Oh Those Dads

Back in 1970, during the final stages of the Baby Scoop Era, my parents were high school seniors when my mom became pregnant with me.

I was an adult and many years past giving up my oldest son for adoption when I learned of the true situation surrounding my mom’s pregnancy and my birth.  When I first became fully aware of the judgment and shame a pregnant woman suffered for being young and pregnant outside of wedlock. Aware of just how close my mom came to being sent away to a Catholic maternity home.  Of how close I came to being another baby lost to adoption during that cruel part of our nation’s history.

I was saved from that fate, in many ways, because of my dad. Because, in a time when it was much easier for men to deny paternity and walk away, my dad stood up and took responsibility.  He didn’t turn and run.  Instead he did, as he once explained to me, one of the most terrifying things in his life, telling his dad (my grandfather) that he had gotten a girl pregnant.  Asked him for help so that she and his baby wouldn’t be sent away.

And that show of courage was the first step in saving my mom from the maternity home.  In saving me from becoming yet another adoptee to add to the many that were taken during the Baby Scoop Era. (And no, the fact does not escape me that my mom had absolutely no choice, no rights in what was happening to her.)

Growing up, I didn’t know that part of my story.  Perhaps it was to protect me.  Perhaps it was the shame my mother still struggled with for so many years of her life because of her pregnancy with me.  Whatever the reason, I am thankful I have had two decades now of knowing my dad’s first step into fatherhood was having the courage to stand up and face his father so that my mom wouldn’t be sent away, so that I wouldn’t be taken from him.

And yet, I know, back then, just as today, my Dad really had no rights.  Had the past played out differently.  Had there been no quick-planned wedding but instead a send off for my mom to the maternity home, there would have been absolutely nothing my Dad could have done to keep his own daughter.  He, just like so many fathers before and after him, would have had his child taken without his consent.

I think of that now, with Father’s Day just around the corner. Of just how much I could have lost, of what I would have never known, if my mom had been sent away and my dad denied any and all rights to his own child.

And I think of all the other fathers out there who were denied their rights and had their children taken from them without their consent.  Of their sons and daughters, taken from their Dads, given away for adoption.  To fulfill the desires of hopeful adoptive couples while stripping innocent babies from families they already have.  From fathers who wanted nothing more than to keep and raise their own child.

I’m thankful that fathers like Ben Wyrembek and Dusten Brown will have their children with them this Father’s Day. And I’m hopeful this will be the last Father’s Day Robert Manzanares will have to spend without his little girl.

But my heart aches for these fathers . . .

John Wyatt

Christopher Carlton

Jake Strickland

Cody O'Dea

Greg Johns

Christian Diaz

And so many others who will spend Father’s Day without their children.  Who were denied their rights and lost their children.  Who have been forced to fight desperate couples who believe they have a right to keep a child, wanted and loved, by his or her father.  Who believe they are entitled to rip a child away from the family they already have, is fighting for them, to satisfy their own selfish need to complete the family they desire.

What’s happening to these fathers is wrong.  It’s wrong that the adoption industry is allowed to continue to find new ways to deny fathers their rights.  It’s wrong that so many actually support such a thing, will actually be a part of taking children away from their fathers without consent.

My own husband, father to all four of my children, was denied his rights to his oldest son who he never wanted to give up for adoption.  In a letter for Father’s Day he wrote last year - Guest Post: A Letter to my Readers From A Reunited Original Dad - for Declassified Adoptee, he mentions, “a decision that I had no rights to make.” A decision that took his son away, placed him in a childhood with an adoptive father who walked away from him when he was only five years old and a stepfather who physically abused him.

A decision that took his son away from the only REAL dad he ever had.

That is what adoption does.  That is what happens when you have an industry that only profits if it can successfully take a child from his or her family and place them in another family.  And one of the ways to make that happen is to eliminate those pesky fathers who actually want to keep their children.  To place ridiculous restrictions on them and their rights so their chances are slim to none of being able to keep their sons and daughters from being given away to strangers.

As a mother of three sons, it terrifies me to know our family is vulnerable to suffering the terrible loss of a child/grandchild.  To know, when it comes to adoption, the laws are created so that complete strangers, if given the chance – with the ability to write a big enough check – would be given more rights to keep a part of our family away from us than any of my sons would ever have to keep their children.

It was a fear I had traces of even when I first learned my daughter-in-law was pregnant.  Yes, they were married and madly in love but their ages and situation were perfect matches to what those in the adoption industry prey on – young college students, working part time, relying on their parents to help make the bills.

I hold my beautiful granddaughter today and find myself so thankful that adoption was never able to get its greedy hands on her.  I watch my son with her and get so angry at the very idea that, had circumstances been different, she could have very well been taken away from him.  He could have lost that precious little girl that he loves so much.  Could have been forced to fight yet another desperate couple believing they have more of a right to his daughter than he does.

It’s just so wrong.  So very wrong.

Nobody has a right to take a child away from his or her father because of their own wants or desires.  They don’t have a right to determine, for themselves, whether a father “deserves” to keep his son or daughter.

A Father’s right to his child should always be equal to a Mother’s.  ALWAYS!

Yes there are fathers that are no good but there are mothers like that too.  And they can also be adoptive, foster and step as well.  But to believe it is justifiable to take away all fathers’ rights because of the bad ones.  To breed the myth that it’s better for a child to be taken from their dad because adoption will somehow miraculously given them a better one, is wrong.  So very wrong.

My hope, this Father’s Day, is that the small steps that have been taken recently to expose the reality of Fathers being denied their rights will gain force and we will start to see positive change for all the Dads out there who have, or will, face the horror of having their children taken from them without their consent.

It’s time to stop accepting fathers being treated in such a way.  Time to stop allowing the adoption industry the right to justify why they should be forced to jump through impossible hurdles to prove they are worthy of their own children.  Time for hopeful adoptive couples to realize they have no right to any child that is wanted and loved by their father, no matter what reasons they try to tell themselves to feel better about refusing  to give back a child that should never be theirs as long as they have family who wants them, is fighting for them.

Time to stop accepting the unnecessary destruction of families on the broken hearts of so many fathers who only want the right to keep, raise and love their children.  Who deserve their child much more than any stranger ever could.