Let’s Get Ethical

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We are the Nelsons. I am Lynette. And I'm Sean. Thanks so much for joining us. In this episode we'll be talking about an experience that we had where we matched with an expectant mother, but the agency that she was using had some kind of shady practices. So we'll be talking about how that all played out, what we learned from that experience, and we'll talk about why choosing an ethical agency is so important.

0:37Last week when we left off we were talking about how our in vitro journey ended, and ultimately our doctor told us that if we ever wanted to get pregnant we would need to have an egg donor or an embryo donor. And we actually had a few friends offer to donate eggs and embryos to us, and it was really really touching. It's an incredible thing to have someone offer something that huge, but it's really not what we felt pulled toward. We were probably feeling like we were done

1:12for the time at that point and not planning on pursuing growing our family for a while, but as we talked about that experience did kind of leave us wondering if there might be more kids that were supposed to join our family, but we didn't do much about it for a while. So we didn't have any plans to jump back into getting approved to adopt again or look at fostering, potentially foster to adopt, or fertility treatments at all anymore. Like Lynette mentioned we had a great

1:44friend's offer to donate eggs, but it just didn't feel like the way that we wanted to grow our family. We left off talking about how these experiences left us thinking that our family might not be complete, but we hadn't really talked together at this point about what our next steps were. And when people asked us, which they did quite frequently, what our family plan was, we usually just said that we were done at that point. And we even started getting rid of some of our baby gear, baby clothes, stuff like that, which is funny. We've done that between all of our kids,

2:19actually. That's true. So Sean actually had a co-worker who knew that we were open to the idea of adopting again, even though we weren't approved or focused on it. We had no plans for it at this point, but she knew about this. And this co-worker is a black woman and that plays into this story. So the community that we live in is predominantly white and this, like Lynette mentioned, this particular co-worker of mine is black. And one day she was at a store or in, I can't remember

2:55where they were, but another black woman approached her and said, hey, I'm not from around here, but are there any good places I can get my hair done? And they kind of struck up a conversation and they became really quick friends. And it turned out that this woman that my friend met was an expectant mother who was flown here. She was working with an adoption agency in our state and she was flown here. So the baby could be born here. In their conversation, she had shared with

3:26my friend that though she was working with the agency, she didn't really have any family that she really liked from that particular agency that she could be matched with. And so my friend mentioned that Lynette and I had adopted and that we were open to adopting again and that she thought it would be a good idea if we met. Yeah. And so we ended up meeting. We went out to lunch together. Like the next day. Yeah. It was all very fast and very sudden. We didn't even have time to really think about it or process it, but we met and became quick friends too. She's very personable

4:00and likable. And we struck up a relationship quickly and started talking about the possibility of adopting her baby. So like Lynette mentioned, we had lunch together and I think it was just a few days later, we were having a family birthday party. And like we've mentioned in previous episodes with open adoptions in our family, we invite all of our birth families and birth parents to birthday parties. Yeah. Birthday parties are this great big celebration in our family where

4:32we have all of our family. It's uncles, aunts, cousins that are biological, adoptive. It's a big mosh podge. Our village, our family. We love it. Yeah. And so we invited her to come to that so she could get to know our family and kind of feel out what adoption kind of looked like in our family. And she came. It was a really sweet, good experience. We had a good time and she had a good time. And she also had an older son that was with her. He was preschool age probably and was staying

5:07with her while she was out here. And so he came to the party too. And he was about the same age as our oldest at the time. Yeah, they became buddies. It was fun. This woman told us that she was interested in placing with us and we had a good relationship going where we were talking about what adoption would look like if she chose us. But we did have some concerns. Among those concerns, we were worried that she was from a different state that was not near ours at all. She was across

5:40the country and flown to Utah a few months before she was due and seemed a bit like a red flag to us. Not about her, but about the agency that she was working with. We had heard other people talk about how this sometimes happened as a way to bypass father's rights to parent their child. Yeah, and each state has different laws. But I think the particular law was that if you live in or are in the state for a certain amount of days, 50 days or something, I'm not sure.

