Archive for December 2008
Dear Expectant Parent
Just added this to my holtsurvivor blog, but I thought you might find it interesting as well…
Excerpt below:
Excerpts from the two page (yup, that’s it) guide to taking care of your new adopted child from Korea, circa 1966. (from my own personal files) Bold added by me for highlighting. Portions omitted are about plane arrangements, clothing to send, documents which will arrive, medical exams and immigration. Sarcastic comments are fully mine.
Dear Expectant Parents:
This letter is to prepare you for your child’s arrival. First of all, be sure you have all the fees paid…We must have this money before your child comes.
What is this need to KNOW WHERE YOU CAME FROM?
The following question was deleted from Yahoo!Answers. Fortunately, I saved a draft. Please forward to anyone who also doesn’t get it.
Question
What is that, especially after you were brought into and loved by a afmily?It seems rather selfish to me. It also seems like the effort to have a ready excuse for what doesn’t go the way that you want it.
I am trying to understand.
I’ll take a stab at it, but it’s nearly impossible to describe because you have to live it to really understand.Say you had amnesia. You wake up and you are in strange surroundings with new people, and you can’t remember your name or where you came from or anything about your life prior to waking up that day. You get a new name, but you know you were called something else before. You eat food, but you know it is different than everything you ate before. You are cared for, but you know they are not who cared for you before. What a difference one day makes. How can you not remember? You know there are so many things about yourself, but they are all gone and you don’t know who you are anymore. You’re too in shock to know what to do.
This day goes on to the next and the next and you gradually become familiar with this new life. But you are confronted with questions that cause sheer chaos inside you. Draw your family tree. Chaos. How were you born. Chaos. Does your mother have the same color eyes. Chaos. Do your siblings look like you. Chaos. Form field – what ethnicity are you. Chaos. Medical history. Chaos. All you know is you had an identity once and it’s gone now. People keep asking you these things. You look at other families and they all look alike. You have a child and it looks up at you, half your face. You look up like your child and see – nothing but chaos. You look in the mirror and see – a stranger – who looks nothing like anyone else.
Yes yes yes we can and must deal with this. But in my case almost three years got erased. Three years of culture and language is no small thing. It is not just a trivial thing to lose three years. Those were my formative years. They shaped me on a profound level. But all acess to anything that can tell me anything about the beginning of my story, any clue to alleviate that unworldly feeling like you are an alien dropped out of the sky, born at age three, is denied me. To know see how I will age. Denied. To know even one sentence to cover the hole that is three years. Denied. To have even one image to confirm that I am not an alien. Denied.
We can get by all right. We just must. But this amnesia induced by others, our original identities stolen is no excuse we make up to blame others out of selfishness. It’s a very very real loss. That nobody else has to confront except adoptees and amnesiacs. And it is haunting. And heartrenching. And frustrating.
Please don’t trivialize this. You can’t begin to conceive what this is like.
Adoptees: if you could have picked your own adoptive parents, would you have chose the ones you have?
No, not being adopted is not an option.
How would the AP’s you were to be raised by be different, if you’d had the chance to choose them?
Answer
I would have liked to have established a RELATIONSHIP with them FIRST, so I could see what their true colors were and make my decision based upon that. Trust should be earned. Relationships should be built. Even children deserve that.
The problem with adoption is you become an instant family. Back in the day, this was sight un-seen. They at least got a photograph. I didn’t get any. I didn’t know them from Adam, but I had to live with them. Even today, it is typically just a visit or two. I not only had zero choice, but I had zero opportunity to bond except after I had already been totally uprooted and totally dependent upon them for – EVERYTHING. I was stranded with strangers, powerless. I also couldn’t speak English so I couldn’t even communicate my fears, reservations, or needs. I also had no way to leave a bad situation. I didn’t even get an interpreter… I can’t understand why adoptive parents would want a child under those circumstances, where love is forced because there is no alternative. I wouldn’t want a parent willing to settle for something that shallow.
