The Baby Market

STEVE LOWMAN AND Darlene Saxon spend anywhere from 20 to 30 hours a week looking for a baby to adopt.

The Arlington couple advertise in area newspapers and have installed a separate telephone line in their home to take calls. They staple fliers onto bulletin boards in apartment complexes, hair salons and laundromats. They pass out business cards to school nurses and the high-school-age children of friends. They mail out photos and one-page “resumes” that describe their values and home to counselors and abortion clinics. Most weekends, they walk around Metroplex malls wearing their homemade sweat shirts, decorated with teddy bears, which read. “Open adoption is the best option. Call Steve and Darlene. (817) 265-BABY.” They wear hats with similar messages and also have bumper stickers and T-shirts. They meet every other week to swap ideas with other couples using the same sorts of tactics. And they have put magnetic signs on the doors of their cars: “Open adoption is the best option. Call Steve and Darlene. (817) 265-BABY.”

Welcome to the new world of adoption, to the world of “outreach” and “networking.”

The techniques are not new. For years, private agencies and attorneys have done whatever it takes to find a child. You’ve probably seen the ads: “Loving couple wants baby.” What’s different is that a growing number of parents themselves are doing the hunting, the marketing, the self-promotion. And they are doing it through traditional non-profit agencies.

Dallas has been a leader in this field. To varying degrees most non-profit adoption agencies here-including Catholic Counseling Services, Lutheran Social Service of Texas and Hope Cottage-encourage client couples to use these aggressive techniques.

In fact, Catholic Counseling estimates that up to 55 percent of its adoptions last year were through outreach, and at Hope Cottage it’s about 50 percent. At Lutheran, the number of outreach adoptions is still small. But all three agencies agree that outreach and networking programs are the wave of the future.

Catholic Counseling claims that outreach drastically cuts the amount of time couples must wait for a child. Proponents also talk about “empowerment” for both the adoptive and birth parents. In these programs, the agency encourages the prospective parents to seek out and make direct contact with the birth mother. It is the birth mother, rather than the agency, who decides where she wants to place the child-before the child is born. Often the adoptive couple will stay in touch with the mother throughout the pregnancy- sometimes to the point of being present at the birth-and the birth mother may see the child regularly as he or she grows up.

Mostly, it comes down to a matter of supply and demand in the 1990s.

On the supply side, the inventory of available babies continues to drop as the general population ages. On the demand side, the number of couples seeking such babies continues to swell. And then there is the cost. For a private adoption, couples will pay about $18,000 to $20,000. Non-profit outreach programs usually charge a fixed fee plus a percentage of the couple’s income, with the ultimate cost ranging from about $8,000 to $17,000.

The outreach process is nevertheless not an easy one for adoptive parents; the responsibility of finding a baby is placed squarely on their shoulders. Adoptive couples set themselves up for painful disappointments when promising leads don’t pan out, sometimes after months of working with a birth mother. They also compete head-to-head with other infertile couples, some of whom may be from out of state, and must sell themselves aggressively to grab the atlention of birth mothers. The prospective parents also invite misunderstanding from those unfamiliar with this new concept.

“The first week we put up business cards, the agency got a call about us from the FBI,” says Steve Lowman. chuckling. “Someone thought it was a black market baby scam.”’

The couple is working with Catholic Counseling Services, Dallas’ biggest proponent of outreach, and belong to one of three CCS adoption networking groups. Each group of six to eight couples meets every other week to share leads and swap ideas on advertising and marketing.

“It takes someone who’s willing to pioneer new things. You have to be innovative, and venture out there and do it.” says Darlene Saxon.

The husband and wife, he sole proprietor of Steve’s Maintenance and Fixall (“I fix everything but broken hearts”) and she a corporate accountant, started checking out adoption agencies in January 1991. They decided to work with CCS because both are Catholic and they liked the non-profit agency’s go-gel-em philosophy. They easily passed the requirements for adoptive parents: One member of the couple must be Catholic, both must be between the ages of 25 and 45 and they must have been married for at least two years.

