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.
Showing posts with label adoptive parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adoptive parents. Show all posts
Friday, September 10, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Terminology in adoption
The issue of language in adoption, which words to use/not use, which words are offensive/not offensive, is a big one. I'm not going to try and discuss it all. I'm just going to toss a few words out there that, for one reason or another, rub me the wrong way.
Reunion: As in "search and reunion," or looking for, and finding, one's birth family. I think reunion has a very specific connotation that, in a lot of cases, tries to establish a connection that isn't really there. For children who were older when they were adopted, and who have memories of their birth family, yes, I think reunion is a valid term. But for those of us who were adopted as infants, I think it's silly to say we were "reunited" with our birth family. When I met my birth parents, it was, for all intents and purposes, like meeting strangers. There was no sense, for me, of having lost my birth parents and then having found them again. I'm sure for them, it was very different. For them to say they were reunited with me would seem very appropriate; my birth mother remembers giving birth to me. But I don't remember anything about them, I never felt like they were missing in my life. If I tell people about my birth parents, I tell them, "I met my birth parents."
Forever families: In contrast to the above term, I think "forever families" is offensive to birth families, and I think it was coined out of arrogance, consciously or not, of adoptive families who look down on birth families because they've given up a child. Mostly though, I think it's just a stupid term. My family is my family. I don't think I need to quantify it any more than that. And I don't disparage my birth mother and father as the ones who gave me my life. They're not my family in the sense of raising and caring for me, but they're family in the sense that I carry their genes and their appearance and their ethnic roots.
Natural mother/first mother: A lot of people seem to have taken issue with the term "birth mother" in recent years. They feel that it relegates birth mothers to the status of incubators or breeders. I guess I can see where some adoptees are coming from on this one, but I don't like the terms "natural mother" or "first mother" either. Because what do those make my mom? "Unnatural mother?" "Second mother?" Yeah, those aren't offensive at all. I use the term "birth mother" because it very literally describes who she is. She gave birth to me. My mother, on the other hand, is the person who took care of me when I was sick and picked me up when I fell down and watched me walk at graduation and helped me pay for my education and taught me how to be assertive and never let me sell myself short. Yeah. But she's just a "second mother," not a "natural one." Please. Give me a break.
Reunion: As in "search and reunion," or looking for, and finding, one's birth family. I think reunion has a very specific connotation that, in a lot of cases, tries to establish a connection that isn't really there. For children who were older when they were adopted, and who have memories of their birth family, yes, I think reunion is a valid term. But for those of us who were adopted as infants, I think it's silly to say we were "reunited" with our birth family. When I met my birth parents, it was, for all intents and purposes, like meeting strangers. There was no sense, for me, of having lost my birth parents and then having found them again. I'm sure for them, it was very different. For them to say they were reunited with me would seem very appropriate; my birth mother remembers giving birth to me. But I don't remember anything about them, I never felt like they were missing in my life. If I tell people about my birth parents, I tell them, "I met my birth parents."
Forever families: In contrast to the above term, I think "forever families" is offensive to birth families, and I think it was coined out of arrogance, consciously or not, of adoptive families who look down on birth families because they've given up a child. Mostly though, I think it's just a stupid term. My family is my family. I don't think I need to quantify it any more than that. And I don't disparage my birth mother and father as the ones who gave me my life. They're not my family in the sense of raising and caring for me, but they're family in the sense that I carry their genes and their appearance and their ethnic roots.
Natural mother/first mother: A lot of people seem to have taken issue with the term "birth mother" in recent years. They feel that it relegates birth mothers to the status of incubators or breeders. I guess I can see where some adoptees are coming from on this one, but I don't like the terms "natural mother" or "first mother" either. Because what do those make my mom? "Unnatural mother?" "Second mother?" Yeah, those aren't offensive at all. I use the term "birth mother" because it very literally describes who she is. She gave birth to me. My mother, on the other hand, is the person who took care of me when I was sick and picked me up when I fell down and watched me walk at graduation and helped me pay for my education and taught me how to be assertive and never let me sell myself short. Yeah. But she's just a "second mother," not a "natural one." Please. Give me a break.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
On gratitude
The only time in my entire life that I was ever told I should be grateful for being adopted, it was my ultra conservative, Roman Catholic, staunchly pro-life aunt who was telling me so, and she didn't so much tell me as much as imply. I think she said something like, "Your parents did such a good thing by adopting you."
My parents themselves never said any such thing, never even implied that I owed them anything for having been adopted by them. At times in my adolescent years and even up through college, I think I imagined those kinds of sentiments into being, tried to find instances of such implications in my parents' past actions. Being resentful of one's parents is hardly an unusual thing, and that was the way my stereotypical teenage angst manifested itself.
But my aunt's comment ultimately just made me angry at her. Not at the institution of adoption.