6:14I don't remember the details, but that you could relinquish your parental rights without the biological father doing the same. So in the back of our minds, that was kind of like a little iffy. It was definitely concerning. And she didn't talk much about this baby's biological father. And we didn't want to pry. Like there's lots of different sensitive experiences that really weren't our business at that point, right? We kept building a relationship with her and we

6:44realized that if we were going to adopt her baby, that there were kind of two options for us. We could do a private adoption where, you know, we just worked with an attorney and her to figure everything out. And in a private adoption, you should also provide counseling and support. Yeah, that's a great side note. It's not just a legal transaction, but we as adoptive parents should take all the measures possible to provide legal representation for birth parents and also any counseling that they need post placement or even before. That's a really important aspect

7:18of that that needs to be shared. So we could do a private adoption or we could do, or could work with the agency that she was working with. And the agency that she was working with, it was paying for her to stay in a hotel. It was paying for her food. It had paid for her flight out here and we just started getting these iffy feelings about this agency. She felt like her hotel room, I don't know what the problem was, but there was a problem with that where it didn't feel good.

7:50Like she felt like it was kind of dirty and gross and she didn't have enough money for food, but the agency was supposed to be paying for her food and it was just really sketchy. Yeah. And we knew at the end of the day, all of those fees that this agency was paying for her would be transferred to whoever adopted her child. And obviously expected parents need to be taken care of and respected. But they also can't be coerced. And the way that it was all coming across, she felt very obligated to this agency. She didn't feel like she could work in a private adoption or she couldn't switch

8:26to a different agency that met her needs better because she felt indebted to the agency already, even though she hadn't given birth yet, she hadn't signed any papers. She didn't have any legal obligation to this agency, but the way that they treated her, she felt like she did. Yeah. As we started talking about doing a private adoption, she was like, that sounds really good, but I really felt like I have to stay with them. Like, are they not going to fly me back home if I change my mind now? And yeah, it was just a really weird spot. And so I ended up calling the agency to see if we

9:02could work with them, what the logistics of that would be. Yeah. We had a lot of questions about this agency. So it was really, I think Sean also to kind of testing out the waters to see what was going on, why it felt like she wasn't being taken care of, what really was going on on that agency side. And so yeah, Sean called the agency and had a chat with them. And by chat, I had like an hour long conversation with their director. I expressed a lot of my concerns, a lot of our concerns about some of the unethical seeming practices that were happening, how she pretty much felt coerced. She

9:38felt like she was being pushed to pick a family from their pool of families and they were pushing her toward one specific family. Even though she didn't want to choose that family. After a very, very long conversation, it was clear that the agency wasn't going to budge in anything to make it work with us and her. And most importantly with her, right? Like, yeah, so frustrating. They weren't focused on what she wanted or needed at all. It was, it was really a dark experience for us. I mean, it was an eye opening experience, but seeing that side of adoption, I think,

10:13helped us realize that there are some bad things that happen in adoption. At that point, we had a conversation with her and said, Hey, we love the relationship that we had with you already. It was a new relationship, but yeah, we, it was growing quickly. We felt a very real bond with her. We cared about her and her son. Yeah. We said like, Hey, we would, we totally want to work with you and we would love to be placed with your baby. If that's what you want, we would love for you to be

10:43part of our family and for your baby to be part of our family. But we shared with her our concerns about working with that particular agency. And at the end of the day, she felt like she had to stay with them. And we felt like we could not work with that agency for us personally. It was just, we couldn't work with that agency and feel good about what we were doing in the future. Like, everything about how this child would have come into our lives would have been uncomfortable for us. And I think always looking back, we would feel that and remember that the way that your children

11:18come into your family is really important. It's going to be something that you remember forever, that your child is going to ask about a lot at some point that the birth parents of your children will have gone through the same experience. And we just want it to be the best situation possible for everyone involved. Yeah, we want everything to be ethical and above board. We don't want anything to be questionable. We want to feel confident that we've really prioritized people, expectant parents

11:48and their wishes, our children, everything. We want to just make sure that we're focused on making sure people are being taken care of. I guess maybe another thought that I'm having right now goes back to the interview episode that we did with Brianna and Andrew. Yes, they had some great advice. A lot of this really does tie together when they talked about ethics and adoption. And I think it is important if you are going to work with an adoption agency, that you ask them lots of questions. I think they mentioned in that interview episode, ask some of

