Name: Anais Cornfeld

Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Child Welfare, Foster Care and Adoption

Date of Fieldwork: February 10, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Jenny and Kevin Samuelson

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

On Thursday, February 10th, our group interviewed Jenny Kevin Samuelson. We talked about their adoption process, and their experiences adopting. They currently live in New York City with their two children. When they adopted their first child, they were living in Georgia. The foster laws there vary from those of New York. They had to go through a process to become certified to adopt. They had frequent home assessments and studies with a social worker. They also had to be thoroughly background checked for any criminal acts of any kind. Jenny and Kevin became licensed after three months of working fervently. They worked with a private organization that required the samuelson’s to put together a profile for birth parents to look at and decide if they wanted to send their child with them. The Samuelsons adopted their first child immediately from birth. Foster parents must have a certification to adopt babies born in a different state called the interstate compact. It must get approved before the parents can take their baby home. After the compact is approved, adoption can proceed. This however takes months. Social workers continue with monthly checkups until the child is officially adopted. When an adoption is approved, the parents receive the birth certificate and have full rights to their child. Until then, they are still legally bound to their parents or the organization. Private agencies tend to have a quicker adoption process than state agencies, taking only up to three months. Certain agencies can supply parents with emergency supplies like a car seat, or diapers.
Jenny and Kevin shared some more personal experiences and opinions on their experience. They talked about how babies are considered quite valuable. CPS and private organizations have all these processes in place to protect babies and children from being trafficked. The agencies always look for the safest outcome for a child even if it is not the quickest or easiest, although they are trying to do it as best they can. Fraud can happen, which is why there are always so many home visits and check-ins. Until the child is adopted, there is a lot of stress on the foster parents because there is no guarantee the baby is staying for good. The birth parents still have rights to their child, and can receive full custody again if they choose. Jenny noted that the social workers do a very thorough job with their check-ins. She sometimes felt under scrutiny by them, but she knew that they just had the child’s best interests in mind. Their agency did an organized job, however, with private organizations they can be a bit ruthless. They want to make adoptions final because that is the way they make their money. Jenny felt like at times she needed to be protective of her child’s birth mother because she was under a lot of pressure, and the agencies did not do much to comfort her.
Jenny and Kevin also talked about how there have been times when they have felt shame when their kids were babies. When they had to fly their first child back on the plane, after picking them up, they felt judged by the other people for bringing a newborn, but the other people didn’t understand the situation. There are also a lot of stereotypes about how a baby should be raised. It was sometimes hard having to feed their kids with formula instead of breast milk, and dealing with the judgments. They also faced judgments on the relationships they have with their kids. There is still a big stereotype about how families are supposed to look today. Real families around the world come in all shapes and sizes. Normal should no longer be thought of in one way. “Families go in different ways.” awareness needs to be raised about adopted families, and it needs to be normalized. We should stop treating it like a taboo. This may even encourage other families to adopt if we get rid of the stereotypes.