Forgotten choice: adoption is a rebuke to single-parenting and abortion, and the liberal media will have none of it

SCHIZOPHRENIA, thy name is adoption! Here are some of adoption's multiple personalities, as judged by media depictions over the past 2 years:

-- Polls show adoption in the abstract to be almost as popular as motherhood itself, but some leaders in media and academia still pin a scarlet letter on adoptees.

New York Times editors who automatically delete demeaning references to minorities or women allowed one reporter to emphasize that an alleged multiple murderer was adopted: "Though experts were careful to say that adoption was no indicator of criminal tendencies, they noted that a number of serial killers like David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, had been adopted."

-- Studies conducted by the Search Institute and other organizations show adolescents adopted as infants doing as well psychologically as their non-adopted peers, but critics of adoption proclaim that every adopted baby has experienced a "primal wound" that can lead to extreme behavior.

One of the early signs of adoptee distress is colic, articles tell us. When patting her baby's back an adoptive mom should say, "You must feel really sad, you must feel really lost. You miss your mother. You've lost something very important, and I understand." Expect to see a New York Times story noting that colic is no indicator of future criminal activities, but a number of serial killers have had it.

-- Although most adoptions work out very well, television's sewer talk shows feature not only freaky perversions but tortured birthmothers describing their regrets about placing children for adoption years before, and teary teens describing their desperate efforts to locate birthmothers who preferred to remain hidden.

Impressions from such shows, along with those left by all the tug-of-war stories about Baby Jessica and Baby Richard, lead to a typical teen perspective described by Mary Beth Style, formerly of the National Council for Adoption: "They think it inevitable that they'll change their minds, that there will be a battle, or that they'll be miserable their whole lives if they place for adoption."

That perception forms the biggest barrier to adoption today. Adoption is popular in opinion polls and among politicians who can gain the benefits of baby-kissing without the danger of infant counterattack via spit-up. Adoption also has become a way for some proponents of abortion to retract their horns and suggest that they do feel others' pain; Hillary Clinton mused about her desire to adopt, someday, and one of her newspaper columns noted that she and Mother Teresa "differ on some issues" but agree on the need to promote adoption.

Adoption is unpopular, however, among those who are the decision-makers: fewer than 2 of every 100 unmarried pregnant women choose adoption. The enemies of adoption are single-parenting, which still receives special economic support via the welfare system, and abortion, which receives special legal privileges through judicial fiat. Adoption is squeezed out.

Most attempts to spur adoption so far have been either inconsequential or even counter-productive. During the past three years "National Adoption Month" (November) and "National Adoption Week" (around Thanksgiving time) produced not much more than some cute human-interest features, such as those depicting "adoption fairs" in which older children messed up by foster care are paraded before potentially welcoming adults. Such events may help some children to find homes, but what does a teen mom think when she sees children displayed -- "Check their teeth, honey" -- in this way?

Other press articles have been snide. Jeanne Beach Eigner of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote on November 21, 1994, "This is National Adoption Week. The good thing about this is that nobody's telling you what to adopt, so go ahead and adopt anything you want. Some disgusting habit, for example, since there are so many of them available these days. If you feel like thumping something, it's also National Bible Week." On November 20, 1995, Miss Eigner was at it again: "This week is National Adoption Week (we're assuming they refer to the adoption of children, not habits or noms de guerre). And it's National Bible Week . . . ."

Let's get serious -- and getting serious first means defining the problem correctly. The new adoption tax credit for adoptive families is good and fair, but the main adoption bottleneck is not a lack of potential adoptive families. Two million couples are waiting to adopt, and infants of every skin color or level of disability can be placed.

The key problem is the supposed superiority of the two major alternatives to adoption. Abortion seems to convey an immediate benefit: It makes the problem disappear. (And don't worry about death or post-abortion regrets that may grow more severe as time goes by.) Despite last years' welfare-reform bill, single-parenting still conveys benefits. Adoption, on the other hand, is altruistic -- life for a child and a gift to an often-childless couple -- but it is also inconvenient and embarrassing, especially when compared to abortions done in secret. Teenagers generally ask not what they can do for others, but what others are thinking about them. Is it any surprise that adoption is usually ignored?