Word: births
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...doing genealogy" are typical little white lies. Many justify their actions with the claim that they are victims of adoption, robbed of their heritage or shamed into giving up an illegitimate child. Their anger and desperation have led some psychologists to conclude that adoption leaves a permanent wound. "Birth parents and adoptees are amputees in our society," says Los Angeles psychologist Annette Baran, who specializes in adoption- related counseling. Says she: "I think reunions are excellent, even when the outcome...
Reunions are not for everyone. Some birth mothers would slam the door if their relinquished baby came knocking. In fact, the search process is the focus of a great debate in adoption circles. Critics contend that it breaks legal contracts, that confidentiality should be the cornerstone of adoption. Says a woman who gave up a child 28 years ago: "The mere thought of being found by this baby is so upsetting. I made a new life for myself, and it doesn't include...
When Nicole entered the hospital on Aug. 26, Dick's beeper sounded and the Evanses rushed over from a Los Angeles Raiders game. Jan helped coach Nicole through her labor and the birth of the baby girl. The Evanses named her Rebecca; Nicole nursed her in the birthing room...
...world between having a baby . . . and getting a baby. So much has changed in U.S. society in the past generation -- legal abortion, the growing acceptance of single motherhood, new concerns about infertility -- that people looking to become parents face a most intricate enterprise. Possessing a scarce resource, birth mothers can often dictate their terms; operating in a crowded marketplace, adoptive parents must be ingenious and relentless in their search and accommodating in their negotiations. As middlemen, the old-fashioned agencies must now compete with newfangled lawyers and adoption consultants. Sometimes, as with Nicole, the groundwork is laid by an organization...
...there is adoption's dark history to overcome. Until very recently, every party to the transaction bore the scars of its language: "promiscuous," "barren," "illegitimate." When adoption professionals called a woman the natural mother, it left adoptive parents in a semantic dilemma. Were they unnatural parents? The techno-jargony "birth mother" was the more neutral alternative. All the secrecy reinforced the shame: as recently as the 1970s, some delivery-room nurses covered the mirrors and draped towels in front of a woman giving up her child, or even blindfolded her, so she could not see the baby. In the nursery...