life, love & laundry
Coercing an expectant mom to relinquish in 12 easy steps
This will be long so if adoption issues are of no interest to you, feel free to skip it. It won’t hurt my feelings.
In case you have a life and didn’t watch Dr. Phil yesterday or Monday, he did a two-part series featuring a 16 year old pregnant teen, Brittney. The focus of the show was to help her make a plan for her baby: abortion, adoption or to parent. It was a glaring example of exactly what is wrong with expectant mom counseling but it stung to see it so blatantly exposed on national tv.
You can catch the episode details and summaries on the Dr. Phil website and also bits on youtube.
Background: Brittney is a straight A student, intelligent, articulate, a star athlete, emotionally closed off, still involved with her boyfriend. She was clear that she planned to parent at the beginning of the show although unclear about HOW she would manage it. This is often the state of mind of girls and women when they unexpectedly become pregnant and seek counseling. This is where the coercion begins.
Dr. Phil “counseled” Brittney’s parents not to “compel” her to chose one path or another which, interestingly, they seemed pretty capable of following through on in the end. Unlike the Good Doctor, himself.
Coercion Tactic #1: Phil sits down with Brittney and asks a series of questions indicating he has already concluded that she intentionally got knocked up to keep her boyfriend around. Brittney insists this is not the case, at all. Cut scene to Phil explaining to Brittney’s parents that clearly this is exactly what she did. Based on nothing but his foregone presumption that this must be the case because she is “too smart” to not have thought about the consequences of unprotected sex. Couldn’t help but think, here, that the vast VAST majority of children are conceived unexpectedly which must mean, in Phil’s mind, that we were all conceived to trap a partner. Or because the parents are That Dumb. Interesting. Anyway the tactic used here? Guilt for being ‘irresponsible’, self-loathing.
Coercion Tactic #2: Phil asks Brittney if she thinks it is fair to burden her parents with the care of the baby. She agrees, no, it is not fair and she does not plan to burden her parents. Phil asks where she plans to live. She says she plans to live at home until she’s 18. Phil jumps all over her for being hypocritical, the clear implication being that it is a “burden” for her family to give her a roof over her head if there is a baby in tow. No mention that her family would actually be required by law to provide such roof until she was 18, if she had no baby. And no mention that a baby requires no extra space. It isn’t like she was hoping the parents would add a nursery onto their house. Tactic? More guilt. This time directed toward her relationship with her parents, being a ‘burden’.
Coercion Tactic #3: Phil arranges for Brittney to meet up with three young girls who all had unplanned pregnancies. Each chose a different plan: abortion, adoption or parenting. Seems fair and reasonable on the surface, in the name of full disclosure and informed consent, right? Wrong. The girl who had the abortion loved her choice, raved about it, had no remorse both in body language or in tone. The girl who chose adoption also loved her choice, talked about what a gift it was, etc. Funny thing, though, despite “having no regrets” she started to cry! No explanation for the discrepancy in word and behavior. The girl who parented, of course, seemed visibly distraught. She looked exhausted, she talked about how terribly difficult it was, how she had to work two full time jobs and go to school, how her baby-daddy had left her high and dry. She didn’t smile, she didn’t talk about a single positive aspect of parenting (unlike the abortion and adoption option girls). At the end the OB/Gyn who facilitated the “discussion” wrapped it all up with a pretty little bow by saying “Three girls who are all very happy with their choices”. Huh. Tactic: hand-picking people who represent the best of the choice you are trying to coerce and the worst of the opposite choice.
Coercion Tactic #4: I’m just throwing this one in here since it was a common theme throughout both shows. Brittney was in her first trimester. Her family repeatedly had issues with her sudden attitude, her desire to sleep constantly, etc. Not ONCE did anyone suggest that this is just how pregnant women are during the first trimester. Instead a clear picture was painted that this represented a Defiant Teen with an Attitude Problem. At the end of the show the parents admitted that it all worked itself out after the first trimester but no one seemed to make the connection, distinctly, that her behaviors were not “bratty teen defiance” but “first trimester hormones”. If she had been 24, no one would have ever presumed such a thing. Tactic? Ignoring rational medical explanations and applying age-biased negative behavioral labeling to paint emom as “bad” in order to convince her she’s undeserving , immature and incapable of parenting.
At this point in the show, Brittney was clear that abortion was not an option for her so the focus turned toward placement or parenting. Phil decided that the best idea would be for Brittney to fully embrace the idea of parenting for a week and then fully embrace the idea of adoption for a week, giving each a real place in her brain for consideration. Again, sounds great in theory. Here’s where the serious coercion comes into play.
