes, it's obviously coercion. It's probably not legal. But if you are already in that vulnerable place and you can't afford an attorney and you are confused and you're overwhelmed and you're probably hormonal. Right. Like, they're using like fear. They use this fear. And I, There are several cases like that that have come out which I.

[Ty]

Think is, is, that's part of the broken system here. Why, why are the adoptive parents, Lori, you know, getting a lawyer, but birth parents are not having any representation because they're just. Because they can't afford it. Like, it just doesn't seem.

[Kate]

It's because they can't afford it.

[Ty]

Which, which that comes to the fact of, oh, because they're more financially set, they're more worthy to be parents than I am. Which is just. That's the message you keep getting as birth parents. And it's like, like you look back at it now and it's like even, even the, for the instance of paying for housing for a pregnant girl. That is coercion to me because you're literally saying, hey, as long as you're carrying this baby and planning to hand this baby over to us, we'll pay for your housing. Well, why aren't we paying for helping her get a house now to be a parent? You know, like, it's like, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And on top of all the private money that goes in, so the money the adoptive parents are putting in to the adoption, there's also a federal tax credit for the adoption. So the federal tax credit for an adoption is $16,000.

[Kate]

Wow.

[Ty]

Wow.

[Gretchen Sisson]

$16,000 of credit to cover the expenses of the adoptions. Which is why adoptions can be so expensive and still be accessible to a lot of people. Right. If we were putting a similar investment into just a child tax credit that was accessible to families, these adoptions wouldn't be happening in the first place. I mean, $16,000 is quite crazy. It's a crazy.

[Ty]

That is crazy.

[Gretchen Sisson]

It's a crazy high tax.

[Ty]

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

[Kate]

Which that would get so far out of crisis.

[Ty]

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

[Gretchen Sisson]

Well. And some folks will say, oh, but the adoption tax credit credit benefits the adoptee once they're in the adoptive family. But you can actually claim the adoption tax credit, some expense of the adoption tax credit, even if the adoption doesn't go through.

[Kate]

Interesting.

[Gretchen Sisson]

So that, then it just. That renders that point moot. Right? Because you're actually just putting money into the adoption process. It's not supporting the adopted person as they grow up.

[Ty]

And I think that's kind of like where I think the lines kind of get blurred. Because one thing that I actually had an instant message recently from a girl in Australia, and she said that she's like, you know, listen to your podcast. I never knew that America had this thing where it was like, she's like, you know, over here, she's like, it's like, it's illegal to have adoption agencies. You can't commodify children. We can't. There's no, there should be no money involved. It's illegal. And the fact that I was like, whoa. The fact that it's illegal in other countries to even have adoption agencies, period, is mind blowing to me because obviously that other country realizes we can't commodify Children and exchange money for. For. For this to happen. Which I was like, wow. Like, so if we were in a different country, it would be. The agency we use wouldn't even be there because it's illegal. I thought that was really, really interesting because that's the difference between, like, how does America. What I wanted to ask you is doing your research, what do you find that what is unique about America? Adoption industry here versus everywhere else.

[Gretchen Sisson]

I mean, a lot. I mean, domestic adoption, the way we practice it in the United States is unique in the world. So when you look at a lot of, like, Western European countries, there's still a demand for adoption, but their adoptions were almost entirely international adoption. So bringing children from other countries into their country because they have a social safety net to a degree that we just don't have in the United States. And so if you're poor and you want a parent, you can usually find a way to get those resources. So it's like Danish women aren't relinquishing their children. There's still a really high demand in Denmark for adoption. So they would bring children from Korea, from Africa into Denmark for the purposes of adoption. Now a lot of Scandinavian countries particularly have started banning international adoption because of the coercion and human trafficking.

[Ty]

I read that.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah. So I don't quite know what scandal going to happen. Like, the demand for adoption is not going to go away. But the way that we practice adoption in the United States is pretty unique in the world. I think there's a couple of things going on. One is that it fits in really well with our deeply capitalist way of solving problems. Of problems. And two is that it's really closely tied with religious ideologies in the US To a greater degree than in other countries. So. So adoption is really rooted in. Historically, it was really part of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Charities, running these maternity homes like back in the 60s and early 70s. Today it's really part of the evangelical church in a lot of ways. And most adoption agencies in this country are church affiliated.