I wouldn’t have chosen the parents I got. They provided well, but they failed not only me but also their own biological children in every other way – in all the ways that count. They should have been screened better. And asking me to choose my own adoptive parents isn’t enough, as I would have also traded in my siblings who didn’t appreciate the fuss and disruption of my presence, so I had to grow up with them hating and resenting me.
If I could have chosen parents, I would have chosen people who bothered to get to know me first, who liked me for me and not because I filled a need and provided a role for them. In fact, I think someone like a caring big brother or big sister would have been a much better choice than having to go live with a new family, to tell you the truth. The amount of quality bonding time might even have exceeded what I got with my parents.
I would have chosen people who respected and loved children enough to not re-traumatize them and abruptly rip them from their country, their culture, and everyone they could identify with. I would have chosen local people in my own country. Local adoptive parents or the orphanage, surrounded with others like myself – that is what I would have chosen.
How would my AP’s be different? My only friend in jr. high school had five sisters, a step brother, a step mother, and her dad. All nine of them lived in a two bedroom cottage and attic space. There was more life and love in that tiny struggling house than could be found in my house times ten. Careful, conservative, proper, respectable people don’t always make good parents, just because they go to church, can fill out forms, and can balance their budget. Opportunity can go to hell. Without a vibrant, caring, genuine family like my friend had, my opportunities seem like poverty in comparison. My parents of choice wouldn’t have been so superficially perfect.
Adoption can be just as creepy as an arranged marriage. You can qualify perfect attributes of the perfect people and they can still be perfectly hideous to live with and govern you. You can create a laundry list of what you want in a child, and find you hate them once they are in your care. And there’s something very creepy about being sought after with no established history and no relationship. Without any test, without any trial relationship, we can’t even establish whether these humans even LIKE each other. This kind of courtship takes time and proximity. It takes more effort. It is so much more meaningful.
In my world, love comes first and legal recognition comes after – not the other way around. That’s the kind of world I want to live in. People who prioritize values like that are the kind of parent I wish I had.
the ache of separation
Perhaps the most haunting, heart rending song about loss ever written:
Dearly Departed by Devotchka
.
Sweetheart
How I miss your heart
Beating next to mine
.
The right words
Were always hard to find
When all our times was fine
When darling you were mine, all mine
.
And I know,
I know you had no choice
But how I miss your voice
Singing right with mine
.
Flesh of my flesh
Soul of my soul
Come back home
.
All this darkness,
cannot hurt us
Cause they made you from the light
.
Here on purpose,
don’t be nervous
We will make it through, this night
.
Sweetheart
How I miss your heart
Beating next to mine
.
Flesh of my flesh
Soul of my soul
Come back home
For those who were adopted, when did you start understanding?
My daughter has always known she was adopted. She knows just about everything we know except for issues that she’s still too young for. She’s going to be 10 soon.
We have an open adoption with visits, calls, e-mails, etc. She rarely asks me any questions except for “why don’t I look like my sisters and brother?” and “why don’t they live with us?” We always tell her the truth. When I ask her if there’s anything else she wants to know, I usually get that deer in a headlight look. I know it’s coming. I know she’s going to ask more questions some day. I want to be prepared.
Additional Details
3 weeks ago
Best Answer – Chosen by Asker
I threw myself into my interests – vocational, recreational, and relational with great fervor and passion. On the surface I appeared vibrant and successful. Yet nothing ever lasted. From childhood to present day, I’ve always been a little remote or a little too intense or a little too vested or a little too intimate.
At 43, after a failed relationship, I crashed. I crawled into a fetal position for two months surveying all my relationship disappointments and nearly didn’t make it to my 44th birthday. Until one day the obvious hit me – that I had been living my entire life avoiding and fearing abandonment. And because avoidance had been my main focus, I was ill-equipped to handle the normal ebbs and flows of relationships most people learn to deal with. That the rough start of abandonment and adoption truly was profound. That it shaped my whole life. And confronting that wound and dealing with it in a more productive way will shape the last half of my life as well.
