Adoptions in Hawaii
Price of Paradise · Hawaii Public Radio · aired 1994-11-20
Guest host: Calvin Pang. Guests: Annette Baran (author, adoption expert); Frances Wong (Judge, Family Court)
Duration: 1:00:50

[Note: Calvin Pang's stated role not explicit in audio (recording begins mid-intro with no self-introduction captured). Normal sign-off at 01:00:10. Music/dead-air tail: 2156s (confirmed via chunk04+chunk05 transcriptions showing no speech).]

[00:00:00] Calvin Pang: Your host ran left a few days ago to present a paper on the mainland. I understand he's on his way back, but he just couldn't get back on time to be on today's program, so I'm here minding the store. Randy will be back next week. Today's the start of the national adoption week and in keeping with the theme our topic this morning is adoption. And if you have any questions or comments on any aspect of adoption, please give us a call. Our number is 955-8821. For our neighbor island callers, please call collect. In 1978, three adoption professionals published a work entitled The Adoption Triangle. The book concerns the effect of restricting adopted children from accessing their own adoption, original birth records. Earlier this week, I spoke with a number of local adoption professionals and I think to a person, this they attributed to this book a major role in shifting the way our culture has thought about the institution of adoption.

[00:00:57] Calvin Pang: And this morning, I have in the studio one of the co-authors. Her name is Annette Baran. She's been in the islands for the last couple of days, um, to deliver several speeches on various concerns about adoption. Annette is a national expert in the field of child welfare and adoption. She's been frequently called upon by local and national media when stories or issues about adoption arise. She has served as director of a major adoption center in California and has maintained a private psychotherapy practice in Los Angeles. Annette, Aloha and welcome to Hawaii and the studio.

[00:01:31] Annette Baran: And thank you for inviting me.

[00:01:34] Calvin Pang: To give a local slap to this morning's topic is I've also invited Judge Francis Wong who sits on the first circuit court bench in Honolulu. Judge Wong recently completed a two-year tenure as a senior judge of our family court. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California Law Center in Los Angeles. And my may I say that she's a highly regarded jurist in our community. Judge Wong, good morning. Thank you for joining us.

[00:01:57] Frances Wong: Good morning. I won't thank you for inviting me, but I'm happy to be here.

[00:02:01] Calvin Pang: Thanks. Thank you for your courage. Both of our guests have agreed to respond to your comments and questions on adoptions. As always, this program is listener driven. And if you have any questions or just wish to register a comment, please call us. Our number this hour is 955-8821. And again, Neighbor Island residents, please call collect. Annette, I'd like to begin with you. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of listening to one of your speeches at the University of Hawaii. Um, in your speech, you mentioned that you've been working in the field of adoption since 1949. That's a 45-year span. Um, would you like to describe what adoptions were like back in 1949 and how it's evolved since that time?

[00:02:47] Annette Baran: I I should um mention that I did take eight years out to to take care of babies and then went back. That's still 37 years. I know. I know. And and it feels like it was yesterday and also it feels like it's a century. Um it certainly has changed. When I started in adoptions and and I need to to make it very clear that um adoption social work is different than any other social work and it was serendipity. It was I needed a job, my husband was a graduate student. Children's Home Society was the only adoption agency in the state of California, 1949. And um the what the difference between adoption social work and the rest of social work um is very clearly delineated. I was trained in social work school to deal with people in crisis, people with problems. To deal with helping them make decisions that they could live with. Um we dealt with poverty, we dealt with dysfunction, uh we dealt with delinquency, all of those kind of issues, public welfare. Um field work and before going to graduate school, I walked the beat from door to door to see AFDC, which were women with children who were on um state and in federal funded welfare. And then I got into adoption.

[00:04:06] Annette Baran: Now, adoption by that time was already adoptive parent-driven. Um uh it no longer was focused on children. It was focused on providing infertile couples with babies. And um there were the birth mothers who were in crisis, but they were temporarily there and we rationalize it all, we we solve their dilemma, we help them resolve their problems that we could in terms really that we use, re-virginize them and send them back to their communities to go on with their lives and put it all behind them. Uh-huh. And they had given up their children out of love. Um the truth was that wasn't true at all. But what we loved having was all the accolades from the adoptive parents. It was playing fairy godmother. We chose perfect babies for perfect couples. We got gifts, we we we we were lauded, we were um invited into their homes and it was different than other social work. Well, why would you ever leave this? It was a Garden of Eden. Um really, so that was social that was adoption then. Small.

[00:05:12] Annette Baran: Um we didn't have many babies to place. Uh and then World War II had an enormous effect on families all over the country. Little has been written about the effect upon adoption. But there was enough family breakdown Mhm. so that a lot of the strictures were gone and you had as a result a lot more um unwanted pregnancies because the women were and young girls were out working early and moving around the country and there was a sense of um uh horror abroad and take whatever you can as fast as you can. So there suddenly was an outburst of numbers of babies available and California was the Mecca. And um it was still not time to keep babies if you weren't married. But uh we had the babies and suddenly um we built offices and new agencies were born and we had more babies than families. And then that bottom dropped out because the morals of the country shifted. Uh-huh.

[00:06:10] Calvin Pang: And you want me to go on or do we have some questions? Shall I wait? Keep going. Okay. We must be about 1968 at this point, right?

