“Dear Incubator”
An analysis of what is REALLY behind “Dear Birthmother Letters”
Dear Incubator
We want you to give us your baby. We know that by meeting us and seeing just how perfect we would be for your child, you will gladly do this.
Why do we know this?
Because you are young, vulnerable, and don’t feel confident about your ability to be a mother. We know that we will appear mature, confident, capable, and will make you feel like we could take care of your baby better than you can. We may even remind you of your own parents.
Because we know that the reason you are considering adoption is out of fear and guilt. Guilt that you have disappointed your parents by irresponsibly getting pregnant. Fear because you do not know what to do and you don’t know if you’ll be a good parent or not. We can take advantage of your fear and your guilt, and we don’t have any qualms about doing it.
We know that research shows that mothers who “meet” and “choose” prospective adopters during their pregnancies will give up their babies out of guilt and obligation. Especially if we are in the delivery room with you, or “bonding with” OUR newborn in the hospital with our family and friends congratulating us. How would you DARE think of keeping our darling newborn from us? Giving us a “failed adoption” by “not carrying through with your adoption plan.” We are scared that if you take your baby home first before deciding, that you likely wouldn’t give her to us, so our agency’s “birthmother counsellor” will ensure that won’t happen.
We know that if we befriend you while you’re still pregnant, you won’t have a choice. In fact, we’re happy to take that choice (and all choice) away from you, because we are desperate and we know we deserve your baby more than you do. After all, we’ve paid thousands to the agency – you just had a broken condom.
We also know that our promises of open adoption will sounds great, and the same pregnancy hormones that make you feel trusting of others and insecure about yourself will make you believe us, and WANT to believe us. And we also know that these promises have NO basis in law, that we can close the adoption any time we want. And we will close it, especially if it looks like OUR baby loves you when you visit (as many adopted children do with their natural mothers). We’ll just crush that pesky blood-bond by stopping those upsetting visits. They will only “confuse” our child.
If need be, we can get you a counsellor at an adoption agency. We know that the more visits you have with agency staff, the more likely you will be to surrender your baby. They will have lots of time to work on you and convince you how expensive and difficult it would be to raise a child at your age. Can you actually afford it? Like any other luxury commodity, only the rich should be allowed to obtain (and keep) a child. Poor? Too bad. You should have kept your legs crossed.
We promise we will treat you like a queen while you are gestating our baby, while we are “Paper Pregnant” and counting down the days until we get our freshly made bundle of joy from you. We’ll praise you and call you things like our “heaven sent angel” and “God’s gift” to boost your ego and make you feel valued and incredible and loved during your pregnancy — the love and support that your parents and those around you don’t show.
We’ll even give you flowers and a “birthmother gift” when you hand over OUR baby to us — a reasonable exchange, right? If you’re lucky, the hospital will give you a teddy bear to take home with you – standard practice now, right?
And of course we or our paid agency worker will be right there with you in the delivery room, to make certain you don’t try to “bond” with our baby. We’re paying too much money to the agency/lawyer/facilitator for this baby to allow THAT to happen.
Speaking of money, we offer to pay your medical and hospital expenses. This will make you feel like you “owe” us that baby.
But frankly we don’t care what we do to you — how we will manipulate you, exploit you, and then cast you aside like a used container (and that’s what you are, right?) — because we’ll be better parents than you will ever be. That’s why we’re writing you this letter: We know we deserve that baby more than you do. We pay more in taxes than you earn in a year (but we’re sure looking forward to that $10,000 adoption income-tax credit that we’ll get!).
Contact us at our 1-800 number, and check out our “profile page” to see how good-looking we are and how confidant and mature we look compared to you.
Signed,
Two “Waiting Parents”
Praying that God will bring us Our Little Angel
~
shortlink: http://wp.me/p9tLn-k1
Adoption Critique 
October 24, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Absolutely wonderful! I love it! It says exactly what I feel it says when I read those horrible things!
October 24, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Cedar,
Can I use this for an answering post on my site. As one of the first moms who was coerced by the promises of the disgusting “Dear Birthmother” letter and fell victim of so much of what you have here, I would love a chance to respond, bit by bit, to a lot of the very true intentions you have listed here.