And one of the main reasons for this handicap was because my parents gained more from me than I gained from them. Their self interest was, in effect, abandoning me. This is something adoptive parents don’t want to recognize. When the parent/child relationship is more about the joys and satisfaction derived from children than it is about truly what is important to the child, then who is there for the child and the child’s emotional needs?
I think childhood is not a time when children can express how they feel, or communicate their deep loss or grief or pain. I don’t think they should be expected to. Nor do I think they will necessarily share any recognition they do have with their second parents. Because you contributed to the process that caused them pain, even if your intentions were honorable. And they care about not hurting you. It’s our own private thing we have to deal with, that the child will never trust the parents to relate to. Because unless you’ve been abandoned and adopted you just can’t.
The only thing you as parents can do is put them first. Really care about them. Always be supportive. And never, ever, place conditions on your affections or put your own needs ahead of theirs. You need to be a rock of gibraltar, a constant and abiding source. They need to trust that you will always be there for them and never abandon them – in word, deed, attitude, in any way, shape, or form. Your loving words are not enough – they need to see/feel/know without a shadow of a doubt that they can be totally secure. The more insecure you show you are, the more insecure your child will be…
So I don’t think it’s a matter of having talks about adoption. In fact, that’s invasive, self-interested, a sign of parental insecurity, and a great way to further alienate yourself from your kids. It’s a matter of being a genuine and complete loving parent. And if your child wants to talk about it when she’s ready, know that all she wants is honest answers. NOT happy adoption rhetoric. HONEST self probing answers.
Again, the theme I keep going back to is this: we don’t need adoptive parents. We need PARENTS. Relaxed. Loving. Secure. Steadfast. Comforting. PARENTS.
Hope I’ve been of help.
- Asker’s Rating:
- Asker’s Comment:
- Every single answer gave me a new perspective, so my thanks go to all.
AlmostHuman, your theme of children needing genuine and loving PARENTS really hit a chord with me. Thanks also for sharing what you learned about yourself during your journey.
remembering in korean
funny how this small thing made me cry and feel joy at the same time.
i sent the following email to loved ones, as if i had graduated or something: i guess i had.
i just had a memory from my childhood in korean. how bizarre is that?
i remember saying this to my new parents.i peu da
looked it up and found this:
yeh ppeu da
예쁘다it means pretty
i think it must have been RIGHT AFTER I ARRIVED. it’s very fuzzy, but i think it is real. it was about the christmas tree…i kept saying it over and over again.
silly to flood your in-boxes with something so small, i know. i was just excited to have the word come to me in korean out of nowhere. i was watching a kdrama and the guy told the girl she was beautiful, and suddenly i peu da popped into my head! and then the christmas ornaments. i haven’t studied it. i haven’t heard it. i just KNEW it was a synonym. so i looked up pretty and korean on google and the word was there! and then i typed pretty and beautiful in the free translation on-line, and sure enough, it was there…
now, if i could only remember two weeks earlier about my life at the orphanage…or nine months earlier when i was with my family…
i hope i have more of these, but i doubt it.
this is the first time I can recall where my first thought was a word in a foreign language, and not only that but inherently knowing what it meant. i was about ten weeks shy of 3 years old when i arrived at my american home, which was four days before christmas.
he,he,he, i guess the forty hours I thought I’d wasted watching korean dramas wasn’t a waste afterall!
ADDED:
Relaying my joy over this reclaimed word on an adoption support board, one of the adoptees mentioned that my experience is not unlike Helen Keller’s.
from RNIB; supporting blind and partially sighted people:
Then, after a month of Anne’s teaching, what the people of the time called a “miracle” occurred.
Helen had until now not yet fully understood the meaning of words. When Anne led her to the water pump on 5 April 1887, all that was about to change.
As Anne pumped the water over Helen’s hand , Anne spelled out the word water in the girl’s free hand. Something about this explained the meaning of words within Helen, and Anne could immediately see in her face that she finally understood.