[00:06:15] Annette Baran: Right. Right. We're into that at that point. And and when the drop bottom dropped out, again, we never saw it coming. I think that's one of the things we don't do. It's there upon us. There was, if you remember the civil rights movement, there was a sexual revolution in the United States. There was the very beginnings of legalized abortion. Um and there was a lot more divorce taking place. We had a lot more young women raising children alone who may have had a marriage certificate, but nobody could prove it once they um started their life as single parents. And pregnant women looked around and they began to say very loudly and clearly, a number of things. One is, you're not there to help us keep. You're there to skew us toward placing. You're there to convince us the thing to do is to give the baby to that more deserving couple and that we can't do a job of raising our children. You're not going to help us really make a decision.

[00:07:12] Annette Baran: And then they said, if we're going to go through a pregnancy, it's going to be because we're going to keep. Mhm. Otherwise, we can find out how to terminate. They also went on to say, we if we do place, we want to know who the baby goes to. We don't trust you. Mhm. We have to be part of that choice. And finally they began to reverse the numbers. When I first started um in adoptions, I remember the executive director saying, we're the best agency because only 3% of our pregnant girls keep. Mhm. And by the time this era that I'm talking about now was in full bloom, it had totally reversed itself. 3% were placing and 97% were keeping. Right. Right.

[00:07:54] Annette Baran: And we closed our offices. We um saw the beginning of the um um black market so-called rising once more because there were too many families and not enough babies to go around. Right. Right.

[00:08:10] Calvin Pang: In your description of this evolution, you you begin by talking about how um single pregnant women would come to the home, um have their children in shrouded in secrecy and then go back home, quote-unquote re-virginized. No one ever knew that they were pregnant, no one ever knew that they traveled to this home to have a child. They never told their family. They would say, I'm going out to have a vacation.

[00:08:29] Annette Baran: Uh-huh.

[00:08:33] Calvin Pang: Okay. And and then so from this period of secrecy, we now come to a time where the birth mother can even can actually say, uh this is the type of parent I would like. Mhm. And and does this go so far as to have the birth parent continue to have a relationship with the birth child?

[00:08:49] Annette Baran: No. No. Now in early open adoption comes another decade down the road. Uh in those days, it was so secret, so closed, so anonymous until the birth mothers really forced us. We want to pick the parent and that from then it came, we want to meet the parent and that began um to open up the doors of of of the whole adoption system which had been changed. And um you know, concomitant with this came the adoption reform movement and that was the movement which said, where adoptees said quite openly, um we want to know where we came from. We didn't um sign any document. We had no part of this and we're going to search.

[00:09:35] Annette Baran: Now they were the beginning searchers, birth parents were not. And the way the uh the thoughts were arranged it was birth mothers who we used to call natural mothers or real mothers, which I mean, you know, think of our language really. Um uh they uh signed a paper, they um made their peace with it, they should be quiet. Adoptive parents had signed a document in adopted, but who represented the adoptee? Who said that the adoptee had to give up an initial name and initial identity, etc. Now, we knew they had always searched, um but it was silent and quiet and secretive. And um we set out to write one paper for one national meeting which turned into a larger research project and then um many articles and then finally the adoption triangle.

[00:10:29] Annette Baran: And we really wanted to know why they searched, what they found, what happened after reunions and how did the birth mothers feel because I had lived with the old system for a lot of years and I bought it hook, line, and sinker. And the old system said the birth mothers have suffered enough, leave them alone. Don't intrude in their lives. You will ruin their future life if you do. They want to put it behind them. That wasn't true. That wasn't true. Mhm.

[00:10:59] Calvin Pang: How did you find that out? I mean, how did how was your thinking evolved evolving and what caused it to evolve?

[00:11:05] Annette Baran: What what happened in the first place, every year on on uh baby's birthday, I would get phone calls from birth mothers. I hated those phone calls. I didn't know what to do with those phone calls. Um they were always so sad and when I think of what I said to them, I cringe. It was like, what else have you done with your life? And you haven't moved forward and you know, all those kind of uh um sugar coated uh kind of words. Um and then when adoptees came to us and asked for information, I would say, why do you have a need to know? They should have hit me on the head for that. Of course they had a need to know. Why did I have a need to say that? I mean, if they didn't need to know there was something wrong. Anyway when we started the research, no agencies would open their records to us and what we had to do was to go to the media um to ask people to volunteer to come forward.

[00:11:56] Annette Baran: We wanted to hear what their experiences were positive, negative, whatever. And what shocked us, we weren't even prepared for this, was that the biggest group who came were the birth mothers. Uh-huh. They came to the agency I was working at, they sat in the waiting room all day till I had time to see them. They phoned, they wrote, and what they said was, nobody has asked us how we feel. Finally, somebody wants to know. And what they said was, we have lived with an aching pain all these years. It's not as acute and we were lied to. You promised us we would get over it. You don't get over it. You have to live with it. We don't know if our kids are alive or dead.

[00:12:38] Annette Baran: And maybe we're afraid because we haven't told our husbands or our families, but if we could know and still be protected, that's all we'd like to know. Uh-huh. They went on to say, we think they hate us. We've never forgiven ourselves for giving up a child. It's an unnatural thing to do. Um we need to explain why we had to give up a baby. We want to tell our children what has happened to us now, we're upstanding citizens, we are successful. We're not somebody they need to be ashamed of. All of these things came out which changed our minds considerably.

[00:13:17] Calvin Pang: Right. Right. You talked about the birth mothers, what were the adoptees saying?

[00:13:22] Annette Baran: Well, adoptees were were were convincing us that the things we had told their adoptive parents were lies. You know we used to say, if it's a good adoption, your child will never need to search. Well that was nonsense. They weren't searching because they had a bad adoption. They were searching for the missing pieces of their jigsaw puzzle. They didn't know their ethnic origins. They didn't and they needed to know what was it like for those birth parents. Um they needed to understand how they were conceived and what the the meaning of all of this was. Um and so their searches went on, often they wouldn't tell their adoptive parents because they didn't want to hurt their feelings. Mhm.

