I’m running through the adoption questions first and then I’m going to hit the freelance questions. Also here I’m going to answer one that starts to head out beyond out personal adoption and that’ll segue nicely to the ones Marley and Suz asked me.
From Mirah again: When you are out and about and people admire Madison. Do you offer that she is adopted or allow then to assume that she might be your by birth?
Sometimes and sometimes not. I asked my husband and my good friend Abby (who have both been out and about with me) if they could tell if there were times when I was more likely to or not and neither could say for certain. I think it depends on who’s asking (random salesperson? the soccer coach?), what we’re doing when they ask (rushing to get out the store? hanging at the park?) and how I’m feeling (friendly and open to discussion? in desperate need of caffeine and solitude?). It also depends on how they ask it, I think, but I’m not sure.
Sometimes when people compliment either of my kids I just smile and nod or say “thanks” or “we think so, too.” Sometimes when people compliment them I say, “He has his daddy’s eyes” or “Her birth mom has a big wide smile, too.” I’d say the situations when I do this for either kid are pretty similar. Basically if I have the time, inclination and interest in expanding, I will. I really don’t think I am less or more likely to mention Pennie than I am to mention any other relative.
I know that there are arguments for and against bringing up adoption to strangers but 1) having a transracial adoption makes things more obvious; 2) Pennie, as folks now know, is a very present person in our life and not referring to her would be as weird as not saying, “Yeah, his grandmother has blue-blue eyes like that”; 3) I err on the side of being open. If Madison ever wants me to stop, I’ll stop.
Then Joy asked:
I can’t help but be struck with the question though, why would you invited this kind of pain/drama into your life?
I am an adoptee and have strong feelings about the difficulties adoption leaves a child with, so maybe that really colors my ability to understand how people could want to be a part of something like adoption, actually pay money to be a part of it. Even without that aspect, if I could really believe adoption was good for children, what it does to their mothers and even the adoptive parents, it is not something I would ever invite into my life.
It is ironic that adoption makes more sense to me when it is done by people just blindly grabbing at a baby, lost in fantasy, I mean obviously that will be harmful for the child but smart people trying to do it “right” only brings into sharp relief how truly bizarre/harmful the whole situation is.
I mean Pennie sounds great, you sound great, how did this happen?
First of all Joy, I do appreciate your question and I do take it not in the spirit of hostility but in the spirit of discussion and much-needed debate.
I am pro-choice. I do believe there is much too much money and coercion present in adoption and far too little practical and cultural support for women who parent outside of our often rigid cultural mores. So I think there needs to be adoption reform and more support for parents but I don’t think adoption should be abolished anymore than I think abortion should be abolished. I would love it if there was less need for either abortion or adoption but given that the world is what it is, I think abortion and adoption must be available to the women who need and want it and that they should be supported — not forced — around their decisions.
I also believe that adoptees experience loss and that adoption is less than ideal but I don’t think that every adoptee feels that loss or processes that loss in the same way. I do believe that children (and adults who were once children) have essential rights. Some I’m still trying to figure out (i.e., relinquishment periods) but I’d say original birth certificates are unarguably a human right.
Ok, I’ve used this parallel before but I’ll use it again.
I think divorce is sub-optimal for kids BUT:
- I don’t think there’s only one right way to do a divorce.
- I don’t think divorce is always worse than staying together.
- I think some married couples’ kids would be better off if their parents divorced.
I believe divorce needs to be available but that marriage counseling needs to be available (and affordable) and I think post-divorce services need to be available (and affordable).
I think divorce can be the best case scenario for a child and still be painful and still be loss. I believe it can both be the best thing and the worst thing that happens to a family. I believe that ultimately that decision needs to rest with the adults even though the decision will forcefully impact the children.
This is how I feel about adoption, too. And can you imagine if there was an industry behind divorce that was as present and as pushy as the industry behind adoption? If there were agencies that aggressively promoted divorce in the interest of making money on brokering divorces? Or that promoted better, prettier, more accomplished wives and husbands? Or that told people that if their marriage looked like xyz that divorcing was the most loving thing they could do for their kids? I mean, really. We’d be up in arms.
Back to our own adoption. I am not Pennie and I cannot and will not try to explain her decision to place Madison with us. I will say that in some ways her decision — in the context in which it existed — seemed inevitable. Much of that context is stuff I’d like to see changed (and this from a feminist perspective more than an adoption reform perspective — but then my adoption reform springs out of my feminism) but within the context, too, exists her free choice. (I’m saying here that her decision really became cemented before she ever called the agency and while the agency and the adoption policies and my presence in her adoption is a very big part of what happened, it’s not in anyway the whole part and addressing the one without the other would have been unlikely to change what happened next.)
I know that it’s hard to see free choice in the maelstrom that is adoption in America today but it’s there in as much as many of other choices (to marry, to practice a religion, to leave a husband, to have gastric bypass, to send our kids to school). In adoption, it’s easier to follow the money. The industry itself is much more obviously present and also (and this is why adoption interests me so much) so many of our other preconceived ideas about womanhood, motherhood, family, class, race, etc. are really, really present.
