Yet for all the passion these cases evoke, adoption in America is not turning into a custodial free-for-all. Headline-grabbing sagas like Baby Jessica and Baby Richard may be dramatic, but they’re also aberrations. Of the estimated 50,000 domestic adoptions that take place in the United States each year, the National Council For Adoption says, not even 1 percent are contested by fathers or mothers trying to wrest back a child.
Most matches that go horribly awry are doomed from the start – in ways that both birthparents and adoptive parents could have predicted. In Baby Jessica’s case, the mother lied about who the father was. Baby Richard’s case is riddled with even more deception. When Daniela Kirchner gave up her newborn son in March 1991, she was angry that her then boyfriend (and now husband), Otakar, had left her two weeks before the baby was born and returned to Czechoslovakia. She believed rumors that he had run off with an old girlfriend. He believed her story that the baby was dead – even though Oto and Daniela had lived together for the first eight and a half months of her pregnancy. She refused to disclose that he was the father. He failed to search for his son as thoroughly as some thought he should have. Then, in May 1991, the couple reconciled in Chicago. And 80 days after Baby Richard’s birth, Oto challenged the adoption. Although Illinois requires a father to demonstrate an “interest” within 30 days of the birth, Oto argued he couldn’t stake a claim to a son he didn’t know he had.
Two lower courts didn’t buy it, ruling that Oto had abandoned his rights to his son. Last summer, though, the Illinois Supreme Court not only overturned the adoption but also excoriated the adoptive parents – he’s a firefighter, she’s a paralegal – for not trying hard enough to find the father. The ruling stunned almost everyone because, unlike Baby Jessica’s, Richard’s case raised the chilling prospect that even a completed, legal adoption could be upended. Days of brinkmanship followed last week’s Illinois Supreme Court ruling, which again ordered Richard returned to the Kirchners. On Saturday attorneys for the Does and Richard told Newsweek they would ask yet another U.S. Supreme Court justice to delay the order. They also have 90 days to appeal the merits of the Illinois decision to the full court.
Adoptions don’t have to fall apart. Top on the list of pitfalls is an inexperienced attorney. No matter how much Cousin Bill the real-estate lawyer wants to help, don’t let him; adoption laws are intricate and vary widely from state to state. And no matter how much money it saves, using one lawyer to represent both the adoptive parents and birthparents is courting trouble. Ensuring that the birthmother gets professional counseling is just as important. A birthmother needs to grieve. But since coming to terms with that can take years, it’s also essential to build in a safety valve – a neutral party to whom she can turn. If Daniela Kirchner had had counseling, says Chicago adoption specialist Toni Carter, “there might have been an opportunity to build some trust” – enough to persuade her to notify the father or disclose his name.
Why do adoptive parents ignore obvious precautions? In a word: desperation. According to the National Council For Adoption, more than 1 million American families are looking to adopt. That’s 20 for every child available for placement, nearly 35 for every healthy infant. And especially for couples who’ve waited until their 30s to try to get pregnant and then find themselves infertile as they push 40, the prospect of waiting a year or two for another baby to come along is as daunting as waiting another decade. Though laws nationwide favor birthparents, Roberta DeBoer, after trying 10 years to conceive, not surprisingly fought to keep the child.
In the days before open adoption, when neither set of parents knew the other, both sides viewed each other with suspicion. Now they’re more likely to work together. What’s often overlooked is that adoption starts out as the birthmother’s plan, making her the least likely person to want to disrupt it. “Most birthmoms worry, “Who’s going to want my child knowing I’m the kind of person who would give up a baby’,” says Chris, a 25-year-old Illinois woman who placed a son for adoption five years ago. At the agency where Chris surrendered him – Sunny Ridge Family Center in Wheaton, Ill. – officials say that of the 1,160 domestic adoptions they’ve handled since 1979, only one birthmother has ever contacted the agency to say she irrevocably regretted her decision.
How tough is it for the children who do get handed off from one set of parents to another? Dr. Robert Gatson, director of child development at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital, says that because small children see the world in a self-centered way, they can view the loss of a parent as their fault. “This child will know that his parents didn’t die. In his eyes, they will have given him away. He must have done something wrong.” Baby Jessica has reportedly come through the turmoil attached and adjusted to her new family. The Kirchners insist they don’t want to wrest Richard from the Does overnight. “We lose everything by going out there with the sheriff and having a Jessica,” says Loren Heinemann, Oto’s attorney, who has offered a gradual transition. “If we can’t learn from Jessica, damn us all.”
Whether or not we’re learning, the sagas of children like Jessica and Richard rivet us, to a degree that far outstrips their actual numbers. Our fascination goes beyond rubbernecking at the car wreck. We have a visceral sympathy for a child in pain – and most of us can’t imagine having to give up our own kids. For some, however, the fantasy of adoption may also offer a secret release: kids can imagine jettisoning annoying parents for an adoptive family that will really appreciate them; temporarily fed-up parents can dream of leaving the kids on the doorstep. “Little disownings” is how University of North Carolina psychologist Paul Brinich describes them. “One of the things we as parents never like to admit is that sometimes we don’t like our kids. It’s the same idea behind a lot of fairy tales that include adoption. That’s where we deal with a lot of our ambivalence.” Yet no matter how strong the emotions they stir, most of us can never really know what kind of scars adoption battles leave. Baby Richard isn’t so lucky. Oto Kirchner says he wants to meet his son this week.