[Kate]

Yes.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And I should say a lot. People often push back, like, well, adoption agencies are nonprofit. Like, they're not making money. And I'm like, they can be technically nonprofit organizations, but people are still employed because they are facilitating adoptions. Like, those attorneys aren't working pro bono. Right, right. The photographers that are offering the package to the prospective adoptive parents to create their profile, they're getting paid. Like, people are getting paid at every step along the way through the agencies and through all these, like, ancillary services. That have developed around them. So there is tremendous money to be made both within and without and around, within and around the agencies. And I think that that's really important to understand is that they have a huge, huge demand for adoption, for adoptable babies. And in capitalism, when you have high demand, you're very motivated to generate supply. And in this case, supply is children.

[Ty]

Which is just crazy to me because I think about when people say, oh, it's nonprofit, I'm like, yeah, it's nonprofit on paper, but the CEO of these agencies are still walking away with six figures. I mean, you're pretending that this is not like people aren't living off of this. And they are. And I think that's the difference is that they are living off of this, you know, this agency. And I remember when we were looking at different agencies after the fact a couple years later, I couldn't find any that were not religiously affiliated. I couldn't find. I didn't see any of them that, that really looked legit enough. I couldn't find any that weren't somehow related or had Christian in their, you know, about page or. And I thought it was really interesting because when I looked at some of the studies that. What's the National Institute of Adoption?

[Gretchen Sisson]

National Council for Adoption.

[Ty]

Okay. So when I looked at the studies they did and then who funded the studies, the highest, the highest donation was from Catholic Brothers Social something. I can't remember what the name was, but I remember seeing it at the very top. And they donated a lot of money for that study. And in my head I'm like, wait a minute though, how can we even say that that study is not biased if these. It's funded by religious. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, it's murky. It gets murky. Like you said, the capitalism behind it all is just that. I think that's what separates us from other countries. And I think people don't really understand the fact that when I say a 25 billion dollar industry, they're like, well, wait, what? How is that possible? And I'm like, well, here's how it's possible. And it's almost like getting people to understand like the way that this industry works. It's like they have to go through like a withdrawal step. They get to like break them all down very slowly to them because they have this idea that it's a specific thing. And then when you throw numbers out there like that or facts, they kind of like, they really hesitant to accept.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Them because we bel. Again, it just gets back to this idea that we believe adoption is good and we. Nobody has been given space to, like, have a more complicated conversation about that. And I'm not saying that people can't have good experience, experiences within a bad system. And I'm sure you all hear from, you know, adopted people and other birth parents were like, I had a great and empowering experience. My first response is always like, okay, I'm really glad that that's what you're experiencing. Like, let's see where you are in 10 years. Because I talked with a lot of mothers who were like, this is amazing. This is great. This is going to do so many amazing things for me and my child. And 10 years later, they were like, this adoption never needed to. To happen.

[Ty]

Yep.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Ty]

And also, like, those negative experiences don't. Or those positive experiences don't negate the negative ones. And I think.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right.

[Ty]

They kind of like, use that well, that you're. You're trying to bash adoption. You're trying to make it all bad. And I'm like, I'm not, though. I'm. I'm just giving you a different perspective that kind of goes against obviously, what your experience was. And I feel like I'm very. I always say I'm very glad that you had a positive adoption experience. Now we need to work on making every adoption experience that positive. If it's. That's the goal, like, you know, that should be what the goal is, not to. To, you know, almost minimize the negative experience because you had a positive one. That's. Yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And one mother that I interviewed for the book who had a pretty good experience, I think is how she did describe it. She was very, very close with her daughter's adoptive parents. She was very close with her daughter. She went on, like, family vacations with them. I remember there was. She told me a story one time when her daughter was like, 9 or 10, and she came up to her and she was like, can I call you mom? And she's like, I don't ask your other mom if you can call me mom. And her mom was like, sure, you can call her mom, whatever. And her daughter kind of tried it on for a while. I was like, that feels weird. Went back and calling her by her first name. But, like, you have this interaction that shows one. Her daughter has full access to her.

[Kate]

Yes.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Comfort. Asking her these candid questions. The adoptive mom doesn't view her motherhood as a threat to their family. Right? Everybody is fully comfortable, open, and they're centering the child. Like, yeah, you want to call her mom? Try that out, See how that feels for a while, like, up. It's up to you. This is your adoption. This adoption was designed to serve you as the adopted person, and we want to continue to center that. And so she would say, I had a good. I had a good experience. But when I asked her, like, what would you change? Is there anything you would change about the system of adoption? She's like, oh, so many things, right. We didn't get support from our agency. There's too much money involved. Like, nothing was centering my child. And she's like, I got lucky, right. The people who adopted my daughter were incredible people who were very down to earth, did not feel threatened by me, Right? And she's like, luck is not. You don't build a system on luck. Right? She's like, the system is still deeply, deeply flawed, even though I had a good experience coming out of it. Because you can't base policy on luck. You can't base policy on individual relationships. Right. You have to set up a system that's designed to care for people long term. And this one does not do that. Even if some people can pull a good experience out of a bad system or get lucky.