12:22the birth parents that worked with that agency, how they were treated, what the experience was like for them. And I think that's a really, really good practice. It's really important for us as adoptive parents to make sure that we are advocating for ethics, for ethical practices, for change where things aren't ethical. We need to make sure that we are asking ourselves every day, are we engaging in responsible behavior as adoptive parents? Are we compromising so that we get what we

12:58want? Are we compromising our standards and the well-being of other people? Or are we really focused on giving expectant parents the freedom and the choice to make the choice that feels right to them? I mean, you want to feel really comfortable with the decisions you're making. And it's really tempting and really hard. Just do anything you can to have a child. I mean, we've been there where we

13:28just feel like we want it so much. That ache and longing to have children, but... I can't bend your morals. I can't bend your values. And it's easy to maybe let that happen in certain circumstances or situations. But we can't do that. Yeah, it's our responsibility to make sure that we are advocating for ethical treatment of especially birth parents because agencies... I don't want to villainize all

13:59agencies. This isn't all agencies that do this. But there are a lot of adoption agencies that don't really focus on expectant parent or birth parent well-being. And they kind of exploit these parents and are just using them to make a profit. And that's not okay. We need to be advocating for treating people with respect and dignity. To sum that up, our advice would be make sure that you feel really comfortable with the ethical practices of an agency that you're

14:35working with. Ask lots of questions. Have lots of conversations. And feel good and feel comfortable about who you're working with and how they're treating expectant parents, adoptive parents. And ultimately adoptees. Yeah, I feel like agencies often cater to adoptive parents and treat them pretty well. So it's easy to look at an agency if you're just looking at the adoptive parent experience and say, oh, it's a great agency. My friends had a great experience there. And most people are going to say that if they adopt a baby, right? Yeah, I think Breanna

15:07and Andrew talked about that as well. But it's true. And so it's important to be looking at the experiences of expectant parents and birth parents. See if they felt respected. Did they feel like they were treated well? So during this whole interaction, we felt like it was probably going to work out. And so right, right toward the beginning, after we met, we decided that we were going to get approved to adopt again, just so that if it did work out, we were ready to go legally and have everything

15:40in place. We homestead approved. Yeah. Yeah. And so we were ready and approved about a week after we had this discussion with this expectant mom where we decided we probably weren't going to be able to do this. And it was a good like mutual conversation. Like we both expressed like how much we wish that it could work out. But under the circumstances, it just wouldn't. And yeah, yeah, we cared about her. She cared about us. It was, yeah, it was a good relationship, but

16:15it didn't work. And that's okay. That happens. Yeah. And we parted ways on really good terms. Oh, one other thing that we failed to talk about when we were thinking about kind of the practices of that particular agency. I think this one's worth at least highlighting so that it's something on your mind. If you're, if you're a hopeful adoptive parent or couple, this might be another thing to look at. So this particular agency, in addition to paying for all of those expenses that we've mentioned before, which I think is pretty living expenses, yeah,

16:45also offered a scholarship. So they were offering her a couple thousand dollars. I don't know the exact amount. It was like $4,000. Yeah. And they called it a scholarship, but it was just going to be handed to her after she placed. It was definitely sketchy feeling. It wasn't enough for it to be, I don't know. I don't know exactly what the laws are around that, but I know that you have to be really careful with anything that makes it feel like child trafficking or like a

17:18transaction. Yes, yes. And to be really clear with all of this, we are blaming this agency, not this birth mom, because this agency was preying on this woman's need financially. She was in a really desperate situation and they were exploiting that and it's really sketch. I mean, we want to provide for needs and, you know, going through a pregnancy that's unplanned, there are some additional

17:50costs and changes in life, whether that's work circumstance or whatever it may be. And so there are definitely things that we can help with in this situation. And that's something that you can work between. If you're with an agency, that you can work with the agency if you're doing a private adoption with a lawyer. But we've heard of some where expectant parents ask for things that are too high value monetarily for it to be ethical. Yeah. And I think Brianna mentioned that someone said they needed a car and she said her friend was like, well, just buy her a car. While that's,

18:25I think, super sketchy on its own. You just have to be so careful. It's really important to make sure that everything is above board. You want to make sure everything is going to check out legally. And if this expectant parent decides to parent their child, which is their right, you might not get those things back. You most likely won't. And so you need to make sure that you're okay meeting these needs that they have to help them get through this time, even if it doesn't result in you bringing