[00:14:04] Annette Baran: Some of them waited till their adoptive parents died before they'd search. Right. Right.

[00:14:10] Calvin Pang: For those of you who are joining us late, I just like to let you know that you're listening to the Price of Paradise radio show. You have any questions or comments, please call us. Our number is 955-8821 for Neighbor Island residents, please call collect. Our guests today are Annette Baran, national expert on adoption issues, and Judge Frances Wong.

[00:14:29] Frances Wong: I'd like to if I could, Kelvin, go back to something that Annette had said earlier and that is um the shift in focus and perspective of the initial social work, the first social worker or the first helper who um who approaches or who is approached by the birth mother. And judges like to see that there was a lot of good work and a lot of good information Mhm. given to everybody involved. It's whether it's called a quote open adoption or not because now, really, despite what what the actual labels are, there really is a very wide range Right. of information initial information that's shared uh among all the adults when they get together and and try to get this um worked out at the beginning.

[00:15:19] Frances Wong: Um and we what really gives us pause is when we think oh no, wait a minute, you know, did the birth mother know exactly as far as you can exactly what is happening? Um how much has anybody spoken to the birth father? Mhm. I mean that is always a big concern of ours although we work and concern with everybody in the triad. But this whole issue of birth fathers is almost unnecessary appendages, signatures that you need to get. Right.

[00:15:52] Annette Baran: You need to know that in the very beginning birth fathers had no rights, only responsibilities. So that there went when was that Illinois case? It had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Yeah, right. And that case didn't come in until the late 70s, I think. But before then, um he didn't have to sign. He could be taken to court uh and made to to pay. To pay. Right. Um I have one of my fondest memories of is of parents coming in with their teenage son and sitting there and saying, he's going to be a father, he can't even pick up his socks. So you know, that uh and as a matter of fact, in our agency, we did some of that initial work with the feelings of birth fathers. They were perceived as no good rues who ran off and left the girl. You know the old melodrama. Mhm.

[00:17:37] Annette Baran: But in terms of counseling, um the uh if it's an adoption agency and their job is to place babies and to stay in business by placing babies, then uh most adoption agencies, probably very subtly and they really do believe it, will probably skew the counseling toward um placement of the child, not keeping when they can Mhm. because they want to provide babies. And and they feel two parents are better than one and, you know, on and on and on. Mhm. Um but those birth mothers would come back and say, we never had a chance. Nobody showed us how we could have kept our baby. What resources in the community were there. Mhm.

[00:18:24] Calvin Pang: In your comments, we've we've talked about, I've heard the word triad used and we've also been talking about open adoptions. For the listener's benefit, could we define those terms um clearly so everybody knows what we're talking about? We talk about adoption triad, what is that?

[00:18:40] Annette Baran: I'll take the easier one. Adoption triad, those are the birth parents, the adoptive parents and the kids. Okay. Well, uh one of the uh the things that I do take uh some pride in is the whole um uh approach to open adoption in this modern era. Adoptions didn't get closed until uh really um what the third of our century down. You know, we adoptions were open for many, many years and the original closing was based on the fact that they were trying to protect the child Mhm. and protect the birth mother. And but you know, the child's birth certificate was stamped with big illegitimate over it. In one form or another and they didn't want this to carry to have the child carry, so they sealed it and replaced it with a nice clean neutral birth certificate. So it started with that notion, and I can remember early on um the um uh petition to adopt and the adoption decree would have the original name of the child on it. It was still that open. Now, each state went had their own codes and laws and and passed them and it got more and more closed and it got more and more closed because adoptive parents wanted it as secret as possible.

[00:19:00] Speaker 1: their child. They wanted to be able to live with the fact that this overcame their infertility, this made them real parents. And it doesn't work from an emotional, psychological point of view. It certainly was closed adoption at its greatest. Now, it was closed in other ways too. Nobody ever met anybody else. Even our infant foster mothers never were allowed to meet the adoptive parents. Why? I don't know, but that we lived in a secret box as we became more and more secret. And, um, open adoption was a theory that we tried out very frighteningly, we tiptoed, we we didn't, we were scared of it ourselves. And it came about because of one woman came to me at the agency and she had kept a child for 3 years, and she now realized she couldn't keep it any longer and she asked us if we find her a family.

[00:19:57] Speaker 1: We were not in the business of playing anything placing anything but babies, but we thought we would try. Uh and perfect blue ribbon babies. I mean they had to be young and perfect, but we were thought we would try and she said, I have to meet that family because I've had this child for 3 years. I have to be able to go on with life knowing that I'm peaceful with the family that the child has, and again, no one had ever asked us that before and we said let's see if we can't find a family where we can do this. It was we were experimenters, we were already doing the open record, on the feeling business as well.

[00:20:31] Speaker 1: We found a family who were comfortable with it, we arranged for them to meet, we arranged for her to help the child move into the new home, so that the child wouldn't be too traumatized. But the notion was not that it would stay open. The notion was it was an open placement. We were so proud of ourselves, we wrote this up as a interesting piece of research, nobody would publish it. It was the hardest thing to get the adoption community to look at in those days because it was so foreign to this closed place everybody was stuck in. And when it took off, it took off with a bang. Um and again, we were idealistic and thought isn't this wonderful what we're doing, until we saw what the baby brokers made of it.