[Ty]

Yeah, we always tell them that, like, you know, you're the exception. You're not the rule, though, for having that great experience. Because I have. If I had a way, on a scale, the negative versus positive, I mean, the negative is just so, so much heavier. So it's like you can't, you know, you're. You are lucky, but you shouldn't. We shouldn't have to be lucky in this industry. You shouldn't have. There shouldn't. There shouldn't be an assessed, you know, necessary for you to be lucky or not. It should always be like that experience that you talked about. The reason why I believe that sounds so positive is because it was centering the child, and there was not. You're not allowing the insecurities or fears of adoptive parents kind of override what the child wants.

[Kate]

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

[Ty]

And I also want to. I think it's important to applaud adoptive parents who do operate that way. Like that's. That's. Your intentions are pure. You must have had some kind of, you know, you must be trauma informed in some kind of way. And that's important. I also feel like, you know, there's. I know there's screening that is done for adoptive parents, but I believe there could be more education or ongoing. Ongoing? Yeah.

[Kate]

Every few years you have to take some new trauma classes or, you know.

[Gretchen Sisson]

But that's the kind of thing, like, when we talk about open adoption. Right. And like, what does it take to make a good open adoption work? You need to have. If agencies are going to sell the idea of open adoption, which they have to, because very few parents would relinquish at all if they were. It was a closed adoption.

[Kate]

Didn't you say something about that in the beginning of your book too, about how far, like, we're baby. There was like, there was tons of babies and there was like, no babies. And then they were like, oh, what if we do this open adoption thing?

[Gretchen Sisson]

In, like the late 80s, early 90s, they introduced this idea of open adoption because, like, no women were relinquished and there were fewer, you know, as. As contraception and birth control got more widely available, as abortion became more widely available, like, you were just having fewer people carrying unpran unplanned or unintended pregnancies to term. Yes. And so they needed to capture. Because of the market demand, they were like, well, how can we make adoption more palatable to pregnant women who are in a vulnerable place? And the idea was open adoption, right. You're going to have more contact. You're going to be able to have contact with your child. And openness is. Is protective of some of the worst kinds of trauma that can come out of adoption. So closed adoptions are generally more traumatic than open adoptions because these. A lot of the mothers that I interviewed who are in closed adoptions, like, they didn't know if their child was alive. Right. They didn't have. I mean, they literally had no idea. Some of them didn't even know they had had a boy or a girl because the baby was just taking. Taken away from them. The records were sealed. Right. Like, they were. It was just this black box. And they, you know, even in. Even in adoptions today, like, you can know your child is safe if nothing else. Right? Right. So openness is protective against some of the darkest kinds of trauma that can come out of closed adoptions. But openness isn't a fix on the system. Right. And I think open adoption, like, as you all know, can mean a huge range of things. Like, I've talked to mothers who are getting, like, pictures from the agency a couple times a year. I've talked to mothers who are Going on family vacation with their kids, adoptive families or are babysitting for their, their children's or for their children.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And so you have this huge range. It's not legally protected. It's really at the whim of what the adoptive parents want. And even in some states where there's some legal protection for openness, usually it requires like going through mediation first and if the adoptive parents refuse to do that, like a lot of these birth parents can't afford an attorney. So like legal protection means different things and doesn't often have very much enforceability to it either.

[Ty]

Yeah. I think it's interesting that you point out the fact that, you know, even in the states that they do have this legal protection for openness, it's still not, it's still not like, you know, legally enforceable to the point where I could get the adoptive parents in trouble or I could, they have some kind of consequence. It's not like we can force this adoptive parents to, you know, open and keep it open. It's like so. And I also think it's interesting because if, if, if openness was legally enforceable, then I think things would look a little bit differently. I don't know if they would look any less dramatic, but they would look a little differently. Because when we talk about, you know, coercion when it comes to women relinquishing, it's like, you know, when our agency said, here's your openness adoption agreement, here's the paperwork, we're going to put all the wants and needs and whatever desires and we're all going to sign it. But it's not legally enforceable. Then what is the paperwork?