Next, they signed an agreement to participate for two years. The process involved agreeing to a home visit for state approval and participating in six training sessions on adoption and the handling of phone calls on their baby line. They were also required to prepare 20-page autobiographies, a “Dear Birth Mother” letter and a one-page resume describing their home life and values (the latter two of which are read by birth mothers selecting couples for their babies).

“We are both outgoing, fun-loving and ’ humorous people. We are caring, helpful, kind, generous with our time, thoughtful and a generous couple. We are organized, clean, hard-working and industrious. We are ac- tive. go getters and outdoor people. We are animal lovers and have two wonderful dogs,”-from Steve Lowman and Darlene Saxon’s résumé, sent to people on their mailing list.

They were the first couple in their group to be approved. On Jan. 1, 1992, they ordered 5,000 business cards and have been at it ever since, giving out an average of 4,000 cards a month.

“We’ve also contacted a lot of people we ! know who have kids in high school,” says Saxon. “We say, ’Your kids aren’t promiscuous, but surely there are kids out there that they know who may be pregnant.’ We’re working with one high-school girl-as soon as she hears of someone who may be pregnant, she gives them one of our cards.”

“You never know what card is going to bring you a child,” Lowman adds.

Like the vast majority of Dallas-area couples working through outreach programs, Lowman and Saxon want a white newborn. African-American couples usually do not participate in outreach because of the greater availability of black babies. CCS has had Hispanic couples in its networking program. Lowman and Saxon would like to have a girl, but CCS doesn’t give couples a choice on sex because the birth mothers start selecting a couple before the child is born. All medical and legal expenses for the birth mother are paid by the agency, which charges adoptive couples a flat fee of $5,000 plus a percentage of their adjusted income.

Saxon, the accountant, says the adoption will cost them about $8,000, plus about $500 in legal fees, but CCS will deduct up to $2,000 in outreach advertising and marketing costs from the final bill.

CCS provides a set of questions to ask birth mothers calling in on the baby line, but Lowman doesn’t use it much, preferring to get to know the caller first. The two plan to pass their baby line number along to another couple after they get a baby.

“That’s a good number and it’s hard to get, and that way we won’t lose all the efforts we did on outreach,” Saxon says. So far. the baby line has brought serious inquiries from three birth mothers, all in the early stages of pregnancy.

Both talk excitedly about other CCS couples who have gotten so close to their birth mothers that they have been Lamaze coaches and have even been able to cut the newborn’s umbilical cord. Given CCS” track record, they expect to find a baby by the end of the year: Of 30 couples who started networking through CCS in April 1990, 26 received a child within 12 months. In traditional CCS adoptions, couples typically wait an additional six months to a year to receive a child.

Lowman and Saxon both admit to being hesitant at first about open adoption, but after going through the CCS program they say they no longer have any qualms about sharing information with their future birth mother before, during and after the birth.

“We’ve told them [the phone leads] we’d like to send them videotapes, snapshots, exchange phone calls and letters. They could even stop by if they wanted to, after we have the child,” Lowman says. “But some of the birth mothers aren’t really for a full open adoplion. They’d like pictures but they feel in their hearts it would hurt too much to see the child.”

Despite the unusual methods, Ann and Steve Gravseth consider themselves satisfied customers of outreach adoption. The North Dallas couple went to a Lutheran Social Service of Texas meeting in November 1990. They were approved for adoption in February 1991, placed their first ad in March, started working with a Texas birth mother in August and brought home a son, Matthew Hale Gravseth, in early December.

They were even at the hospital when Matthew was born at 7:21 a.m. on December 7, 1991, weighing in at 9 pounds, 14 ounces, but they did not witness the birth.

“We were proactive in finding a birth mother ourselves. We actually took the birth mother into the agency to meet with the social workers,” Ann says. “We found her through networking and had to Fed Ex a résumé down to her. She was getting information from other agencies, too. She chose to interview us and to interview two other couples.”

