Book Review- The Baby Thief

The_Conductor

PUBLICATION DATE: MAY 5, 2007

The Baby Thief:
The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption

By Barbara Bisantz Raymond
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For almost three decades, Georgia Tann was nationally lauded for her work at her children’s home in Memphis, Tennessee. In reality she was selling many of the boys and girls – often stolen from their parents – to wealthy clients across America. While building her black market business Georgia also invented modern adoption, popularizing it, commercializing it, and corrupting it with secrecy by originating the policy of falsifying adoptees’ birth certificates – a practice that continues to this day. Now, for the first time, the influence of a criminal on an institution affecting tens of millions of Americans is revealed in Barbara Raymond’s riveting investigative narrative and social history, The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption (Carroll & Graf, May 5, 2007).
Drawing on court records, Georgia’s correspondence, the papers of the governor who closed down her operation, and interviews with hundreds of her victims, Barbara Raymond has recreated Georgia’s world. It was a time when a belief in eugenics had made adoption rare, and the nascent institution was vulnerable to a baby seller who regarded poor, single women as incubators and their children as products. Georgia was enabled by political boss Edward Hull Crump, who himself had gained power by exploiting a devastating plague that drove prominent Memphians to move to other cities, and killed 70 percent of citizens who remained.

The world Barbara Raymond depicts is dominated by the larger-than-life Georgia Tann: a brilliant woman whose legal ambitions were thwarted by society’s limits on women, who sought in social work the money and fame she would never achieve in law, and who was drawn by particular psychological urges to the subcategory of adoption. An emotionally cold woman who abused little girls, Georgia considered herself a social engineer whose mission – making poor children middle class – justified both her child stealing and the deaths of more than fifty babies in her care.

The world of The Baby Thief is also populated by the pediatricians and social workers who tried to stop Georgia, and, most memorably, by members of the poor Southern families she tore apart. Among them are Cleveland Panell, who searched for over thirty-seven years for the five-year-old sister stolen by Georgia; Mollie Mae Moore, who was imprisoned for protesting Georgia’s abduction of her four-year-old son, and searched for him unsuccessfully for the rest of her life; Irene, who lost four children to Georgia, and shortly before death recorded their names in her Bible, along with the inscription: “The children of a broken-hearted mother. I have no one to love me now.” The Baby Thief tells the stories of people like Barbara, who was sexually abused by a foster father and by Georgia Tann, and then placed by Georgia with an adoptive father who molested her too.

The Baby Thief also depicts the pain of Georgia’s indirect victims: single mothers who never knew Georgia but because of her popularization of adoption were forced to relinquish their children; adoptees who, because of the institutionalization of Georgia’s practice of falsifying adoptees’ birth certificates, to this day cannot find their families or learn potentially life-saving information about their health histories; and the children who suffer overseas at the hands of the modern-day baby thieves who are Georgia Tann clones.

A compelling, landmark social history interwoven with heartrending personal narratives, The Baby Thief is a sensitive and searing depiction of a long-buried and vital piece of American history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Barbara Raymond is an adoptive mother, adjunct professor, and writer. She has received two awards for feature writing from Women in Communications, and was an author of a childcare section that won a National Magazine Award for Public Service. She contributed to The Handbook of Magazine Article Writing (Writer’s Digest Books), and has published widely in USA Today, Working Mother, Parents, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, McCall’s, Reader’s Digest, and Writer’s Digest. She lives in New York City.

The Baby Thief
The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption
By Barbara Bisantz Raymond
Carroll & Graf | May 5, 2007 | Cloth
320 pages | $26.95 | 0-7867-1944-3
Biography

The_Conductor

Because I Loved You, A Birthmother’s View of Open Adoption by Patricia Dischler

Review reposted with thanks from:

http://www.adoption-net.co.uk/news/2007/February/120207bookreview2.htm


Patricia grew up in America in a warm, loving and wonderfully supportive family. She has an idyllic life until at the age of 20 when having just started her own printing business, Patricia finds herself pregnant. After much heart searching, she comes to the conclusion that she cannot raise her child and give him the kind of upbringing she herself enjoyed and therefore chooses adoption as a plan for his life. The touching account of her final moments with her son and her goodbye to him is honestly written and moving.

Because I Loved you, however is more than just a birthmother’s story with an emotional reunion at the end, it is in fact a story of open adoption, and how if handled correctly it can be a satisfying and successful relationship for everyone concerned.

Believing that she might never see her son Joe again, Patricia Dischler settles for an annual photograph and update on Joe’s life from his adoptive parents. This annual contact is a lifeline for her since she longs to hear how her child is progressing. She writes to Jerry and Kathy, the parents she chose for her son, assuring them that she would never do anything to jeopardise their family. The letters from Joe’s parents and his birthmother were clearly written with mutual respect, love and understanding.