[Gretchen Sisson]

Well, like it's, it's almost never legally enforced. Yeah, yeah, but, but also what it would take to get that to work like over the next 18 years and beyond in different ways are like counseling, you know, working through conflict resolution, being continually trauma informed, involving the child as they grow. Right. The adoption agency can't just be like, here's your openness agreement and here's your TPR and like go, good luck for the next 18 years.

[Kate]

And that's what they do.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And you don't have agencies offering that kind of support. And so like I remember one mother I talked to, she's like, I thought they told me that they had post adoption services and she thought that she was going to be getting the support that she needed throughout the open adoption. And she got like three therapy sessions in the first year. And then they were like, well, that's it. Right? Like there. There's this idea that, like, post adoption services are ongoing. Ongoing? Yeah.

[Ty]

I don't think we didn't get any post adoption. I don't even think we had one required therapy session.

[Kate]

I don't think so. I mean, I do think. I do think, like, we could always, like, call Don and talk to her and ask questions. She would help us process. But I don't think there was any, like.

[Ty]

But an unbiased, not connected.

[Kate]

Right?

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Kate]

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

[Ty]

That's kind of my hope, because they.

[Kate]

Weren'T getting any babies, so.

[Ty]

And if the paperwork's not legally enforceable, then what is the paperwork for the birth parent perspective, like, what is this paperwork then if not a coercion tactic to get you to make it easier for you and more safe and comfortable for you to relinquish.

[Kate]

And I noticed in, like, our culture in the United States, a lot of people that aren't involved in the adoption world, they. We see the question all the time, like, get a lawyer. Why can't you take them to court? Why? And I'm like, a lot of people do think that it's like, legally binding. And it's like, no, the only legal thing we ever did was sign our rights over to them and stop ours. That was the only legal thing we ever did.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Kate]

No.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And the family that has been created by the adoption, they have all the legal rights. And so everything you do is at their whim. And even if you do challenge it, like, good luck getting in front of a judge. That's like, you people who are legal strangers to this child have a right to say, and then what kind of openness is it going to have? Like, if they're. I mean, I can't even imagine the scenario where a judge would be like, yeah, you have to allow visitation. Like, okay, that's not a good.

[Ty]

That's why I say any less traumatic.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right. You know, and most, most parents can't afford a lawyer. No.

[Kate]

Like, no.

[Gretchen Sisson]

This is an expensive process.

[Ty]

And I also feel like people look at adoption as being this whole general thing, when really in reality it's a legal, Legal transfer and termination of parental rights and that's it. And so when people ask, well, what's the alternative? And it's like, well, there's, there's guardianship, there's, there's, there's fostering. There's so many different things that you could do if you really cared about just, you know, helping this child or whatever. You know, adoption is not necessary to provide safe external care for kids who are. Who need it. So I think that's. People don't really understand that when they're like, well, and they all. We also get a lot of hate as far as, well, you signed your rights while you knew what you were doing. And it was like, yeah, we were 16 and we, we.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And you didn't have your own lawyer.

[Ty]

Yeah, I didn't have my own lawyer.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Kate]

Yep.

[Ty]

And also, people like to. Like to assume that we had. We had to get a guardian to litem because her mom didn't agree and wouldn't sign because she was a minor. And so people are like, oh, well, you had a lawyer. No, a guardian. Litem is not a lawyer.

[Kate]

I was like, I had a guardian alone for like an hour, and it was just to sign my rights away legally. And then after that, she was gone.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And in many states, states, pregnancy is considered an emancipating event for a minor. So in some states, you wouldn't even have that.

[Ty]

Oh, wow. Which I think is a little. Yeah, that's insane.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right?

[Ty]

If we're gonna. And if we're going to. Like, that's, that's crazy to me that they're not. There are some states that you don't even need a guardian to light them. Like, how is that. That's their children. Like, relinquishing children. Like, how. Where are they?

[Kate]

Even the women. And even the women that aren't children. It's still. Is not okay.

[Ty]

It's just kind of the whole, the whole. I think the whole industry is just you all.

[Gretchen Sisson]

You signed your papers. You had to leave the hospital to sign your papers, right? Yes. Right. Because you signed in like the parking lot. Am I remembering?

[Kate]

Yeah, we handed her off in the parking lot.

[Ty]

Yeah. Because the hospital didn't agree. They said this is too, this is too legally.

[Kate]

Well, it's not legal and my mom wouldn't sign the paperwork.

