The Adoption Lists: Oxygen's I'm Having Their Baby

I'm Having Their Baby is yet example of how a thriving business (adoption) can spawn one television show after another, especially when around every corner is someone searching for their 15 minutes of fame, even if 13 of them are spent in tears.

After eight years living in the United States, I thought I had become inured to the absurdity of American reality television. Until last week, while on a whim, I flicked on the remote and tuned into Oxygen Channel's controversial reality show, 'I'm Having Their Baby'.

I have never liked the Oxygen channel, but this right here just made outright despise it.

Read on to find out why.

That title implies that those women really have no choice in the matter. It implies that these women will relinquish their children and "move on" with their lives because their babies are with their "real" families. It implies that these parents are just vessels to place these children where they're really supposed to grow up. It perpetrates every evil adoption stereotype of birth parents in general out there. The title of the show causes shudders to course through my body because of the negative stereotypes associated with the terminology used.

The Oxygen Network's New Show "I'm Having Their Baby" has caused quite a commotion in the adoption community. Expectant mothers considering adoption should not exploited for entertainment value.

There were some good things, there were lots of bad things and, when it comes down to it, adoption reform now needs to encompass the way "reality" shows portray adoption, because they sure aren't doing our efforts any favors.

Absolutely one of the best revealing of the reality of the adoption world I have seen on a blog. The story does not stop here, there are horror stories about child stealing, coercion, mothers being told their baby died, when it was alive, and it goes on and on and on for the sake of a dollar, and the egos of those who are willing to pay for a child.

A stone faced counselor sits next to a sobbing young mother who had just given birth less than 48 hours earlier. The counselor is holding the paperwork that will forever legally sever this mother's connection to her baby. As the mother is crying the counselor says "Are you feeling a little bit emotional about your adoption plan?" A little bit emotional?! At this point I wanted to throw my laptop through the picture window in my living room.

This series claims to show the adoption process from the viewpoint of the "birthmother" but cleverly and subtly places pro-adoption propaganda throughout the episode.

Out of curiosity, I did watch a preview episode today and was disgusted when I saw the look of disappointment and anger on the adoption counselor's face when the mother told her she had decided to parent after giving birth.
Not to mention, the name of the show? How degrading to First Mothers and our children!

Oxygen Network's new voyeur docu where titillated couch consumers and Snooki fans get to watch adoption agents and their clueless customers, ie PAPs, vie for the attention and ultimate product of pregos in trouble and need of social engineering.. There's not been such an uproar in AdoptionLand since Orphan hit the big screen when adoption agents, their industrial hangers-on, Christian orphan savers, politicians, paps and adopters hit the keyboards over Hollywood's "destruction of adoption." Bastards and birthers found the whole business amusing.

I find the title of this show much more loathsome than any other that has gone before it. It reduces expectant mothers as though they are some sort of service for someone else. In reality, they are expectant mothers who are expecting a child that will be born to them. It is then that they must make the decision of whether or not to parent.

The adoption community is up in arms about a new show that premiered on the Oxygen network this week. I’m Having Their Baby is described as a “six-part docu-series that reveals the stor...

Let's start with terminology. No woman gives birth to someone else's baby. She may choose to place her baby for adoption, but even after placement (or "transfer", as Oxygen calls it), the baby is still her child. And she's not a "would-be mom". She's a pregnant woman, and after she gives birth, she is a mother. She remains a mother no matter where her child grows up.

On one hand, we have the new reality cable TV show “I’m Having THEIR Baby” (OXYGEN premiered Monday July