Adoption: Emotional Scams

Our agency told us that these types of scams are rare and can be extremely difficult to deal with. Basically, these involve the birthmother making an adoption plan with the chosen adoptive parents, but never intending to carry out the plan - stringing the adoptive parents along, so to speak. The hard thing to understand is the motivation - why would someone want to do this? It’s not financial - they ususally don’t ask for money. Perhaps they have a real psychological condition that makes them feel like they need people to be dependent upon them, or have power over other people. (I’ve come across that in my professional life, so that doesn’t seem all that rare!) Sometimes there’s no baby at all. It’s so difficult because the adoptive parents are going along as if everything is on track and then - boom - nothing.

There was a period of time for us when it seemed we were getting contacts from two or three birthmothers per month. An embarrassment of riches and dare I say it almost got to be routine as most of them were not good matches for us - we became pretty adept at “qualifying” the contacts quickly. It was during this time that we received contact from a birthmother that seemed to be right - conversation was easy, she asked all the right questions of us and answered all our hard questions with (seemingly) honesty. I seem to remember that initially she even told us she was talking with another couple at the same time, but only to narrow her decision down to the “right” couple for her. And that was OK with us - a match has be right for everyone so careful comparison is expected. At some point, she decided on us and then contact was only with us. Whether there really was another couple or not, we don’t know. In any case, it felt right so we proceeded.

At first, it was surprisingly easy to talk with her. It was an equal mix of emails and phone conversations (she lived several states away from us). She was very open about her situation; she owned her own home (though barely able to keep it); she was in her ’30s and already had a school-aged son. Our beliefs in the world at large (religion, kids, balance) seemed to match perfectly. She wasn’t too sweet or too cold - but just like someone who was in a bad situation and was logically and methodically trying to move through it. She even sent us pictures of her and her son. She told us that she just could not afford to keep this baby and that the circumstances under which she became pregnant meant that she didn’t really want to keep it anyway (you can imagine what that might mean). Bascially, this seemed like the adoptive parents’ wish come true - a seemingly low-risk birthmother with a plan and determination - and she had “chosen” us.

Probably the only red flag was her hesitation to contact our agency (remember that qualifier?). She said she would, but she wanted to get to know us a little more first. Like I said, communication was easy - we got know each other and just had small talk between us for a time. Eventually though, we began to have doubts - only because the conversations never seemed to move beyond that small talk stage and into the real meat of planning for this adoption. She never asked for money or support (at least not outright) nor did she ever hold this baby over our heads or dangle it like a carrot in front of us - or at least we never felt that way. But talks just seemed to have stalled. We told her that in order to move forward with the process, we would like her to contact our agency counselor for an official intake call. (With our agency, it was not a requirement for the birthmother to work with them for counseling, etc., though there were certainly benefits for all involved if they DID work with them, but we also had a contractual obligation with our agency that once we established contact with a birthmother, the agency would be notified. And in this case, they were aware of the situation and were waiting for her call.) Eventually, she did call the agency. There were some slight discrepancies in the story she told our counselor and the story she told us, but that’s not uncommon so there was no need for major concern. Our counselor agreed with us that while this seemed honest and legit, there was just something a little odd about it that you couldn’t put your finger on. She told us to be on our guard. Which we were anyway.

I distinctly remember the night it all fell apart. For about a week, there was this air about our conversations that things were turning serious but at the same time they just weren’t making sense. I don’t want to say to that we felt we were being “reeled in”, because we didn’t really allow ourselves to fall victim to that (again, goes back to our promise not to become desperate), but looking back on it, that’s probably what it was. I remember that our attitude (my wife and I, that is) was that we wanted to get on with it - either take this to the next level or diplomatically back away from this birthmother and move on. Perhaps she sensed that, because that’s when things really got weird. Perhaps she felt like she was going to lose us and she wanted the game to continue (it felt like a game by now). The exact instance I remember that I realized this was not legit - and it hit me that this was probably an emotional scam that we had heard was so rare - was when she asked us if we were willing to also adopt her school-aged son. Never in any of our conversations had she ever hinted of that scenario - and in fact it was always the opposite; that she was adopting her unborn baby so she could better provide for her son. It was so out of the blue, it really felt like one those As Seen on TV commercials (”but wait! there’s more!”) - that may sound odd, but you really had to be there, so to speak. I guess we didn’t fall for it, because of instead of jumping at the chance for a two-for-one, we said we would definitely consider it, but given the surprizing circumstances, it was really now time to formalize our plan. She said OK but we never heard from her again. We’re not even sure there was a baby or even a son.

I mentioned that we were getting contacts from several birthmothers during this time. That really helped, because we felt we had options - or at least that we were doing something right because we were getting contacts and we now felt confident that eventually the right one was going to find us. It helped in that we didn’t allow ourselves to get emotionally attached too much with a situation that had this odd air about it. I can’t say for sure what our emotional state would have been had we NOT had these other contacts. And we had recently come off a tantalizingly close successful adoption (more on that in another entry) which was very painful, so we were understandably approaching any adoption contact with a bit of healthy skepticism. It was also during this time that we received contact from the birthmother who would eventually follow through with her adoption plan with us (though we didn’t know it at the time) - so to say that helped is quite an understatement.

We didn’t feel crushed by this experience, because again it just felt a bit odd. It certainly felt honest enough to want to seriously explore her adoption plan, but it never moved on to that level. Perhaps she was genuinely a lonely sole who needed companionship - or she was a real emotional scammer who, once she realized she was not affecting us like she needed, moved on to another couple. We felt no animosity towards her because once we realized it was not meant to be, we had to move on to the next opportunity. I guess the lesson here is that there will always be a defining moment in the process - the analogy of “doing something” or get off the pot comes to mind! But if it never comes to that point, then perhaps it is time to move on.