GUEST BLOG: Unwanted Until Proven Good Enough to Have
Our Guest Blogger today is Paula, an adoptee and an adoptive mother. Paula’s blogs about adoption and adoptees are insightful, thought provoking and at times heart wrenching. You can read more of her outstanding blogs at Heart, Mind and Seoul.
A conversation I had a few days ago with one of my daughter's friends reminded me how far we still have to go in deconstructing the negative association that so many people have about kids who are adopted. The recent conversation with this particular 10 year-old boy pretty much mirrored the several dozen other discussions I've had with children about adoption. Sure, there is always a little variation on the words and how things are phrased, but the overall message is essentially the same. First - a little background about the impetus of this particular conversation, just in case people are wondering if I go around grilling random kids about adoption. My daughter's friend, let's call him Sam, knows that my son and I are both adopted, and he asked me some very pointed questions about my "real" mom and dad. Before I addressed his questions, I first asked Sam for his definition of adoption. I often do this whenever I'm talking to kids about adoption in an attempt to gauge where the child's level of understanding is about the concept. Here was Sam's reply when I asked him what he thought it meant to be adopted:
"Well, being adopted is when the kids that nobody wants are put into an orphanage and then if the kid is really good, someone rich will pick them and buy them to have in their family."
Now, to be sure, whenever I hear someone talk about a child being bought, I cringe. And yet Sam's understanding of adoption was so familiar to me - including the part of a child being available for purchase. His succinct albeit limited understanding of adoption was wholly consistent with virtually every other conversation I've had with kids about adoption. In fact, based on my own personal experiences, the recurring themes that that eventually emerge from just about any adoption conversation I've had with a child between the ages of 4-16 are the following:
Adopted Children:
1) Are unwanted
2) Can become more desirable when they exhibit good behavior, i.e. being the perfect child
3) Are thought of as a commodity; they are a good that is exchanged in a transaction typically received by someone considered rich or well-to-do
4) Are disposable; their permanence in their adoptive family is always conditional
5) Deserve pity, because they are the kids who no one wants
I realize the conversations that I've had with Sam and the many, many other kids I've talked to about adoption does not provide any scientific proof that all or even most kids feel the same way they do about children who are adopted. But nonetheless, I still find it incredibly disturbing and hurtful that my young son and other young adoptees are still being perceived by so many of their peers as unwanted, unlovable and unworthy. Too many adoptees from my own generation, including myself, have fought a relentless internal war against the societal messages that have had us second-guessing our self-worth. It's one thing to take a critical look at adoption as a whole, but it's quite another to be so critical of the one who truly is without any power, choice or voice. Sam and the other kids I've talked to don't just get their working definitions about adoption out of thin air; clearly they've been ingesting, processing and retaining messages from someone, somewhere and presumably from a multitude of sources.
And so the question I have is this: How can we talk about adoption in such a way that makes an unequivocal separation between the circumstances surrounding the act of adoption (regardless of what they are) and the perceived value of the adoptee? How do we go about challenging - and thereby hopefully changing - the way we talk about adoption so that the word adoptee is no longer synonymous with unwanted, damaged goods and the leftovers that people are forced to take? Now I realize that yes, there exists a contingent of children who tragically do fall into the true "unwanted" category, far more than my heart can comprehend, but I refuse to believe that all children available for adoption are deemed in their families' eyes as unwanted and easily disposable.
Let's compare the perception of children of a divorce versus children who are adopted. From where I stand, a fair number of people do not conflate the decision that two adults make to get divorced with the value of the child(ren) affected by the divorce. Regardless of the circumstances, I'm led to believe that many children of divorce as well as children who are adopted are quite susceptible to internalizing the same kinds of messages as a result of their life-altering events: that pervasive, internal soundtrack that rotates amongst the tracks of "If only I could have been better, this wouldn't have happened", "I know on some level that it's my fault for what took place", "If only I could have been more lovable, I might have prevented this", "I'll be perfect in every way so that I won't get left again", "If I can accomplish x, y or z, it will show them that I'm worthy enough of their love", "If I can just keep these walls up, I won't ever have to hurt like that again", or "Who needs them anyway? I'll show them I'm strong enough to survive on my own."