[00:21:17] Speaker 1: What some of the, the uh absolutely amoral attorneys were doing with it, which is they were going in and recruiting teenage girls and saying to them, you can have your cake and eat it, too. It'll be open. See, you can have no responsibility, but all the pleasure. Well, but that was just to seduce them into placing, and so now, if we look at the definition of open adoption, and I'm sorry I'm taking all this time to get you there, but open adoption goes from A to Z. Open adoption in in the state of California, for example, where all independent adoptions nonagency operate under the aegis that the mother and or father choose their baby, choose the family for their baby.

[00:22:00] Speaker 1: So if you choose the family for the baby, that means somehow you know about them or know them personally. That's open. Now, um what arrangements are then made, does it stay open, uh how open does it stay? Some of them exchange letters once a year. Some of them go to the other extreme and babysit for each other. We have some really interesting open adoptions where, uh you have very handicapped children, let's say you have a Down Syndrome baby and a, a mother who can't keep but who becomes the respite mother for the child and takes the child on weekends, giving the adoptive family respite. But now that's a real cooperative kind of open adoption. So, you know, the, um unfortunately, a lot of women believe they're going to have an open adoption, and once it's legal, the doors are shut.

[00:22:51] Speaker 1: And there's no law that says you have to keep it open. So it is at the, um good behest of the adoptive family, whether it stays open or not, because the law is on their side. They have no reason to have to keep it open. Would you add anything to it, judge?

[00:23:07] Speaker 2: Just that there are as many different nuances to this whole enterprise as there are human beings. You know, just like any other human undertaking. And and I want to keep going back to that groundwork, um because I think Annette is right. For the most part, um people really need to rely on the good faith of everybody else. But I'm comfortable with that. I think that um if we don't look at this as just a way to, you know, broker children. But if we look at this as forming families, this has been going on forever. You know, as Annette says, this business about the closeness of the the legal records didn't start until relatively late, right?

[00:23:58] Speaker 2: In our legal development, um I want to make real certain because I have to because I'm a judge, that the court itself doesn't take a position on any of this because this is this has got to be community driven. Right. This whole business about even how you label children, do you label them as illegitimate? That is a community undertaking. And I mean we've heard lately about how maybe we should be using that label again so we can get people off welfare. You know, this kind of debate is going to go on and on and on and the way it filters down to families is very complex. I mean you go back to the mom who says, wait a minute, I didn't come here for help in losing a child. I came here just because I have a set of problems.

[00:25:08] Speaker 2: Right. And part of the solution might be that I might have to give a child up, but what else is there? And so how complicated is that question going to be Right. Um as the legal community and as the political community starts following what they think are the the the predominant mores of the community.

[00:25:12] Speaker 1: Except, except that you know, from a philosophical base, I have come to believe, um that every human being has a right to retain some connections with their roots. Now, the some connections, we have to certainly be aware of danger to the child so that you're not going to do this and put the child into a dangerous situation where there an abuser or a violent kind of person. And granted all of that, but um what bothers me the most is that there seems to be no understanding of how important those roots are. Um we as a nation, um have given up our, uh, our heritage. Generally, we're a mixed bag. Other countries in the world put much more faith in roots and heritage than we do, and I think that's sad.

[00:26:06] Speaker 1: And the biggest number of adoptions are not infants. You know, infants are what, 25,000 a year, it's very little. I mean they they bring us the most money and the most notoriety. The biggest number are these older children and and foster homes who need permanency planning and or adoption. Right. And too often, the families try to cut off their connections. And that seems so sad to me because which families in it? The new let's say the new adoptive family. And and and with good intention, they will say, well, child was taken away from the parents by the courts because the parents were neglectful or injurious or whatever. And we don't want the child to ever be in in in that kind of situation again, so we're going to start all new, we're wiping this blackboard clean.

[00:26:51] Speaker 1: Well, you know, maybe, um the mother or father uh need to be monitored in visits or maybe they need to be left out of it, but there are grandparents, there are aunts, uncles, there may be somebody in the extended family, there are other foster, old foster parents, neighbors, somebody who for that child retains a connection Right. to that root. And that's the part that I think we we need to really emphasize. Putting on the vision, the glasses of the perspective, are the, the adoptive parents for moment, however. I could, one could argue that this couple might have a good deal of trepidation in so far as um maintaining some presence of the birth family. Um if that does occur, how might you counsel such a couple?

[00:27:39] Speaker 1: Well, I think you can have monitored visits. I don't think you put the child in in danger. I mean you certainly can. And I've seen enough of that. I mean, I think of a child who whose mother was a uh uh florid schizophrenic, and she'd be in and out and the the visits were always monitored. And the therapist going with the child to the visit would say, well, we don't know how your mother's going to be today. This might be a good day or a bad day. And the child understood the reality of it. Sure. But she didn't lose her mother because her mother was sick. I mean, you know, her mother couldn't take care of her, her mother wasn't responsible, but she was her mother.

[00:28:17] Speaker 1: And we've seen this over and over again. Um, but on a, on a real basic uh point of view, these children have memories. You can't wipe it out. Uh they they can remember how the names, they can remember the people. So, how can you say to them, they don't exist anymore, you don't have them anymore. In fact, just out of fairness to our local community here, a lot of that does go on. And I give the, I mean, all the parties a lot of credit to try to use that elusive standard, the child's best interest as the measuring rod.

[00:28:57] Speaker 2: And you know, sometimes you guess wrong about exactly how much harm will come about, psychological harm, much less physical harm will come about of Right. even a supervised visit. So, a lot of that does go on, and and I do know that, um certainly the courts don't have a black and white litmus test that once permanency planning is in place, there will be no, absolutely no um um contact anymore between birth parents and and kids. Um we don't we we don't have that test.