[Gretchen Sisson]

In, in some states, you can't sign in the hospital or you can't sign within 48 hours of birth rate, but When I ever asked them, and they're like, yeah, I sign my papers in the hospital, or I sign my papers in the parking lot, or I sign my papers. Right. And I'd be like, do you know what you signed? Like, do you actually know what you signed?

[Kate]

I don't.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And a lot of times. And again, I'm not an attorney. And this varies a lot by state law. A lot of times you're signing two things. You're signing custody of the child over to the agency who then assigns custody to the. The adoptive family, the prospective adoptive family. Right. And you're signing a waiver to be. To be informed of ongoing legal proceedings. Right. So you probably wouldn't have been given a notice when, like, their adoption finalized on their end. Right, right. And so you are basically saying, I don't need to be informed of what happens to this child after this. And so then they can proceed legally with the adoption, basically, without letting you all know what's happening.

[Kate]

Which is crazy because they also tell you, like, you have 30 days to change your mind. But if you're signing something at that hospital, does that like, null and void that I wonder.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Kate]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Ty]

Have to prove to the.

[Gretchen Sisson]

You change your mind, you have to go to the judge and you have to say, like, oh, this baby who's been with this family for two weeks, this family who has more money and more capacity and more support and a better job like that. That actually I should get this. But you have to, like, demonstrate your.

[Ty]

Parenthood, which is crazy that you'd have to actually fight to a judge to prove that I'm worthy to have my own baby back. Yeah, like, that's. That. That's. I think what the point is that you not understand that the revocation period, I actually fight for that. It's not something automatically given to me as a birth parent.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And again, that varies, like, a lot by state. But, like, a lot of people are like, well, you can just change your mind or like, oh, if you can demonstrate coercion, like, you can get the baby back. And I'm like, no, you're not.

[Ty]

You would have to.

[Kate]

Yeah, you would have to prove a lot of things.

[Ty]

Even for the coercion that we signed, the paperwork that we signed in the hospital. We don't even know what that said. I've asked, like, what.

[Gretchen Sisson]

What.

[Ty]

What did we sign in order for that transfer in the parking lot to even happen? And I still haven't gotten the answer. I don't even know what that was. I'm assuming it was what you said, because we did that we have to sign two different forms. And then I had to actually go get an affidavit of parentage to be considered the legal father that I had to say. So it was a whole. And I look back at now, I'm like, why wasn't any of this, like, explained?

[Kate]

Like, I just want to know why the adults in our lives didn't say, what. What are you signing? We need to get a lawyer. Somebody needs to read this, or I need to read it as a parent.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Kate]

Well, like, outside of the agency.

[Gretchen Sisson]

I mean. No. Right. Like, the agency can sometimes still pay for it.

[Kate]

Right. See, that's.

[Gretchen Sisson]

I would want somebody like, you want somebody outside, but. But that's like, that's something that you can create policy on and say, yeah, you can't sign this contract without a lawyer.

[Kate]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Some states do require that. Most of them.

[Kate]

Good. It needs to be.

[Gretchen Sisson]

So I'm just saying, like, some of these things there's a fix for.

[Kate]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Fairly straightforward. Still have chosen not to do them.

[Kate]

Right.

[Ty]

Which is weird to me. Why. So that. That goes to say that, I mean, society. We're looking at this from the wrong angle.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah.

[Ty]

Like, I think we're looking at this adoption as. As fixed to certain solutions, like, oh, poverty, kids and, oh, lessening all this stuff. But it's not. We're not looking at. We're looking at it from the wrong angle. This isn't the solution.

[Gretchen Sisson]

I. I remember once I was on a call with the legislative team for United States Senator. Right. This is big, big leaks. Right. As far as policy. And we were talking about the federal policy, the federal tax credit for adoption, and some other adoption pieces that were coming up. And I just said it feels kind of odd that this senator is, like, so supportive of some of these policies around promoting adoption, feels inconsistent with other of her policy priorities. And they're like, well, she views this as an LGBTQ equity issue because A lot of gay and lesbian families adopt. She views this as consistent with her support to make IVF and infertility more affordable. So she wants adoption to be more affordable and she wants adoption to be more accessible for middle class families. And I said. You just said three things about what adults want and nothing about what children mean. Right?

[Kate]

Yes.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And I think that that is a paradigm shift that we need to make. What do children actually need?