I'm not trying to play the "Who suffers more" game between children of divorce and children who are adopted. What I am trying to illustrate is that I bet if you asked a handful of kids to define divorce and then to define adoption, the former answer would emphasize the role of the parents (i.e., "Divorce is when two people don't want to be married anymore") versus the implied negative connotation against the child in the latter (i.e. "Adoption is when the unwanted kids get new families"). It seems that we as a society talk about divorce in a way that protects and keeps the children as they should be in this circumstance: innocent and absolved from any responsibility. And yet, so many people talk about adoption as something that ends up implicating the child as the unwanted and burdensome toll that needs to be removed in order for the original parents to "move on" with their lives.
The suppressed yet omnipresent shame that many adoptees can feel at various times in their lives can manifest itself in emotionally and mentally exhaustive ways. It's a shame that I can only describe as a war of Head v. Heart. As I've said on this blog numerous times before, as a young child, teenager and young adult, intellectually my mind knew that I was not responsible for being in a position of having to be placed for adoption, but my heart was so inexplicably heavy with guilt, shame and a complete sense of responsibility that somehow, someway I must have been so unwanted and so much of a burden to my parents, because otherwise - how could they ever, ever let me go?
I've come so far in processing my adoption and truly attaining a measure of peace and acceptance for who I am. I like to think it would have been just a bit easier and a more expeditious journey of shedding those layers of shame if so many people hadn't harbored and communicated to me their interpretations of adoptees as unwanted, easily discarded goods for the unfortunate people who couldn't have children "of their own".
Who knows if Sam will think any differently about adoption after our little talk. I can't control what he or anyone else thinks about kids who are adopted, but I can continue to speak up on behalf of my son and myself and say with absolute certainty that no, we are not unwanted.
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Folks have got to be
Folks have got to be educated about adoption.
That's sort of an unhealthy old skool way of looking at the complicated issues of adoption.
Maybe movies might help somehow, or books. I just don't know.
Interesting
When one of my sons was a HS Junior, he was at the after school hangout, Starbucks. A girl there was very upset, her parents were divorcing and she desparately needed her father to hear her worries and concerns, but didn't know how to get that conversation started. My son suggested a very straight forward "Dad I need you to hear what is worrying me." The girl turned to him and said "That would work for you Chad, you are adopted!" I was shocked when he told me the story. He absolutely accepted that that was true, and that the adopted child is chosen and always the center of the family. What was interesting is that the other kids present agreed with the girl, some were adopted and some were not. I wonder if perhaps as kids get to be teenagers and see normal families come apart in divorce, if they notice that the adopted kids are likely to have a more stable life.
I would suggest that the incidence of unwanted children is drasticly different in baby adoption vs adoption from foster care. Parents can be severe flakes.
"Chosen"
I think there is no unwanted child and in my soul the child chooses the parent, not the other way around. I adopted from birth and as a foster parent. My children are very close. From them I learned in their hearts they are best friends and siblings forever.
I divorced and my children were glad. In my own case, my biological parents divorced and I celebrated and was so happy with the thought they would both still live.
A "normal" family exists in fairy tales. If there is such a thing as "normal", it would probably apply to less than 10% of the population!!!
My children have been raised to know of their origins. Both have healthy attitudes. I felt it was my chidren's right to know about themselves. In fact, I once asked when they knew they were adopted and their reply was "I've always known."
Maybe that young woman was just trying to qualify her own feelings of abandonment. Bet I'm right. Adoptees have normal teenage feelings just like the biological children. Hopefully, you will talk with your child and have a discussion, especially listening to him. And....you are right, parents can be severe flakes....
You show your care just by posting your concern.
I forgot to tell you.
1. When my first child was born (without knowing about her birth, I experienced the "labor" and it stopped the moment she was born.
2. My elderly aunt taught me a poem, which my children had recited to them as long as I can remember. This is the poem:
"Not flesh of my flesh,
Nor bone of my bone.
Never forget for a single minute,
You didn't grow under my heart,
But in it"
3. When my daughter was about 13 or 14 and being a typical teen, she was angry with me (for whatever reason). She told me, "Well, you're not my REAL mother anyway. The Irish temper must have emerged and I verbally told her I was the one who loved her, diapered her, worked for her (I don't remember all of the statements)....took care of her when she was sick and comforted her. I just spoke so fast she could not have interjected a word. My daughter just looked at me after my verbal tirade. A huge smile came to her face!!! She walked to her room, saying, "I know, mom." It sure took the wind out of my angry sail!!
have to explain something
When I indicated I did not know about her birth (the date), we knew a child was coming, but did not know the due date. On the date of her birth, I experienced birth pains like labor. My daughter loves to hear the story about "Tell me when I was born, mom."