Helen later recounted the incident:
“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”
Assimilation has been like having my sight taken away. But it appears those early connections live on and can never be obliterated once formed.
We adoptees are not blank slates.
update on letter to girl4709
On a cold March day in 1966, two little girls began a journey which would change their lives forever. That day was the day they were transferred to an orphanage to begin their life as orphans, to be adopted and sent away to foreign lands with foreign people.
You and I were together that day. You and I were together the next four days and possibly the next nine months. Were we together prior to that day? Only meeting can rule out the remote possibility of relations undocumented.
You are the only living person I know who has anything to do with my past and I would at the very least like to contact you, however you feel comfortable. We are sisters in solidarity, and I would be interested in hearing how you’ve fared in life.
fondest regards,
Suki
BACKGROUND
My earliest document atypically referred to two people at one time:
- two little girls
- both the same age
- both given “provisional” names
- both abandoned on the same day
- both sent onward together
- both sent to Holt and given consecutive Holt orphan numbers
My struggles to obtain this document, and the struggles to be allowed to passively contact this girl, whom Holt had identifying information for, was herculean. Finally, they relented.
UPDATE
Never letting up reminding/prodding Holt to not let up and asking for updates as to the search for girl4709, Holt called and said they have located her. It is now up to her.
If this is true (or just a ploy to get me to stop harassing them) then I feel sorry for girl 4709. But then again, it was not I that orphaned her nor I that sent her to foreign lands and foreign people for adoption, so I hope she harbors no resentment towards me for upsetting whatever calm she has in her life. Hopefully, like me, the knowing of the truth has more value than some temporary emotional turbulance.
I recall how I felt the morning my Korean speaking friend gave me a rough translation of my earliest document from Wonju city hall. At first I was just numb. A kind of “well don’t that beat all” kind of disbelief, which lingered throughout the day. It kind of felt like the feelings I had harbored about adoption in general all my life – pushing it aside as a non-issue in hopes its nagging implications would just go away – only it was like times ten. And then I was driving on the long commute home when it hit me.
When I first asked for my adoption records, my daughter asked me if I would search for my birth mother. I had no interest in upsetting the life she had established and I told her no. When my daughter mentioned that I might have siblings as well, I told her I hadn’t thought about it before, but probably I wouldn’t bother. I was shocked that I had NEVER EVEN CONSIDERED this as a possibility. (In retrospect, I can’t believe I had never entertained this possibility – but it is true. The depths of my own denial and self preservation amaze me)
On the long commute home, I recalled my daughter bringing up siblings and my cool reaction. And then I thought about the other girl from Wonju. And what if’d. What if she was my sister? What is we were even twins? What if I was not only separated from my parents due to poor economics (the most likely scenario, since I was already two years old) but also separated from my sister? from my twin??? Can I even begin to imagine what kind of pain that would have caused a parent? Can I even begin to imagine what the severing of twin bonds can do to a person? Possibly myself? What if my almost hostile attitude about birth family search has always been so negative because maybe my loss was too great to deal with? It was not just a loss of an incubator. It was the loss of someone who cared for me well (I was a fat, secure, well-adjusted child upon arriving for adoption) and thus presumably well loved. The loss of a sibling on top of that was unimaginable. The loss of a twin on top of that was unfathomable.
I started to sob in the car. Full body racking sobs. I couldn’t tell the difference between the rain outside and the rain inside. I could barely drive home. Whereupon I stayed immobilized in the car for an hour, sobbing. Sobbing like I’d never sobbed in my entire life. Primal sobbing.
What had adoption done to me? How could it take over forty years for me to finally acknowledge and cry about my loss? I still can’t wrap my head around the profound consequences of the redistribution of children. It puts an end to my words and makes me silent.
And so I wait to hear from girl4709. I wait for her to catch up. To have her primal cry in her car. To have that healing cry.