Related posts:
This is such a great answer about why adoption. I’ve said the same thing many times, but never as eloquently.
[...] need to since the wonderfully smart and articulate Dawn has said it brilliantly in her post I’ll get to the not adoption questions soon, I promise. I can just point to that post and really say, “What she [...]
Dawn, you are just brilliant. Once again, I can point to you and say: “What she said.” Bravo and thank you.
Lisa V, I learned this at your lovely, graceful and oh so petite feet!!!!!! You are, as always, my mentor!!!
OK, but I did wonder why Joy referred to this as “pain or drama.” I wasn’t sure where she was coming from. Is this the inevitable pain and drama of adoption–and if so, is this always the result? Do we know this–just a question. Or is this the pain and drama of having to explain that you did not give birth to this child? Wonder if the latter is painful to you. . .it never has been to me and don’t know if I’m in the minority or not. It makes no difference to me that I am not genetically related to Simone but only she can say whether it will make a difference to her. At some point, I’m sure she will consider it deeply.
Great conversation here. I recognize some of the participants.
I need to think a lot about this answer —
I’ve been thinking a lot about a similar question: From the time that we discovered that domestic infant open adoption wasn’t for us (was it a matter of our agency particularly? our social worker? the cases we were presented? or was it the norm? I don’t know), I’ve wondered whether women are placing who, without the open adoption option, would have parented (with difficulty but successfully) or would have had their child raised within their family unit. What I mean is that if the choice were to relinquish a child to the absolute unknown or to parent, and the parents were to *still* make the choice to relinquish, that is persuasive to me that adoption was necessary. BUT that isn’t okay: It is tragic that a child would be relinquished to the unknown (surely felt as abandonment, even if the relinquishment is careful and papered and all else — and this is something that we have to process with our children forever). And, I believe when possible, open adoption is healthier than the unknown for a child. So what a conundrum . . .
Abebech, I hear what you’re saying and I really get it. But I also think that choice is important and it’s not us to anyone outside of the world a woman inhabits to tell her whether or not her decision is “necessary.” I appreciate the slippery slope feeling that comes with talking about this (and I grapple with it whenever I’m talking to anyone contemplating domestic infant adoption). But there is so much outside the adoption industry that moves some women to adoption and until we deal with those things, we need to have ethical prospective adoptive parents in the system and we need to work at changing the industry. (I think the industry is reflective of the whole — it exists because we live in a society where we don’t support women and don’t support mothers.)
(sent via email and posted as a comment)
thank you for this, dawn. so well articulated, and i very much agree..
Dawn, you’re absolutely right — and I didn’t mean to indicate that anyone can determine “necessity” for someone else. (And I don’t, for example, meet an adoptive family and think “Yes, but was it really _necessary_?”)
I think I’ve said it quite badly.
(And I realized that in my comment above I used the term “family unit” rather conservatively, whereas in our life in practice “family unit” has an expansive and inclusive definition — An adoptive family in a successful open adoption, together with the first family is in a new family configuration even if that configuration would not have existed without the child).
Abebech, know that I took you at your word that it IS a conundrum and one that we need to discuss. I never feel dismissed or judged by you and I feel like even though we made different decisions in our own paths to adoptive parenthood, that we both made them with the same good intentions and ethical concerns. (In other words, I feel like we are definitely allies and always take your comments as such!!! So when I quoted your “necessity” it was really to call attention to the nebulousness of the term and not like sarcastic air quotes!!!!
” What I mean is that if the choice were to relinquish a child to the absolute unknown or to parent, and the parents were to *still* make the choice to relinquish, that is persuasive to me that adoption was necessary.”
Yes, and as the adoptive parent raising a child who was literally left to the gods to intercede for, I am SO envious of Dawn’s situation with Pennie. As much as I recognize that it’s hard work to open your family and bring Pennie into the circle as a relative who is not a parent who is part of the family that she chose for her child, it’s work I daydream about getting to do.
As a substitute for my own work, which is helping my child to process the loss of not just being raised by whoever birthed her or a relative or anyone who lived in that context, but literally the option of ever knowing who it was.
So the tradeoff for us was, adopting this child was necessary. We didn’t have to do it; in fact, had we taken another path, she’d have a lovely straight white married rich family in Long Island or Santa Barbara instead. (Which some folks would judge as a better family than we can ever be, no matter how we do our work.)
But we felt it was ethical to adopt this kid because there was no option for her life where she was going back to her birth relatives.
We had serious reservations about domestic open adoption, after meeting with a potential placement and saying to each other later, ‘She can totally be a great mom with not much support. She’s too close to fully able that we can’t explain to this baby why she’s not parenting!’
But a decade into this, I wish I were hoeing that row sometimes.
Just another perspective.
Thanks for replying to my question. I know it is a thorny topic.
I feel like I could write min. 5 pages of response, but will try to keep it short.