Ann. a corporate merchandise cosmetics manager for JCPenney, and Steve, a school teacher, sent out about 60 résumés and advertised three times in Dallas and Piano papers. They easily fit LSST’s criteria, which require a couple be married at least two years (they were married seven years in June), be members of any Christian church, be no more than 45 and have no more than one child already in the home (Matthew is their only child).

Steve says bringing photos of all their relatives to the interview helped persuade the birth mother to choose them, because she wanted her baby to be part of a big family.

The couple met with the woman four times before the birth and developed a close relationship. She sent them the results of her sonogram and called them to come to the hospital when she went into labor.

They arranged for a separate room at the suburban Dallas hospital and held Matthew 15 minutes after he was born. Steve then rushed home to put the finishing touches on the nursery, including a wooden crib he built in the shape of a giraffe. During Matthew’s three days in the hospital, they took turns feeding him. The couple completed the adoption process in time to take him home directly from the hospital-a frequent oc-curence with outreach adoptions.

In fact, the birth mother, her mother and sister visited Matthew, Ann and Steve on Christmas Eve, in what is tentatively scheduled as an annual affair.

“It was kind of like distant relatives coming to visit. It was real healthy for everybody,” Ann says.

“The birth mother certainly can call and set up meetings, and we’ll be happy to do that,” Steve says. “We have pictures of her. He’ll grow up knowing who she is. It’s not joint custody or co-parenting. The more you learn about it, the more normal it seems.”

They plan to explain the adoption to Matthew slowly as he grows up, but also expect a gradual decline in contact with the birth mother as she gets on with her life.

LSST now has about eight couples doing outreach, according to Jan Johnson, the agency’s coordinator of children’s services. LSST also uses a sliding scale to determine fees, which start at $9,000. The Gravseths’ fee was $15,000, which included reimbursement for up to $1,000 in outreach costs. The average adoption takes a year to 18 months, but the Gravseths say the key to their relatively quick success was flexibility and salesmanship.

“In most ads, you don’t want to put anything in about an agency or talk about it until you get a rapport going with the birth mother, because most birth mothers think an agency is a cold place, where they take your baby away from you. The birth mothers really wanted to work with couples, not any agency,” Ann says.

Steve took most of the calls on the baby line. He says the networking is getting tougher as more couples join in the search. “You could do it full-time for a year and not get anything. It’s like looking for a job.”

“It was a bit of a roller coaster, but you shouldn’t do outreach if you don’t want to take risks,” Ann says.



WITH THE DEATH OF THE DALLAS Times Herald, outreach couples are left with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as the only large-circulation daily in which to advertise locally. The Dallas Morning News will not print adoption ads as a corporate policy, to protect itself from the liability of any possible illegal adoptions.

Ads from out of state often appear in the Star-Telegram, the Dallas Observer, smaller suburban papers and even in free shopper publications like the Thrifty Nickel, mixed in with the car ads and get-rich-quick schemes.

In Texas, all couples wanting to adopt must be evaluated, usually by a social worker. The evaluation includes a home study to determine the suitability of the environment for a child. It’s illegal for birth parents to make money from the adoption or for anyone to offer money or other financial inducements, such as a car, for a baby. Anyone trying to find homes for babies or babies for adoptive parents must be licensed. Agencies and individuals can charge fees for legal, medical and administrative services.

Anyone can provide information to birth parents about prospective adoptive couples, so long as the prospective couples are working with licensed agencies and no one makes any money from the referral, according to Cris Ros-Dukler, the director of licensing for the Texas Department of Human Services.

Despite its many apparent advantages, the system does have its critics. Because outreach adoptions are by definition “open” adoptions-that is, the birth family and the adoptive family know each other-opponents say they are dangerous examples of social engineering that amount to co-parenting, which confuses the child. Private adoption attorneys say they are better suited than the couples to take on the role of matchmaker.

Dallas attorney Mark Siegel is not, repeat not, a fan of outreach adoptions. Outreach and open adoptions are “extremely experimental. The long-term effects aren’t known,” says the founder of Adoption Advisory, a licensed for-profit agency. “The adoptive family is the primary nucleus for that child. If you dramatically change that concept, you have at least three people trying to parent, and I personally think it’s experimental, dangerously experimental.”