Over time they build a relationship based on truth, a truth which overcomes fears, doubts and suspicions, enabling each of them to become secure in their place in Joe’s life. You can’t help but smile when the day finally comes, 12 years after she has said goodbye to Joe, when Patricia receives a letter from Joe’s parents saying that they would like to arrange a meeting.

As an adoptive mother myself I appreciated Patricia’s constant respect for Jerry and Kathy, always referring to them as Joe’s parents, and was moved by her account of meeting them for the first time. She writes: “I looked over and saw Kathy. Tears already forming in her eyes, she stood still, apprehension filling the space between us. Simultaneously we broke the silence and space and hugged. Through the tears I tried to whisper the years of gratitude, but the “thank you” seemed so small in comparison to her years of selfless, devoted love. Then I realised she was thanking me also. With one look we became one person. Together we were Joe’s mother. And instead of any sense of jealousy over the other’s part in that role, we knew a sense of completion and thankfulness.”

The book, as I said, is not especially remarkable if you look at it simply as a birthmother’s tale, but what is remarkable is the way Patricia Dischler has acquired a deep and sensitive understanding of the way relationship dynamics are built and how open adoption can potentially develop or disrupt those identities and securities. She offers very sound advice to birth mothers on how to enhance relationships and insists that a birth mother should never undermine the parents’ authority in the child’s life, particularly in the teenage years when clear boundaries are needed to avoid power struggles.

Patricia accepts that most teenagers will inevitably fantasise about belonging to another family, whether they are adopted or not, but says she was not about to facilitate this in any way and made sure that Joe understood this.

Patricia’s life experience gives her a great deal of wisdom and understanding in the area of adoption and her book is filled not only with her own story, but with pages of excellent advice - for girls and women facing the decision for adoption, for adoptive parents whatever stage they are at, and also for parents and birthmother’s who have already started to create relationships through adoption. Her advice to them is, ‘Take a chance and trust one another. Respect one another. Try to understand the other’s point of view. Support one another as the child grows older. Be honest.”

A book like this has many uses. I can see how it would be enormously helpful for counsellors and social workers; for adoptive parents; for birthmothers and their families; and even for adoptees. My concern though is that the UK’s current adoption situation appears to be dramatically different from that of the USA.

Although open adoption is very much encouraged here, and face to face contact with birthparents is seen as a positive and helpful thing in a child’s life, the reality is often quite different. In the UK one of the first things you learn about modern day adoptions in Great Britain is that the today babies are rarely relinquished by young women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. In fact the statistics surprisingly prove that the younger the woman the more likely she will be to keep her child. Where are these women who relinquish their babies with tears because they are unable to care for their child and yet desire a better life for him or her?

Today the vast majority of children in Britain needing families are those who have sadly suffered neglect or abuse in some way. Some of the children come from drug or alcohol addicted mothers, and sadly before they are adopted many children are the subject of care orders and removed from their birthmothers, because they are at risk. This presents a whole new scenario of open contact. I know many adoptive parents who have really tried to have face to face contact with their children’s birthmothers… sadly it just wasn’t possible.

However, despite the varied problems we may face, I do believe that wherever and whenever there is a birthmother loving and caring about her child, and there are adoptive parents who want the very best for their son or daughter, then open adoption and face to face contact - if handled correctly, can be a wonderful thing for all concerned and Patricia Dischler clearly demonstrates this.

Well worth a read.

Published by Goblin Fern Press RRP $16.95.

holly_johnson

Thanks for those reviews, they both sound like interesting reads. I must put them on my book list!

The_Conductor

I was thinking of starting a thread about books relating to adoption that we may have on our bookshelves, or authors that we have found helpful. It may be useful for people starting down particular roads?

The most useful author I found is Betty Jean Lifton- she is able to capture a lot on paper, and has a very good understanding of Adoption in general. Nancy Verrier also has some very good books.

Shane

holly_johnson

I think that sounds like a great idea - reading others stories can really help.
I must look and see if I can find some. I did read a book years ago about a womans story of how she traced and met her birth mother. I thought it was a great honest account. I can't for the life of me remember her name now but I will root it out.

Portia 27

In the UK, children are being stolen in exactly the same way. In one case the social worker ignored the high court order not to remove the child and took him.Police thought she was mad. Mother showed police the court order to prove baby C was really stolen, but they ignored her.

Finally after years of pain and suffering, the social worker and all involved are being charged for human trafficing.

Another mother just got an order from the judge to say the children had been adopted- no court hearing at all.

Most people think it is impossible in 2010, but like Georgia Tann, it is possible and these baby thieves get away with it for a long time and it is only when the number of natural mothers come together, do they find they are not alone and then others listen.