Why are they in a hospital bed? (Adoption related)

[FightingtheFoo]

I just want to be clear this has nothing to do with the parents in question being a same-sex couple. I feel equally about surrogacy whether it's Kim Kardashian buying a baby or Pete Buttigieg.

With that disclaimer:

Why on earth is he posing in a hospital bed?

I just find the absolute airbrushing out of the woman who actually carried, nurtured and gave birth to those babies for 9 months horrifying.

https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1434167993769111552

Women sometimes choose during their pregnancy to relinquish the babies for adoption. It’s not forced by the state. If so, they get to pick the adopting parents and can choose to have them begin parenting immediately. Every state has its own waiting period where the mother can change her mind. (Technically the father as well)

If the state takes the baby at birth, it’s likely the mother has a previous history with social services and the baby would technically be placed as a foster to adopt so the potential adoptive parents might be in for considerable heartbreak even months later but they do know this when the placement begins.

My experience is that even healthy babies are required to stay in the hospital for at least 24-48 hours. All the hospitals in our area only have private maternity rooms and the nurseries are only for sick babies or mothers who are incapacitated; babies generally stay with their parents in room.

Last one

'In the UK there are around 6,000 children who need to be adopted every year. Many of these children are of school age and over 50% of them are brothers and sisters who would need to be placed together. These children come from a wide variety of different religious and ethnic backgrounds. '

Population 60 million I think. 6k.

Indiana 2k adoptions (completed that's not number of children who could be adopted). 6 million people.

@Hoowhoowho

The hospital bed doesn’t bother me but the US newborn adoption system is as ethically questionable as surrogacy.

Women ‘match’ usually during pregnancy with prospective parents
They are paid expenses which they often feel pressure to give back if they choose not to place the baby
The prospective parents are often present at the birth, they are often pressured to sign relinquishments within hours of birth
There is pressure to move states to avoid the baby’s father staking any claim to the baby as in some states, a father has to register his interest prior to the birth whether or not he knows the women is pregnant, whether or not he knows she will go to that state.
In many states open adoption agreements are unenforceable
Counselling is often coercive and many women receive neither independent counselling or legal advice

The newborn adoption system in the US sidelines mothers just as surely as surrogacy.

Women who wish to give up their babies at birth can match and choose the adoptive parents based on their own personal values - religion, race, education, geographic location, etc. Women may request expenses for - housing, medical, legal, transportation, and support of other children. They are not required to pay back ANY money, even if they change their mind about placement. Paternal registration is meant to protect the father's rights. A woman cannot sign her baby over for adoption and just claim the father is "unknown". Potential fathers (sex partners) must be located and they can choose to sign over paternal rights or be tested and if they are the father, can stop the adoption and request custody. Open adoption agreements in private adoptions are mostly unenforceable; court approved agreements are enforceable. Many types of counseling are available to women but most counseling services have their own agenda; United Way, Planned Parenthood, and religious counseling are a few that are free.

See the stats etc above.

There is something dodgy as fuck going on imo

The USian adoption system is almost as much baby trafficking as surrogacy in some areas.

I also highly doubt that these babies were adopted. I think it's far more likely they paid a woman to gestate these babies and bought them from her at birth.

To be honest I didn't get what why people are getting upset with the picture, then I thought how weird it would it have been if my male OH had popped into a hospital bed for a photo with our LO. And I think I kind of get it.

Its like the hospital bed is quite a symbolic bit of furniture really. Maybe it was the only place they could fit both of them. Or they had been having skin to skin or something. I don't know.

@LobsterNapkin

I'm not sure I understand the issue. Most hospitals in the US don't have large wards as in the UK, babies room in with the parents. Typically only a night or so but sometimes longer. So this is likely the room for the babies and parents, with the latter sitting on the bed for the photo.

I'm not sure who else would be taking care of the babies, they can't stay in the room alone.

The issue is homophobia.

