Reassembling Motherhood by Yasmine Ergas

Author:Yasmine Ergas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

CONCLUSION

My focus has been on the circumstances under which postadoption visitation agreements are entered into and the circumstances under which they are enforced. Whether an analogy to plea bargains or to prenuptial agreements is more apt may be a matter of maternal circumstances. In cases where adoption is actively, if reluctantly, sought by a woman represented as the heroic birth mother doing the best for everyone, the logic of open adoption is clear. In cases where a mother’s children have already been removed and termination looms, open adoption and the promise of visitation look quite different indeed.

Although every case does not fall neatly into one pile or the other, it seems clear that there are important differences in how postadoption visitation agreements are used, depending on where in the tricky constellation of motherhood the birth mother finds herself. The bargains look one way when sought by birth mothers who have considered their options and are satisfied with the slice of relational association that visitation or progress reports provide. They look quite another way for mothers for whom open adoption is simply the least-bad choice.

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