I think gratitude is a sentiment that gets grossly misrepresented when it comes to adoption. If an adoptive parent expresses gratitude for his or her child, they are seen as objectifying their child. If they express gratitude towards the birth mother for making a tough decision, they're disrespecting birth mothers who didn't have a choice. And god forbid if an adoptee herself is grateful for the life she's lived. The poor thing must be brainwashed beyond belief to actually believe that her life with her adoptive family might possibly be better than the life her birth family could have given her.
I'm not saying that such sentiments are wrong, just that they're one sided. Certainly some parents who say they're grateful for their adopted child see the child as property, or a package of goods. And some who are grateful for the birth mother giving up her child don't have great respect for birth mothers. I still bristle a little when I hear prospective or waiting adoptive parents say how grateful they are to the birth mother because to my ears, it sounds a little bit like they're saying, "I'm grateful there's poverty in the world," or "I'm grateful female babies in China are still killed," or "I'm grateful the earthquake happened in Haiti and orphaned so many children."
But to assume that all adoptive parents think like this is, in a word, offensive. Adoptive parents are parents, period. They're no better and no worse than other parents. If a mother gives birth to a child and says, "I'm so grateful for this child," is she objectifying her child too? Just because parents become parents by adopting, doesn't make it less okay for them to express the sentiments of parents.
And why shouldn't adoptees be grateful? Why shouldn't all people be grateful? Maybe we as a society have just gotten into such a rut of finding everything that's wrong with our lives that we can't pick out the good things hiding in the midst. No one told me to be grateful, I decided to be grateful on my own terms. After living in China without central heating or reliable hot water or the ability to access uncensored information, I came back to the States grateful to have those things again. After spending a year in Taiwan, I came home grateful that I had been turned down for all the other scholarships and fellowships I'd applied for and ended up in Taiwan instead.
After a semester being treated like trash in Spain, I came home grateful beyond belief that I am an American citizen.
I'm not grateful because I think my parents "rescued" me or anything. I'm grateful because I have a good life, because I was able to get an education, because I'm healthy. To not be grateful for these things, when so much of the world has none of them would be, quite frankly, ignorant and offensive.
My parents themselves never said any such thing, never even implied that I owed them anything for having been adopted by them. At times in my adolescent years and even up through college, I think I imagined those kinds of sentiments into being, tried to find instances of such implications in my parents' past actions. Being resentful of one's parents is hardly an unusual thing, and that was the way my stereotypical teenage angst manifested itself.
But my aunt's comment ultimately just made me angry at her. Not at the institution of adoption.
I think gratitude is a sentiment that gets grossly misrepresented when it comes to adoption. If an adoptive parent expresses gratitude for his or her child, they are seen as objectifying their child. If they express gratitude towards the birth mother for making a tough decision, they're disrespecting birth mothers who didn't have a choice. And god forbid if an adoptee herself is grateful for the life she's lived. The poor thing must be brainwashed beyond belief to actually believe that her life with her adoptive family might possibly be better than the life her birth family could have given her.
I'm not saying that such sentiments are wrong, just that they're one sided. Certainly some parents who say they're grateful for their adopted child see the child as property, or a package of goods. And some who are grateful for the birth mother giving up her child don't have great respect for birth mothers. I still bristle a little when I hear prospective or waiting adoptive parents say how grateful they are to the birth mother because to my ears, it sounds a little bit like they're saying, "I'm grateful there's poverty in the world," or "I'm grateful female babies in China are still killed," or "I'm grateful the earthquake happened in Haiti and orphaned so many children."
But to assume that all adoptive parents think like this is, in a word, offensive. Adoptive parents are parents, period. They're no better and no worse than other parents. If a mother gives birth to a child and says, "I'm so grateful for this child," is she objectifying her child too? Just because parents become parents by adopting, doesn't make it less okay for them to express the sentiments of parents.
And why shouldn't adoptees be grateful? Why shouldn't all people be grateful? Maybe we as a society have just gotten into such a rut of finding everything that's wrong with our lives that we can't pick out the good things hiding in the midst. No one told me to be grateful, I decided to be grateful on my own terms. After living in China without central heating or reliable hot water or the ability to access uncensored information, I came back to the States grateful to have those things again. After spending a year in Taiwan, I came home grateful that I had been turned down for all the other scholarships and fellowships I'd applied for and ended up in Taiwan instead.
After a semester being treated like trash in Spain, I came home grateful beyond belief that I am an American citizen.
I'm not grateful because I think my parents "rescued" me or anything. I'm grateful because I have a good life, because I was able to get an education, because I'm healthy. To not be grateful for these things, when so much of the world has none of them would be, quite frankly, ignorant and offensive.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
In the News
US Mother Sends Russian Adopted Boy Back
There's so much to talk about in terms of this latest story surrounding the adopted Russian boy sent back to Russia by his adoptive mother, too much to talk about, really. For me, this is one of those times when I have to work really hard to step back and try and separate my instinctive, gut emotional reactions from a more rational, objective point of view.