I would say I agree with pretty much all of the things you say, except I think the comparison of divorce to adoption to be very limited. Personally, I think adoption for the child is much more profound than divorce, so much so that the comparison– I could almost consider glib and insulting, but I don’t because it is very difficult to ariticulate things related to adoption, because they are almost completely intangible, and it is as a good of a starting point as any in that context.
I also disagree that not all adoptees experience a loss, I think all children do, that it is a physiological impossibility not to be profoundly affected, nothing supports my claim more than child development lit. sans adoption.
I definetly do agree that adoptees process it differently, it is a combination of post-adoption environment, parenting, coupled with the inherent nature of the personality of the adopted. I have never met an adoptee I feel *exactly* like, as I am wont to say, it is more like a venn diagram of symptoms vs. an absolute pattern. The symptoms reference makes me want to go off on another tangent about the revulsion I felt at finding out parts of what I considered “me” , my distinct personality, were actually fairly predictable given my experiences. Yuck to that. I can see why some adoptees reject that notion as it is a disturbing one.
My best IRL adoptee friend, who has been my friend since childhood, purposely introduced by our respective amoms so we would have the support of each other, their scheme worked in spades, thinks she would make the ideal adoptive mother because of her experiences and would like to adopt, vs. me who thinks I would be the worst adoptive mother because of my experiences and wouldn’t be able to separate myself from my own adoptee, if I were to have one, and would be screaming, “My God we have to find your mother!” like a madwoman.
That being said, I am like you Dawn in the respect that I have one natural born son. I grew up thinking that I would have 5 boys, my own rugby team, and dress them in matching sweaters and have our portrait taken like so many of the ones I saw growing up–of me the Queen-mother of so many promising sons. That was my childhood fantasy. Pretty narcissistic, I know. The truth is rarely pretty.
That is not how life worked out for me.
I can’t say I am bitter about that, or gnash my teeth over it, or even think about it much except when I am trying to imagine what motivates someone to adopt.
There is so much giving on the part of the adoptive parent who wants to do right by their adopted child. Entering into realms of despair, identity, connection, disconnection, ethical dilemmas…that I have neatly avoided by instead of focusing on my motherhood, have spent my resources focusing on my career, travel, and hobbies.
Motherhood in its easiest form, the form I experienced it, a surprise, natural, a child that I easily resonate with and has a good head on his shoulders is still exhausting and taxing, inexpressively so.
I mean honestly, jmo, but would I rather deal with a mother devastated, feeling the guilt that many adoptive parents express, Dan Savage compared it to feeling like he was kidnapping a child, or going to Paris, well it is not much of a conumdrum for me.
As far as having a social conscience or being “my brother’s keeper” as one poster said, I can do that without being a part of something that comes with such a high personal cost. There are a myriad of ways one can take care of children without assuming them.
When I think of my own amom, who I do love dearly, who I believe in many ways has given me my moral compass, who has encouraged me when she couldn’t understand me, who met my nmother shortly after I did, closed adoption, but young, 18. Who was light years ahead of her peers dealing with adoption, so much that people told her she was “crazy” , feeling in her words, like “a glorified baby-sitter” as I was so much a product of my DNA.
I just still don’t get it.
I am not an adoption abolishinist, I just would like it to be so reformed it would be unrecognizable by today’s standards. It is hard for me to understand how people voluntarily participate in it.
What happens if Madison wants to live with Pennie later on? Is there a real reason Madison is having to deal with these issues other than that was the agreement you made? Pennie can deal with a situation much more difficult than average motherhood, open adoption, and responsibily so.
I mean it sucks for me to say this, think this, but in the successful way your family and Pennie have navigated this complex relationship, I can’t help but think there is no real resason for Madison to suffer at all.
You deserve kudos for your willingness and sensitivity, all of you do, and yet I find myself asking, so why don’t you undo it?
I know maybe Pennie doesn’t want to, and it is frightening, and scary, and perhaps just flat out wrong of me. I am just a person with opinions, I don’t know everything. My opinions frighten me, I am not saying they frighten you.
I have a feeling all of these difficult questions I am asking, are questions you have asked yourself, as it seems you have a deep and soulful nature, I like you.
and that is more than enough outta me…
Joy, I read your blog, and it gives me pause and encourages me to widen my understanding of adoption all the time. I disagree with you, but I respect you and am always interested in what you have to say.
I think adoption is gray. There is no black or what, in “natural families always” or “adoptive parents are superior.” I don’t believe that in either case. I think human beings are far too complex to have one size fits all psyches. I know you agree with that too (that one size fits all doesn’t work as you explained above).
But it seems just really weird to me that you think Madison – or any adoptee experiencing another loss- and being returned to Pennie is superior to being nurtured and raised in a family that three of her parents are committed to. Just because someone can raise a child, doesn’t mean they want to. I honestly don’t think Pennie (and this is so presumptuous of me to assume) wants Madison’s life turned upside down. I don’t even think with the inherent loss in adoption it is worth it to lump loss on loss.
My child is 17. She doesn’t shoot me shit. I totally admit that she likely doesn’t talk with me or maybe even herself about all of her feelings about adoption, but she wouldn’t go back right now. She wouldn’t have gone back 10 years ago. If she could turn the clock of time to the day before she was placed, maybe she would, but not now. Not after we all became a part of each other. I think many adoptees may wish adoption had never happened, but not to undo an adoption. They are two different things.