October 25, 2010 at 12:30 am
I would be honoured. 🙂
October 25, 2010 at 12:12 am
Cedar, BRILLIANT… hope you don’t mind, I am linking…
October 25, 2010 at 12:30 am
please go right ahead. the more links the better. 🙂
October 25, 2010 at 12:45 am
Love it! It’s so true with so many PAP’s. I’ll definitely link to this sometime on my blog
October 25, 2010 at 3:00 am
So sadly accurate.
October 25, 2010 at 3:28 am
When you do away with the flowery language and euphemisms, the letters don’t seem inviting at all. Good job on the translation, BTW, Adoption Critic. Going to link this. Probably will offend some people. But you hit the nail on the head.
October 25, 2010 at 4:06 am
I am so touched by this post, it explains the process perfectly and what happened to me personally (minus having an agency involved, mine was private).
Do you mind if I put a link to this on my blog? EVERYONE needs to read this.
October 25, 2010 at 7:44 am
I don’t mind at all. Please go right ahead.
October 25, 2010 at 2:43 pm
i lost my first born to adoption. i love the truthfulness of your blog, this is exactly the manipulation game that is played. the more people that speak out about the manipulating game, the more aware everyone can be.
October 25, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Excellent post. You’ve really nailed it. Too bad this can’t be made into adoption agency policy for all pregnant women and pre-adoptive parents to read. This is a “side” that must be made very public. It is part of informed consent when a pregnant woman or new mother is making a decision to relinquish her child or not.
October 25, 2010 at 8:06 pm
[Author’s note: Dear “DW,” no I am not going to publish your comment. It is so full of bile and indignation that I can only assume that you have a very large vested personal emotional investment in believing that that this technique cannot possibly constitute coercion. (Did you adopt using this method to solicit and procure a mother?) Over 30 research studies were done between 1980 and 2010 to find out how to convince expectant mothers to surrender their babies. This letter is an example of how several of those tactics were put together and are used — because they work! Mothers are not “brainless” as you termed it, but the hormonal/neurological changes of pregnancy do make many vulnerable to doing what they would never have otherwise considered in a million years — surrendering their babies.
And I also suggest you examine how incredibly offensive the term “bitterness” is before you choose to use it. There is NO “bitterness” in this blog. I never have been ‘bitter” and never will be. Anger at injustice is another matter entirely. But slaves would not be free today if people had not been angry at injustice. Righteous anger directed properly is the fuel that drives social change.]
October 26, 2010 at 12:52 am
LOL, someone sent you a vile note did they? Perhaps they dislike the honesty dsiplayed in front of them. Wahhhh, lets have a pity party!!
And as for the term bitterness… sigh… again, they are so creative with their vocabulary. I would hardly say this post is bitter! Some people really have issues with seeing the truth in front of their face.
May 4, 2011 at 10:23 pm
Well said – 99% who read this blog would agree with you.
October 26, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Mothers are “brainless” are they? My son doesn’t think so!
After all, it took brains to find him
(and he wouldn’t be too pleased if his adoptive mother called me that either 🙂
October 26, 2010 at 4:43 pm
I love it when we piss of the desperate baby-buyers.
October 26, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Brilliant! It cuts the fluff and goes to the core of a true template used to write or speak to us incubators! I didn’t receive a letter but instead heard this letter direct out of thier mouths when they came to kidnap my daughter.
October 26, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Excellent! As a reunited firstmother, I find this wickedly truthful and right on. Somehow, I don’t feel as guilty about it all after reading this.
October 27, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Great post! This letter should be attached to every two-faced, back-stabbing, entitled and hypocritical “Dear B Mother” letter expectant mothers receive from the paps and their baby brokers. After all, the paps and brokers are only interested in one thing… would it kill them to be honest about their intentions to take babies away from their mother? Why won’t paps admit they are only interested in claiming a status that doesn’t belong to them; and their broker be honest about their determination to fatten their bottom line. Would it be hurting them in any way to tell the mother exactly how “brainless” and worthless the pap views them… oh right… that wouldn’t get them their desired womb-fresh bundle they feel they deserve because, well, they are so much better than the baby’s mother in their selfish mind.