Maternity rooms are for women giving birth or recovering afterwards, not the care of infants whose parents didn't just give birth. A newborn may be kept in the same room as its postpartum mother for convenience and bonding (unless it needs to be in the NICU or something), and maternity rooms often have both a bed and a bassinet or incubator to accommodate that. But if the baby is hospitalized and the mother isn't, they don't put the baby in a maternity suite just because it's a baby - that's not what they're for. Here, the babies' adoptive parents aren't hospitalized and certainly aren't postpartum, and the babies aren't being cared for by their biological mother, so I don't think they'd have been given that type of room.

Most surrogacy arrangements involve one or both parents legally adopting the child. In a few states, this can be done before birth. In a few others, legal motherhood is determined by DNA rather than gestation, so if an embryo that used the husband's sperm and the wife's ovum was implanted into a surrogate, there would be no need for adoption. But two men can't both be the biological parent of the same child, by any definition, so even if one's sperm was used, the other would still need to adopt the child to legally establish the parental relationship. I don't have a problem with surrogacy, personally, but I think it's worth noting that saying "These children are/will be adopted" doesn't eliminate that possibility.

As for the Indiana stats, many children adopted in the US were adopted from overseas, so have nothing to do with the rules for birthmothers in the US. Many more are adopted by close relatives like grandparents, so still, nothing to do with those rules. And then there are the ones taken by the state - you have to really screw up for that to happen, and stay screwed up for years. And then there are surrogacy arrangements, which usually also involve a legal adoption. Oh, and stepparent adoptions - that's a lot. Maybe more than all the rest combined. The number adopted via private placement, where birth parents and adoptive parents "match" and then negotiate terms, is much smaller than the total number of children with at least one adoptive parent. And I can't think of a better way of doing it while still allowing the birthmother free agency to choose whom she wants to raise her child.

We don’t know if they are in the maternity ward or just in a generic hospital room. Most hospitals here have only private rooms except for the ICU. Even our local emergency department has private rooms, some with solid doors, some with a glass wall and a curtain that can be drawn for privacy.

Every The maternity wards I’ve been on is locked with controlled access and all the babies have alarms on their ankles so it would surprise me if the hospital wanted to put them in a room elsewhere in the building. It’s seems more likely that they would move the mother to a generic gynecological wing, but I am not a hospital administrator so I am just speculating.

The issue is homophobia
@Simonjt can you expand please?
Do you think posters would feel differently if this were a single heterosexual man doing the same pose in a hospital bed he didn't give birth in?

I have never heard of this happening in the UK. I don’t think it happens in Europe at all. Mothers don’t willingly give up their babies for adoption. I can’t believe that mothers in the US are making a free choice to do this. As NiceGerbil says there is something disturbing about it.

It makes me think of the mother and baby home scandals.

All the things NiceGerbil listed under benefits of adoption in Indiana are provided by the state in the UK. My partner was unemployed for one of my pregnancies, I got £500 maternity grant to spend on nursing bras, maternity clothes, baby clothes etc, I got vouchers to buy fruit and vegetables for myself and child 1, obviously no-one pays for maternity care in the UK, then we get child benefit after the baby is born and no expectation that a mother will return to work for the first 12 months. I am not saying that it is easy to exist on benefits but at least it is possible. In the states it seems as if there is no support at all for single mothers or even couples on a low income or unemployed.

Why isn’t it recognised in the USA that mothers and babies should not be separated except in extreme circumstances? Why doesn’t the USA support families in difficulties? Why is the buying and selling of babies, of human beings seen as acceptable in the USA?

When babies in the UK are placed for adoption they are at least 6 weeks old. It isn’t that common though and usually happens because all the other children of that mother have been taken into care already. I have known of one or two cases where the mother addicted to heroin that there was an element of willingly giving up babies for adoption but they had 6 weeks to change their minds.

Free access to contraception and abortion are vital too. I don’t understand how anyone can be all up in arms about abortion being bad and not care about the suffering of mothers and babies traumatised by separation or mothers and babies living in poverty and/or forced apart by lack of paid maternity leave. Contraception and abortion save a whole world of woe. I really struggle to understand the so called ‘pro-life’ lobby. They don’t seem to care about ‘life’ enough to campaign vociferously against the death penalty, or the military or for gun controls or a decent basic standard of life for everyone.