[Ty]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

How can we keep. Our first goal should be how can we keep children in their family of origin and make sure that that is safe place? And that's going to mean investing in families, creating a social safety net. And I'm not saying every parent can care for every child that they give birth to, but how do you support them on a path toward parenting if that is what they want? Which most of the time it is.

[Ty]

It is because. And the. So the goal, even my policy is should be family preservation. Not to, not to, you know, give these adults the chance to be parents. It should really be focusing on the kids because that's who's the most effective. And it goes to show that, like, this is. I think the biggest problem is that we're, we're, we're just putting the wrong people as a priority in this whole adoption triad situation.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah.

[Ty]

The adoptees at the bottom, birth parents at the bottom, adoptive parents at the top. And it's like, why are we, why are we doing this? It doesn't make any sense because it's not, it's not really helping any of these children the way that they think it is.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah. I mean, I think that they. We just have this tendency to, like, oversimplify it because we do not live in a world where we want to understand the complexity of adoption. We want, you know, we believe adoption is good. We want adoption to be good. We want adoption to serve children and families the way that we believe that it is. And I think we fundamentally misunderstand the ways that we're failing people when we continue to be invested, invested, like on a cultural level. And that we believe, like, we believe that this is good, like that type of investment, but also financially deeply invested in this system too.

[Ty]

Yeah. Which is crazy because I feel like, you know, it's just a lot of the things that I. And honestly, a lot of the pushback that we get because we're getting the worst backlash we've ever had in our whole lives. Sixteen years on tv, you think we get it? We think we've seen it all. We've never seen this much negative.

[Kate]

We Started talking in a different light of adoption.

[Ty]

I mean, it was like the floodgates open and people. People just came after us. And I. I guess keep. We just keep talking about. I'm like, listen, this is an unfortunate, necessary, muddy, messy part before it gets to the good part, you know, hopefully, which is policy change, which is, you.

[Kate]

Know, and just educating people, like, about statistics and, you know, all of the real things involving adoption. So, like, through you doing all of your research and all the things for your book, I wanted to know, did you find any adoptions out there that didn't involve some type of coercion?

[Gretchen Sisson]

Well, it depends on how you define coercion.

[Ty]

Right.

[Kate]

Okay.

[Gretchen Sisson]

If you define desperation as coercion, then no. Okay, Right. Because adoption is always. I always say you don't convince women to give away their children unless they believe necessary for their salvation or their survival. And the salvation is obviously where you get into the religious part of it, where people believe that they have committed a sin by having sex, by being pregnant, you know, with being by while they're not married or whatever the circumstances are. And that, like, this is how they're gonna save their child and themselves is through adoption. That exists for a meaningful subset of. Of parents who relinquished. But survival is the big one. It's how I can't afford this child. I don't feel safe in my life. I don't have stability in my life. I can't give that to my child any other way. And I think that some others faced very outright coercion. Some were merely manipulated. But what allows the manipulation to take root is that function of, like, how am I going to survive and how am I going to ensure that my child can survive? And I think that that's a little different than, like, the. The coercion, which is sometimes, like, super blatant. Right. But a lot of this, like, marketing pitch wouldn't work.

[Kate]

The marketing, exactly.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Or if you're not in a deeply vulnerable place. And that's why I say, like, we've already failed in some of these circumstances. If people are like, well, if there's a mother who's homeless, like, she can't parent. And I'm like, you know what?

[Kate]

That's a problem.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Like, you're right. Why is she unhoused? We've already. We've already failed as a society to care for her as a person and find a path to stable housing and food, stability and, like, all of those things that she would need to be successful. But I want that for her as well as for her Child.

[Kate]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And so I think that that is part. And maybe she can't parent right away. Maybe that's going to take time. Maybe that's going to take six months. And we always need more people who want to care for children. But, but foster care and crisis care is not set up to maximize the odds that her child's going to receive good, safe, trauma, informed care that keeps her child connected to her while she gets on a path to stability and then reunites them. Like nothing about our current systems are designed for that.

[Ty]

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

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right. It's always a reflection of failing at some point. Yeah. Right. And we. That's why when we celebrate adoption as like this good and beautiful thing, I view every adoption as, as a failure to meet someone's needs before that point.

[Ty]

Because would it be necessary?

[Kate]

Makes sense.

[Ty]

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

[Kate]

Yeah. Because like I said, just listening to your book, I kept just the same thought in my mind every time I would listen to a new chapter. And I'm like, it comes down to resources and no help. Like most of their stories was just like no resources, no resources, no. No help, no support. I was just like, yeah, because at.