18:58home a baby. You don't want to be over fulfilling though, to the point where it's getting morally gray. And I think that brings up a really important point about open adoption. Like you want to set appropriate boundaries. We don't want to set expectations of something that we can't meet in the future. And while we are providing for some needs of expectant parents in the moment, we don't want to set up something, some unhealthy relationship. Anyway, we just wanted to mention the scholarship thing and I guess dive in a little bit more into the ethics. We're a little bit passionate about

19:29this. It's something really important to us. So if it feels a little soap boxy or ranty, that's why, because it really, really, really is important to us. Yes. This experience really did drive this all home for us so much. Just seeing and becoming friends with this expectant mom first and then seeing how she was treated by this agency and manipulated. Yes, she was so manipulated. It it was just really hard to see. They weren't focused on her as a person. She felt like a

19:59commodity and she was treated like a commodity and it's not okay. Let's do what we can as an adoption community to be more ethical and promote better ethics and the practices that we are involved in. And so I think just one more quick thing that really does come down to us as adoptive parents. If we support agencies that aren't ethical, then they're going to stay in business and we're perpetuating a problem. Yeah. And ultimately it's our responsibility to try to work with agencies if we're working with an agency that are ethical. Yeah. And and

20:34Lynette mentioned this earlier and I hope we don't sound like super, super anti-agency. We just had a really negative experience with this particular agency and wanted to highlight some of those experiences. We know that there are some great agencies out there that have some great practices but be cautious and and support expectant parents and their rights and the way that they're being treated. And I think that if we as a community can do that, we can see some positive changes. Absolutely. Advocate for fair treatment. So we were approved to adopt again. We had made the

21:11decision that we would not be pursuing this adoption anymore. And we kind of found ourselves in this state of limbo again, like, well, we're approved to adopt. We're not working with any particular agency. Should we try to pursue a private adoption? And so we posted our profile online. There was an online hosting site that we posted to, but we didn't invest much in this. Yeah, I think in the back of our minds, we were saying, you know what, if we're supposed to adopt,

21:43it will happen. Let's put our profile online. I really thought in my mind, we're going to put it online for a year. Our home study is going to expire after a year. We're not going to get picked in in that time. And then at that point, we'll have to decide whether we renew our home study or if we just kind of move forward with our life with our two great kids that we already had. Yeah, I think I was thinking about that on the same lines as you, we weren't really expecting anything to happen, but we had already paid to get approved. So we were like, well,

22:15while we're approved, why not just throw our names up there? Do you want to talk at all about different online platforms for posting profiles? We mentioned a little bit before that the agency that we had worked with previously had stopped doing adoptions. And so we were looking at different options for adopting again in the future. And now that we were approved to adopt, it was natural for us to pursue it, at least in some regard. And so we decided that we would go

22:46the private route and really for people hoping to adopt, there are kind of three channels, three primary ways that you can jump into the adoption world. First is through the foster care system. And we recently had an episode with Crystal where she talked a lot about that fostering to adopt. So that's one avenue. Another is working with an agency where they do your home study approval. They also match you and do follow up visits after placement. All of those services are provided.

23:19And then the third is private adoption where you self-match, where you put yourself out there and connect with an expectant parent or expect a couple that feel like you're the right match. And then you work through an attorney to do everything legally. And again, like Lynette mentioned earlier, we provide counseling for the expectant parents, really, really focused on the expectant parents experience and making sure that they're being treated well and that we're building

23:49a beautiful relationship. So we jumped into that third option of a private adoption, knowing that for us at the time, working with an agency might be difficult a little bit financially. We had just been turned off really hardcore because of ethics. And really that was the first experience with another agency that we had other than the one we used to adopt our first children. And so we kind of had this maybe negative feel toward agencies in general. So we jumped on

24:21a private adoption option. And then the adoption world, it's really word of mouth that you rely on to match in a private adoption. It's all about networking, getting yourself out there. And it's been really interesting to watch how that's evolved over time. Because when we first were waiting to adopt our second child, we were posting on Facebook all the time and trying to network that way. And it has changed. We were posting on our personal pages. There weren't Facebook groups back then.

