Internet Marketing of Adoption

The Internet is a part of our lives and is here to stay. It is a wonderful tool for gathering information and we have all come to depend upon it. However, there are times when ethical lines are crossed and good judgment goes by the wayside. I am talking about the practice of putting birth mother information or adoptive parent profiles on the Internet for all to see. The first issue I have with this is privacy. Privacy evaporates on the Internet. Even when you take things down, much of the time those old posts can be found. Personal information is out there and it's not limited to those who need to know. In many cases, there are phone numbers listed. This puts adoptive parents in a precarious position because they have no idea who is accessing that information. There's no buffer to protect adoptive families who are all too vulnerable. I wonder how many times an unscrupulous person has purported to be someone they're not in an attempt to extort money from an adoptive family. You can read about it all over the adoption chat boards (another hot topic!). Secondarily, how many birth moms are really "shopping" for an adoptive family on the Internet? On one adoption website, the adoptive families are instructed to provide their phone numbers. Presumably, birth parents (and others) call them. If the situation isn't right or doesn't match with them, the adoptive parents become glorified office assistants for the agency, writing intake information and forwarding calls to the agency. I guess it saves the agency money because they don't have to hire additional workers, but what are the adoptive parents paying for, if not service and professionalism? Additionally, I wonder how long it takes a family to match when they are competing with hundreds of other couples on the same site? What happened to taking some time to get to know a birth mother and finding out her preferences and what she really wants? What happened to telling her about prospective families who may have a common bond with her that can't be communicated in a few pages posted on a web site? Birth mothers and adoptive families deserve better than this. These websites are more like Internet dating sites, where people -- based on looks -- decide whether to "keep this one" or "throw this one out". It reeks of baby selling, with some agencies even putting "prices" on each baby. Why is this legal? I have no idea, but I object to it. I think it's trafficking in human beings. The adoption of a child shouldn't be like shopping for a puppy. Perhaps Dateline should do a show along the lines of their highly successful "To Catch a Predator", only this one would be entitled "To Catch a Baby Broker". For those who do these postings, hiding under an agency banner or behind a shield doesn't make it right. It's time that our legislators look into these practices and make some changes. If you care, write your congressperson.