Envisioning Future Possible Selves, Pre-Adoption

Across the board, participants were initially overcome with emotion and disbelief upon learning of the pregnancy. Robin recalls full-fledged denial at the news, demanding additional tests for confirmation. May felt embarrassment and shame, “…wanting everything to just go away.” Bronwyn avoided confronting the possibility of pregnancy until more than halfway through the term; when it was confirmed, she admits feeling as though her life was over. But after a period of processing and living with the news, each woman began to assess the situation in light of her current circumstance. Participants recalled difficulty in pulling themselves out of denial and into a frame of mind where they could consider the future. This difficulty corresponds to the assessment of the severity of the negative event (i.e., unintended pregnancy) stage of crisis decision theory (Sweeny, 2008); participants in this study perceived the unintended pregnancy news as overwhelming, a negative life event of significant magnitude. Various prompts in their lives motivated participants to shift into conscious consideration of possible outcomes or

possible selves. Time itself was the most obvious prompt; the nature of pregnancy is bounded by a specific time frame with an equally imminent decision-making time frame. Participants were also prompted to think about their future by those in whom they confided, often by friends and family, and sometimes by the information resources they consulted such as an adoption

professional or even information found through Internet searches.

Taking stock and assessing where she was in life, each participant identified a veritable list of qualifiers by which to judge whether or not she could see herself successfully parenting the child(ren). Each participant envisioned a future as a mother to her unborn child(ren) and

judged the probability of a positive outcome based on her current self. “Possible selves furnish criteria against which outcomes are evaluated” (Markus & Nurius, 1986, p. 956). The list of qualifiers was virtually the same for all cases: financial status and prospects for near-future stability; social support including biological father, immediate family, and friends; emotional and mental stability; comparison between her own childhood and prospective upbringing of this child; co-crisis and extenuating circumstances that complicated the situation.

As each participant began to try on different responses and outcomes relating to the pregnancy, she engaged in some form of information seeking behavior. May visited a Planned Pregnancy facility to collect information on abortion options and then a crisis pregnancy agency to explore parenting and adoption possibilities. Jenny sought out a pregnancy counselor for information on options to support both a parenting decision and an adoption decision. She credits the nonjudgmental support of the social worker as she explored these two very different possible selves. She found the extensive and detailed information to be helpful as she crafted mental depictions of her choices; the resulting vivid portrayals of the possible future selves helped her make an informed decision.

Laurel started with her current vantage point in order to inform her decision to consider adoption, “I could see how this was going to go, and I felt like we were just going to end up on welfare for the rest of our lives.” Bronwyn focused on her vision for the future of her child, “This is not what I’d pictured for my family life, not going to be what I imagined one day for my daughter...I should not be a parent right now.” Liz considered the pregnancy in light of the biological father’s attitude and her current struggle to support her toddler daughter:

At that point it clicked. He’s not going to be there for us physically, financially, any type of support you need to have a child. I told him I’m considering adoption because I feel like it’s going to be all on me and I know, I have enough self- awareness to know, that I can’t give her what she needs.

After this internal accounting of her current support resources (or lack of), Liz searched for information about adoption online to explore a possible self as birthmother. As with most participants, she initiated contact with an adoption agency to obtain more information specific to her situation. The Internet played a significant role for all participants as they began to explore adoption and consider “birthmother” as a future self. May recalls:

Birthmother, adoptee, all these different conversations that are really common within that experience. I was just starting to familiarize myself, so that was a large part of what the Internet played. There are forums, so I would browse through those, but again, I think I was having a hard time with acceptance. It was just a slow process of coming to terms.

Two participants, Stella and Bronwyn, relied on a close family member (the mother in both cases) to begin the search for an adoption agency and more detailed process information; both Stella and Bronwyn were 16 at the time and living at home, so the close involvement of a mother is not surprising.

In addition to information provided directly by the adoption professionals (usually social workers), participants consulted with other birthmothers (women who had previously

relinquished a child to adoption) in the search for information with which to construct a birthmother version of a future self. Direct and unmediated access to women who had already placed a child for adoption was noted in all cases as beneficial and important in learning about what the future could look like (for better or worse). These opportunities provided information with a degree of authenticity and rawness unavailable anywhere else. Laurel recalls gleaning specific insights from another birthmother, but most importantly she heard the possibility of a return to some semblance of “normal” at some point in the future.

For me I guess I just needed to know that there was going to be some sort of normal somewhere down the line. And it was funny because she [the other

birthmother] told me that it took her two years before she felt back to normal, and that’s about how long it took me as well.

Other birthmothers were a vital source of information for participants as they considered an adoption decision. They were able to provide authentic answers to the question, What is the experience going to be like? While each situation is different and surrounded with unique complexities, the voices of women who have already begun a journey through adoption can be a rich source of inspiration (both positive and cautionary) for decision-makers as they construct and consider their own possible selves.