My understanding of adoption now may make it so I view adoption differently than I did before I adopted. I don’t know if it were 1991 and I miraculously had this knowledge if I would choose to adopt again. But knowing my life, and loving my daughter and her mother so deeply, and knowing they love me, that is different. Taking her in the first place, and giving her back are different situations.
I wasn’t clear. You are right Lisa in that most adoptees would not undo adoption. It would be very traumatic for me at this point to lose my adoptive parents.
I did not mean to be suggesting that Madison’s things are packed up and she is dropped off at Pennies. I agree that would be shocking and very hurtful to her.
Perhaps though the adoption could be really broken open to co-parenting. Again, this is just an intellectual idea, and perhaps wrong-headed.
Personally, though I think if I had been returned to my natural family at around age 12, when I really started dealing with identity issues, I found adolescence where the phyiscal bond mattered the most, both in my own life and in my childs, I would have fared much better. Of course, this would have had to mean that my natural family would have been willing, and they would not have been. So from the practical aspect in my personal story, this would not have worked. My natural family would not have participated in an open adoption, my mother believed that if she would have felt worthy of contact, she would never have given me up, but once she made that decision it was all deference to my adoptive family.
Lisa, you can’t really say what your daughter would want or not want despite how close you may be to her, anymore than I can say what my son would want or not want. He is very much like me, he is very much like his father, but in all children, there is country inside them all to themselves. According to me, our divorce was not such a big deal. He hasn’t had any outward behaviors indicating that it was, and yet, as much as I know him, I know that I don’t really know him, and shouldn’t, there is a part of his soul that is reserved just for him, and imagine the things that live there are profound.
Like mine, like yours.
Maybe again, people like Dawn can forge a new sort of adoption, a truly child-centered adoption, but again, I am struck by the amount of giving that would require, the selflessness, the uncertainity, that makes it all very unappealing to us more selfish of mortals.
Dawn, theres alot of good things you state in this post.
Although, to be honest, I don’t like your divorce comparision.
I’d rather a different kind of comparision, but I can’t think of one that fits, I guess divorce is close enough.
I think that what many people might think if they were to meet Pennie, and see that she is most likely a fine senible person, they would question why she did not choose to parent Madison.
I know because people think that of me. Many people I know where not happy with my decision to place my birthson because they see me as the as a capable person.
I have only been learning now that adoption has consiquences that are not always pleasant. I remember thinking that adopted persons (that knew years before I had my birthson) were always turning out to be such excellent people and people I knew from single parent homes were quite the opposite.
Now this is just my personal experience, I know it was limited, but each person makes decisions based almost completely on their own experiences, no matter what anyone tells them.
I just am convinced that keeping things ‘open’ is better than the alternative.
Joy, I think we are saying the same thing. I said that my daughter probably doesn’t tell me or even herself about all her feelings about adoption, but the ones she admits to, she chooses to stay in the life she knows.
An actually she has opportunity to go back, and has had since she was around 15. She goes to visit her mom, the length of stay is left up to her. If she wanted to stay longer than summer, I might be sad, really sad, but I wouldn’t stop her.
Again, I believe she has a choice. And I love her mother, we may not be co-parents (logistics and the power inequity would make that hard); we are both fully parents. I can see why she would chose to be with her. I’m grateful that I’ve been allowed the privilege to be part of their lives.
LisaV, I keep starting a comment or an entry and then you post and I say, “Oh good! Lisa said what I was doing to!” So I’ll just nod and say, “What she said, yup. That works for me!!”
I wish it worked for me too.
Joy,
I feel a great deal of compassion for my child, but not guilt for adopting him. I don’t regret adopting him, and to me guilt = doing something wrong knowingly which we didn’t do so no, not guilt. Compassion, yes, and heavy on that. But that’s OK; that’s what moms do, and as a mom, of course none of us want our children to hurt, but all children hurt and it’s part of our jobs as mothers to help our children through their hurts, not to take it away from them. I don’t mean to sound flip; I really don’t and I hope I don’t. It’s a part and parcel of being an adoptive mom, yes. But I’m not a devastated mother by any means; most of the time — especially now — I’m a joyful mom. And most of the time my son is silly and playful and having fun.
And I never ever feel like “a glorified baby-sitter”. I’ve always felt like his mother. He and I do have some coincidental similarities in personality, but we also have some striking differences, but I’ve never felt like a babysitter. Always a mom.
I simply try to feel for him, but I can’t take away what he’s feeling.
<3,
Judy
I don’t mean feel FOR him, I mean be compassionate and understand what he’s feeling. That makes a bit more sense.
Joy, I think you’re saying some very important things and in following the thread, I understand more where you’re coming from. Throughout my lifetime I have, in fact, known several adoptees without “issues,” including one who relinquished. I am not saying adoption wasn’t profoundly part of their identity, because it has to be for the adopted person, but that was the shape of it: it had become part of them and was not something they continued to deal with overtly the way one deals with a problem or issue. That is just a few people; for others it may be different. I tend myself toward the idea that many but not all adoptees experience the feelings you are talking about. Again, I have no proof but there is not much in life to which the word “all” can be applied.