We might not be/probably aren’t sisters. But there is that small possibility we are, so that possibility must be exhausted. And either way, that jolt to my adoption psyche helped me realize how essential the fundamental facts of our origins are, how important their meaning is. Whether it is girl 4709 or not, while there is still time to piece together this picture, I must at least try.
I am glad my sleep got disturbed. I am glad to be awake.
I hope girl4709 will one day feel the same way.
removing the hypocricy from ethical adoption
This was a response I posted on an ethical adoption site. I have edited portions of it referring to the particular thread to make it more universal.
It is a snapshot of my current evolving view on international adoption.
As a person who can understand WHY people want to adopt, yet as a person who wants all international adoption to END, I’ve found this thread to be very interesting.
It’s interesting because this is a website devoted to integrity and ethics in adoption, and yet it still reflects all the divisiveness of the adoption issues at large. It’s also always interesting to me when children who were once so coveted and sought out grow up to be a source of discomfort and conflict.
Like most of the parents here, my views about adoption began to turn upside down only as I learned more about how it was conducted and as I explored the motivations behind its genesis. It’s not a pretty picture beneath its top layer. The deeper I explored, the more outraged I became. Is this angry adoptee syndrome a popular phenomenon? No. It does not reflect the majority of adoptions (though I do believe time brings us all closer to these revelations). I believe it is a parallel path to those who are willing to ascribe to ethical adoptions, which also do not represent the majority of adoptive parents. Both positions are the result of a deeper exploration and a belief in social justice and personal responsibility. These positions are not set, but are a journey, as we all are seeking the truth.
There is no room for (or value in) blame or assumptions or pre-judging. Especially when what’s done is done. However, more fundamental to all adoptions are the issues of desire, entitlement and all the dark alleys that can lead people down. As a broad generalization, the distinctions between ethical adoptions and the status quo often stop here.
For me, as an idealist who wants to promote the idea of village (a more expanded definition of family in a social context) and the exploration of what a genuine parent is, I don’t feel adoptions are a necessary legal construct. However, as a pragmatist, I feel I must address adoption on two fronts: Support for social services in source countries to eliminate the need for adoptions, and support for the children who have already been adopted. By support for social service in source countries, I believe most adoptions are unnecessary and very correctable if we threw as much energy into caring for one another as we throw energy into rescuing children of the aftermath of not caring for one another. By support for the children who have already been adopted, I mean helping children by helping their adoptive parents provide a more meaningful parent/child relationship. What’s done is done and I want to spare other adopted children the suffering us older adoptees had to endure at the hands of our well meaning (by their estimation) parents.
At the essential core of both fronts is the surgery that is executed for adoption to take place, and the participation of institutions or individuals in that wound. What is frustrating is that the majority of potential and already adoptive parents reject acknowledging their participation in that reality. Because these issues are so fundamental to the relationship of adopted child and parent, the denial of or unwillingness to admit their role in this surgery can lead to an unbridgeable gap of mistrust, a gap that young children are unable to verbalize. The ends do not always justify the means. If the means were ugly, but only the beauty is promoted, then children are taught that their parents are hypocrites that can’t be trusted to be honest. This lack of trust prevents adoptee relationships with their adoptive parents from fulfilling its potential for depth and meaning.
And the means does not only include adoption agencies and countries. It starts with each person, and what set them on the road to adoption in the first place. Too often progressive adoptive parents wear the mantel of truth yet still exhibit their underlying entitlement. I will put forth that adult adoptees have hyper awareness of this when it occurs. There doesn’t seem to be any good way to point out when entitlement is showing without appearing accusatory.
When you hear the “anger” or frustration in the adoptee voice, it is because we are always trying to have a conversation with people closed to any real discourse when it does not validate what they have put so much energy into building. So please be understanding and patient when you deal with adoptees – the frustration and isolation of voicing an unpopular opinion and repeatedly talking to deaf ears can make our voices shrill.
