Adoptive Parents

I think it's really unfortunate that the prevailing winds in the adoption community right now are blowing away from recognizing the "adoption triad" and instead towards reframing discussions of adoption with adoptees as the main players.

This is not me saying that adoptees' experiences aren't valid, or shouldn't be paid attention to. I'm an adoptee and trust me, I want my experience to be heard, and I think it's crucial that my experience be taken as one, valid, honest account amongst a multitude of varied, differing experiences.

But this whole idea that adoptive parents and agencies have "imposed" an idea of adoption on adoptees long enough and now need to be discredited for doing so irritates me. Yes, adoptive parents' experiences are different than adoptee experiences. Yes, adoptive parents and adoptees differ in how they perceive/experience/process things. Yes, adoptive parents may screw up, or make mistakes, or say things they don't mean or don't realize the implications of.

This doesn't mean they as a group should be vilified or discredited for "not telling the truth." Adoptive parents' experiences are one facet of adoption. Adoptees' are another. Birth parents' and birth families' are still another.

Being an adoptee simply means I perceive situations differently than my parents. I hear different implications in news stories. I may feel differently about this aspect or that aspect of adoption. When I was a teenager, yeah, I was 100% sure my parents were trying to impose their will on me, stifle my independence, make me think like them.

When I got older and started actually talking to my parents and listening to what they had to say, as well as being very forthright and honest about my own opinions, all that tension disappeared. So often, one of us will say, "I never thought about it like that."

Just as I think every adoptee's experience is valid and honest, but not any more true or less true than any other adoptee's, so I think adoptive parents' experiences are valid and honest and shouldn't be considered less true than that of adoptees simply because the emotions/thoughts/opinions/reactions they have may be different.