As for myself, in 1998, I simply wanted to parent a child who needed a parent. I settled on the China because the issue of abandonment of girls resonated with me and single women were accepted (then). A bonus was living in a highly multicultural city. I didn’t have oodles of cash to throw around, a stereotype that persists to this day (most of the people in my group went into debt to adopt) but the alternatives offered at the time to me seemed less certain. For me personally, adoption also seemed more ethical than manufacturing a new life with an an anon sperm donor.
You may take offence at this but today I have to remind myself that Simone is adopted. The bond is that close, and I don’t know motherhood any other way. Yet as the years go by, I think more and more of her parents and would give almost anything to meet them. Realistically, though, if we were to reconnect with anyone in China, it would be her foster parents and not her original parents. I support adoption reform (domestic and international), unsealed records, etc., but will not apologize for I did (not suggesting this was your intent). . .and I am Simone’s mother–not her guardian, custodian, keeper, sponsor, babysitter, or chaperone. The people who want her to call me Miss Pegis and and not Mommy are, in my opinion, working out their own troubled stories. I wish them well but my job is to focus on my family and let Simone be who she wants to be.
Jess, you said it. I don’t think there is a universal experience of mothering one’s bio offspring, any more than there is a universal experience for APs.
My sister birthed her child, with whom she is constantly locked in conflict. She expected her child to be a known quantity, who felt ‘easy’ and ‘natura’l to raise because she ‘was a part of me once’. Now that’s exhausting.
I don’t spend my mom energy battling my kid’s inner nature and despairing about what’s wrong with my kid. It just is the way it is.
[...] that I’m ignoring Joy, there’s a busy discussion happening in the comments to this post. But I’ve written so much of it before (that Pennie has a right to her decision, that I [...]
Joy, wouldn’t “undoing it” be worse? Bounced back and forth between families? Dawn is Madison’s mother. She’s raised her.
We are only partly the genes that we come from. We are very much the family that raised us. And even that, we can break away from as adults.
I think Joy made it pretty clear she wasn’t talking about forcing the adoptee to lose the aparents, that she was talking about instead co-parenting.
And I agree, I wonder often too why co-parenting is somehow dismissed out of hand as some terrible awful idea. (Not speaking to any specific situation here, just generally.)
Jess, what you said here…
” Throughout my lifetime I have, in fact, known several adoptees without “issues,” including one who relinquished. I am not saying adoption wasn’t profoundly part of their identity, because it has to be for the adopted person, but that was the shape of it: it had become part of them and was not something they continued to deal with overtly the way one deals with a problem or issue.”
I admit to being utterly confounded. How many women relinquish in a year–13K to 14K? Out of how many? We are a very small percentage of the population–women who actually go through with abandoning our babies. VERY small. It makes it very hard to believe that an adoptee joining our ranks did so without any “adoption issues” playing into that decision. I mean I think you said it yourself–it becomes part of them and isn’t something they overtly deal with. But how much better would it be TO overtly deal with it? You don’t think an adoptee abandoning her own baby has anything to do with COVERTLY acting out adoption issues?
I mean I suppose it’s possible, but it’s very very hard to believe….
PhoenixRising’s point goes along with similar thoughts I have had. I come from a family of 6 (all bio kids) although we lived in the same home with the same parents and were present for the exact same acitivites and discussions — we each remember them differently, felt them differently then and now. We, as individual humans, have individual experiences no matter the similarites. So, here I am now, mother of children and considering adoption. And I search the internet, as many, for answers to my individual situation. But in the end, it is the not direct answers we find, instead the information that we can add to our own webs of life, making a more complete picture for ourselves to make the best decision we can for ourself. I wonder what the adopted child may feel later in life — another reason I search out input from adoptees — but then I also think of my sister. She struggled through high school and later as a early mother — issues of bonding, or lack of bonding, views of injustices and the ever present search for identity (not identity in who-we-are-related-to — the idenity of WHO we really are) and self-confidence issues. And I think, what if she had been adopted? All that baggage would have been a labeled bag “Adopted issues” to carry it all in. By saying this I do not mean to down play the adopted issues that are there — I just mean to say that as complicated individuals with our amazing tapestry of life events and circumstances we all have issues many similar but all unique in how we experienced them — what we label them and how we handle them is part of our journey.
It helps to find others along that journey to help. Thanks to all of you so willing to share.
I think Dawn writes it right with:
“I think there needs to be adoption reform and more support for parents but I don’t think adoption should be abolished anymore than I think abortion should be abolished. I would love it if there was less need for either abortion or adoption but given that the world is what it is, I think abortion and adoption must be available to the women who need and want it and that they should be supported — not forced — around their decisions.”
thanks
Nicole, if you’re talking about an unresolved issue, I believe that would be overreaching. The factors that seemed to drive this decision were her strong anti-abortion convictions and the wish not to parent again. She was a single mom already to two boys, one of whom has some disabilities and he needed her ongoing support. She berated herself good-naturedly about the incident (an uncharacteristic sans birth control one-night-stand) but there was never any doubt in her mind that she would surrender. She left ample documentation for this third child and a door open for future contact.