Coercion Tactic #5: Living the life of a teen Mom. Of course there is no true way to simulate such a thing. Moms have hormonal and biological drives to bond with their newborns that can’t be simulated or prepared for. Still Phil decided the very best way to have her “live the life” would be to have Brittney wear a pregnant belly (remember she was early in her pregnancy so didn’t have a belly of her own, yet) while simultaneously carrying around a simulated newborn doll who randomly cries. What the doll does NOT do is smile, nurse, blow kisses or any of the millions of other tiny human behaviors that bond a child to its parents and create mutually beneficial relationships. Plus also, near as I can tell, she was not planning on having a newborn while simultaneously carrying a pregnancy into its third trimester, as the simulation was meant to replicate. I think these simulation dolls are such a crock of shit. As someone who has given birth a few times now, there is absolutely no way to simulate that experience. Simulation dolls would be great for, say, babysitter training. Maybe. Still people aren’t dumb. We know when we are dealing with a plastic inanimate toy and an actual human life. Interestingly Brittney seems pretty unphased by most of that experience. Tactic: try to overwhelm the emom with false realities while completely ignoring any positive aspects she might enjoy.
Coercion Tactic #6: Part of living the life of a teen mom was getting a minimum wage sh*t job, despite the reality that Brittney was top of her class in highschool and likely could have made significantly more money, even without a college education. Again this seemed to sort of backfire. She was bored (duh) but didn’t seem all that phased. Tactic: unrealistic doom and gloom version of future used to scare the emom
Coercion Tactic #7: BUT! She accidentally left the simulation baby at home. Phil jumped all over this and literally told her “That’s what 16 year olds do”. This is so incredibly condescending. As a mother to a 15 year old who frequently babysits his younger siblings, I promise you there is no way he would hop off with his friends or leave the house while being in charge of human lives. If the life was his own child? Not a chance. Again, presuming that a simulation toy is a fair or realistic example of how responsible a person might be as an actual parent is off base, dangerous and coercive. Funny how Brittney was “too smart” to accidentally get pregnant but too young and irresponsible to forget her toy baby when she left the house, huh? Tactic: age-based recrimination and shame
Coercion Tactic #8: After her minimum wage job, she took her measly paycheck to buy baby gear at USA Baby so she could see how far her money would go. Again she seemed wholly unaffected but it was a completely unrealistic example. Many people of all ages can not afford to shop at USA Baby for $150 bouncy seats and $400 car seats. Tactic: unrealistic version of reality created to support desired outcome
Coercion Tactic #9: Next up was her week considering adoption. To “help her” consider this option, one might think they’d connect her up with an emom considering placement who was further along in her pregnancy or a birth mom who had placed, right? Wrong. They connected her with an adoptive parent who had 5 failed adoption attempts and was awaiting the news of the birth of her newest potential placement, in the hospital. Tactic: exposure to the extreme pain this amom experienced through her failed adoption attempts creates guilt for the emom who will be less likely to back out of an adoption plan after seeing first hand how it affected this amom.
Coercion Tactic #10: While all were awaiting the birth of this baby, the amom rushes in completely upset that the emom has “changed her mind”. About placement, you might wonder? No, about HOLDING THE BABY AFTER BIRTH! Later she changed her mind back again. But the clear implication here: Emoms who want to hold their baby after birth are BAD.
Coercion Tactic #11: The baby is born after 40 hours of labor and Brittney is allowed to be there for the moment the amom meets the child for the first time. Brittney is not at all exposed to the pain of placement from the emom’s end of things, she is not there when the child is relinquished. She only sees the joy and relief from the amom. Tactic: one-sided view of the experience, shield the pain, focus on the joy
So you can see that, again, the two “week” experiments were, in and of themselves, completely coercive. One was designed specifically to relay hardship, pain, misfortune and misery. The other was designed to relay joy, selflessness, the gift of giving a life to another. Neither of them were anywhere near realistic or a reflection of what her actual experiences might be like. Not once was a single option offered to help Brittney parent. Not once was a single positive aspect of parenting expressed. And in this first episode, not once was a single negative aspect of adoption considered. Not the hardship on the emom, not the hardship on the adoptee. None of it.
How is this “not compelling Brittney”???
Background: it is several months into the pregnancy now and Brittney has made a decision to create an adoption plan for her child. of course. I get the distinct feeling this would not have ever aired if she hadn’t.
Coercion Tactic #12: all these months Brittney is being ‘mentored’ by the amom from episode 1. Mentoring should be based on someone who has walked in your shoes and has grown through a similar experience, not someone who is on the benefiting end of a painful and traumatic life choice! Tactic: Create a false illusion of mentoring and friendship in order to steer a decision to a desired outcome.
