Adam Pertman: A New Chapter in Adoption History: For Millions of People, the Internet is Changing... Everything

Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute; author, 'Adoption Nation' and 'Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men'

It's hard to describe the extent to which the Internet is changing the everyday realities of adoption -- and the lives of the millions of people it encompasses -- without using words that sound hyperbolic. But a yearlong examination of the effects of this very new technology on a very old social institution shows that they are systemic, profound, complex and permanent.

Social media, search engines, blogs, chat rooms, photo-listings and an array of other modern communications tools, all facilitated by the Internet, are transforming adoption practices, challenging laws and policies, providing unprecedented opportunities and resources, and raising critical ethical, legal and procedural issues about which professionals, legislators and the personally affected parties have little reliable information, research or experience to guide them.

A groundbreaking new report by the Donaldson Adoption Institute, which I have the honor to lead, lays out the profound changes that are occurring, explains their consequences, and offers recommendations on how to meet the challenges they present. Among the findings in the 70-page report, "Untangling the Web: The Internet's Transformative Impact on Adoption," are:

• "A growing commodification" of adoption and a shift away from the perspective that its primary purpose is to find families for children. This is particularly the case in domestic infant adoption, where a scarcity of babies available to be adopted heightens competition. Unregulated websites compete with traditional practitioners, sometimes by making claims and utilizing practices that raise serious ethical and legal concerns.

• Finding birth relatives is becoming increasingly easy and commonplace, with significant institutional and personal implications, including the likely end of the era of "closed" adoption and a growth in relationships between adoptive families and families of origin.

• An indeterminable but growing number of minor adopted children are contacting and forming relationships with biological siblings, parents and other relatives, sometimes without their adoptive parents' knowledge and usually without guidance or preparation about the complex emotional and interpersonal repercussions for everyone involved.

• There are a rising number of sites that expedite the adoption of children and youth who need families, notably including those with special needs. At the same time, there are more places to get information and education, networking opportunities, support services and other resources that are a clear, positive contribution to professionals, policymakers, researchers, journalists and the millions of personally affected individuals.

• Evidence that the Internet has many additional positive effects on adoption and the people it touches. For instance, there are growing numbers of opportunities for affiliation, support and information-sharing that would be impossible to achieve without the technology and reach of the Internet and, in particular, social media.

"Untangling the Web" is the first publication in a multiyear research project on this subject by the Adoption Institute. A key goal of this initial report is to stimulate a national discussion about the Internet's impact on adoption and how to regulate Internet-based adoption services to assure that they are legal and ethical, and that the interests of all those affected -- particularly children -- are protected. The report provides an overview of the evolving landscape; an explanation of the scope and impact of the changes; resources (albeit limited ones) to inform, protect and assist all those affected; and preliminary recommendations on legal, policy and practice reforms intended to better respond to adoption's new realities.

Our ultimate intent is to identify and promote policies and practices that enable this powerful technology to best serve the millions of children and families for whom adoption is part of everyday life. Toward that end, the preliminary recommendations in the report include:

• Professionals who deal with expectant and pre-adoptive parents should get training reflecting the certainty that many, if not most, of their clients will be able to find each other at some point, so they should be educated about the benefits of openness and the realities of such relationships.

• Practitioners should get additional training and resources to enable them to better assist the growing number of adopted individuals, as well as members of their families of origin and adoptive families, who seek help with search and reunion.

• Policy and law-enforcement officials should routinely review online adoption-related sites and activities for fraud, exploitation or other illegal and unethical practices, and they should take legal or regulatory action as warranted.

• Laws that impede the parties to adoption from gaining significant information, including statutes that prevent adult adoptees from accessing their own original birth certificates, should be repealed since the Internet obviates their main contemporary rationale (i.e., preventing the affected parties from learning about and finding each other).

The list of positive, negative and complicated changes occurring in the world of adoption as a result of the Internet goes on and on, with many already in place and others still evolving. The common denominator among them is that they are not best practices derived from lessons learned from research and experience; rather, overwhelmingly, they are a mostly unregulated, unmonitored tangle of transformations that are happening simply because new technology enables them to happen. Now, with the Adoption Institute's report as a starting point and for the sake of the tens of millions -- yes, really, tens of millions -- of people for whom adoption is an everyday reality, it's time to start straightening them out.

Follow Adam Pertman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@AdamPertman

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Rare automobiles from Milhous collection fetch millions at auction

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Many collectors of classic automobiles and other items turned out for a recent auction of many of the collectibles obtained through the years by two brothers.

The Milhous Collection, offered by brothers Bob and Paul, included nearly 30 vehicles along with assorted other items, such as an paintings, statues and even a 42-foot custom-built carousel with more than 40 hand-carved animals, chariots and an organ.

"The brothers looked all over the world for a suitable carousel to buy, and they couldn't find one," Alain Squindo, the manager of the research department for RM Auctions, told the New York Times*. "So they commissioned this one. It took years to build."

The pair had spent years collecting the items, and chose to sell them off as a way to simplify estate planning for their relatives, the Times reports, since many would have no idea what to do with some of the collection's more unique items, such as the carousel. Their collection was so large, it had already outgrown four previous storage locations.

The most expensive item sold at the auction was a 1912 Oldsmobile Limited Five-Passenger Touring automobile. While the former museum piece would have been sold for roughly $7,000 back in 1912, RM Auctions* says that vehicle ended up selling for more than $3 million at the auction, largely because it's the only known survivor of the 1912 Oldsmobile Limited line. The vehicle has also won a number of auto show awards during the past few years.

