Ron Reigns:
Welcome and thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption with Kelly Rourke-Scarry and me, Ron Reigns, where we delve into the issues of adoption from every angle of the adoption triad.
Speaker 2:
Do what’s best for your kid and for yourself, because if you can’t take care of yourself, you’re definitely not going to be able to take care of that kid and that’s not fair.
Speaker 3:
And I know that my daughter would be well taken care of with them.
Speaker 4:
Don’t have an abortion, give this child a chance.
Speaker 5:
All I could think about was needing to save my son.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
My name is Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I’m the Executive Director, President and co-founder of Building Arizona Families adoption agency, the Donna K. Evans Foundation and creator of the You Before Me campaign. I have a bachelor’s degree in family studies in human development and a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in school counseling. I was adopted at the age of three days, born to a teen birth mother, raised in a closed adoption and reunited with my birth mother in 2007. I have worked in the adoption field for over 15 years.
Ron Reigns:
And I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the co-host of two successful morning shows in Prescott, Arizona. Now I work for my wife who’s an adoption attorney, and I’m able to combine these two great passions and share them on this podcast.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Let’s talk about the effects of social media on the adoption process.
Ron Reigns:
I love social media. You know me, I’m a technological guy. I’ve got my MySpace going, Friendster is going now.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Okay.
Ron Reigns:
My Yahoo messenger, I’m all over it.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Your AOL.
Ron Reigns:
AOL. Got the disc and everything.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Where you can buy extra minutes at the grocery store in the little cards…
Ron Reigns:
Exactly. And they always have the free samples. Here free 1000 hours of AOL online. Ooh.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Fast speed.
Ron Reigns:
So yeah, let’s get into it. Social media and how it affects adoption.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. So we’re going to really look at this for adoptive families from their perspective and we’re kind of in the same age group as the other adoptive families. I mean, we’re kind of at the end of the age group probably…
Ron Reigns:
Certainly.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
We’re still in the group. We’re still…
Ron Reigns:
Still technically there. Right?
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right. And so there’s a lot of new stuff out there. I am just now really learning Instagram and Twitter and now Snapchat and TikTok have taken hold.
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And so to try to stay cool with my teenagers, I am trying to learn some of this and the look on their faces when I will say something like, okay, I have to go tweet. They will just, yeah. They just start laughing because they’re like, stop.
Ron Reigns:
I got to go make a Twitter.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah, exactly. And so the TikTok, I don’t really get the TikTok. Have you seen it?
Ron Reigns:
I kind of know… I mean not very much. Just a very cursory… It’s short videos that people put together and it’s all the rave right now, which I don’t understand because they’re five second videos most of the time.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. Less than a minute. Yeah.
Ron Reigns:
It’s crazy to me because I guess we’ve gotten to that point. We talked about it for so long that we’re desensitized and our… What is the word I’m looking for? Our short attention span. And they’ve been talking about this since the ’80s, and now it’s just getting to where, well we got a five second video and we lose interest. So it is funny that all that’s come to fruition.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
It is. It is. And the other day, my 17 year old was talking with one of her friends that’s a boy. But they’re just friends clarifying…
Ron Reigns:
Not boyfriend.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And I’ve never seen somebody Snapchat. So they’re Snapchatting back and forth. And I asked her, I said, my gosh, why don’t you pick up the phone and FaceTime him?
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I mean, you make a video and then you send it and then he makes a video and he sends it back and then you make a video and send it back. And I’m thinking wow.
Ron Reigns:
It seems like you’re expending more energy creating these, but are they looking at it as, okay, I want to portray the perfect image. So let me do this video four or five times until I say exactly…
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
She wasn’t. She wasn’t. I don’t know if he was, but she wasn’t.
Ron Reigns:
Okay. Interesting. And the text has always been the same to me too, because you sit there and text back and forth. And what would be a 30 second conversation on the phone…
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
No, no, no, no, no. I get the texting because you can text as you’re doing something else.
Ron Reigns:
Okay. That’s a fair point. Interesting.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
It’s not always appreciated when someone’s sitting in front of you and you’re texting somebody else. But with this Snapchat, I mean, this was honestly ridiculous.
Ron Reigns:
Just bizarre.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I mean, FaceTime them.
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I don’t…
Ron Reigns:
You would still see their face and I mean, what did they save the videos? They disappear here after a little bit, right?
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right. They disappear after you watch them. Yeah.
Ron Reigns:
Okay.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t see the relevance at all.
Ron Reigns:
It’s because we’re getting older. You and I.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Thank you.
Ron Reigns:
And our generation. I didn’t say…
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
We’re part of the problem?
Ron Reigns:
I did not say we’re getting old. We’re getting older, but then again, who isn’t right?
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. We’re not cool.
Ron Reigns:
No, we’re not cool or relevant anymore. Unfortunately.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Well.
Ron Reigns:
I look like I just gave you brain freeze.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah.
Ron Reigns:
Sorry. She’s got the mopey face, everybody.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. All right. Well maybe we should do a couple Snapchats of…
Ron Reigns:
Just so we understand it?