To be fair here, the amom expresses her concern that Brittney has cut herself off emotionally and isn’t fully understanding the emotional impact of such a decision. I can’t imagine WHY after all the efforts they put into cutting off any true choice, they would be surprised by this.
Phil arranges for Brittney to visit an adoption agency and an adoption attorney to discuss her options. She hopes for an open adoption. It is unclear what her knowledge or expectations are for an open adoption. Her “mentor” has open adoptions of some sort. She shares this desire with the agency. The young bubbly intake worker (or social worker or screener, I really could not tell) at the agency explains that they support open adoption…..if what she means by open adoption is that the she will not know the aparents last name or location or other identifying information. She explains that “trust” has to be earned over time and that most adoptions don’t begin open but grow that way over time. I was waiting….and waiting….for her, as an adoption professional, to inform Brittney that open adoptions are absolutely not enforceable by law and that she is at the mercy of the aparent and no matter what the afamiy promises up front, they could (and often do) change their mind and cut off contact to varying degrees without recourse. That never happened. It was hard to tell if the agency was trying to talk her out of open adoption or if they were trying to steel her for the reality that many times aparents do not cooperate in the end.
Next she visits the adoption attorney who seems smarmy. But that could just be my bias against most adoption attorneys. No real quality info was evident from this meeting. When she left she decided to go with the attorney because the agency would require counseling and she’s not down with that. Quick and dirty, that’s what she’s looking for and while the adoption attorney claims to repeatedly ADVISE her to receive counseling, she won’t REQUIRE it. A good bit of the show is then used to try to pressure Brittney into agreeing to see a counselor, which she is completely opposed to. Completely. Phil basically assesses that she is hiding from her emotions…you know, the emotions he worked hard to suppress? Yep, mission accomplished.
In a totally bizarre and categorically asinine twist, Phil brings on an adult adoptee (finally. it’s about time, I think). She is there to talk about open adoption. Turns out? Shes against it. Against open adoption. I wonder how long they had to look for an adult adoptee opposed to open adoption?!?! Probably she had a bad experience with open adoption, right? Wrong. She had NO experience with open adoption. None. She did not reunite with her birth parents until she was an adult. Basically her mentality was “I turned out just fine, no regrets, so no one should have open adoptions”. So now, yet again, it appears this teen is being counseled out of her natural inclinations by inexperienced faux-”experts” with an agenda. Unbelievable.
On another ironic note, this adult adoptee shared a bit of her story which included reuniting with her birth mom but then cutting off the relationship when her birth mom’s guilt became too much for her to handle. Wouldn’t it have been refreshing to have an open conversation about the potential for this teen to carry similar guilt throughout life and suitable ways to avoid it (particularly given her aversion to counseling)? About how that may impact her future relationships, her future children, etc? Instead of being considered a pretty common result of adoption, it was treated like a birth mom with a serious problem, so serious that she wasn’t even healthy enough for a relationship late in life with her adult birth daughter! Ouch.
In summary, I want to clarify that I am not anti-adoption by any means. I would not have adopted if I was anti-adoption! I am, however, pro-informed consent. And pro-options. There should not be salesmen coercing girls or women into relinquishing human beings through false reality and expectations. Pre-adoption emom counseling is notoriously inadequate and substandard, often carrying a serious agenda and failing to provide informed consent. Adoption is not the easy option but you’d never guess that after watching a show like this or taking to some adoption counselors. The truth is, in every case, there should always be true options. There will always be a place for adoption as an option but to create a coercive environment like this makes adoption a very dangerous and unhealthy option for all participants.
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Totally get what you’re saying, but the bit about planned vs unplanned pregnancies is off. The current stats are ~49% planned pregnancies vs 51% unplanned. Still a majority, but a narrow one.
Otherwise, carry on ripping on Dr. Phil. Sounds deserved.
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July 8th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
@Elowyn, I actually tried to google it but came up empty and was going on memory. I thought it was crazy-high. That’s still pretty high but not nearly as high as I remembered it.
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Wow. I knew it was heady, and misguided, and I could tell (from talking to you earlier) that it was coercive, but WOW WOW there are so many sickening things about this…
I don’t think I could watch it, now that you’ve given the blow by blow here. So thank you :)
I really don’t understand why a PAP is the mentor for an expectant mother. This makes absolutely no sense to me. And WTH? The girl is supposed to be pregnant AND carrying a newborn? Simultaneously? I don’t understand why no one stepped up to say, “hey, that makes no sense!”