Fear of being 'sent back' was never something that I felt personally, but I know other adoptees have said they felt or were explicitly told about. I think that whether that fear was real or imagined before, it is definitely and unfortunately very real now. Even one case of an adoptive parent sending a child back is too many, because gives form to something I think most adoptees have thought about at one time or another, even if only at the most superficial level. We as adoptees know that for one reason or another we were separated, taken, or given away from/by our birth parents, so we know that it is possible for such bonds to be broken. Like I said, I never, ever felt that fear growing up, but I think my first gut reaction to this case was not so much shock that it could happen at all, as much as dismay that it did actually happen in reality and not just in some screwed up imagination/dream world.
In this case, the adoptive mother's and grandmother's actions were wrong on so many levels that I could go on for pages and pages about them. Beyond the inherently dangerous (though not explicitly illegal) act of putting a young child on a plane and hiring a total stranger to pick him up at the other end, there's the glaringly obvious issue of this woman thinking of adoptive motherhood as some sort of trial run that she could simply terminate if it didn't suit her liking. Adoption is no less valid of a way of forming a family, and if prospective adoptive parents are not prepared, at the VERY LEAST, to accept an adopted child at the same level as a biological child, then they should never be allowed anywhere near adoption.
Obviously the agencies, institutions, and various parties involved in this case share the blame as well. Whoever overlooked/didn't pay attention to/neglected to mention the signs of attachment problems and/or other issues in this boy set this whole situation up in the first place. It doesn't excuse the mother's and grandmother's actions, but it does highlight the fact that adoption is a process involving multiple people and parties, and it is not just a simple, cut-and-dry solution to institutionalized care. The details are still quite murky in terms of who told who (or didn't tell) what facts, and we'll probably never know everything because everyone is going to point the finger of blame somewhere else.
As all of this is going on, though, I hope it doesn't go completely unsaid the fact that many (most) adoptive parents do their best in all sorts of circumstances and do NOT treat their children as warehouse goods that can be returned if damaged. Many adoption agencies do everything they can, given cultural differences and government bureaucracies, to educate parents and prepare them to deal with any issues that may arise. There are 'good guys' and 'bad guys' everywhere, and it would be unfair to villify one whole group of people within adoption based solely on this case.
There's so much to talk about in terms of this latest story surrounding the adopted Russian boy sent back to Russia by his adoptive mother, too much to talk about, really. For me, this is one of those times when I have to work really hard to step back and try and separate my instinctive, gut emotional reactions from a more rational, objective point of view.
Fear of being 'sent back' was never something that I felt personally, but I know other adoptees have said they felt or were explicitly told about. I think that whether that fear was real or imagined before, it is definitely and unfortunately very real now. Even one case of an adoptive parent sending a child back is too many, because gives form to something I think most adoptees have thought about at one time or another, even if only at the most superficial level. We as adoptees know that for one reason or another we were separated, taken, or given away from/by our birth parents, so we know that it is possible for such bonds to be broken. Like I said, I never, ever felt that fear growing up, but I think my first gut reaction to this case was not so much shock that it could happen at all, as much as dismay that it did actually happen in reality and not just in some screwed up imagination/dream world.
In this case, the adoptive mother's and grandmother's actions were wrong on so many levels that I could go on for pages and pages about them. Beyond the inherently dangerous (though not explicitly illegal) act of putting a young child on a plane and hiring a total stranger to pick him up at the other end, there's the glaringly obvious issue of this woman thinking of adoptive motherhood as some sort of trial run that she could simply terminate if it didn't suit her liking. Adoption is no less valid of a way of forming a family, and if prospective adoptive parents are not prepared, at the VERY LEAST, to accept an adopted child at the same level as a biological child, then they should never be allowed anywhere near adoption.
Obviously the agencies, institutions, and various parties involved in this case share the blame as well. Whoever overlooked/didn't pay attention to/neglected to mention the signs of attachment problems and/or other issues in this boy set this whole situation up in the first place. It doesn't excuse the mother's and grandmother's actions, but it does highlight the fact that adoption is a process involving multiple people and parties, and it is not just a simple, cut-and-dry solution to institutionalized care. The details are still quite murky in terms of who told who (or didn't tell) what facts, and we'll probably never know everything because everyone is going to point the finger of blame somewhere else.
As all of this is going on, though, I hope it doesn't go completely unsaid the fact that many (most) adoptive parents do their best in all sorts of circumstances and do NOT treat their children as warehouse goods that can be returned if damaged. Many adoption agencies do everything they can, given cultural differences and government bureaucracies, to educate parents and prepare them to deal with any issues that may arise. There are 'good guys' and 'bad guys' everywhere, and it would be unfair to villify one whole group of people within adoption based solely on this case.
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