At least be honest about your intentions about procurring another woman’s child. It’s pretty sad the mothers are lied to, manipulated and coerced. It’s really sad these individuals lie to themselves and deny every single truth in front of them, then make an innocent child pay for their lack of decency. I still don’t get how a woman can take a mother’s child and be ok with that. I find it astonishing they could somehow convince themselves the mother doesn’t want her baby and believes she deserves another woman’s baby because they are older and married. How hypocritical and what a load of bs. Nowadays, single, 18-year-olds can adopt… as long as they have the money to pay the broker.
Children who are made to live the lie paps and adopters force them to acknowledge as true are the disrespected victims of needless adoption transactions. So often adopters are disrespectful to the child residing with them and don’t particularly care if they are hurting that child when speaking belligerently about that child’s natural mother and father. In whose best interests is that kind of behaviour? It’s abusive and negligent. Totally careless about the pain being inflicted on the people whose lives are torn apart by the adoption transactions.
Adopters lie to children they obtain and more often than not sever any contact between the mother/father and their child due to the fact that the truth just doesn’t make them comfortable. They surely didn’t pay to obtain a child that wants to be allowed to love her/his true mother and father. They expect and demand gratitude and ongoing acknowledgement of their efforts. Mothers and fathers don’t expect gratitude from their children. Paps and adopters pay for that privilege and somehow manage to convince themselves they deserve applause.
It’s time for paps and adopters to be HONEST. With mothers and fathers. With our children. With themselves. The lies and deceit surrounding adoption is despicable. Paps and adopters should be honest about their hateful and bitter feelings towards mothers, and eventually the children, who grow to find and love their natural family.
Their broker won’t tell them no amount of money is going to make any child they procure *theirs*. But that is hardly the broker’s concern.
October 28, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Oh yes, I have the “Dear Birthmother” letter, full of brainwashing and BS that my son’s adopters had made up, for someone to “chose” them. The woman actually included a line which states, and I quote, “I believe that god allowed the conception of this baby for my husband and I or some other infertle couple”. Brainless???? THERE YOU HAVE IT. Convoluted, deluded and absolutely are a few other words that come to mind. Included their lovely blue folder meant to entice was was paragraph after paragraph about their childhoods and how wonderful their families were. Also included were pictures of their 4 bedroom house on a cul-de-sac, them on vacation in Cancun and snow Skiing in Colorado. All this was drummed up so they could look perfect on paper and deem themselves so much better than a young, vulnerable, scared woman was.
What was not included in their “Dear Birthmother” blue folder was the selfishness, greed, self-entitlement and deep seated hatred at people who could get pregnant and they not. This only became apparent to me after several years had passed and I realized that I had been duped; cut out of the picture in a fraudent “open adoption”. They had to have my son all to themselves, so they could be free to brainwash MY child to their liking. Why? So he would, for the rest of his life bow down at their feet, like they are such saviors. It sickens me beyond belief. To live with the fact that I did this because I trusted those people makes my blood boil.
My child see’s me as the “evil” one and they are “saints”. Yeah.. they are so saintly, with the halos around their heads. They had to con someone out of her child with lies and promises, leaving her devasted when they cut her out of the picture, and I AM THE EVIL ONE.
I am not trying to condone violence on your blog, but DW’s comment calling young, vulnerable, scared young women BRAINLESS also makes my blood boil and I’d love to punch them in the face. I have had it with these selfish, hateful people who can only hide behind the internet and say something that they have always wanted to say, but knew if they did they could not make off with the flesh and blood of another woman. These idiots with their hatred at a woman because she can get pregnant and they can’t are nothing but pathetic and desperate. Comments like that are nothing but FEAR, of knowing what is really in their hearts towards the woman who suffered so they could gain. Comments like that are FEAR at knowing that the children they covet, even though they may now be adults, will find out what is REALLY in the hearts of the people who paid to become their parents and they too will be KICKED TO THE CURB, just like the did to the MOTHER who lost her child to them.
