The Chairman of the Board at Spence Chapin Thinks More Pregnant Women Should Consider Adoption
My friend and fellow adoptee and writer, Andrew Glynn, texted and sent me a Father’s Day episode of the podcast Honestly by Bari Weiss. “These motherfuckers are fucking lying,” Andrew wrote. “Start listening at minute 33.”
I was pulling weeds, and there’s nothing like yanking things out of the dirt while listening to motherfuckers fucking lying, so I tuned in to hear Ian Rowe, the chairman of the board of Spence Chapin, and I got that pit in my stomach that I have almost every time a person who was kept by their mother sings the praises of adoption.
He talked about how in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, the order of choices a women would make when she had an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy went marriage, adoption, single parenting, then abortion. Now the order, he said, is single parenthood, abortion, adoption, and marriage. He said, “It’s interesting that adoption has just fallen out as a culturally acceptable choice of how to form strong families for vulnerable children.”
We’re vulnerable because vultures like you found a way to make money by selling babies. How can you assume that when a couple adopts a baby the family becomes strong? Have you read The Primal Wound? Adoption does not equal a strong families, unless your definition of a strong family is one where many parents feel confused/hurt/flummoxed by their adopted child’s behaviors.
He said, “I am chairmen of the board of Spence Chapin which is one of the premier adoption agencies in the country. We have formed 30,000 families over the course of our 100 years for vulnerable children starting in the early 1900s in New York City when literally children were being left on the street. We were pioneers in interracial adoption in the 50s and 60s so Black children could be accepted into loving families versus languish in foster care or other kinds of adverse settings.
Why do you keep saying the word vulnerable? How come I’ve never heard an adoptee sing the praises of Spence Chapin? White ones or Black ones. What’s your salary? Do you get a bonus for every adoption that goes through? This information is not available on your annual report.
https://spence-chapin.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/5-13-22-2021-annual-report-final.pdf
“I’m a big believer that children, most desperately and from the earliest possible time, are raised in loving families that have made a deliberate choice to have a family, and in today’s world, a lot of young women like those women 24 and younger, adoption is not even on their radar. The whole nature of adoption has shifted from closed or the baby scoop era where young women were sent away in shame, all of that has literally been eliminated. Now there’s a much more empowering environment where a woman can make a choice. She can literally choose the parents, and, in many cases, build an ongoing relationship, and I just think that as another empowering alternative to create strong families with children needs to be on the table.”
How many women who relinquished their child or children talk about feeling empowered when it comes to adoption? Do you hide these women away? Where are they?
If women have adoption as their third choice, maybe it’s because adopted people are more vocal now thanks to social media. Maybe these women have learned from other adopted people that other options are better considered. This must be terrifying to you when your business depends on women giving their babies to you!
All those vulnerable children are out there in the world.
And so are you.
Andrew told me Ian Rowe called adoptive parents “angels”, but I couldn’t listen for that. I quit pulling weeds when Rowe started to talk about what had to be on the table and went inside to write this. If adoptive parents are angels, what are adoptees?