[Ty]

The end of the day it's like, I think people get confused where it's like they think that these birth moms are just so gung ho they want to do this adoption. It's like, it's like what percentage did you find that where birth parents actually wanted to parent versus like all like, you know what I mean? Like there had all of them want.

[Gretchen Sisson]

I mean almost all of them wanted to parent. I mean maybe like, I mean I've interviewed hundreds of birth parents at this point. I think maybe like two or three were like adopt. Like adoption is my first choice.

[Kate]

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

[Gretchen Sisson]

I mean the re. And this like gets into the, the abortion politics part. Right. Because most of the mothers who relinquished didn't consider getting an abortion and didn't want to have. They continued their pregnancies because they intended to. To parent. And so people always say like, what about all these unwanted children now that we have abortion bans? And I always say that most of the most mothers who relinquish weren't trying to get an abortion. Right. And also most women who are trying to get an abortion if they're denied care, over 90% of them are parenting.

[Kate]

Yes.

[Gretchen Sisson]

This is a very. Like this. There's a very. It's a Venn diagram with a very small overlap. And we think it's a circle, but it's not.

[Ty]

Well, people. People actually say that all the time. They're like, oh, well, well, if abortion's not here, we'll have more adoption or whatever. They kind of keep. It's like, that's.

[Gretchen Sisson]

I mean, you'll have. You'll have some more. Yeah, but you'll have, like. But that's only because so many people need and want abortions in this country and there are so few adoptions that, like, even if a very small proportion of people who can't access abortion care end up relinquishing, that's still a meaningful increase for adoption.

[Kate]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

But it's not like it's not going to be this flood that everyone thinks that it is. I mean, we have around a million abortions in this country every year, and you have about 20,000 private domestic adoptions of infants like these. So that's on the same scale.

[Ty]

Yeah. So that right there is proof that.

[Gretchen Sisson]

It'S not showing, like, and, and abortion has always been more common than, like. So even when we look back at like the baby scoop era, before Roe v. Wade, abortion is illegal everywhere in this country. Adoptions are at their absolute peak. Super coercive, secretive, extractive adoptions happening. Even then, there were five times as many abortions as there were adoptions. Now the data on, like, illegal abortions, like, a little fuzzy, but, like, it's an order of magnitude difference. Right. And so what that means is that most people who are continuing their pregnancies either doing so because they want a parent and they get to a point in their pregnancy where that doesn't feel possible. And, you know, I opened the book with Haley, right? And Haley, she was 19. She actually already had a son. She had a son when she was 16 that she was parenting. She was pregnant again. And when she was pregnant the first time, she had, like, felt really proud of herself. She got her life together. She got really good grades in school. She graduated high school. Well, like, she was. She had used pregnancy as, like a galvanizing way of like, I'm going to get myself together for this baby. So, so when she got pregnant again, she was determined to do that again. She went back to school. She's like, I'm getting a degree so I can get a better job so that I can take care of this baby. Like, we are going to make it. And she told this story about she was parked in the parking lot of a grocery store because the grocery store had free WI fi that she could reach from her car. And her son, her four year old son is asleep in the backseat. She like, got him settled and she's using the store's free WI fi so that she can do her homework for school in the parking lot. And she just had this breakdown and she's like, I just can't do it. Right. And that, like, that's the moment where the adoption happened. Right. Is where she didn't have any support. She didn't have any people around her saying, you can do this again. She had another child that she needed to figure out how to care for. Like the question of like abortion. Like, no, she's in her third trimester. She wants this child. Right. Like, people want to put abortion politics on these stories and I think they're a relevant part, part of understanding them. But like, this is not. No, no, part of that is a. Is what's happening here. What's happening here is you have this young mom in crisis who wanted to make it work and couldn't.

[Kate]

Yep.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And that's, that's where adoptions are happening.

[Kate]

Yeah. And I loved that how you described that in your book about just how people, yeah. They're not just automatically jumping to adoption. Most of them want to parent. And the ones that maybe wanted to get an abortion showed up, said, oh, you're too late. You know, you're so many, so many weeks. Then, then they're like, all right, well then I'm gonna parent. Like, their mind doesn't automatically go to adoption unless something significant happens.