The Oldsmobile was one of six classic cars to sell for more than $950,000. Some of the other high-priced cars included in the auction were a 1933 Chrysler Phaeton, a 1939 Lagonda V-12 Rapide Sports Roadster and a 1930 Duesenberg convertible.

Overall, the cars in the collection impressed many collectors who attended the auction looking to buy cars.

"All of us have seen some nice collections before, but this one turned the knobs all the way up to 11," David Wallens, an automobile collector, told the Times.

In total, the items in the collection sold for more than $38 million.

*according to the New York Times on February 27, 2012
**according to RM Auctions on March 15, 2012

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Best in Blogs: Mega Millions Inspires American Dreams, Obama Campaign is Pinterest-ing

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

The Mega Millions lottery drawing this Friday night will reach an all-time record jackpot of $500 million, give or take a few megabucks, giving millions of Americans reason to stop resenting the wealthy one percent and instead believe that they may join the much more elite .00000000569 percent (the odds of winning the jackpot are 175,711,536 to one). With so much at stake, mathematicians and economists have relished the opportunity to have people actually read their blogs. After a gigantic load of calculations on his blog, David Torbert concludes that "for your 'investment' of a $1 lottery ticket, your expected return is 88.2 cents for this Friday's drawing." Which on its face doesn't sound so bad, though it essentially means the more you buy, the more you lose. But opinions are mixed. "At some point it becomes what a friend calls a 'utility bet,'" says The Spectacle Blog. "In other words, the possibility, almost no matter how small, of winning such an enormous prize makes it worth taking a flier with some modest amount of money." Cunctabundus has noted that the .00000000569 percent chance of winning with one ticket "rounds to zero" - and so do the odds of winning if you buy two tickets. "And 20 tickets? Your chance of hitting the jackpot is a just over a hundred-thousandth of a percent. Say it with me, round to zero."

Stephen Bronars at Bronars Economics seems to be worried that after you win you may have to split the jackpot with others - logic that seems to be leaping ahead a little - but he concludes that "even after taking the likelihood of multiple winners into account, the expected value of a one dollar Mega Millions ticket is more than a dollar." So get in line! Everyone's an expert now, apparently. Says the Pinch That Penny blog: "As math is a fuzzy subject for me, I deferred to my buddy the math whiz (he wrote a post for me on the NBA lockout a few months ago)." Well, maybe not everyone.

It does as if like an undue amount energy is being expended wondering what everyone will do after they all win. Business Insider is on top of the topic with strategies for taking your winnings ("make sure to decide between lump sum and annuity.") and seven things you could do with the winnings ("Buy 952,000 new iPads. Donate $475,999,999 to Planned Parenthood and $1 to Susan G. Komen.")The consumer finance blog Life Inc. warns unemployed job seekers not to admit in job interviews that they'd quit after winning the jackpot: "When you answer the lottery question - or any interview question - you want to leave out any inkling you're not excited about working hard, no matter what the circumstances." The Economix blog has noted the correlation between high unemployment rates and high lottery sales: "Can't Find a Job? Play the Lottery."

Anyway - the sound you are hearing now is the alarm clock going off on Saturday morning. You didn't win Mega Millions. The next bandwagon leaving the stations appears to be...Pinterest. Yes. Says Naked D.C.: "Pinterest is the new social media revolution - an electronic scrapbook that allows you to 'pin' pictures, ideas, quotes and the like from various websites around the Internets. In short, it is the greatest invention to ever befall young, unmarried women who are looking to creep the sh*t out of their imaginary boyfriends by completely planning their wedding before they ever meet anyone." Ok, there's that, maybe. The newest Pinterest adopter appears to be Mr. President, Barack Obama, who has the worst Pinterest page ever, Naked D.C. says. Jezebel, in a comprehensive analysis of the PObama Pinterest presence, adds: "while I bet Barack Obama's got some totally cute DIY wedding flower ideas, this move makes sense in light of what appears to be the President's reelection strategy: personally befriend every woman in America."

"President Obama Joins Pinterest, Wants All Your Themed Cake Recipes," laffs WebProNews. "Obama has always had a huge presence on both Twitter and Facebook, but in the last six months, Obama has checked-in to Foursquare, started blogging away on Tumblr, went a little hipster by joining Instagram, joined Google+ and almost immediately hosted a Hangout, made his campaign playlist available on Spotify, and switched his Facebook profile over to the new Timeline." The Dallas News Trailblazers blog notes that Obama "isn't the first to use Pinterest for political purposes. Groups like liberal-leaning Think Progress have employed it to poke at GOP candidates. Ann Romney, wife of GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, has a page of her own to collect recipes and post campaign photos." VentureBeat gets to the real point, figuring Obama's pinning will "likely be a bigger boon for the social networking site than for the campaign. Consider this yet another defining moment for the still-small, 30-person, Palo Alto-based company." Pinterest certainly is attracting a crowd. The Daily Dot broke news that a Pinterest spammer may be making $1,000 a day: "Spammers are turning innocent users' clicks into cash by running thousands of automated Pinterest profiles, and they're getting away with it for longer than any of them expected." That's $30,000 a month for doing hardly anything, says Mashable. Hey, who needs the lottery?

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