On the other hand, I think that it does not do our cause any good when we try and hammer home our viewpoints, however well argued. This is because there are too many iterations of the adoption scenario and because the ten arguments we may have do not apply to the 15 reasons people adopt. I understand adoptee frustration over ethical adoption organizations, despite being for integrity and ethics, are still advocating adoption, and more radical than that, international adoption. Yet – I think our energies can be spent better eliciting allies amongst them. We don’t necessarily need 100% support. An inroad is an inroad. A little enlightenment is still an improvement and progressive. We need thoughtful parents, like the ones who come here, to help us re-frame the dialog with the rest of the adopting world. We can not do this alone. We need to recognize those that are on this path are heading somewhere positive, just as they need to recognize that our perspectives are valuable, even if they hurt.
Me, I’m a pragmatist.
I see adoption as a great experiment gone horribly awry. I feel we can all learn from each other and all work together to stop the mistakes of the past from continuing to be perpetuated. It is my sincerest hope that for every adoption that goes through, x+ families are assisted to stay together. We should ALL work towards the elimination of the need for adoption to abandon children. Hopefully we can all agree that the need for adoption to abandon children is messed up, that there are things we can work together to eliminate this need, and that reform is a beautiful thing.
Imagine all the progress we could make if each adopting parent who claims they are adopting to save children, would concurrently support programs to save families…now that would be an adoptive parent I could believe in and endorse.
I would hope all of you can join me in open forum, enlightening popular culture as to the complexities and consequences of adoption. I would hope everyone can take what you’ve learned and broadcast it OUT to those that know little about adoption and do what we can to minimize the damage that can happen when people jump into something with simple and reckless abandon. I commend you all for pausing to think and choosing this path. Now that you’re on this path, I hope you don’t stop – but continue on – with me – working for social justice and – with yourselves – doing the hard self analysis.
For the kids
Do all adoptees feel this way?
Here is a question that was closed before I got a chance to answer. (the run-on paragraph makes for hard reading, but bear with it)
Her question
A very common theme I see here with adoptees are the feelings of loss, betrayal, feeling unwanted, different and feeling like they didn’t “belong” to their adoptive families, all of which are justified. I have had these feelings too. I know there are a lot of people with strong opinions here, but please consider the fact that I am an adoptee also. What I would like to know if there are any adoptees that consider their adoption to have been a positive thing? Obviously adoption was a life changing event, whether as an infant and unable to remember your adoption or as an older child, remembering being taken from or surrendered by your family. It seems like a lot of adoptees have lots of negative things to say, almost as if their whole life has been ruined, and but I don’t think for everybody. When I first started asking about adoption on Y!A, I didn’t disclose the fact that I was an adoptee, I came here seeking information on how to adopt. I came under some really heavy criticism from people not knowing my background, assuming that I was just another infertile parasite looking for someone’s baby to take without regard to the child’s feelings at all. Do all adoptees feel like that’s what all adoptive parents are like? I was a baby, I don’t remember anything, so I never experienced the trauma of remembering being separated from my family. My parents have a bio son who I consider to be my brother in every way and I was never ever referred to as an adopted daughter. Now, that isn’t to say I had a great childhood. It wasn’t, but not in the way that a lot of adoptees describe their childhood. I had to get therapy for other issues in my early 20s and am coming to terms that I’ll likely never know my biological family. Are there any adoptees who have no desire to know their bio families? If you are one, are you content with your life as it is and consider your adoptive family to be your only family, period? I thought that my own experience as a child would make me a better adoptive parent, but it seems like that might not be the case. I figure that was the hand I was dealt and it has made me who I am today and though it took a while, I have to say I’m happy. I’ve gotten married to a wonderful man and we are looking forward to building our family, conventionally or not. Some of the comments given to people just trying to look into adoption almost make you want to NOT do it. My feelings aren’t as strong as some others here and if no matter how much empathy I can give an adopted child, if they still are going to feel this way, it makes me wonder if this is the right thing for me to do. I don’t want my child years from now having all these negative feelings, although I realize that’s not going to be in my control. All I can do is be the best parent I can be and hope they know that I know what it’s like. Is there anyone out there who is happy to have been adopted and wouldn’t want life any other way? For the other adoptees who aren’t, what is the source of your feelings, other than the obvious, of course? I understand every person is unique as is each family and each situation. I understand the need for reform. What I’m not always understanding is a lot of the bitterness, perhaps because my situation was different. I really would love to adopt but am no longer feeling as confident about it because of the responses I’m seeing from other adoptees. Is it possible for an adoptee to be truly happy with their adoptive family?