Generating possible selves to aid in decision-making and coping with the pregnancy crisis is a theme apparent across all cases. Information behavior (search, evaluation, use, etc.) directly supports this iterative activity and involves both internal resources (self-reflection and imagining different futures) and external information sources. As participants solidified an adoption decision and began to refine the birthmother version of her future self, information gathering efforts focused exclusively on the adoption pathway. Participants purposefully restricted or stopped other information search activities and moved into a space of intentional avoidance and insulation. Restricting information engagement to sources focused solely on adoption planning allowed women to shelter their decision from conflicting information and opinions. For example, as Stella decided to move forward with an adoption plan, she put up a wall around herself, “This is what we’re doing, no one is changing my mind…I knew that this was what was right.” Bronwyn remembers the sanctuary of the maternity home, “I didn’t have outside influences to make me second guess the choice that I was going to make.” Restricting information engagement provided emotional relief in some cases; Becky recalls:

There was a point when I was approaching the due date that I had to put the books away. I was like, I am so emotional right now that I can’t possibly absorb any more. So I had to put away the adoption stuff, the grief stuff.

Efforts to narrow information searching and engagement to sources supporting an adoption decision may be interpreted as a coping strategy. Purposeful pruning of information sources to those that nurture the adoption choice follows the earlier flurry of information-

gathering about any and all options. Limiting information and intentionally avoiding conflicting information serve a self-protective function and suggest Festinger’s (1957) dissonance theory. The framework of dissonance theory characterizes participants’ efforts to shield themselves from conflicting information once they have committed to a plan—in this case, an adoption plan (at least tentatively)—as a way of reducing post-decisional conflict (Fischer, Fischer, Weiswelier, & Frey, 2010). Participants welcomed a safe haven from the emotional storm of information

engagement and decision-making; once the decision to move forward with relinquishment is reached, participants focus on information to aid in clarifying the adoption plan. Women seek information to nurture a future self as birthmother and shift attention to resources that will help her reach that outcome. At this point, participants begin to focus on the details of the adoption process such as level of openness they desire, selecting an adoptive family, contact agreements, birth planning, and timing. Laurel remembers how she turned most of her attention and

information seeking to adoption planning and in doing so assuaged some of the negative emotions of the situation.

I wanted to be able to speak knowledgably about what I’m going to do and what decision I’m going to make. That’s how I handle serious things, you gotta have a deadline. I set arbitrary deadlines for myself. So by 5 months I wanted to decide whether or not I was going to do adoption. At 6 months I wanted to be talking to an agency…at 8 months we needed to have a couple. And that was because I really didn’t want to feel like I was going to be making a last minute choice, like we were just going to be throwing a Hail Mary and going with a couple that we weren’t really comfortable with.

To be clear, efforts to prune away some information sources and focus attention on information that supports the adoption choice are different from the cognitive coping style

known as blunting. Whereas an individual engaging in blunting behavior will avoid threatening information and actively seek distraction (Miller, 1987), participants in this study took measures to nurture and actively engage with information about adoption once they had at least tentatively selected that option. The quotes above demonstrate participants’ efforts to protect their decision from their own emotions and shield themselves from other people and information that were likely to undermine or criticize the adoption choice.

Moving from the initial reaction of denial and overwhelming emotions into various forms of information engagement helps us begin to characterize the basic trajectory of the process that participants experienced leading up to a decision to relinquish a child(ren) to adoption. In the early phase of cognitive appraisal, women wrestle with the threatening information and

confirmation of pregnancy, often to a point of denial. Overwhelming and negative emotions may initially stymie efforts to seek out information about available options. But the pressure of time and realization that the situation won’t “just go away” (Bronwyn) forced participants to begin to assess themselves and their close social support resources to help formulate potential responses to the situation. Women began to explore, seek out, and consume information; in these particular cases, the selected sources included information on adoption. Engaging with information allowed each woman to mentally construct different versions of her future self as well as her unborn child. Generating these future possible selves, participants used similar criteria to evaluate whether or not a version seemed viable and the right fit. These criteria included financial stability, social support, emotional stability, comparison between her own childhood and the prospects for this child’s home environment, and co-crises complicating the situation. In these eight cases, each woman determined that an adoption plan was the right choice for her and her child. Making the decision to move forward with an adoption decision (even with lingering

uncertainty), participants focused information seeking efforts solely on resources to support that option. Many participants felt the need to insulate themselves and shield their decision from conflicting information and judgmental sources while awaiting the birth and adoption event.

It is important to note that although I have described this possible selves decision journey as sequential through cognitive appraisal, information-gathering to generate possible selves, and upon committing, at least tentatively, to a decision, nurturing adoption information and pruning away non-adoption information, there is overlap and movement back and forth between these behaviors. For example, several participants felt they continued in a state of denial to some degree throughout their entire pregnancy; although they moved forward through cognitive appraisal, generating possible selves, and ultimately made an adoption decision, a flicker of fantasy remained in their mind, that perhaps the pregnancy was not really true.