I was walking across the street this morning, as I am wont to do, walk and streets and such is life. I put my foot down upon the asphalt from the safety of the curb while the walk sign chirped at me. This thought came into my head, “better for children or better for the child?” in regard to adoption.
I have often said on this blog that I prefer to be adopted rather than being raised in foster care, rather than being with a family that had no personal investment in me. For sure, I still feel that way. While some people love to paint me as anti-adoption, which I am not, and they say that because they are cruel beings from the Planet Bad-Hair.
You really have no idea the damage you have created
Being adopted benefited me personally in a way I believe. I mean if my option was to be raised in indifference vs. being raised in a family that cared about me personally and expected a return on investment and therefore was invested in me being a healthy whole human, yes adoption benefited me. My personal reality was that my natural family was perfectly capable of raising me, had they not bought into the myths of adoption and I would have had a trust fund, which I did not have being adopted out, in a reality where I am still paying off student loans. That had the myth of adoption not been trotted out as a given to my natural fam-fam, I would not have to deal with any of this because they did have the means and the ways.
If they were the type of folk that just didn’t care and sent me to suffer in care despite that, I would have suffered. In regard of my own personal difficulty, I was adopted, so for me to say I wish I wasn’t is so unpalatable, yes I wish my identity wasn’t destroyed, yes I wish I could be one person instead of split into a geode of selves but I don’t know that life and I love the people I do know. All of them.
No, at the same time I cling to my love of all the people in my life, I don’t wish this division on anyone. Not even MAC. Well maybe MAC and Jessica, no kidding, not even on them and all their smuggy-smugness, well maybe just a little so they would stop being so smuggy. So they would stop having all the answers that they cannot even begin to fathom for adoptees. It is complicated to say the least.
So I was making out with my boyfriend BigFoot, oh kidding, see how bitter I am about being ridiculed for the most painful experience of my life? If I was a beer I would be called ESB which stands for Extra-Special-Bitter, okay not losing sight of what this post is about.
Adoption may be better for one particular child but is it better for children? Okay for someone like me, as painful as this is to say, and unless you are an adoptee with a good relationship with your adoptive parents you have no fucking idea how painful this is to say, without the bullshit of adoption I would never have been adopted. My adoption was unnecessary, and no if you are not in my position you cannot even fathom how painful that knowledge is, I mean there is no happy resolution. I don’t have the luxury of villains in my life. That sucks ass.
The devil is not in the details the devil is in the ambiguity.
Don’t ever underestimate how necessary villains are.
I do not mean to discount those that had real villains in their lives, my afather did not molest me, I am really not trying to say my difficulty is greater, but my difficulty is more ambiguous. I know lots of esp. female adoptees who were seen as fair game for sexual experimentation, is that even the right words? Up for grabs is more like, not really blood so just a fun-hole to experiment with. Yes that makes me angry. Which brings me back to my original point, is adoption good for the child or good for children?
If we take children in the aggregate, like my era, like what is called the Baby-Scoop-Era, but only really as it relates to United States domestic adoption. Because we continued to baby-scoop just when we let women in the U.S have more control we continued to baby-scoop just in foreign lands, I mean the Baby-Scoop-Era is really a misnomer we just scooped with a farther reaching spoon.
So back to taking children in the aggregate, if we failed to reach our far-reaching spoon around the world what would happen? Would children be better off? Less children would be trafficked to be sure, those that really wanted to help children like so many Paps and APs esp. of the Christian persuasion who are so called by God to eat the last piece of pizza and gain so much praise by adopting an orphan, what would happen if they couldn’t gain that praise?
If they had to gain that praise by helping a family stay together? If they had to gain that praise by providing love and support to an orphanage? If they had to gain that praise from the much needed support to the BigBrothers/BigSisters community in their own neighborhood? Oh but they may be matched with domestic black kids, how unexotic.
What if it wasn’t about gaining praise at all?
What if it was about helping children? If it was about helping children we wouldn’t hear these ridiculous comments from adoptoraptors about how they are saving these particular children; we would be hearing comments from adoptoraptors that didn’t say things like : “I saved this child from a flea-infested orphanage” We would hear comments like “I sent that orphanage money for a flea-bomb” Because with adoption there is an investment to not care about the child, to care about the parents, and de facto not care about the children.
Adoption destroys the best interest of the “children” which would include the undesirables.
Your comments are swirling in my head. How to change ideas of what is in the best interest of children – they are so ingrained – they make people feel good and righteous. The ambiguity of it all is spot on – what ifs lead you down a path that never ever has a happily ever after ending for everyone. Like Sophie’s choice – that is adoption.
I’m glad somebody else agrees BSE is a total misnomer. I don’t like that phrase because for a couple of reasons. It suggests there was an era and now it’s over. No it’s not. The other reason I have a problem with it is the fact that the term originated with the literal scooping of native children. (I thought it only referred to Canada but maybe it was the US too. Our situations were not good but theirs were a whole other terrible thing.