[00:29:33] Speaker 1: Not in the courts, but I think that on the other hand, the court should uh be on the side of proposing, suggesting, supporting connections, not cutting them off. But really making it a point to say this is in the child's best emotional interest really. Um, whenever I counsel even on on newborns, um like the birth parents and the adoptive parents together will come in for conjoint counseling, and they need to place. They they're whatever the reasons are, that the child is going to be raised by strangers. And my point of view, and I I feel so strongly about it, is that, um lots of birth mothers take great pride in eating right and not drinking and not smoking and producing a healthy baby.

[00:30:17] Speaker 1: Um, and that's fine physically. But from an emotional point of view, if that child is to grow up not feeling abandoned and bad and therefore given away, that child should have a connection with those birth parents, which allows the child to feel they couldn't raise me, they couldn't care for me, but they didn't abandon me, they care about me. And so I have a bottom line thing which is every birthday, you send a card and a note, I'm thinking about you on your birthday, this is the day you were born. It can be two lines, but the meaning to a child is enormous, and on Christmas or a significant holiday or Valentine's Day a card as well.

[00:30:57] Speaker 1: It doesn't take much, and I think we do adoptive parents we give them a bad wrap on this. Sometimes, they're the ones who would like this and you get birth parents who say it's too painful, I can't do it, you know. So it it has to be that we stand for something for kids.

[00:31:14] Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you to hold your thought for just a minute while we remind our listeners that you all are listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. Our guest today are Annette Baron and Judge Frances Wong. If you have a question please please call us. Our number is 955-8821, neighbor Island residents please call collect.

[00:31:34] Speaker 1: It's Sunday morning and I think people are just listening.

[00:31:37] Speaker 2: I know my daughter she's reading the Sunday having her mother read her to Sunday funnies. Um getting back to you uh you talked about the closing the open system and one of the remnants of the closed system is a sealing of records. Um Frances, first of all, I'd just like to know what is the practice of sealed records in Hawaii? How does one go about accessing adoptive records or original birth records uh if one chooses to do so? Um, first of all, the the starting point is the child's 18th birthday. And then once that birthday has been met, um people can send in inquiries to the family court. Um, and and and this is a function that the legislature has given over to the family court.

[00:32:28] Speaker 2: And frankly, it's not a function that we feel very comfortable with because we feel like all we are are just holding on to these records and that there's so many more important things that should be going on for these people that we um both fiscally and functionally cannot provide. Um, because the pain, frankly, that that we hear coming into us, no matter where that pain originates, is just something that we feel like we shouldn't treat as a piece of paper that we're just trying to meet an inquiry, and that's all we're we're we're able to do. In fact, the first few years, um when we were given no money to to fulfill our function, it was being run by volunteers.

[00:33:14] Speaker 2: Um, and in addition to our court staff. But what happens is that if we, if there's all if there are all the consents in our file, then we simply release the identifying information. So if if birth parents state from the get-go at the time of the adoption, if my child ever asks, give them the information, then the information goes the moment the child asks. the moment the child asks and we want to make sure that there's no other you know letter that revokes that or anything. Um, the real difficult part comes when people have lost track of each other. And we have, not we family court, but there are, you know, adoption trackers, um, and not enough of them, uh who will try to do basically almost a missing person's kind of investigation.

[00:34:09] Speaker 2: And then once we can get that information, and people write for a whole range of reasons. They say, we don't really want to know that much, but can you tell us what my ethnicity is? Uh-huh. Or, um, you know, just tell me if I have siblings. Right. And inquiries like that, and then one of our staff will go through it, or a volunteer will go through it and we'll try to make those um those disclosure How many inquiries do you get? Oh, no, I should have thought that one up. I don't know. I no I don't like to give figures unless I know for sure. I don't know for sure.

[00:34:45] Speaker 1: Could I ask a question? Um, let's say that the person's 18. 18 years ago, no one really asked the the young woman that question, um, if your child asks 18 years from now, are you available? They didn't think to ask it 18 years ago. Um, do you have any system by which an intermediary can, the tracker can locate that birth mother, call her now and ask her whether she'd be willing to meet?

[00:35:12] Speaker 2: That that's exactly what happens. So if there's nothing in the record, they will call to ask her. Yes, it's not just, well, too bad. Because 18 years ago we didn't have that. Yeah. Right. We do we do now, but not. Yeah. And so in other words there is that intermediary. Oh yes. I've read somewhere that that's called a searching consent method. Something, yeah. I mean, it's there's different labels, but there are avenues. Can the can the birth mother also ask that the her adopted daughter be asked or adopted son? Yes. So either party may ask. Yes. I know at times sealed records are very hard to open. I know yesterday I had you you in your speech you told a story about Michael Reagan, uh who is the adopted son of former President Ronald Reagan.

[00:35:58] Speaker 2: And uh I think you told a story in part to illustrate how difficult it is to open records. Could you reprise that story for our listeners?

[00:36:07] Speaker 1: Well, I told it also because it gave me a chance to say something I'll never have a chance to say again. And the story basically is that uh uh when um a man by the name of Joe Himes was ghost writing Michael Reagan's autobiography, uh he called to ask about how a child um an adopted child would feel if at the age of 7 he was told he was illegitimate. And would he be upset? Would he be um traumatized? And I didn't know at that time who he was talking about, but soon he made it clear. And he made it clear that uh Michael Reagan was visiting uh his uh father and new stepmother. Uh he was born to uh President Reagan when he was married to Jane Wyman and they had one child and then they adopted Michael.

