As I promised, a few of my posts this month will be used to point to other blogger’s important work .

Tonight’s post will be brief, but the links herein will all be well worth your time.

1. For starters, Kerry at Niels over on Pound Pup Legacy have written one of the more important posts I’ve seen in a long time. I consider this a MUST READ piece-

Why the Hague Convention needs revision

Far beyond a discussion of reworking the Hague Convention and the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000, this piece is a well written post about much of the basic history of inter-country adoption, baby brokering, and the pressures that are inherent to the system that make child trafficking simply the logical outcome.

For so short a post, it’s a marvelous overview, and basic Bastard history anyone working in this field should be aware of.

While I personally remain unconvinced that reform efforts to these tools can actually stem the tide, particularly in light of the problems inherent to for example, the Hague Convention itself, it is important to continually remind the community and Ambassador Jacobs personally, that the Convention is not working when it comes to ending child trafficking and that more to the point, regardless of how it might get tweeked at some future date, the problems with the Convention are inherent to it’s very nature.

Another key reason to spend some time with the PPL post is the important documentation of the supply vs. demand aspect of their post. They detail how the ongoing demand for children has outweighed the number of children made available to the adoption process through news reports dating back to the 1880’s.

Again, this is a very important post and I hope it will be widely circulated.

2. Up next, 73adoptee’s post:

The Critical Difference Between Foster And Infant Adoption

A vital read in light of how National Adoption Month began as an effort to focus on placing Foster kids and has rapidly devolved down into the adoption industry hawking infant adoptions (or reworking the foster system into yet another stream of infant adoptions, complete with the incentives and tax credits for newborns couples were aiming to get their hands on anyway.)

3. By way of yet another angle on the Foster Care clusterfuck, also from this week,  Lori Trevino writes about what it can be like to be a foster kid with a baby of your own taken by the state for purposes of adoption:

How to Steal A Foster Child’s Baby – 101

Despite the high pregnancy rates among foster care girls, few people do any follow up to see what happens to them, and whether or not they are actually enabled/allowed to keep their children.

Trevino’s post cracks the door open just enough to catch a glimpse of the process by which minors still in the system can have their parental rights stripped.

As the state acts in loco parentis for these girls, decisions simply get made for them, their voices considered irrelevant more often than not.

Few people think of foster kid girls as Mothers who have lost children to adoption themselves, but sure enough, here we’re fortunate enough to hear directly from one.

4. Turning to another blogging Mother, Robin wrote an eloquent piece on the expectations of gratitude from both Mothers and Bastards in adoption.

The Burden of Gratitude

She dissects the demand for gratitude both interpersonally,

I often hear paeans of praise and gratitude from adoptees that go beyond the normal expressions of love and respect for parents. The very nature of adoption, a child for the childless or for a home, places the responsibility on the shoulders of an infant, from day one of placement, for the emotional well being of the adopters. As the adoptee grows, so does that sense of obligation promulgated by the mythology.

and more broadly, across society, particularly from those with no direct ties to adoption itself,

It would be one thing if it were only the adopters who expected this, but the average Joe and Jane on the street, unaffected, personally, by adoption, seem to expect it as well. Popular culture expects gratitude from the mother and the adoptee along with a lot of other things and manages to exaggerate the horrors of abortion, inflate the numbers of so-called “dumpster babies” and, sadly, thinks that Safe Havens are the best thing since the paper napkin.

5. For my fifth and final link of the night, be sure to click across to Bastardette’s

Betty Anderson: A Little Clip from Peyton Place

Any self-respecting Bastard should be familiar with Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place.

Marley is of course working with a clip from the TVs series, which I am not as familiar with, (but clearly need to remedy that situation!)

The book, and later media iterations both considered  “scandalous” at the time and a key shaper of attitudes and popular culture from the period, deserves a place in any Bastard timeline.

Allison MacKenzie, as a fictional character, deserves her own place in the Fictionalized Bastard’s Hall of Fame.