Pretty astounding from an adoptee who was transracial, intercountry, and sexually abused. The deep deep level of how much we want things to be as they should knows no bounds.
To me, adoption is a process. One that had I further complicated with adopting, I might have forever frustrated reaching an understanding of what adoption means: personally, socially, and politically. And recently, I have even begun to recognize adoption as a feminist issue.
I am glad that I did not participate in perpetuating what was done to me. I am glad that I am no longer fatalistic about the hand I was dealt with. I am glad to finally be questioning what adoption really is.
It revealed itself when I had children of my own. It revealed more of itself when my parents passed away. It reveals itself in new color and depth as I begin something I had no desire to ever do – search for my birth family. It seems to have waited until my hair turned gray; It seems to have taken that long to process and acknowledge.
What I’m finding is that adoption is a misguided solution. It treats the symptoms of society’s problems without addressing the root causes: The thinking that by distributing orphans amongst the many who want children, the problems will be cleaned up does not work. The problems will continue to come. The orphanages will just be filled with new results of the same old problems, because the problems are systemic and cultural. But people who want babies aren’t concerned with fixing the system or with the next generation of orphans. This myopic vision, so attractive in its personal rewards, contributes to the neglect of fixing the system, because as long as people are there to relieve the system of its excess pressure, they negate the need for fixing anything. This is why I am against saving children through adoption. Instead of catching one falling child of many, I would rather those that want to save children work together on a safety net for all the children. The focus should be on eliminating the need for orphanages, while at the same time reforming the system by improving social services to women and families, and creating an exit strategy to truly empty the orphanages.
Your inquiry shows me that you, too, are on this process. That you’re starting to reflect on the more profound aspects of what a parent and family really is, and hopefully your path will lead to a further exploration of the larger social impacts of adoption.
Today I am glad I did not pursue adoption. Just like I try to not to purchase items made in sweatshops. I realize not all of the workers are exploited. I realize my boycott does not directly improve anyone’s life and that my boycott could mean loss of jobs for a few. But it sends a clear message that exploitation is unacceptable and that markets will disappear if unethical practices are allowed to proliferate unchecked. Public awareness and pressure successfully causes systems to adjust. For example, Walmart will not suffer another Kathy Lee scandal. Walmart has just announced it will only purchase products from green factories. I would rather do without the enjoyment of certain items I want, than to know I had a hand in the viability of a system that perpetuates exploitation. So-called orphans are the by-product of systems which prey on the disenfranchised and cultures which don’t support and disrespect women. By providing help to families in crisis, we eliminate the need for orphanages. By increasing opportunities and social services to women, we increase their chance to succeed – and when women are successful, unwanted pregnancies and relinquishment are reduced. Changing systems is slow and painful work, but I would rather prevent tragedies than clean up the aftermath.
I think it is an over simplification to categorize adoptees as happy or bitter, and it is also an over simplification to correlate that with adoptive family relations. One can hate adoption and love or hate ones adoptive parents. I am not bitter about adoption, I am sad about adoption because it is a preventable tragedy. I am bitter about some things my parents visited upon me, but I can also distinguish their individual issues from the fact of me being adopted. I can also say that adoption distinguished me and that it influenced some of my parent’s actions, which is an added burden for children.
Is it possible for an adoptee to be truly happy with their adoptive family? Yes. Part of them can be truly happy. But part of them will always be deeply disturbed in some way by adoption. There’s just no getting around this dichotomy.
Adoption Survivor 