Also, as an aside, I’d TOTALLY leave a bean-bag behind. I kill plants, too. Things that interact with me – cry, smile, squawk, whatever – get a lot more attention and TLC. I’d think that holds true for most people…right? Please tell me that I’m normal…
That poor girl. I hope she was planning on making an adoption plan before she ever stepped up to Dr. P.
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July 8th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
@rachel, she was definitely NOT interested in adoption, at all. That was the tragedy of it all. She was totally coerced into it. But NOT into counselnig.
I’d be interested to know if she ended up with an open adoption (I saw on the DP website that she did place….).
And yeah I’ve even killed pets but I like to think my kids are pretty well parented.
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July 8th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
@Nicki, That’s RIGHT…I remember you writing that in the beginning. Sorry! I forgot that by the end of it all – there were a lot of horrific points in there.
Dr. Phil drives me insane.
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July 8th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
And just fyi, i’m not a sociopath! I didn’t INTENTIONALLY kill pets! I’ve had pets die, is what I meant. I didn’t KILL them.
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I think my head is about to explode.
The most aggravating part is that I know there are so many people out there–adoptive parents included–who watched those two episodes and saw nothing wrong. It’s hard to change people’s hearts and minds in favor of reform when you’re up against jerkwads like Dr. Phil.
I hope Brittney lucked into some good post-adoption support. Although, based on all this, I somehow doubt it.
Good write up, though!
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July 8th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
@Heather, sadly I think its safe to assume that it’s adoptive parents, especially, who saw nothing wrong.
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July 8th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
@Nicki, Ain’t it the truth. *sigh*
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All I Can say is I hate Dr. Phil.
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I have to say that I have never seen Dr. Phil (or Oprah for that matter) as I work. After this write up, I can’t say that I want to see him. To make things more realistic they should have given Brittany a puppy to take care of rather than a doll. It is a live thing that interacts with you and is likely just as frustrating as a newborn in a different way.
Having a now 8 year old adopted daughter an open adoption sounds so much more appealing to me now than it did 7 years ago. Don’t forget that most aparents go into adoption blind and with lots of fear of the unknown. If they had the benefit of foresight they might have a different opinion, like me.
I feel so sorry for Brittany as she was in a real no true win situation. I can’t tell from your post if her parents would have supported her if she kept the baby. My nephew married a girl that had a baby in high school. With the support of her family she kept the baby, finished high school and college and now has a great job. And by the way is a great mom to her now 13 year old daughter and 10 year old stepdaughter.
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July 8th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I didn’t mention it in the post but yeah, her parents would have been supportive. Her Mom spent the entirety of both episodes bawling, she wanted the baby and was pretty honest and up front that she would have never been able to make an adoption plan. She was also honest that she didn’t necessarily want to parent the baby herself, though. I think they would have supported her to parent, if she made that choice. They seemed like a pretty tight knit family. I thought they did a pretty good job of staying neutral in the end and supporting her and letting her make her own decision, even when it turned out to be a very painful one for them.
I got pregnant with Dalton at 18 and I like to think I’ve been a pretty good parent to him, as well. No regrets here, at all.
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July 8th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Not sure as a parent that I would be able to stay neutral. G-d bless them
for that. I know that I would never have been able to give a child up for
adoption so even though I have never been in that position, I know how
a birth parent would feel.
I don’t think that I will ever watch Dr. Phil now
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Thanks for this post ~ I missed the show and it was great to get a recap.
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OK..I was screaming in my head (my kids were napping) as I watched the show but your play by play made me physically ill. PLEASE tell me you are sending this to Dr. Phil…not that he would read it! The whole show was sooo disgusting and yeah, I thought the same thing about the adult adoptee. She was so condesending to Brittney.
Oh, now I may have to write him. GRRRRRR
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Nicki – I have not seen these two shows BUT I have seen an update on this girl and she did not place the baby and choose to parent the child. She is doing well doing so with her families support — and the support of the father.
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Another aside – my 17 year old mother would have been better to place me for adoption than have her and my father parent me – there are VERY VERY few situations that would have been worse for me than that family. I am not saying that is true of every teen parent but mine it is….don’t tell either of my parents I said that though – would break their hearts now that they see the error of their ways in how they raised or didn’t raise me.
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I detest Dr. Phil. This doesn’t surprise me in the least. It makes me SICK, but it doesn’t even shock me. I can’t even stomach the sound of his voice, so I doubt I’ll watch. Your summary pretty much says it all. I agree with the person above who said that it’s probably a lot of adoptive parents who wouldn’t see the problem. Sad, sad, sad.
BTW, sort of off topic, but when I was in college, one of the local radio station morning show guys were always bagging on Dr. Phil. One of them could totally do his voice and would say the stupidest things that made NO sense, like, “You can’t clean out the fridge when there’s an ocelot in the front yard.” It was funny b/c it was pretty much representative of his logic…there is NONE.
