A Look at Adoption From All Sides : Agency Worker’s Book Studies the Changing Practices

When Charlotte De Armond set out to write book about adoption, she aimed high. “I wanted the book to be ‘must’ reading for everyone ever involved in adoption in any way,” she said.

De Armond was certainly in a position to write the definitive book. For more than 20 years she has worked in public affairs and public education for the Children’s Home Society of California, a private adoption agency based in Los Angeles.

“I really thought it was time to do the book. There are so many controversies in adoption currently,” De Armond said. “We have been learning in the last 10 years that some of the most basic assumptions we made about adoptions were wrong.”

In recent years, De Armond said, such routine practices as sealing adoption records and prohibiting contact between adoptive and biological parents increasingly have been scrutinized and many procedures have been changed. But, she said, there is still no consensus about which changes are healthy and which are not.

“We at the Children’s Home Society believe we have a responsibility as an agency to examine all the issues pertaining to our adoption,” De Armond said. “And so we polled all the adoption experts to present different points of view.”

Views Differ

The resulting book, “The Changing Picture of Adoption,” available through the society, provides a comprehensive look at today’s adoption picture. Each chapter focuses on a different issue, presenting the society’s view, and then the views of national experts.

Sometimes the views are diametrically opposed. One chapter, for example, focuses on privately arranged adoptions versus agency adoptions. The society is strongly opposed to private adoptions, in which adoptive parents arrange adoptions, usually through lawyers, instead of through agencies. In the society’s opinion, private adoption “is a service for those who are able to pay, rather than for those who would be the most nurturing parents.”

But the book also contains the views of California adoption attorney David Leavitt who claims that “agencies cling too strongly to their prerogative of making adoptions for people and excluding the parties themselves from the adoption process.”

In detailing the society’s position on adoption practices, the book reflects the agency’s struggles with adoption issues as it has sought to update its policies.

Among those is the agency’s policy about adoption records. In 1981, the book explains, the society’s board of directors formed a policy of opening adoption records.

Policies Updated

Its revised policy statement read in part: “In light of the fact that the child relinquished for adoption is not a consenting member of the adoption triad, the home society affirms its belief that every adult adoptee has the right of access to information about his/her identity. The society endorses the concept of making information available to that adoptee on request.”

Some policy changes discussed in the book reflect an increasing sensitivity to the needs of the biological mother planning an adoption for her child. It was once standard practice for agencies to select adoptive parents without consulting the biological mother. Neither party was aware of the other’s circumstances and meetings between the two parties were unheard of.

Virtually every adoption expert polled for “The Changing Picture of Adoption” agreed that traditional closed adoptions of that sort are becoming obsolete.

De Armond said the society now requires approved adoptive parents to submit written statements about what kind of parents they would be and what kind of life they plan for an adopted child.

These statements, together with pictures, are put into notebooks that biological parents are encouraged to examine. In most cases the biological parents select the adoptive couple who will get their child. Sometimes, biological parents meet with the adoptive parents.

“We used to say to birth (biological) mothers, ‘Put all this behind you. Forget it.’ We didn’t know then that birth parents never forget. They can’t forget,” De Armond said. “We now know that the more involved the birth parents are in selecting adoptive parents, the more comfortable they will be with their decision in the long run.”

In part, the need for examining adoption procedures at the society and elsewhere have stemmed from basic changes in adoption. “Only 5% of all pregnant teen-age girls now plan adoptions for their babies,” De Armond said, noting that it is socially more acceptable for unwed mothers to rear their children. As a result, there is much more competition for the available babies.

Fewer Babies Available

In the 94 years since it was founded, the society has placed more children for adoption than any other public or private agency in the United States. But the number of babies it places each year has declined: In fiscal year 1985, the agency placed 384 children, compared with the more than 2,000 it placed in 1969.

De Armond said that the decline was due not only to an increasing trend for unwed mothers to keep their babies, but also is due to biological mothers opting for private adoptions. The society has attempted to make itself more responsive to pregnant mothers’ needs so as to make agency adoptions more desirable, she said.

Encouraged by Friend

De Armond’s involvement with adoption began as more than just a professional affiliation. As an independent public relations consultant in 1956, De Armond was encouraged by a friend to do some work for the society.

She already had one daughter, but had been told she could bear no more children. “My husband encouraged me to do some work for CHS. He said maybe we could adopt a child more easily that way,” De Armond said.

But after learning about adoption through her work with the society, De Armond and her husband decided they probably were not suited to adopting a child.

But De Armond said she had come to believe even more strongly in the society and in adoption. When the society urged her to work full time for it in 1965, she gave up her own business and threw herself into her work there.

De Armond often has advocated trying new approaches to adoption. She fondly remembered one child the society was having a particularly hard time placing because of the boy’s serious medical problem. He had been born without an arm, but was being provided with a prosthesis at UCLA Medical Center where he was a patient.

De Armond saw that the traditional means of getting a family to adopt the boy simply were not working. She said something innovative was needed and got the society’s higher-ups’ permission to try something new.

First she called the media. Then she threw a news conference like the society had never thrown. The boy was on hand for the television cameras; the doctor was on hand to provide information about the child’s needs. The next day dozens of phone calls were received from families wanting to adopt the child, and, De Armond said, “He was placed in a wonderful home.”