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
No. I mean to send out to our listeners that they…
Ron Reigns:
Oh.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Oh you can only Snapchat one person that’s right. I think, I don’t know. I don’t.
Ron Reigns:
Yeah. We could Zoom our audience, do a live… We could do a live…
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Oh that’d be fun. We should try to do that.
Ron Reigns:
Okay.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That’d be fun. We probably need to be in the same room though and then Zoom everybody else.
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Remember we’re social distancing. Yeah.
Ron Reigns:
Maybe after the COVID 19, we’ll try and do a live podcast where we Zoom everybody just to have fun and I think that’d be cool.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. I agree. And we can do it in your amazing studio.
Ron Reigns:
Ah, it’s getting there. I’m working on it. I would love that.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That’s good. Yeah. I would too. That’d be fun. So I wanted to talk about social media because it’s so prevalent in society. I mean, you can’t go anywhere without hearing it, seeing it, referencing it. Teenagers are jumping from one platform to another just as I’m beginning to learn Twitter and Instagram, they’ve moved on. When I say MySpace, they look at me with their mouth open and ask what I’m talking about.
Ron Reigns:
And then you say, well, me and my friend, Tom, we like MySpace. He’s the only friend I have on it.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right.
Ron Reigns:
Do you remember Tom?
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
No.
Ron Reigns:
When you started MySpace, you had one friend and it was Tom. It was the founder of the company or whatever, right?
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. And now that they’ve moved on to Snapchat and TikTok, I just can’t catch up.
Ron Reigns:
Right. I’m with you. I think I gave up years ago and it doesn’t help that… See your kids are into it and they’re all at the age where they’re into it. Maybe it’s how I raised my son, but he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t do Facebook. He doesn’t do Twitter. He doesn’t do any of it as far as I know. I ought to ask him about TikTok and the newer ones.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Okay. I thought he did do Facebook. He doesn’t do it?
Ron Reigns:
He’s got a profile on there. I don’t think he’s posted anything in years.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
You know, I haven’t posted anything on my personal Facebook in a long time. I just don’t have the time to do it. And for what purpose?
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I mean…
Ron Reigns:
Look what I’m eating.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. Facebook eliminated the need for Christmas cards. So I scratched that off the to-do list.
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I mean, you posted all your pictures all year long. What more are you going to do?
Ron Reigns:
You don’t have to save your own calendar. Facebook tells you when people are having their birthdays.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That’s helpful.
Ron Reigns:
It is kind of nice.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And your anniversaries and everything else.
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That’s helpful. So for adoptive families it’s important to be cautious when you’re using social media, because there are some downfalls in incorporating social media and your adoption process, but there’s also some amazing aspects of social media as well. For adoptive families looking to connect with a birth mother, maybe get a Google voice number, an answering or screening service, or setting up a voicemail. If you’re trying to do an independent adoption, again, you want to really take precautions because this is where scams can erupt. If you don’t know how to screen a birth mother, and you’re trying to go out there on your own. Now working with an agency is in my opinion, a safer option or an adoption attorney because they can be the one to screen the birth mother and have the personnel that is trained in working with women who are looking to place their baby for adoption. When adoptive families have their profiles on websites that are not associated with an agency and they’re an independent website… Do you remember… This is going to make you laugh, the old penny saver?
Ron Reigns:
Yeah, absolutely.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And adoptive families used to put their little ads in there. And it was in Juno too. They did it in Juno, in that movie that people think is real.
Ron Reigns:
Oh, that’s right. They did. Yeah.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And people can do it anywhere, but again, the long and short of it is, is that to protect your financial and emotional investment…
Ron Reigns:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And your family, it is safer to go with an agency. Now that doesn’t mean that you have to exclude social media. So where social media working with an agency would really be positive, I think is if you are looking to fundraise, for example, you have to check with your agency attorney and make sure that they allow it, but I’ve seen people do GoFundMe accounts. I’ve seen people do fundraisers online. I have seen them host virtual garage sales. I’ve seen that we had one family that was a speech pathologist and in her office she had her adoption jar and so when clients would come in they would put some money in her adoption jar. And Jenny posted it on Facebook so she got virtual money too. So things like that is an area. Also, I think being able to emotionally connect with other adoptive families as you are entering and going through the process. Now the danger zone with that is that if there’s not a monitor on it, you get one bad apple in the bunch and it can really make things go south quick.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
If somebody does get burned with the adoption process with one birth mother and then that terrifies and scares everybody else who are not maybe with the same entity or they’re having a totally different experience with a different agency, again, that can be hard too. So it’s always better to make sure that if you’re in a chat room or something of that nature that there’s an adoption monitor in there that that can watch and help and jump in and explain because nothing is worse than getting information and then having a whole bunch of people who really don’t understand…
Ron Reigns:
The process.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That information to try to disseminate it themselves.
Ron Reigns:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I mean, you can imagine where that can go.
