Another form of coercions was to convince the birth mother that they had an emotional obligation to surrender their baby.

Adoption professionals may have told you to think only of the joy that you would give to a couple who could not have children of their own or if you changed your mind you will be disappointing a wonderful mother who has been waiting for her first baby.

You may have been told that you could not keep your baby because your baby has been promised to someone already and you were encouraged to have the adopters pay your medical or living expenses so that you felt as if you owed them your baby.

You may have been encouraged to meet with the perspective adoption parents and after meeting them you may have felt you could not bear to disappoint them by choosing to keep your baby. You may have been encouraged to establish a relationship with the perspective adoptive parents and then “fell in love with” with them prior to surrender. You may have also been encouraged to have the perspective adoptive parents in the labor or delivery room with you, for the birth of “their” baby.

Therefore, you felt like you could not disappoint them by “changing your mind”.

You may have been told by your parents that you could come home once you had “disposed of the problem” meaning surrendered the child to adoption.
Another way of coercion was to remove all personal support systems and make you reliant on adoption professionals for advice, counseling, and emotional support. It was tried to distance yourself from any person who might try to provide you alternatives to surrender.

Your family members and boyfriend may have been discouraged by adoption professionals from helping you. Your family members and/or boyfriend was prohibited from seeing you and you were incarcerated by your parents to a maternity home where adoption was stressed as “the loving option: or “the only option. Contact with your family, boyfriend, etc may have been restricted by the agency, maternity home, or social worker(s). The correspondence in and out of the maternity home was screened and telephone use was restricted.

Your boyfriend may have been lied to by adoption professionals that the baby was not his. In addition, you may have been told your parents were coercing you by encouraging you to keep you baby that they “only want to be grandparents”. Finally, you may have been discouraged to distrust anyone who didn’t support you surrendering your baby.