Also I just can’t understand why they are so bothered about abortion, or why they can’t see that a woman’s bodily integrity is sacrosanct and no woman should be forced into motherhood (by that I mean 40 weeks of pregnancy, giving birth and all that comes after that whether mother and baby are separated or not) against her will, nor should anyone be born into this world unwanted.

When they are motivated by religious beliefs then why this one issue? Why aren’t they protesting outside porn studios, harassing men as they buy women in red light areas or as they try to enter strip clubs or lap dancing clubs?

FightingTheFoo, getting back to the original post, I have concerns about surrogate mothers being airbrushed out of the birthing process too, and the consequences for women and childbirth generally. It’s very odd, two people posing in a hospital bed they haven’t given birth in. It commoditises children as a bit of an Instagram lifestyle accessory at best, or something psychoanalytically darker at worst, where they are enacting a kind of envy of the birthing mother by literally usurping her. It rather reminds me of the birth of baby Angela in The Handmaid’s Tale, and no, I don’t think the sexuality of this couple is relevant. I found it inappropriate too.

@DaisiesandButtercups plenty of mother’s give up unwanted babies for adoption when they are denied the right to have an abortion.

Simonjt the sex and sexual orientation of the people concerned is irrelevant. It is the buying and selling of babies and the separation of mother and baby that is the problem.

I apply the same to homosexual and heterosexual couples. Adoption in the UK is ethical. Taking babies from their mothers on the maternity ward is not.

The photo would perhaps be even more obviously offensive if it were a heterosexual couple on the hospital bed and the other circumstances were the same.

I wondered this and then saw a comment under the NYT article about that said this is a current trend in adoption photos for some parents.

UK adoption law prohibits adoption before 6 weeks, this is in order that the birth mother can change her mind.

Of course if she doesn't want to see/care for the baby or there are serious concerns of harm the baby may be separated at birth, but technically it will then be in foster care. Babies aren't allocated to adoptive families before birth but a foster to adopt placement or normal foster placement may be earmarked by the baby's social worker if the separation is planned/known in advance.

It seems very cold to me that a newborn needing medical care would be in a nursery. Wouldn't a parent be admitted as well? When I had my second baby in Germany, he had to be moved to a different hospital. At first he was in NICU so I could only visit and not stay, but then he got moved to the normal children's ward (which consisted of rooms with 2 patients each) and I was signed in as his "rooming in" parent. I wasn't the patient but I had a hospital bed while he had a cot. Older children had a larger sized cot between the size of a cotbed and single bed with extra high bars. I technically wasn't breastfeeding when he was moved there so there was no "need" for me to be there.

Is that just how it works in the US?

Daisies because it is not about "life" it is about controlling and punishing women.

Birthmothers can sometimes choose out the adoptive parents during pregnancy, there are agencies with lists of hopeful adoptive parents.

The shot in the bed is obviously creating a false start to the time line of 'parent hood'

And yes, airbrushing the birth mother out.

I would imagine if I seen a female celebrity in a hospital bed, holding her new adopted/surragate baby I would be a bit too.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.lifelongadoptions.com/birthmothers-unplanned-pregnancy?GA_network=g&GA_matchtype=p&GA_device=m&GA_campaign=805920203&GA_adgroup=59779200206&GA_adposition=&GA_placement=&GA_creative=306090642846&GA_extension=&GA_keyword=adopt%20a%20baby%20now&GA_loc_physical_ms=9000752&GA_landingpage=www.lifelongadoptions.com/birthmothers-unplanned-pregnancy&gclid=Cj0KCQjwssyJBhDXARIsAK98ITT9tqKajdSw483vqqJA6h9fSSxBZAWbnyYbD1_Ju6jcU-2EhqLgS-QaAlSNEALw_wcB" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lifelong adoptions.com