[00:36:54] Speaker 1: And then they divorced and he married Nancy Reagan, um and he was visiting them and they weren't getting along very well. Um uh he was a uh uh not that I guess, um attractive charming little boy, and um at one point he asked if the new bedroom they were building was for him and they said no it was for a new baby, and he said, if I ever found my mommy, uh she would have a room for me and uh Nancy annoyed, said your mommy didn't want you, she gave you up, you were illegitimate, or something of that sort. That's his memory of it, and so I explained to uh uh Joe that the word would mean nothing to a 7-year-old clearly, he never heard the word.

[00:37:32] Speaker 1: But the expression on the face of the person saying it, the way in which uh uh it was um handled body language even, uh would be what was traumatizing Yes. to the child. And um and passing, I said, you know, if Michael's ever interested in searching for his birth parents, uh tell him to call me and I'll tell him the road the route you go and how you would uh manage this. And a few months passed and he called and he said, Michael is now ready. And so they came to my office, he, bringing Michael in with the Secret Service men and, as I described, they were in cut-off jeans and tennis shoes and no socks, whereas the Secret Service men were in natty gabardines and shiny brogues and, you know, they're sitting out in the outer office and, it was the first time Secret Service men sat in my outer office.

[00:38:20] Speaker 1: When they came in, it you know, I I sort of joined into a fantasy discussion because here was the president's son sitting, who should have access to all kinds of things that we ordinary mortals might not, and so I said, you know, there are many ways that you search and nothing is that secret, etc. But I said, um, you're in a position where, who knows? Maybe uh the governor of the state of California could do something about opening your records. After all, and you have comments, you know. And um, and you have you have connections uh with um these kind of figures. He said, 'Of course, I do. By God, I could call Governor Duke Mejin, who was then our governor,' and they said, 'No, I'll call my father and he'll call Governor Duke Mejin.' And so I was just sort of part of this, wow, you know, we we're into this in in a big way.

[00:39:11] Speaker 1: Well, um, he did send a copy of the book to uh Washington to his father. His father, um, uh did call Governor Duke Mejin. It was the simple thing to do, um, he felt, and he never thought twice about it, and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and eventually, he called again. And one day, and this is the part the reason I tell the story, because it's such fun to tell, because I was sitting on the phone talking to my editor when my call waiting button, uh, pushed in, and I said, 'Um, do you um, mind waiting a second? I'll be right back, Charles.' And I pushed the button, and this voice said, 'Governor Duke Mejin calling.' And it bearing, and I said, 'I'm not interrupting this. The governor doesn't call me very often, you know?' And so I said, 'Here I am, Charles, you can just hang up to myself,' said I.

[00:39:57] Speaker 1: And the governor came on, and he said, 'Doesn't the president realize I can't open the record? It's against the law. And I could be in tremendous trouble if I broke the law by doing it just for his son.' And so then we had a long conversation about the meaning of um, the sealed record and why they should change records in California and the fact that Michael would be able to access it access it anyway. And then we hung up, and then I had this great pleasure of calling my editor back and saying, 'I apologize. I apologize, Charles, but you see, the governor called to find out what to tell the president.' Now, you know, I'm never going to have that opportunity again.

[00:40:37] Speaker 2: We have a caller on the line. It's Jenny from the Big Island. Jenny, good morning. Welcome to Price of Paradise radio show. Do you have a question or a comment for our guest?

[00:40:44] Speaker 3: Good morning. I just have a comment. I'm listening to your show this morning. We don't have any adoptive children in our family, but I'm presently reading a book that has just come out this year. It's called Becoming Attached. The author is Robert Karen, and the subtitle is The Unfolding Mystery of the the Infant Mother Bond, and its impact on later life. And it is so important for any parent or any people who are with children. It's even important for adults in understanding how we have come to be who we are, but it's essential for anybody dealing with adoption because it it's just speaking about what happens when you remove the mother and the child for whatever reasons, and it's just critical for anybody in this who works in this topic.

[00:41:31] Speaker 1: I'm so glad you called about that. It's a favorite theme of mine. Would you spell the author's name?

[00:41:37] Speaker 3: The last name is Karen. K-a-r-e-n. First name, Robert.

[00:41:42] Speaker 1: What's the title again, please? Becoming attached. Published by? Uh, I I think Time Warner. I guess. I just called Walden Bookstore, and they, you know, it's it's a a new book. We now in the mental health field recognize that um, bonding is a physiological affair, which starts at conception, continues through gestation and in that first month or so after birth, because we humans don't finish gestating, you know, like some of the animals do. And in that first month or so, the child and mother really still feel as one, with the same heartbeat, the familiarity of the smell and the sound of the voice, and all of that. And so that newborns who are taken away from birth mothers to be placed with strangers suffer an enormous amputation that we, I think, have not really been aware of.

[00:42:45] Speaker 1: And um, what happens in further relationships is attachment. We no longer call that bonding. Um, and it's very important and um, it's uh it's a wonderful kind of thing, but it's not the same as bonding. And I think all adoptees removed from at from their mothers at birth um, suffer a severe lifelong uh kind of emptiness in one area.

[00:43:11] Speaker 3: This book also goes into what happens when a child is removed from its mother or primary caregiver at any stage about up to five years old. And it talks about the history of child psychology and things dealing with hospitalization that up until apparently the fifties that parents were absolutely not allowed in hospitals. And if a child was hospitalized for tuberculosis or for anything that lasted for more than a week, the incredible um the incredible consequences of even for a week or two, what the consequences of breaking that bond, even if it was brought together again, particularly if it went for more than a couple of weeks, say, a couple of months, which was common, I guess, in the earlier part of this century with more devastating illnesses.