She may not be typical but whenever we talked about it, I always came away with the impression of someone who knew exactly what she was doing and why she wanted to do it. She did mention several times that many people remarked on her calm purpose–but that quality pervades everything she does. If I remember correctly, a current boyfriend offered to marry her at the time but she wasn’t interested. I really think she saw a life beyond raising another child and that’s pretty much how it’s played out. She did eventually get married in the 1990s and they both agreed on child-free. We talked about adoption lots of times and she wrote one of my letters for China when I began the process.
Phoenix and Stephanie, there’s a nice op-ed piece in the NYTimes by an adoptee about the mystery of origins. You can find it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02ullman.html?_r=1
I was going to link to it. . .still might.
Sample
No one is a genetic match to his or her parents. Nature has gone to a great deal of trouble to see that we are not like them (a strong argument against adding cloning to the human parental mix).
[...] Woman’s Work | There’s a great discussion developing at This Woman’s Work on several adoption questions. Head over there for the thought-provoking and delightfully non-combative. [...]
Thank you Jess for the link! First time for me to leave a reply and my first response to a reply
— welcome to a whole new world of internet sharing and friendship!
Trust Joy to break my brain. This is so on the mark, it really is the paradox of adoption.
“It is ironic that adoption makes more sense to me when it is done by people just blindly grabbing at a baby, lost in fantasy, I mean obviously that will be harmful for the child but smart people trying to do it “right” only brings into sharp relief how truly bizarre/harmful the whole situation is.”
I often read what you write about adoption very much as an outsider, because our adoptions are closed. I long for the complexity of your relationship with Pennie, and am fascinated by it. Yet on another level (and please understand that I say this as a proponent of less adoption, more support for single mothers, and open adoption,) the fact that our children’s first parents aren’t a physical presence in our lives has simplified our adoptions. This isn’t to say the emotional impact is any easier for my kids – open or closed adoption, the loss is their reality.
It just strikes me as odd and paradoxical that what I think is best for adoption when it happens – openness – may be what makes it, in Joy’s words, bizarre.
Just musing. Co-parenting needn’t necessarily involve adoption at all.
I wonder how many would chose to co-parent without the adoption option.
Jess, as far as surrender and resolution is concerned, I don’t doubt that if a pregnant woman is really convinced in herself that she *can’t* parent and she is opposed to abortion, it does cease to be an ‘issue’ as such. It simply becomes a problem to be resolved.
I know someone who was in that kind of situation. I guess she did have the choice between returning to war-torn Uganda and her broken and decimated family (who, because of social pressures, would have pretended that the child was not hers anyway, but the child of some dead relative) or relinquishing her little girl to an open adoption in Canada. I think the peculiar nature of that choice (not quite a Hobson’s – but getting there) clarified her decision and made it easier for her to accept surrendering her child to an open adoption.
However, I know she suffered at the time, and while we’ve lost touch I’m sure she continues to do so. Though I hope and expect the intensity has abated. She is a strong person, and I believe she will prevail.
I’ve also heard it mooted that the very fact of being adopted herself may predispose a woman to relinquish. I’m not sure that I do, but I know some believe this to be evidence of unresolved issues over her original adoption.
So to that extent, I don’t think relinquishment ever comes without at least some ‘issues’ for the mother or the adoptee.
Maybe my imagination is deficient, but I really do find it hard to believe that there are adoptees who don’t feel at least some sense of loss, whether they acknowledge it or not. It would seem to go with the territory.
After all, who would actually *choose* to be born with the expectation of losing their natural family, and then be subsequently adopted? It doesn’t make sense.
I think about the idea of my own daughter relinquishing one day and it gives me a heart attack. But I wonder what my friend would say at the suggestion that she was working out an unresolved adoption issue. I honestly think she would reject that theory–it was an accident and she would not terminate. Unless you want to say she got pregnant to work out this issue and again, totally overreaching.
Of course I can’t speak to other people knowing someone who is adopted and is such a shallow sociopath to have not noticed. After all, one of the beautiful gifts adoption has given me is to know, you don’t really know other people. How many people could say the same of me?
How many people could say that I never bothered to mention I was adopted because it is no big deal to me vs. the reality it is a source of great shame to me.
The pressure upon the adoptee to be grateful, grateful first of all for being alive, as we are frequently reminded, that is a fluke, we should have been abortions. Then that someone, anyone took us in.
It gets pretty complicated and soul-stealing from the beginning.
To Sara, no we are mostly our DNA according to me.
I didn’t meet my parents until I was 18 years old, I had a ton in common with them, much more than I did with my adoptive family.
Why the F— do you think I am so upset?
“Unless you want to say she got pregnant to work out this issue and again, totally overreaching.”