[Ty]

Well, I also think it comes down to people believing that if they're against abortion, oh, well, let's elevate adoption and then it'll eliminate abortions. And we know by numbers. It's just, that's not the case. It's never was a case.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And I, you know, I, I'm on the faculty at the University of California in San Francisco. And it's, I mean, the ob GYN apartment there. Like, I'm, I'm very clear throughout the book. Like, I believe that access to abortion is, is a right.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And I believe that that is what we need to create healthy families and communities and women as individuals. So, like, I'm very clear on that. And if, then there are some anti abortion people who like, we're like, well, then I'll just throw the book out the window. Right. Like, if you're, if you're not values aligned with that. But I Actually believe that. That if you are uncomfortable with abortion or if you're opposed to legal abortion. The lesson of this book is adoption is not the answer.

[Ty]

Correct.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right, right. The common ground that you. We have, we have tried to make adoption be the common ground in the abortion debate. The common ground is parenting.

[Kate]

Yes. It is supporting women, Supporting people who want to parent. Yes.

[Ty]

Which is what our main priority should be. That should be the main focus, you know, So I had a question, though, about, like, do you believe after interviewing all this and getting all the data, is there any ethical forms of adoption that you can see?

[Gretchen Sisson]

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

[Ty]

Okay, no, no.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And that. But I think that's the question that where do we go from here?

[Ty]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

And I remember one reporter who asked me that question, and I think I literally just did the same thing I did here where I was like. And she transcribed, like in the interview, she said, long pause. Right. Because it's always like, where do you go from here? Right. I think that the system of adoption that we have now, one, commodifies children, two, is premised on inequality. And I don't believe that on those two premises, you can build an ethical system of adoption.

[Ty]

Right.

[Gretchen Sisson]

I believe that we need to think more broadly, not just about how we support families, but about how we care for children. And so as long as children are a commodity in this equation, there isn't an ethical way to do that. There's no ethical way to commodify a human being, and there never has been.

[Ty]

You can't really build on that.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Right.

[Ty]

You can't do this.

[Gretchen Sisson]

That's what we're starting. You don't get to an ethical system. I think that there are ways of thinking more expansively about what family means, what it looks like, and how we care for kids that aren't always going to be in their nuclear families. But I don't think that the current system that we have makes ethical practice possible. I think that you can have some forms of adoption that reduce harm, that center the child, that are trauma informed, that provide lifelong support, that are uncoercive, that try to address the root causes. Like, I believe that you could have a system that cares for people much more deeply than the one that we have now. But I think that ultimately you have to address the root inequities at the system before you can build something that's truly ethical.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Kate]

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

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah.

[Kate]

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

[Ty]

And that's kind of why our whole point of the podcast is even having people on like you is that, like, it's just not being talked about enough clearly, or else we wouldn't be seeing the pushback that we're seeing socially. I mean, it's, it's, it just, it's a conversation that needs to just be talked about and we need to talk about the alternatives to adoption, like kinship and guardian. There's so many different things that could, that could be, you know, even funded more and just made better that system could make better so that adoption doesn't need to even exist if this stuff is done better.

[Kate]

So, yeah, so honestly, I think my thing for people that are listening or are watching and maybe you have questions about adoption, you know, maybe you want to know about the statistics or learn some facts. Definitely. I highly suggest reading Relinquished. Tyler was the first one to read it and then he was like, you need to read it.

[Ty]

And I even get.

[Kate]

And then I listened to it and I was like, whoa, this is so eye opening and it makes so much sense and just the factual stuff in it really helped me a lot. So I think that it is a very good read or if you want to listen to it. But I just want to say thank you for coming on and just kind of chatting with us. And where can people find you? Where can they buy the book?

[Gretchen Sisson]

Yeah, well, you can buy the book anywhere books are sold, preferably your local independent bookstore. But any. You'll be able to find it anywhere. It's out there in the world. I am on Instagram, Gretchen Sisson. That's probably the best social media for me now. Also on Blue sky, same thing. I'm not on TikTok. I feel like I maybe aged out of TikTok, but I know that there's a lot of really exciting conversation happening there, a lot of incredible adoptive voices. And so I would encourage listeners to really. And I know if they're listening to you all, they already are probably. But like, follow along to adoptive voices on your social media platform of choice, because I think that is what's actually going to lead the conversation forward in the most critical way.

[Ty]

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree.

[Kate]

Just search adoptee talk on TikTok.

[Ty]

Yeah, adopt you. Tick tock hashtag. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's on there.

[Kate]

Well, thank you so much.

[Ty]

Thank you.

[Kate]

We're really excited to talk to you and love the book. Thank you so much.

[Gretchen Sisson]

Thank you.

[Kate]

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[Gretchen Sisson]

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[Kate]

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