They are the brainless ones. Their minds are so deluded at the prospect of coveting that of which is NOT theirs that I am surprised they have a single brain cell left. Most of their brain cells are used up conniving, manipulating and decieving.
May 4, 2011 at 10:33 pm
The Catholic Church run an adoption agency (the adoptive parents ‘donate’ large sums of money to the Church so the babies are in effect ‘sold’ to them). When the birth mothers try to trace their lost child the Church refuses to give them any information stating “you signed a legal document”. We all know how vulnerable these mothers are with the guilt they are made to feel. Read the book about Philomena Lee’s ordeal and you will get the sickening picture! The pregnant women are forced into slave labour at convent homes while awaiting the birth and sale of their babies. They are then turned out onto the streets.
October 29, 2010 at 3:38 am
Perfect post! I’m trying to do an education page about the coercive tactics of agencies and some adopters. I’d love to use this link…
here is my page if you are interested:
http://reformadoption.com/Advocacy/advocacy.shtml
October 29, 2010 at 3:44 am
Please go ahead and use it. 🙂 if you want to reprint it directly onto your site, please just say “Copyright Cedar 2010. Originally published at (with a link back to this blog).
November 1, 2010 at 7:24 am
[…] You can read it here. […]
November 1, 2010 at 7:47 am
As always, a post with punch!As you’ve suggested you’d like as many links as possible I will link also and thanks.It seems anyone with the right amount of money can relieve another woman of her baby.Did you ever hear of a home study not being successful? Serious question, I’d really like to know.
November 4, 2010 at 1:12 am
Brilliant – a must read for every young girl and sole mother.
July 27, 2013 at 5:03 pm
Hi Lizzy, I am from Nicaragua, Central America. I was watching a very sad documentary in BBC about forced adoption. Were you one of the mothers that shared their story in the documental?
November 5, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Adoption Critic –
Do you ever think Adoption can be a good thing? I choose adoption for my first child. I was 16, and the dad was not mentally able to help (too high). She turns 17 soon, and she has had a much better life than I could have given her and I have been able to grow up as well. Now I happily married to a wonderful man and we have two children who will be able to meet their sister next year. Adoption is not always how you put it. If I could go back in time I would make NO Changes!
FYI… the nurses in the Hospital tried to get me to bond with her and keep her. I held her for 12 hrs. and still used my best judgment and gave her to the best family I could have!
November 15, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Adoption is multi-faceted. Not all AP’s seek out in this way.
May 17, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Adoption is not always how we like to see it.She may have had abetter life, presumably you mean in material ways but you don’t know her inner thoughts.
November 15, 2010 at 11:36 am
Could I please link this? And translate it into Dutch?
November 15, 2010 at 8:35 pm
yes, please feel free to link to this and translate it.
November 15, 2010 at 6:27 pm
“choose adoption for my first child.”
Do you mean you wanted to “choose” adoption? Or that you “chose” adoption because you had no support?
There’s a difference.
December 22, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Well I really liked it. I reunite parents with their kids for free. I was approached by ABC last summer and turned them down because they would only reunite people that fit parameters for being on the show “no dark pasts”. So I told them to take their $20K because everyone I help has a “dark past”. I’m being approached for a pilot for another show, they said I could reunite whoever I want and then instead of showing the actual reunion (which is kind of too much) families with the most inspirational stories could share them if they want, its prime time it cant be too dark, but the stories should encourage people to search. People who adopt criticized the other show for not showing all sides of reunion, how it does not always work out or how some people don’t want to be found. I am struggling with that type of compromise because I want the show to stay on the air – I would only be reuniting people who posted on a reunion registry already who are unaware that the child they are looking for also has posted on that registry. There are hundreds of mothers messages stacked right on top of their babies messages right now on adoption.com. They have no idea their reunion is seconds away unless someone tells them. I do this in my free time. I do this for free. There are no unhappy reunions only Joy. I could tell so many people to go check for themselves, or connect them show them how.