Some might sat that, but it’s not what I’m saying here.
OTOH I might be willing to give the idea consideration as a hypothesis, but I would never presume it to be the case.
However, I do think in the case of women (not talking specifically about adoptees who relinquish here) who oppose abortion for religious (as opposed to strictly moral) reasons, there may be a propensity to capitulate more easily to the pressure to relinquish, *especially* if it is felt to be or presented as a kind of ‘road to redemption’.
But I wonder what my friend would say at the suggestion that she was working out an unresolved adoption issue.
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I can’t presume to know what was going through her mind. However, I am saying that I’d be shocked if her having been adopted had NOTHING to do with the decision. Not that she was trying to identify with her bio mom necessarily (though I do think this probably happens sometimes), but that the very experience of being adopted is a huge life experience, and it had to have some bearing on her decision–even if it was “Heck I was adopted and am totally fine with it all, so it’s no big deal for my child to be relinquished, either.”
How could it NOT have some kind of impact? My childhood experiences impacted my choice to relinquish, and I’m NOT adopted.
And so, how on earth could it be better to NOT overtly examine the impact of adoption?
I am not trying to say she relinquished because she has unacknowledged angst. I am saying that as an adoptee, being adopted had to have some impact on her choice to relinquish.
And as someone who knows the choice to relinquish is never pain-free (ever. ever. ever. ever. I don’t care how calm and confident the mother is, how sure she was, or how uncoerced she was–it is still never ever ever pain free)… as someone who knows this, I have to think–wouldn’t it have been BETTER for her to covertly acknowledge adoption in her life?
My brain hurts. Maybe I’m projecting, who knows. This is one of my worst fears, my (relinquished) daughter growing up and abandoning her own baby out of some sense of adoption being “no big deal,” so it’s entirely possible.
I can’t remember ever saying my friend didn’t acknowledge adoption in her life–in fact, she acknowledged it, described it, talked about it often. I agree that nothing happens by accident and that adoption has probably become as deep a part of my friend’s character as being the youngest child became a part of mine (not that the two are in any way parallel in emotional cost): there’s no escaping these things. What I dispute is that her decision addressed something unconscious or unresolved issue, or some pathology. Being adopted could have informed my friend’s views on abortion, though. I’ve often thought of that. She doesn’t fit the pattern, i.e., she’s feminist, pro-LGBT, vegetarian, agnostic. . .etc.
I understand what you’re saying about your daughter, Paragraphein, because the idea of my own daughter making an adoption plan would break my heart. Totally. Much as I am in no position to start raising another child, the idea of letting such a child go seems unthinkable.
This is an interesting post.
As a trans-racial adoptee myself, you could label me as one of those glossy eyed, idealistic adoptees. I think my adoption went as well as you possible could hope for. I am very much pro-adoption (obviously a result of my personal experience).
I understand you are trying to do the best thing for your child with this “open adoption” concept. However, I wonder if this concept is truly helpful or not? I am not trying to undermine what you are trying to do. I think it does need to be explored, but I guess I am a little skeptical.
Would an “open adoption” not confuse the whole situation a whole bunch more from the adoptee’s perspective? I guess the way I see it; if I got to see my birth mother on a regular basis, it would tear me up inside (causing way more emotional pain and stress than never seeing her). Especially if she has 2 children that she raises on her own. I think one of the biggest “issues” that adoptees face is the question “Why did my mother give me up for adoption?” I would constantly be asking myself, “Why did she give me up, and not her other two children?” “Does she love me less than those other two children?”. Having to face and see and be in physical contact with these types of questions would create such a huge turmoil inside for me personally. If adoptees struggle so much with these questions without seeing their birth families on a regular basis, would this not be worsened if they did see their birth families on a regular basis?
While I know a lot of adoptees and people out there are proponants of being open; however, I think there is a lot of merit to also, for the lack of a better term, shielding. Don’t parents shield their children from things as they grow up? For example you don’t want your 3 year old to learn about the birds and the bees, you also don’t want them watching R rated movies. Parents shield them from these things. As the child get older, parents slowly unshield them as their pysche and maturity develops.
Adoption has a lot of emotions and questions and struggles behind it. Do you really want to “open the floodgates” on all of these immidediately on the adoptee? Is that really the best thing? As a child adoptee, are they psychologically and maturity-wise capable of handling all of these emotions and issues? I think openess is great and required if any adoption hopes to be successful. However, I think there is a lot to be said about a controlled openess.
I was 5 years old when I was adopted. Believe me I had enough hurdles and struggles to face without having to face adoption issues. I had to learn a whole new language and culture to learn, I had several medical issues (nothing major, but things like vaccinations, apparently I never had any, so this required a years worth of shots, along with some minor diseases), and malnutrition. So needless to say, my plate was full for a 5 year old. I think my parents were very smart to “shield” me from adoption issues at this time. This doesn’t mean they tried to snuff out adoption at all, they were open to discussion at any time, they just didn’t bring it up very often. They let me deal with the things I needed to first. As I got these other things out of the way, we slowly and more openly discussed my adoption. It wasn’t until I was a junior/senior in highschool that I finally got to see my adoption records and find out how I got to the orphanage!