I've heard that experience is not unique to an adoptive mother. She is the only child who seems to have no interest in locating her birth parent. I have always been very open to helping her, but she says, "You're my mom." If I bring up the subject of locating biological information, she just shrugs her shoulders and walks away. Ironically she has also named some of her children after my family. I did pick the middle name of her daughter. It turns out the name is my paternal grandmother's middle name and the name of her mother-in-law. Didn't realize or know it at the time.
Her name is a derivative of another english name. Once I asked her if she liked her name. Her reply was, "Oh, yes, but sometimes I call myself________" (and she used the english derivative which just happened to be the name of my own aunt who had died before I was born.
I love the poem, "There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun."
I do not envy your going through the teenage years!! Once one of my children said, "Mom, remember when I was 13?" Oh God, what a difficult time. She added, "I don't think you liked me very much then." Had to honestly admit I did not like her behavior, but I always loved her.
Heck when we had problems we could not work out, "to counseling we would go!". It was hard to find an objective person as I am in the same field. At any rate, we went because my daughter said, "If you don't let me_____ (whatever). I'll kill myself. The counselor questioned my decision in front of my children.
As I was walking out of the office, I turned around and went back to tell the counselor, "I'm the parent. My final decision is not negotiable. Yes, she might make an attempt and if so, I will hope to get her to emergency services, and then she might have to be placed into a therapeutic environment. On the other hand, if I give into this threat. she might threaten me with other issues, i.e., money, a car, allowing her to do whatever she wants. I also told my daughter she could not "extort" from me. She never made any type of attempt. Maybe it was just one of those things teens do.
Oh, funny story. When they would pull a "stunt" with friends, their friends usually got "grounded" seemingly for an eternity. They'd ask my children if they were "grouned" too. When they acknowledged they'd been "grounded", their friends (who were grounded from 1 to 6 months or longer) would ask. "How long?". Their response was most often. "One day." Their friends would say, "One day, that's nothing.". The reply was, "Well, you've never been grounded for one day by our mother!" Grounding included getting them up at 6 am (I worked 2 jobs too), having them work their behinds until about 6 pm. The tasks depended on outside or inside due to weather. They are good organizers and workers to this day.
I am going to share an idea with you. Several years ago, I got rather nostalgic about my life with my children. My ambition was to write a book about our life in the family. I knew it would take me years to complete, so instead I wrote "titles" which would trigger the memories. I have 14 pages of titles!! I asked my daughters if the titles evoked memories. They laughed and laughed and ironically our memories were very close, with a few minor exceptions.
Our life has not been without the worst of tragedies and losses, but we keep going. Something just occurred to me. Maybe you should share with your son how you felt. He needs to know you don't have all the answers, but he does expect you do. Just be real with him.
information regarding adoption and birth certificates
One of my adopted children, adopted by me as a single parent, gave me the go-ahead to find her birth father. He was located. Her birth certificate was amended to include her birth father. According to my daughter, when she went to Court with her father, she was told her birth mother had to be on the certificate. My daughter insisted that my name only be listed as her mother and her birth certificate reflects me as the mother and her biological father as the father.
A friend and I had a heated discussion because she felt the biological mother should have been listed. The birth mother was deprived of her birth child. I just told my friend the birth certificate lists "mother", not referring to biological parentage. What other information could I get to explain I am her mother and her only mother? My daughter happens to be in the medical profession and graduated with honors!!!! I am so proud. Whenever issues of education, history, health, etc. occurred it was amazing to learn the knowledge she had. Her stock answer was and is to this day, "Well, mother, you raised me!"
Great post. Really got me
Great post. Really got me thinking. I wouldn't have guessed that is what kids think adoption is all about. It would break my heart to hear my girls think of themselves (or others) as unwanted.
I would love to "hear" your conversation with the boy after he told you what he thought adoption was.
I haven't had the opportunity to have these conversations with kids as my girls are very young, but I know they are coming. I would love to hear ways to help kids understand and for our children to be ok with it.
Thanks