Adoptees As Parents: Alone On A Raft In The Ocean

There is no shortage of assistance available for adoptive parents. Books, Web sites, parenting classes... you name it, the amount of information is staggering. But when adult adoptees (or first mothers and fathers) look for help, there is precious little information, if any.

Take, for example, the dilemma I faced this past week. My first-grade daughter came home with, yes, the dreaded family tree assignment. I knew this would come up eventually but I wasn't prepared for it for another few years at least. The assignment was given Monday and due Friday, leaving me scant time to figure out what to do. Because, while my daughter isn't adopted, I am. And the same sealed records laws that prevent me from obtaining my own heritage also keep my children in the dark.

By most accounts, the family tree assignment is obsolete. It assumes all families follow the stereotypical 1950s-era "nuclear family" pattern. In this age of divorce, remarriage, adoption, donor conception, etc. there are any number of ways in which such an assignment is a major FAIL. But that didn't give me any answers for my daughter. This situation strikes me as yet another example of the fact that no one thinks about what happens when adoptees grow up. For us there are no books, Web sites, or helpful classes. When was the last time you saw a class at an adoption agency such as "Adult Adoptees 101: What To Put On Medical Forms" or "Explaining To The Non-Adopted Why Being Called An 'Adopted Child' Is Insulting." The obvious answer, of course, is to restore access to our original birth certificates and start treating us like "normal" people instead of second-class citizens. (Oh, and get rid of the family tree assignment, while we're at it). But in reality we are left on our own to muddle through it as best we can.

I reached out to my friends, within the adoption community and outside it, for help with my daughter's assignment. Fortunately my adoptee friends came to the rescue, explaining how they'd handled similar situations and offering advice and resources. (Thank you, everyone!) But most of the available resources are written by and for adoptive parents. That may help parents and educators be more sensitive to families with adopted children, but how to increase sensitivity toward families that include ADULT adoptees?

My friends not connected to adoption generally fell into two categories: "What's the big deal?" and "Just write down your adoptive family." To answer the first, of course it's a big deal. In fact, it's the biggest deal there is. Heritage and origins is basic to our very being. People who have this information take it so for granted that they can't fathom not having it. As I've mentioned before, it's beyond difficult explaining to the general public that no, adoptees can't just walk into the courthouse to get our information and yes, we should have the same access to our origins as everyone else. Now my children are facing the consequences of a decision that was taken out of their hands, and mine, before any of us were even born. They are not adopted. They should not have to deal with adoption... and yet they do, and so will their children.

As for the second part, "just write down your adoptive family," that's fraught with problems too. Even if I had a fantastic relationship with my adoptive family, doing so feels to me like perpetuating the same lie that is on my amended birth certificate. I was NOT born to the people listed there. I was born to my first mother and my unknown father. The fact that my first mother wants no contact doesn't change that. The fact that my father apparently doesn't know I exist doesn't change it either. They are the genetic forebears of myself and my children. As it happens I do not have a good relationship with my adoptive family. (The fact that some people think that automatically disqualifies anything negative I happen to say about adoption is a whole 'nother matter.) To put my adoptive family's names on my daughter's family tree, to perpetuate the lies, advances the illusion that adoptees can simply be dumped anywhere with no consequences. But adoption does have consequences, and those consequences last for generations.

I've written before about the difficulties adoptees have becoming parents themselves, especially parents by biology. Imagine the first blood relative you've ever known and it's your own child. That is too messed up for words. As my children grow older I find such difficulties only increase. Sometimes I feel like we are floating alone on a raft in the ocean. There are no maps to where we need to go, no rescue boats coming along to help us. We have to face each wave, each challenge, on our own. (With big TV choppers circling us, displaying banners that say "Why aren't you grateful to be adopted?" and "Stop making waves!")

As for the family tree assignment, here are the best resources I could find, especially the first link (a PDF).

• http://www.adoptionpolicy.org/Adoption_Awareness_Schools.pdf
• http://www.growninmyheart.com/adoption-family-trees
• http://russia.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/family-tree-assignments-what-s-the-big-d

Again, these are specific to adopted children in the classroom, but can be extrapolated to children with parents who were adopted. At least, I think they can be, but I'm too close to adoption to see it the same way the general public does. I'm not sure my daughter's teacher really understood my concerns, or the problem. She was sympathetic, but the vibe I got was that she found the whole situation confusing.

And that really sums it up, doesn't it? We adult adoptees are so invisible to society, people have no idea how to react to our concerns or issues.

In the end, my daughter put down "unknown" for her maternal grandparents, and I had flashbacks to all those times in doctors' offices, writing down "unknown--adopted" on medical forms. She is confused as to why I can't give her this information, although she's familiar with the fact that I'm adopted and that her maternal grandmother chooses not to have contact with us. But, explain adoption politics to a first grader. She doesn't understand why the law prevents us from knowing. She tells me that makes no sense, and I agree with her.

It's so basic even a first grader can understand. Why can't other people?

The Critical Difference Between Foster And Infant Adoption

It's National Adoption Awareness Month, and many of us in the adoption community are writing about adoption--not the feel-good articles you'll see in the press, but writing that gets to the truth of what adoption actually is. And some of it, perhaps even most of it, isn't very pretty.