I think openess is great, but in a cynical view I would maybe view what is being suggested in this post as a “forced” openess? Maybe I’m reading into it wrong? Some kids just don’t want to face the issue and are not ready to face the issue. I was this way until a year ago when I was 27 years old. I didn’t even want to deal with the issue, and I truly believe I was not ready to discuss the issues until recently.
Hi “InMySeoul” — first I have to apologize because I’m going to answer you before I’ve had my first cup of coffee, which pretty much guarantees typos. On to open adoption.
1. My daughter was not adopted at five with other issues that would necessarily take up her energy to adjust to it all. She was three days old when she came home to us. She grew up with openness so to her it’s a natural state.
2. Research bears out the benefit of openness for adoptees. You can dig around here some if you like: http://cehd.umn.edu/fsos/Centers/mtarp/publications/publicationsArticles.asp I don’t have time to get specific links.
3. I argue that growing with openness is much healthier, much less of a struggle than having it suddenly foisted upon you in reunion. Madison is able to process her reality within the loving support of her adoptive family and her birth mom much like kinship adoptions. There are no lies/denial here.
4. I take umbrage at the idea of “forced” openness because to me that’s like saying I’m forcing Madison to have a relationship with, say, her brother. I mean, we’re family. There’s nothing forced about it.
(written on blog and sent via email)
InMySeoul, I just read your blog and was impressed with how you are searching yourself too as you undertake this major search. My daughter is in the same position as you–so little documentation (born in China) but one day I wonder if there will be an opening for her to search or whether that process will prove simply maddening. We know the local orphanage where she was taken after being found, so we have some sense of location. I am totally leaving this up to her but drop hints now and then that it’s OK to wonder. I wouldn’t let Simone give up her Chinese citizenshup when she came to Canada, so we’ve already opened the discussion up that way. Good luck!
Dawn,
I’m not “arguing against openness” in adoptions. Im actually very much for it. I just cringe when I hear of parents who try to pretend that the adoption didn’t happen. Or parents who stiffle/prevent their adopted children from searching about adoption. I was just wondering if there were any potential negative impacts of having too much openess (if that makes sense?). I guess I’m looking more into degrees of openess.
Like I mentioned previously, one of the biggest questions/struggles adoptees face is “Why was I put up for adoption/orphanage?”. I am wondering if I saw my birth mother (with the two birth children she kept) would it be helpful or harmful? In my particular situation and just the way I react, I think it would have hurt me more than helped. I would struggle/battle internally why my birth mother can keep two children and yet let me go. Ive seen the reasons for this particular case, but it still would be of little comfort for me personally. Obviously each person reacts differently to these emotional conflicts, so I can only speak for how I might view this situation.
I didn’t have the exact words to explain #4 about the “forced” open relationship, which is why I put it in quotes. This is a very difficult position to discuss. What I mean is once you go down the road of a relationship or meeting with a birth mother you really can’t go back. I know this may sound weird but I just wrote about this subject on my blog. Like I said its a little weird. You may think to yourself why wouldnt someone always be frantically searching for their birth parents. I guess my response would be “I don’t know, but there are a lot of adoptees out there who aren’t”.
For me its not that I couldnt. My parents have always been open to the idea of helping me with this adventure. I am actually the one who has had to stop them and put everything on hold. This is really difficult to explain; but I am just not ready to potentially have a relationship with my birth mother.
I know you could argue that if I was raised in a fully open adoption that this wouldnt even be an issue. However, I really appreciate the fact that it has always been up to me on whether or not to have a relationship with my birth parents.
InMySeoul, I think there’s a tendency to conflate reunion with open adoption. They are not the same. I appreciate that it’s difficult for an adopted person who has an essentially closed adoption to imagine how openness could work (one of my best friends — who is an adult adoptee — thinks it’s weird but is happy it works for us). You might as well say I should keep Madison from my parents just in case she doesn’t want to have a relationship with her grandparents. Open adoption is a whole different way of thinking.
(posted on blog and sent via email)
“I just cringe when I hear of parents who try to pretend that the adoption didn’t happen. Or parents who stiffle/prevent their adopted children from searching about adoption.”
But that’s not how open or closed adoption works a lot of the time. I mean, yes – there are SOME APs who would like to pretend. But a lot of the AP forums I’ve lurked at DO happen to acknowledge there was another set of biological parents in the picture, even though it was [be]grudingly admitted. (Sorry, can’t remember the right word.)
Closed adoption is not necessarily just about pretending that the adopted child was born to the adoptive parents. It just means there’s no ongoing contact. I don’t see how you’re trying to interlink the points because I just haven’t heard of many people from TODAY’S generation who won’t even acknowledge the bio parents…
On another note – about the sibling thing. InMySeoul, you have heard my thoughts about this via e-mail. Growing up, I might have been happy to find out I had a sister, but it would have hurt me deeply to know I was the only one given up. It’s hard to say for sure how I would have reacted. But I daresay it would have made a profound difference…