Adoption Advisory deals mostly with the traditional closed adoption, in which the agency usually handles the networking and advertising and determines, along with the family, who gets which child. About 10 percent of his agency’s 50 to 60 placements each year are semi-identified adoptions, with birth parents meeting with the adoptive couple before the birth only, with no exchange of last names or addresses.

Siegel finds all the advertising degrading and often illegal.

“We’ll have birth mothers calling us extremely concerned, where they’ve been offered large amounts of money or cars. .. We’ve had a lot of birth mothers, prior to coming to Adoption Advisory, call those numbers, and they were promised this and that, and the promises never came through. There’s a lot of desperation out there, and that’s reflected in the ads,” Siegel says.

Strangely, the same accusation is made by the non-profit agencies against private adoption lawyers and for-profit agencies.

Adoption Advisory’s criteria are similar to other agencies, but there is no age requirement. Placement takes an average of six to 15 months after being approved, and couples pay $18,300 per adoption. Birth mothers sign a contract with the agency and are rejected for drug or alcohol abuse or if they fail to meet scheduled prenatal care.

“The concept [of outreach adoptions] itself takes away from the privacy the adoptive family should be afforded,” Siegel says.

At the opposite end of the spectrum stands Bill Betzen, the city’s biggest proponent of aggressive marketing by adoptive couples. Betzen considers himself a pioneer in the field, having started the first outreach program at any longstanding church-based nonprofit agency in the nation at Lutheran Social Service of Texas in 1989. He came to Catholic Counseling Services two years ago and started their outreach program.

He says he got the idea from seeing what private agencies and individuals were already doing. Now the concept is slowly spreading through the country, with 15 other Catholic Charities agencies nationwide following the lead.

One of the biggest differences between private-placement attorneys and agencies like CCS and LSST are that these two nonprofit agencies are really umbrella organizations to serve the needs of unwed mothers. They provide care and counseling for the women. Adoption is just one facet of their work. “The largest single problem [in adop-tionj is the quality of counseling available to the birth mother to help her through the most traumatic event of her life,” says Bet-zen. “Our agency is a maternity counseling agency. We don’t counsel for placement. Eighty percent of our clients go ahead and parent themselves.” Nor does he feel that adoptive couples should handle the baby hunt on their own. “Networking shouldn’t be done alone. It’s unethical to put your name in the paper if you can’t serve all the calls you get.”

One of the busiest and best-known adoption centers in Dallas is Hope Cottage Adoption Center, which has been in the business since 1918. Although it does not push the concept as aggressively as CCS does, it has been doing networking since August 1990 and now has 18 couples participating.

“For a while Texas was number one in independent placements [nationally). I think that was because both sides wanted to have more say in the process,” says Carol Demuth, director of adoption education and support services. “That’s more of our role now, to allow the two sides to make the agreement they want to have.”

“It’s not a matter of a waiting list anymore. It’s a matter of how patient the adoptive parents are and how they match up with the moms. We don’t guarantee they will become adoptive parents,” says Doris Marshall, director of child planning services.

The agency also has relaxed its criteria for adoptive parents, dropping age, length of marriage and proof of infertility requirements.

“If the birth families are choosing parents, they have the criteria in their minds,” Hope’s executive director Aileen Edgington says.

“We are Sue and Bill. We cannot have a child of our own, and long to make our family and lives complete by bringing a child into our home through adoption. We want to share the rest of our future lives, and all of our caring love, hopes and expectations as we nurture and raise a child.”- from the résumé of Bill and Sue Kolechta.

Sue and Bill Kolechta were trying to keep the faith, but it wasn’t easy. The Piano couple began their baby search in the spring of 1990-and kept at it for over two years. They went through three different agencies and had to turn down one baby after Sue became seriously ill. They watched as 12 of the couples they started out with in the CCS program adopted newborns, while they had none.

In fact, their adoption group was merged three times with other CCS groups. Discouraged but determined, the couple, married 22 years in June, faithfully attended the meetings every other week and mailed out more than 1,000 résumés.