A number of folks have pointed out that NAAM, which started as a way to promote adoption of kids already in foster care, has turned into a gigantic singalong in favor of infant adoption. So I thought I'd explain the difference between infant adoption and foster adoption.

• Foster adoption is adoption of kids who have already been separated from their families, and are living in foster care.
• Infant adoption is adoption of children, often newborns but sometimes slightly older, whose mothers are unable (either by choice or, more often, through clever coersion and familial/societal pressure) to care for them.

Do you see the critical difference? In foster adoption, family separation occurs BEFORE adoption. In infant adoption, separation occurs FOR adoption.

Foster kids are desperately in need of homes. But they're older and may have suffered abuse or other situations that deem them, in the eyes of some prospective adopters, less than "ideal." They often come with inconvenient birth families and awareness of their own origins. There is also a stigma attached to adoption from foster care, as if adopting a foster kid means taking on "damaged goods." An infant, on the other hand, is considered a tabula rasa. In fact, healthy white or pass-for-white infants are such a prize commodity that they go for tens of thousands of dollars. While there is also stigma attached to infant adoption (indeed, adoption of any sort), it's more likely that neighbors and friends are going to congratulate you on adopting an infant than adopting an eight-year-old out of foster care with, say, medical issues and birth family members still in the picture. That might take *gasp* reordering of one's life on a massive scale. It's "not what we signed up for." (Never mind that life is full of things we "didn't sign up for.") Infants are cute and cuddly and, above all, malleable. As I've said before, why rent when you can own?

NAAM should be about finding homes for foster kids, the ones who truly need it. Instead it's become about infant adoption: how to encourage it, how to advertise it, and how to convince as many expectant mothers as possible to surrender their top-quality tabula-rasa infants, because that's what the market wants.

That's not to say that there aren't infants in foster care who need homes. And that's not to say that there aren't adoptive parents who open their hearts to children who are actually in need, infants or otherwise. But there is also the side of National Adoption Awareness Month that most people won't see or don't want to see--the adopters with entitlement mentalities, who think they deserve a child simply because they want one, and who turn that want into an obsession that drives them to go to any extreme to fulfill it. (Try the Vaughns for one despicable example.) These are the people who drive the market for infant adoption.

Infant adoption is rarely needed, certainly not the number of infants who become available for adoption. Think of all the time and money that is spent on infant adoption. Now, imagine that time and money being used to get as many kids out of foster care and into loving homes as possible. Also imagine that time and money being used to help expectant mothers who find themselves without resources. Oh, but then they might decide to raise their own children, meaning less available product and therefore less money made by adoption agencies. Infant adoption, not foster adoption, is where the real money is. And adoption agencies, despite their "charitable" reputations, are in it for the money. Anyone who tells you otherwise is, ahem, selling something.

Next, think about the efforts made to recruit infants from other countries, to the extent of lying and outright stealing children. Imagine if, instead, the resources spent on these expensive and unnecesary adoptions were spent instead to provide safe, effective, affordable care within such countries, to promote extended family adoptions when parents are truly unable to support children, to promote in-country adoption to preserve the children's heritage, leaving international adoption as a very last and rare resort.

In the current atmosphere, this would never happen. There'd be an outcry from agencies, prospective adopters, and the general public, ostensibly on behalf of the poor "orphans." What is not known to most people is that a lot of those kids have parents and/or families, and are designated "orphans" for the sole purpose of making them more adoptable/profitable. Again, that's not to say there aren't true orphans in need of help, but there's also a whole industry that has been built on marketing children from other countries to Westerners. Which is why so many adoptees, upon expressing discontent with adoption as it is practiced today, are scolded with, "Would you rather have been raised in an orphanage?" or "Would you rather have been aborted?" as if the logical choice--being raised in one's original family--was never an option. The adoption industry needs the perception that there are more orphans languishing out there than there actually are, in order to keep the profits coming. And, let's be honest, there are some prospective adopters who get off on the idea of being the "rescuers" of "orphans."

The unfortunate fact is, not everyone who wants to be a parent is going to get that opportunity. There are other ways to matter to children besides obtaining a child by any means necessary. Is it really that important to own? Has our society become so materialistic that we can't put aside avarice for altruism? Why can't we help children stay in their families of origin instead of wasting all those resources on unnecessary adoptions? The way adoption is currently practiced only encourages unethical and illicit behavior.

This is one reason that adoption agencies, private "facilitators" and some adoptive parents try to diminish the voices of adult adoptees, first mothers and fathers, and those scant few adoptive parents who dare to speak out against corruption in adoption. First mothers (and fathers!) can speak to their experience of being coerced into giving up their children. Adult adoptees like me (I was adopted as a newborn) can speak to the fact that no infant is a tabula rasa. Adoptive parents can speak to the corruption that they have personally witnessed.

No, the adoption agencies and those adopters who consider themselves "entitled" would be much happier if we keep National Adoption Awareness Month as squeaky-clean as possible. Let's put these myths to rest. Foster adoption is about finding homes for children who need them. Infant adoption is about selling children to people who want them.