24:56Hey friends, we're hoping to adopt. And we have sent so many acquaintances and friends that have done that. And a friend of a friend knew someone who knew someone and connections happened and adoptions happened that way. And so we were jumping in and we knew, I won't name any particular websites or matching organizations that are out there. Yeah, we're not like advocates for any of them. Yeah. So we decided to put our profile on one platform. It was a pretty prominent platform at the time and it was a good option for us. It's important to do your research about the platforms

25:33that you're putting profiles on. So this has been a little bit more fresh for us right now, because we are actually homestead approved to adopt a fifth time. We'll see if it works out or how it happens. It does sound crazy. It sounds so crazy. It feels like what we need to try it at this point. Anyway, we've been looking at a lot of different places that hosts online profiles for couples. And we're, you know, we're using one right now. We will probably change soon. There's a lot of places online where self matching is a thing. And so like if you're on Facebook,

26:08there are several different groups out there with thousands of people in them that have hopefully adoptive couples and expectant parents that are in private groups where you can post your profile, where you can potentially make connections. So that's one option. And there are a lot of people in that realm of, of hoping to do or hoping to self match, whether they're working with an agency or doing a private adoption. There's a lot of self matching happening nowadays, but there are

26:38some particular hosting sites out there that you need to be a little cautious if you're going to use. There was one that I've seen a lot of people using and posting in some of these Facebook groups. I kind of started signing up for it and looking like what, what kind of information is hosted on a profile. And I reached out to them as a company and I asked several questions. I was amazed at how little they actually did. This particular one that I'm mentioning now charged $75 a month for a couple

27:10to host a profile. The company does nothing but post a profile online. The communication, the actual connecting to expect the parents happens by them reaching out to you. And so I looked at this one and they had over 300 profiles on their website of individuals or couples that were hoping to adopt. And so I reached out and I said, asked some questions like, well, on average, how many expectant parents do you have coming, using your site to connect with? And at the end

27:42of the day, I realized that in a year they had 10 matches and there were 300 profiles, 300 people or 300 individuals paying $75 a month to this company. And they are rolling or like they are making bank off of nothing. And so if you're going to use an online profile host, just do your homework, ask, ask the hard questions. And if they're not transparent, it's probably a bad sign. And you know what, maybe, maybe you've, maybe that's the way that you're going to find your baby.

28:16And that's okay. I mean, there were 10 matches and so that's not nothing to those 10 families that were built that way. But, but just do your homework. And again, it kind of goes, kind of goes back to this like yearning to have a child and willing to pay money to get your name out there or do whatever you can to help that happen. But do your homework, ask the hard questions. And make sure that you feel comfortable with where you're at. And if you do, great.

28:46So bottom line, be careful out there. It's kind of a jungle. Sometimes in the adoption world, there are some great agencies and some great places that help make things go smoother and make the adoptee experience ultimately better. But there are also some less benevolent players in the adoption world who are not thinking about what's best for expectant parents, birth parents, and adoptees. This episode's kind of a downer episode. We apologize for that.

29:20We know that there are hopeful, adoptive couples listening to this podcast that have never adopted at all. And so we've been in this community and going through these processes for over a decade. And this is one thing that we feel passionate about and that we want others to know about. Ethical practices, people trying to exploit both expectant parents and hopeful adoptive parents

29:51to make money. It's a real thing. And so just be careful and stay true to your values and morals. Absolutely. And do your research. Yeah, do your research and feel good about the practices you're engaging in in the adoption world. So at this point, we in our story, we were approved to adopt. We had our profile posted and our expectations were low, very low. We'll pick up that part of the story in future episodes. Next week, we have another adoptee interview. And you know that we

30:30love our interview episodes, but we love our adoptee interview episodes most of all. They really are just the best and my favorite thing about this podcast. Because we really get to learn about their experience and as adoptive parents or friends and family of people who have adopted or are hoping to adopt, we can all learn from adoptees. It's really so much the best source of information and knowledge, I think. And so we're really excited next week to share an interview

31:05episode where we talked to Malena. She is an adoptee and she was born in Columbia and ended up growing up in the United States. She will be talking about her experiences as a transracial adoptee. And she'll be talking about her search for her birth family. And she has so much fun. I think you're going to love next week's episode. And we're grateful if you stuck around with us for our big rant on ethics today. So we would invite you to engage with us about ethics. We'd love to hear your questions or your experiences with either really good ethical practices that

31:40we can highlight or maybe some questionable things that you've experienced. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. We'll see you next time.

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