Also there is this other problem with the fact I don’t want to put prefixes in front of family titles. I don’t think its necessary, it irritates me. The only way that can be done without making people who adopt angry is to make every story be told from the point of view of the family who was looking for their lost relative rather than from the point of view of the lost relative looking for their “birth” family to differentiate them from the family that raised them. They get so irate everything is “my son” this and “I’m a real mother that”. They don’t want the word adoptive used as a prefix for their family titles. I don’t even like saying “adoptive mother”. I’d really like the world to understand that parents don’t always raise their own children. Any time is a good time to start being there for your kid. Kids don’t listen to their parents for the first 18 years anyway; be there for them in the following 40 when they’re having kids and divorcing and need ANYTHING AT ALL. It will be like the first 18 apart never happend when you look at your family tree. I have a very unpopular opinion. I’m struggling with making those compromises in order to let families know its not too late to get your kids back.
January 29, 2011 at 4:43 am
Wonderful, honest post. My mother had two children taken from her when she was mentally ill, and they were adopted out. What is worse, Catholic nuns were behind it, as well as in the tragic story of Philomena Lee, which is documented on my blog. (see below) Adoption has affected several generations of my family, so much so that I wrote a book ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?’ My two siblings who were adopted out have not come out of it well. Please see my blog frandi.wordpress.com; under the title ‘Adoption & Separation’. I will link this blog to my post for others to read. Remember adoptees out there, most of us understand your pain. Anne Frandi-Coory.
January 23, 2013 at 10:59 pm
Anne Frandi-Coory…as one of the two siblings you refer to above…I am offended that you would say I and your other adopted sibling “have not come out of it well”…that is very unpleasant to read and not at all appropriate…but maybe it willl help you sell more books…
January 29, 2011 at 4:49 am
BTW, one of the writers of a comment above mentions the word “kidnapped”. Excellent word for forced adoption!
January 29, 2011 at 4:55 am
[…] Adoption Critic for ‘Dear Incubator‘ letter and […]
April 26, 2011 at 12:02 pm
I’m a hopeful adoptive parent and I’m also married to an adoptee in a closed adoption and I’m helpting him search for his natural family and while I agree with 99% of this post wholeheartedly I have to say this doesn’t describe all hopeful adoptive parents. For as long as my husband and I have been wanting to adopt we have hated the profiles that you describe above. I cannot fathom how anyone could even think that starting a letter “Dear Birthmother” could be ok and the ridiculous posed pictures that scream fake?? Don’t get me started. My husband and I have been chosen two different times in the past 18 months and both times we developed amazingly close friendships with both of the women. When the babies were born, both decided that with a little help that they thought that they could care for their babies. Yes, our hearts were broken because we anticipated for 3 and 5 months that we would be welcoming these babies but did we try to talk them out of their decisions? NO! They loved their babies! How could they not! We supported them emotionally, didn’t get mad, angry or pushy and we even helped one of them get on her feet so that her baby had the best possible start in life and that included helping her get an apartment, utilities, food and transportation so that she could get him to and from the doctor. Not all of us are evil ogres just waiting to snatch your babies from your arms with a whole army of agencies, facilitators etc.
May 9, 2011 at 2:33 am
Heather, you sound like a good person, and I’m very sorry that nature has deemed it so that you are unable to have children. That has to suck. But, nobody on this planet gets everything they want in life. The fact that you are unable to have children doesn’t give you the right to take another woman’s baby. As painful as it must be to want and not have a child, the pain of having and losing a child is a million times worse. You can’t miss what you never had, but you can miss a living, breathing child. Losing my daughter to adoption when I was 21 pretty much ruined my entire life. We have been reunited for almost eight years now, and I am the one she calls “Mama.” Her adopters had a lot of money and connections, but there is no way these people should have had care of a fern, let alone somebody’s precious child. Only through reunion has my extraordinary, beautiful, brilliant daughter been able to work through some of her abandonment issues and shine. Her adopters abused her in just about every way possible, but they kept up appearances very well, so nobody ever understood that my precious child was crying out for help for many years.