Ron Reigns:
Absolutely. Just like with any website, when there’s no moderator, it becomes the wild west and, and there’s just no limits to what people will say and do, and it can get ugly like you said, very fast.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right. Lord of the flies, you know what I mean? Like all of a sudden…
Ron Reigns:
On the internet. Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah, absolutely. And back in the olden days, wow. Back in the days when we first started the agency, we actually didn’t really want to participate in chat rooms for that reason because we couldn’t be there to consistently monitor it. So actually as an agency, we don’t even have a chat room because of that. Now we will link up families with other families, so they can have that rapport and have someone to talk too, but putting a whole group together without a moderator 24/7 can really cause concern and scare families. And you don’t want somebody to have their adoption journey kind of bent or broken because somebody else had a bad experience when it has no real reflection of their own.
Ron Reigns:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And then during the adoption journey, after you’re matched with a birth mother, I think it’s really important to be mindful of what you are posting, because it is very easy to find people in the small world that we live in. And so if you have a birth mother and we do caution our families and our birth mothers in terms of social media, we want your privacy respected, but you’ll have those couples and the birth moms that will try to figure out whose profile is on Facebook and will start reading their posts. So I would actually recommend that if you are in an adoption situation to have a private Facebook where you don’t have information listed, because sometimes birth mothers will post pictures of their ultrasound. And then an adoptive family may be really panicked about that because it may make them think, oh, she’s not really good with her adoption plan. Is she wavering? And when that happens, then we have to go in and look at it and talk to the mom and, and see where she is.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
But honestly, just because a woman is choosing adoption doesn’t mean she’s not celebrating her pregnancy. And it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love her baby and isn’t proud of the baby she’s carrying. It may not be the vision of what an adoptive family wanted to experience. In other words, they didn’t want to see the ultrasound pictures posted on her wall, but people know she’s pregnant. They see her stomach growing. And so there has to be some sort of understanding, but we get a lot of panicked phone calls when an adoptive family has searched out and done some investigation and found the page and have some concerns. And sometimes, yes, they’re legitimate. We’ll go to the birth mother and talk to them. And sometimes it’s just a reminder of a birth mother doesn’t have to stop her life and doesn’t have to devote everything she writes or everything she posts or everything she says just in the manner to which others will feel better.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
But I think that emotional support in a positive moderated group isn’t a bad idea as long as it’s moderated. I think that additionally, maybe finding local families that have gone through the adoption process and had a good experience, you can connect with. I always think that it is also good for your adopted child to see other adopted children. So this is a relationship that can be grown. And as you bring home your baby and your children grow up for them to meet each other and know each other…
Ron Reigns:
And have a community.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
So after placement of the baby, again, our agency uses Childconnect, which is, I would say kind of a social media platform. I’ve talked about it many times before where you can email back and forth when you’re able to maintain your privacy and send pictures and so forth, back and forth. Again, some post adoption communication will include Google voice numbers, which I think are also a very good idea if that’s the relationship that you have set up with your birth mother. I think the most important thing is to really set the expectation and establish boundaries though…
Ron Reigns:
Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
In any aspect because you don’t want to one, not fulfill what you’re promising to do prior to the placement and two, you don’t want the flip side. You don’t want the expectation to be greater than what you have agreed to. So I think that if you’re going to use a social media platform, there needs to be some agreement between the adoptive family and the birth mother as to what social media platform. I would absolutely do a private where maybe it’s just the adoptive family and the birth mother if they choose to do something like this, make sure there’s a written agreement so everybody understands. Establish those boundaries. When I’ve had situations where families will set up a Facebook profile and it’s just for the adoptive mother and they will post pictures and everything else for her, and then the birth mother is so excited, she takes the pictures and posts them on her own wall.
Ron Reigns:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And then the adoptive family gets very upset because they don’t…
Ron Reigns:
That’s an invasion of their privacy. They didn’t put that on the public page. Right.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right. And so then feelings get hurt and families are hesitant to post on Facebook because they don’t want the pictures then transferred over. And so I think the way to make sure this doesn’t happen is just on the front end, really discuss what this is going to look like.
Ron Reigns:
Right. Define the terms.
Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yes. Because social media can be a great resource used appropriately, safely, and again, agencies and attorneys may have guidelines they want you to follow and it’s not that they want to control how you do this. It’s for your protection and for the birth mother’s protection and the child’s protection. So I think that in talking with the agency or attorney that you’re using, really be mindful and listen to them because they can share past experiences of what can go wrong with social media. So again, I think social media can be a great resource in adoption used in the correct manner.
Ron Reigns:
Thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption. If you’re listening and you’re dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and want more information about adoption, Building Arizona Families is a local Arizona adoption agency and available 24/7 by phone or text at (623)695-4112 that’s 6 2 3 6 9 5 4 1 1 2. We can make an immediate appointment with you to get started on creating an Arizona adoption plan, or just get you more information. You can also find out more information about Building Arizona Families on their website at azpregnancyhelp.com. Thanks also go out to Grapes for allowing us to use their song, “I Don’t Know” as our theme song. Birth Mothers Matter in Adoption was written and produced by Kelly Rourke-Scarry and edited by me. Please rate and review this podcast wherever you’re listening to us. We’d really appreciate it. We also now have a website at birthmothermatterspodcast.com. Tune in next time on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption for Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I’m Ron Reigns.