In the uk if a baby is to be removed at birth then it gets it’s own room on the postnatal ward and the mother gets a separate own room (baby nurseries being basically non existent in the uk as we stupidly think that the best way to promote breastfeeding is to make women who are in pain do all the baby care). If you are removing baby at birth which is v traumatic you don’t then make the poor women stay in the same room and watch someone else parent her baby! we don’t match adoptive parents pre birth in the uk so a removed baby will have a midwife support worker with them until they are ready to be discharged when usually a social worker and a foster parent come to collect them. However I have also seen foster parents stay with baby on the ward if baby is in for a long time. The room baby is in usually has a bed in because we can’t be bothered to re arrange the furniture. If a baby is in overnight I can’t see why anyone would object to the foster parent sleeping on the bed - in fact as it means that we wouldn’t have to loose an msw overnight for just one baby so we would be all for it. Therefore I really can’t see what anyone is getting so worked up about.

@BertieBotts

A baby that needs medical care in the US wouldn't necessarily be in a nursery away from its parents (unless it was in the NICU or its parents weren't there for some reason). It would be in a room suitable for a baby rather than an adult patient. That room would have a bassinet or incubator, but not an adult-sized hospital bed. It would have some kind of furniture that could serve as a (rather uncomfortable) adult-sized bed, like a sofa or a recliner, but not a proper hospital bed. One parent would typically stay overnight with the child. Pre-covid, both parents would sometimes be accommodated, but not by wheeling in an extra hospital bed. They're too expensive to be used as cots, and potentially contaminated or damaged, by those who don't need to be in that type of bed specifically.

@DaisiesandButtercups

Why can't you believe that a mother would ever voluntarily give up a child, or that a child might be better off with someone who isn't biologically related even if its biological mother isn't abusive or unfit? Not everyone wants to be a parent, and not everyone is cut out for it. If a woman doesn't pose any kind of danger to her baby and would do an adequate job of raising it, but would just prefer not to, do you think she should be forced even when there are people who would make excellent parents who are happy to take full responsibility for the child? I don't understand what that's meant to accomplish.

I think in terms of US adoption the cultural landscape is so different that it's hard to grasp.

If you're unexpectedly pregnant in the UK, you can access abortion fairly easily, and for free. Or, if you decide to go ahead with the pregnancy, there's a welfare safely net which, while not at all generous, leaves you not completely without means. And, the NHS picks up the cost of your antenatal care, whether it's straightforward or complex. You get to make that decision based largely on your feelings and personal situation - it may be hard, but neither path is impossible.

Then head across the pond There are many parts of the US where abortions are hard (if not impossible) to get. If you can get one, you'll need to do it quickly and there will likely be a cost to you - for the procedure, and perhaps for travel to where you can get it, and perhaps for a stay there in order to meet mandatory waiting times - and you may not have that money or that time. The religious sigma is also much more substantial and so you just may not feel able to go ahead with it anyway. It, you didn't even know you were pregnant until past the time your state allowed abortions anyway.

So, you're having a baby - but there are medical bills mounting up and the insurance system isn't your friend, and then maybe you live somewhere where the welfare assistance available to single parents is deliberately awful to 'send a message' and deter you from making the choices you didn't really have in the first place... It's all too easy to end up in a situation where both paths are impossible.

Which leaves adoption. Where you can get help to meet those expenses, and you can know that the baby is going to a family where they can give it all the things you can't; you can actually choose who and you can specify whether or not you want to remain in contact... It's a way out. I can completely see why people take it.

It's that highly problematic? Yep. But it's not really the adoption system that's the problem; it's all the other systems around it. I know people on here are very anti-surrogacy (I don't entirely agree with all the arguments against, but I recognise them) but it is a situation where there's a choice about whether to become involved. In terms of adoption in the US, on the other hand, that choice is somewhat illusory since it looks very much as though it may be the only viable option for many who find themselves pregnant unexpectedly.

I think the photo is rather sweet, they look happy and I’m sure the babies will have a lovely life.