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I missed the show but this synopsis really spelled it out. I don’t like this one bit.
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I’ve only seen his show 2 or 3 times – I can’t stand him – he’s no more than a greedy quack selling fix-it-quick BS to Americans who somehow seem to buy into it.
Please send this to the show!
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Wow, makes me glad I don’t have a TV (although, I have seen Dr. Phil once or twice). These “help” shows seem pretty formulaic: the ‘helper’ has an agenda that usually doesn’t match the agenda of the helpee, so that there can be drama, conflict, and ultimately the climax of the oh-so-wise ‘helper’ convincing the helpee to follow the original agenda. What I always wonder is why the ‘helpee’ agrees to go on the show. What do you think Brittney’s agenda was?
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July 9th, 2009 at 8:56 am
good question – I do wonder what her agenda was? Maybe fame? Free stuff? It would be really awful if her agenda was to get help raising her baby, huh?
You are dead right on that formula. It wasn’t even a surprise when she announced that she was placing. It wouldn’t be much of a show if Phil didn’t come out on top huh?
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wow. Really? wow.
I found you thru my blog reader…this is the first post I read and if this went down the way you said it did (which I don’t doubt at all,) then I’m hoping you send this very post to Dr. Phil to read (like he would…).
and not even on tv, but in the real world, there are so many mental health professionals who are so skilled, but still have similar mindsets about adoption and give similar counseling to pregnant mothers.
I may go write a letter to Dr. Phil myself. Can I link to this on my blog?
Em
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July 10th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
@mama2roo, You can link to it, you can copy it and send it in as your own, I’m easy!! I am not going to because I’m too cynical to believe he would care or change. As far as I’m aware, this is not the first time he’s done this same scheme with pregnant teens. And I know last time he got a lot of push back. Clearly it did not matter. Ratings! yay! But honestly you are a better person than I if you make the time to push back.
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Oh ugh. I probably have this on my TiVo, I record him but rarely watch anymore. Definitely too many places to go “ugh” through your synopsis to even go through point-by-point. Though I’ll say that having her meet the potenial adoptive mom at the hospital, how she’d had 5 failed placements, etc. made me want to vomit. It is not a baby or emom’s job to make our life “complete” through adoption. It is not one emom’s burden to carry that the amom had five failed placements. As far as I’m concerned, that is not something an emom should have any inkling about – way, way too much pressure and manipulation. Sounds like this was such a mess all-around and Dr. Phil obviously had an agenda. It frustrates me, I think domestic adoption is so misunderstood anyway and his show did nothing to shed a better light on it.
I’m so grateful I had a couple of hours to talk to Delaney’s birthmom the night she was born. And as it worked out, we had no agency person there because of timing and such which made me very nervous, but in the end I think was actually a very good thing. I NEVER had any doubt about her intentions and reasons to place and I am so glad for that.
Your post brings up SO MANY thoughts in my head of how that was handled tied to my views thanks to my own experience, but I don’t want to write a comment as long as your post! I have seen Dr. Phil tackle other similar topics before and he really doesn’t get it. It frustrates me because I don’t think he’s ALWAYS wrong in his opinions and advice, but this is one area where I definitely don’t see eye-to-eye with him, not even close.
I really do think you should email him about this – yeah, he might not care, but sometimes he does do follow-up shows including people who really gave him hell, and it would be interesting to see him bring on some better, more true-to-life, educational views on the topic.
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I can’t stand Dr. Phil…but this is enraging in so many ways. I agree that you should send him your post. I also can’t believe this is how the show went down when the mother was willing to support her daughter in raising the child. Unbelievable. Thank you for writing it up.
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Catching up on my blogreading, so I’m behind on this one and not reading all 26 comments… But Dang, I had very little respect for Dr. Phil before but now? Make that zilch. Good grief!! I am extremely pro-adoption (especially when we’re talking about a young-ish teenage girl who is not prepared to parent) but holy cow! I mean, right off the bat he’s got things wrong. If my daughter came to me and said she was pregnant, one of the choices I would offer her is for ME to HELP her – good grief, I’m her mother and I WANT to help – that would not be a burden!!! That just makes me so sad that Dr. Phil put that wedge between Brittany and her parents like that. Making a 16 year old feel like a burden? Awful, just awful.
I think it’s great how you broke down all the points where he tried to (and apparently succeeded) influence her … I’d bet 98% of the people watching didn’t pick up on most of those, but you are so right at the effect his tactics (which are used by too many adults in/out of the adoption world) have.
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