“You have to have patience,” says Sue, 44. “There are times when you get so depressed, but you have to know your day is coming.”

The couple first started trying to conceive in 1986 and began checking out adoption agencies in January 1990. They interviewed at Hope Cottage but were turned down because of an age requirement then in force.

“They sent us a letter and said sorry we didn’t select you. They said you’ll have to wait a year and by then you’ll be too old,” says Bill, 45.

They saw information about CCS in their church bulletin and joined their first group in June 1990. Three weeks later, on July 4, 1990, they got a referral from a couple in the group already matched with a birth mother. Ecstatic, they traveled to Pittsburgh where the birth mother lived and hit it off well. The mother was due to deliver in September, 1990, and the Kolechtas couldn’t believe their good luck.

About the same time Sue became ill with a viral liver infection. As the due date approached, she was feeling more and more tired, until she could barely gel out of bed.

Her liver foiled in August, and she went into a coma.

“It was horrible. It was one of the toughest things I ever had to do, to tell them no, we couldn’t take their baby, and then Susie gets so sick she nearly dies,” Bill says.

In September 1990, Sue received a liver transplant and began a long recovery, while Bill attended adoption group meetings alone. They spent most of 1991 recuperating and starting all over again; the paper work had expired and they had to start from scratch with a new home study. After a written assurance from Sue’s doctor that she had recovered, they started networking again in the fall of 1991.

“I was never expecting it to take this long. Never,” Sue says.

Over the course of their search tenure, Bill noticed a drop in the number of calls on the baby line, which he attributes to increased competition from couples who are advertising.

“We realized as a group there is more and more advertising, and more and more competition, so we were rnaxing out on the calls. It wasn’t nearly as effective as it was early on.” Bill and Sue switched their tactics and put a new emphasis on mailing résumés. Together with two other couples in the group, they came up with statewide lists of doctors, hospital social workers and teen counselors from state agencies.

“You hit family doctors. GPs, ob/gyns. counselors, social workers, all of them,” Bill says. One mailing went out to 2,000 licensed counselors throughout the state.

“It ends up getting expensive. It was 52 cents a package with three couples each putting in a resume, and it went up to 78 cents a package for four couples,” says Sue. But still they plugged away, working the baby line and diligently following up every lead. Sue worried that they might be missing calls because the baby line answering machine got a lot of hang-ups while the couple were at work (she is an administrative assistant at a United Way agency, and Bill is a senior financial planning manager for a high-tech firm in Dallas). In all they talked to about 16 birth mothers on their baby line.

“With some of them, you don’t even think you’re going to hear from them again,” Sue says. “We had four calls in one week from a birth father and got all excited, but it ended up they wanted us to give them money to fix their car.”

As time passed, they worried about the kind of baby they would get. “The agency is running more and more into birth moms with drug problems. It’s a matter of time before HIV babies start showing up,” Bill says.

And then, finally, it happened. In mid-June the Kolechtas brought home a baby girl. They found the birth mother not through their mailing list but from an ad they placed in the Dallas Observer. However. Bill notes that two or three CCS placements preceding his had been due to mailings. “It’s funny, when I told the group we were advertising in the Observer, they all went, ’Eeew.’ Our ad was right before the ad for the penile enlarger.”

The adoption cost the Kolechtas about $12,000, minus the $2,000 deductible for outreach expenses.

The lengthy search period gave them time to decide how much openness they wanted in the adoption. Bill expects an ongoing exchange of letters, pictures and videos and for the birth mother to provide an explanation to the child at the right age, but regular direct contact after the birth makes them uneasy,

“We don’t mind meeting a birth mother and talking on the phone. We don’t want to be totally closed, but we don’t want them over every Sunday dinner, either,” says Sue.

The Kolechtas saw firsthand the increasing competition in the baby market. Counselors expect it will get even worse as more Dallas couples get into the game.

But outreach paid off in the end for the Kolechtas. Bill’s advice: “Be as aggressive as you can be, The first rule is there are no rules.”