Heather, no matter how you go about it, no matter what your approach, if you adopt another woman’s baby, that mother is going to feel astounding, bottomless, unresolvable pain. You should also look at the studies of how poorly adopted children fair in life, regardless of how “loving” or “wonderful” the adopters are. Have you ever heard of RAD? That is so commonplace amongst adopted kids that it ought to be considered, in my opinion, almost an automatic by-product.
You and your husband obviously have rhe means to help children, and that could be a great outlet for you. Become a mentor, a violunteer, or a “big sister.” If you just feel like you have to adopt, how about adopting an older child or sibling group in the foster care system, a child who really NEEDS a home? Even that type of adoption is fraught with issues, but at least there might be some benfir to the children involved, unlike infant adoption.
I don’t mean to pick on you, and I appreciate the candor with which you speak, and the courage it must take to come on an anti-adoption blog and proclaim yourself a PAP. It’s awesome that you have helped young mothers get their bearings in life, it truly is. I don’t know if I could show that kind of altruism in the face of what muct have been a horrible disappoint ment for you.
But, please re-think the idea of infant adoption. That child will never really be yours, he or she will go through life feeling abandonment issues, and the real mother will feel the loss forever.
If you have gotten this far, thanks for hearing me out. 🙂 I speak the truth, from the perspective of a mom who never should have been deprived of her child, and from that of my daughter, who needed and deserved me. Best wishes to you.
May 9, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Pawsoff:
I thank you for your reply and I don’t feel picked on in the slighest! I have a thick skin and most of all, I like being educated.
I get what you are saying, I do! We are currently taking 10 weeks worth of classes to adopt through the foster care system…I will admit to you that going into domestic infant adoption, we were ignorant and had on rose colored glasses.
While I have never waked in a mile in your shoes and will never know the pain that natural mothers who have basically been robbed of their babies feel, I have learned so much over the years through blogs just like this. The adoption industry is disgusting. That babies are allowed to be bought and sold is disgusting.
I also attended an adoption conference with my husband (an adoptee) where one of the speakers was Ann Fessler who wrote the book “The Girls Who Went Away”. If you haven’t read that book–you should–or maybe you don’t need to because you lived it– but WOW it was eye opening to me about the whole adoption industry and how they prey on innocent women and their children. It is disgusting. It completely changed my view on adoption and working with adoption agencies.
My original comment was basically intended to agree with almost everything expressed here. I have pretty much become an advocate of a baby staying with mom unless there is absolutely no other option..Where I do not oppose adoption, I do believe it can be very necessary. Case in point, I spent many years as an RN in a inner city hospital where some mothers came in gave birth and walked right back out the door they came in 5 minutes later leaving the baby behind. I have to be honest and say that taking a child away from his or her natural mother is extremely unnatural.
I know all about RAD, I have seen first hand the struggles that my husband has even now at the age of 39 with being adopted.
In helping him search for his mom, I have met some amazing women just like all of you here. Women who should have NEVER been separated from their babies to begin with but were threatened, made to feel horrible, etc.
So basically my quest for more information on truth is what brought me here to begin with. Hugs to all.
May 10, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Please know that every adoption page on facebook that I shared this letter with blocked me.
That is because it is the truth. You must all repost to as many sites as you are able – hopefully some young mothers will see it – or it will get caught in the caches.
Goood Luck
May 12, 2011 at 11:35 pm
I have been following this discussion and I think I will share it and the article with our Australian Senate Inquiry Into Forced Adoption group. Many thanks.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141502909234775¬if_t=group_activity
May 12, 2011 at 11:40 pm
Thank you! Please share this with anyone you choose. I would love this to be read far and wide, because it is so true!
May 17, 2011 at 9:25 am
It is indeed so true as you have maintained, and thank you for permission to share it. Obviously your motives have been pure in writing this piece. Many thanks, Lizzy
January 4, 2014 at 10:02 pm
This is spot on…SPOT ON.
January 4, 2014 at 10:17 pm
Reblogged this on A Blog about Open Adoption and commented:
This is EXACT. To the letter. If I was not aware that this unfortunate fate had befallen so, so many others, I would have have thought this post was written just for me.
January 24, 2014 at 1:36 pm
Lizzy Howards kid was given up not wrenched away