[00:43:58] Speaker 1: Yes, but it it's just so heart-rending what happens and and the the study that was done and the people who who work so hard to change the policies of hospitals, to change the policies of orphanages and it's just so critical. Thank you so much.

[00:44:13] Speaker 2: Thank you for your comment. Your call, Jenny.

[00:44:14] Speaker 1: Thank you.

[00:44:15] Speaker 2: We have another caller come from Kauai. His name is Grand. Grand, welcome to Price of Paradise. Do you have a comment or a question for us?

[00:44:22] Speaker 4: Yes, hello.

[00:44:23] Speaker 2: Yes, you're on the air.

[00:44:24] Speaker 4: Oh, I can't hear myself, uh, uh I was one I've always wondered what the uh Hawaiian or Polynesian Hanai system is, uh, and is there any explanation and how does this relate to what's going on?

[00:44:37] Speaker 2: Any comment on that, Francis?

[00:44:40] Speaker 1: Um, I I just know the more popular version of it. I don't really profess to to as someone who knows the Hawaiian culture inside and out. But what it was was a more informal way of having other people raise your birth child. Um, I do know that there were strong traditions, um, and I'm not sure what the details are where a birth mom would actually present the child to her own mother um for raising. There were other instances where because of various other traditions and and sometimes economics, sometimes not, where uh another family would raise uh your birth children. And and the way I understand it was this was along with a lot of other traditions and cultures where you didn't have any kind of abrupt or artificial um severing, yes, of the relationship.

[00:45:45] Speaker 1: I think I once read something which said that uh you maintain both identities and you got um your sense of uh history from your birth family, your ancestors, your sense of yourself and you got feelings of respect and love for the people who fed you and reared you. A lot of uh societies did that. You know, in most of the world, adoption and fostering are interchangeably used. We um in a bigger part of the United States and not Hawaii as much, this had got the nuclear family in there. I think that's where we got into more trouble, because ownership became important in the nuclear family, like it wasn't in the big extended family.

[00:46:27] Speaker 2: Grant, is that responsive to your question?

[00:46:29] Speaker 4: Uh, yes. There would be a couple of things, it'd be nice if somebody, uh uh with real knowledge of the system would call in, or another show uh be devoted to that. And are we moving uh in the direction, is there any kind of law uh reinstating the availability of Hanai so that it's uh um becomes um acceptable and legal and somehow enters uh uh uh fits with our current uh legal system so that it it can be uh recognized formally? Is anything in the works for that?

[00:48:04] Speaker 1: two ways that um I do know that the Hawaiian system did have um different procedures for fostering and different procedures for adoption, which is why I want to make sure people know that all I am rendering is a is a layperson's view of it because it was um a lot richer and a lot more complicated than what most of us know, which is, you know, so and so gives this kid up to be a a Hanai and everybody knows it and everything was fine. Um, it was a lot more complicated than that. The second thing is um I think we have to keep firmly in mind that the legal system really does follow by and large, um, what the community wants.

[00:48:55] Speaker 1: And the other part to keep in mind is that the legal system doesn't necessarily stop people from doing certain things, so that there are still informal fostering, informal Hanai um arrangements going on, um, which are working for the family. The only problem is, of course, the the, you know, little technical stuff about inheritance and science consents. Right. Um, but in this area especially, there's there's it's it's a dynamic area, it's very richly textured area and the legal system will not be able to keep up as well or to respond as well um to to richly textured human situations.

[00:49:43] Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Grant, thank you for your question.

[00:49:46] Speaker 4: Thank you.

[00:49:48] Speaker 2: For those of you who are joining us very late, this is a Price of Paradise radio show. Our phone number is 955-8821. Neighbor island residents, please call collect. I'd like to shift gears for a little bit, uh, for a moment. In 1993, or maybe 1992, the nation was gripped by a story about a little girl named Baby Jessica, Jessica DeBoer, and ultimately the case resulted in Baby Jessica being removed from her adoptive parents and returned to Pre-adoptive. Pre-adoptive, okay. Pre-adoptive parents and returned to her birth parents. And this created, really quite a stir across the country. A lot of folks were upset with the thought of removing a child from the only parents the child ever knew, and and placing the child in a home, with folks who were essentially strangers.

[00:50:38] Speaker 2: Um, the question I get from time to time in the community is, could that scenario occur here in Hawaii, Francis? And if so, what could be done to prevent those kinds of situations?

[00:51:06] Speaker 1: Well, I I certainly hope that as judges and as the judiciary, we take the responsibility to make sure that at least on our end, um, the kind of delays and and and legal ping-ponging that was going on after the issue was very apparent, um, to two jurisdictions, two courts, that that part wouldn't happen. But short of that, um, these cases happen with more frequency than we like because it hurts. It it just hurts everybody involved um psychically, including the kid and including the judge. And we do have cases like that arising where, if, as a judge, we sit and we feel that either birth father hadn't received the consent, Yes. I mean the the the the the notice, or we believe that something else went on such that the will of the birth mom was overborne Yes. by whatever circumstance. Um, then we are bound to not allow that adoption to go through.

[00:52:04] Speaker 1: Um, we like to see that avoided again by going back to the kind of groundwork that happens. We're not talking about someone who did know the various options and said uh and now say we change our mind. Right. You know, there's one case that was so solomonically, marvelously decided in Vermont and didn't receive too much um publicity and came on the heels of the Jessica case. It's the Baby Pete case. And it was similar in that um uh it was a married couple, however, and and a strange married couple, he was in the army, and the uh um woman who had two children with her husband, uh said they were irrevocably estranged, hadn't been together, and she was now living with another man, and he was the father of the child and they took her word for it, and the child was born and placed with a couple.

