I agreed to send my son’s birthmother pictures and letters twice a year throughout his childhood. His birthmother is now out of contact with the agency, so the agency told me not to send them any more pictures and letters for her because they have no place to store the packages. I am still putting those packages together and storing them at my house. I am doing this for two reasons:

(1) I made a promise to the woman who enabled me to become a mother. I plan to keep that promise, even if she chooses not to read the letters. Until she personally releases me from that promise, I plan to fulfill what I promised to do.

(2) I want my son to know that I always treated his birthmother with respect.

I think that adoptive parents who are disrespectful and/or deceitful to a child’s birthparents are being extremely short-sighted. I would not want to have to explain to my child why I chose to deceive his birthmother by making promises that I did not intend to keep.

- Faith

To make matters more interesting, the child just recently found out that she is adopted. I was so outraged because they also agreed that they would give her information from the time she was a toddler, i.e. “I’ll bet your birth mommy is thinking of you today, knowing that it is your birthday” … something to that effect.

I try so hard to understand why they made this decision, but I guess it’s not up to me to understand why .. just to be understanding. I also live in a state where the co-op agreement is NOT legally binding. Oh well … I guess I should just leave them alone and ‘get on with life.’

I hope someone can help me understand all this.

Though I must add that while some states do have them and others don’t, thus letting some agencies encourage the families to sign good-faith agreements, some agencies don’t even go that far, never bringing up the subject at all. Just a heads up to readers that unethical agencies do exist!