[00:52:55] Speaker 1: And he came home on furlough shortly thereafter, and he said, uh fact wrong, it's my child. Now, they did a DNA study fairly quickly in that case as opposed to the other. And it, indeed, the child was his, and um, they went to court, and the adoptive couple said, we will not do a Baby Jessica, we will not drag this out, we will accept the judge's opinion, no appeal. And they all realized that this because he was a married father, there was even more um importance to his role. Uh, a friend of mine, uh came to to testify. We we she and I filed papers not on behalf of either side, but on behalf of the child. And talking about child was under a year, it was 10 or 11 months by this time, talking about the needs of the child to retain connections with both families, regardless of which way the judgment went. And what the judge came forward with was this decision.

[00:53:56] Speaker 1: The adoptive, the pre-adoptive mother would be allowed to adopt. Mhmm. The birth father would retain his legal parenthood. The child would take on a hyphenated name, taking on his stepfather's name in addition to his birth name of his birth father, and the birth mother was invited to start open visiting if she wanted to because the family would now become an extended family of one another. A novel solution, very difficult to the situation. A very novel solution. And it's now a year and a half later, I think and the it's worked out. And what was interesting is that that birth father was terribly angry that he had been totally ignored in this. But he understood that he's in the army, he has no way of raising this child, he would have had to find a relative to give it to. He really now has become a relative to that family, and it as they said afterwards, everybody hugged and kissed in the courtroom and said Baby Pete won, nobody lost.

[00:54:54] Speaker 2: Great. We've got another call coming in. It's Bill from the Molly. Bill, thanks for waiting. You're in Price of Paradise radio show. Welcome.

[00:55:01] Speaker 5: Oh, one thank you. I grew up with two people that I recall who had been adopted by enormously wealthy people and they would not have adopted if they hadn't felt they were adopting a child. They weren't, you know, adopting a puppy or something. They wanted the child to be theirs to inherit their wealth. And this took the burden then off the state because they these two children came into these enormously wealthy families. Now, they would have been discouraged and not adopted at all rather than getting the social involvement of having the, you know, the birth mother and father involved. So, I'm wondering whether we aren't discouraging a lot of an adoption. But then the question is how numerically large is that number? That I don't know, by having all these ties go with the child.

[00:55:59] Speaker 1: I do have one response and that is that um uh there are different kinds of ties. There are reality ties and fantasy ties and um uh no matter what you want, the the ghosts of the uh birth family is always present. Um and uh I suppose it's great that uh the state maybe got saved some money. I don't I don't I think there are lots of facts we we don't know about this case and that these children inherited a great deal of money but uh it sort of really begs the issue. And the issue is that uh important things were taken away from kids and it's not really a question of either or. It's a question of educating people to understand the people who raise you are your real parents, they have history with you, there's no question about that, and we should change our language about this. But um, uh all adoptees have fantasies, all adoptees have what the fairy godmother or the uh the criminal horror fantasy, the good and the bad, um, and all adoptees feel there was something wrong.

[00:57:00] Speaker 1: with them and that's why they were abandoned or dumped.

[00:57:02] Caller: Well, well I guess I'm getting it. Was there a taking or a giving in this case?

[00:57:07] Speaker 1: In this case, the two children, one's estate was 400 million and the other one was 100 million. So, they were enormous. they acquired all this as the only child. Uh now the the kinds of people that did that would not have gone for a child. They're they would have had to go to Europe or something to get a child. So, so if you don't I it just seems there's a problem here, whether they can protect themselves and give the child something or they won't give the child something.

[00:57:41] Speaker 2: I I think there's like two two responses I'd like to share with Bill. Um, one is that I personally and professionally shy away from statements such as all kids Um, whatever whatever the fill in the blank is. So I I don't um, I'm simply not in agreement with those statements simply because they have the word all and always most. But, I but I do think that it it it is true that all children have various thoughts about who they are and who their parents are. And and that's one response. The other response, Bill, is this: um I I really want to make sure you and other listeners understand that there's a whole range of options and a whole range of agreements that can go on.

[00:58:32] Speaker 2: And it may be that these um adoptive parents may have been comfortable with something as simple as the birth parents knowing maybe not their names, but what their ethnicity was. What what kinds of interests do they have and vice versa? And that that would have been enough if their children had asked, well, who am I? Where did I get a start for them to have given some information back to the children without somehow feeling like, oh no, um, I don't want any ties and I I don't want to, you know, I won't go through with it if if if these ties need to occur.

[00:59:09] Caller: Okay. Bill, is that all right?

[00:59:13] Speaker 1: Well, it's a whole area of a problem. I just you get caught at the door but it's the two children I knew when one of them we'd go up into the closet and look at a picture. She showed her some with their little brother and she never you know wanted to her brother. Yeah. Mhm. Well, and then was his blood brother, you know. And the other one was just quite arrogant because of his relationship with the other families, his cousins and whatnot. They all knew that he was adopted. He got pretty mean with the thoughts that he was adopted and they were legitimate.

[00:59:47] Calvin Pang: Right. Bill, we sure appreciate your comments, your questions, and your call. Thank you very much. Okay, we're in our last minute here and I just want to thank our guest, Francis Wong, Annette Baron for joining us this morning. I'd like to let you know that our producer is Sizzey Roth, with technical assistance from Jeff Alardy. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in this morning. Join us again next week when Randy will be back. Aloha.