You said your “natural family bought into the adoption myth”. Let’s be honest, there are many bmothers how DO NOT want to raise their child/children. For many of them, another mother to feel is too much (which I think is a crappy reason to place your child) or in some cases, the child isn’t the bmom’s husband or the bfather is married. Please stop blaming adoption as the reason why women place and portraying them as “victims of the adoption industry”. For many of them, adoption was their out from the responsibilities of parenthood.
Your comment is very convoluted and I am not sure I understand it. My natural family bought into the adoption myth. Many did. Why do you think the percentage of American women giving away their babies has changed so drastically? Do you think 20 years later in 1987 women have changed that much or have social mores?
You are correct that there are people who really do not want their kids the blogosphere is full of them women who write about how they would have been or are to the kids they did want “great moms” but the particular child they gave away they didn’t want at the moment of conception is one of the more unique reasons I read, or the child is black, or the mom wants to party, or the dad just doesn’t want to be inconvenienced. I would actually put my nfather in the latter category. When I said my nfamily I was referring to my maternal side, my paternal side didn’t really buy into it. My paternal grandmother wanted my father to marry my mother just to give me a name and have the marriage annulled later, my mother preferred to give me away to that option. There are those as you pointed out that do not want their children, but they are not the norm they are not average, they are the few and far between where something has gone haywire in their brains
BRAVO!!! Right on target! How have I missed you blog until now?
“My adoption was unnecessary, and no if you are not in my position you cannot even fathom how painful that knowledge is, I mean there is no happy resolution. I don’t have the luxury of villains in my life. That sucks ass.”
Would you consider focusing your anger on the myths as the enemy? On all who sspread the myths that convinced your family they weren’t old enough or rich enough; that you “deserved” “better”???
How about focusing your anger on all UNNECESSARY adoptions? On permanent solutions for temporary problems and on overkill in terms of eradicating all that went before; the lack of any necessity to wipe the slate clean and pretend the child was “as if” born into the new family with a falsified birth certificate signed, sealed and delivered to prove the lie!? And that goes just as well for the necessary adoptions.
Yes, there are mothers who do not want their children or are simply incapable of providing safely for their children. But is enough effort being placed on finding extended kin for them who are capable and willing? Are those extended family members being given resources they need – like tax credits or subsidies? And when all else fails, please someone tell me how it is ever in any child’s – or children’s’ – best interest to deny them their truth, whatever that may be?
As Unfinished said, I have ALWAYS disliked the misnomer of setting a specific time and place to babies being scooped when they most certainly still are! Adoption is an endless war, there is no VD day! It’s not over until we change the mind-sets, the myths that are driven and spoon fed by the insatiable adoption industry. There’s a monster, a VILLAIN, a real evil to despise!
I hate every person who profits in any way – financially or via some power trip or even just basks in the glow of self-righteousness for redistributing children. I hate the entitled. I hate the ignorant who disbelieve the truth that children are stolen every day to meet orders. Villains all, conspiring against the sanctity of family to recreate new ones out of the destroyed shards of those they have wantonly torn asunder – playing god. I despise them as I do all who harm children. Why is it wrong to to?
Yes, I pity them as well for they know not what they do. They refuse to see or hear the truth calling it rants of the bitter or cries of the ubba liberal media. Even UNICEF gets put into that category! I depise them with a side order of pity as I do pedophiles because just as pedophiles are convinced that they child victims want them, those who gain from adoption – personally or indirectly – are fully convinced that they are saving and rescuing children from lives of squalor on the streets or in orphanages or whatever…The industry pumps out lies and those in need and want to believe, believe. Plenty of villains to go around!
I rage with anger at evil, villainous adoption because my daughter was unnecessarily adopted and is unnecessary DEAD!
Mirah Riben
I am sorry for what happened to your daughter that must be so awful and sadly as you know, your story is far too often repeated.
I use the energy my anger creates to work for equal access and supporting the hurt adoptee.
PS I see no way to contact you. Would you please contact me?
You also brought up another issue….all the divisiveness. The “if you’re not with us you’re agin’ us” mentality. The labeling among and between us which reminds me of the levels of blackness within the afro-American community….or my Jewish friends and relatives who have called me pro-Palestine in evil hisses because I am not pro-Israel “enough” to suit them, i.e. pro-Israel right or wrong (or, more accurately, never seeing anything Israel does as wrong).
Just being not “pro” something no matter what, does not make me anti-it!
And, no, I do not believe that MOST adoptions are good and there are a few bad apples that are the anomalies. I do not believe that adoption just needs to be “ethical” and all is honkey dory with it! I believe the corruption is endemic to its nature and it is far too under-controlled and out of control. And I believe in the inherent worth of a naturally existing mother-child bond that should not be broken without really good cause no more than marriages should end in divorce without good cause. One doesn’t have to buy into any pop psychology or theories to know that separations and loss is something to be avoided! That some of us deal with those losses with more palpable pain closer to the surface and others of us hide it denial or develop better coping mechanisms does not change the fact that it is best not to cause the harm. Why do we need the divisiveness of labeling the negative effects of separating mothers and babies as crackpot theory and then pitting believers and non-believers against one another? Does that mean that some of us are PRO separating mothers and babies?! Is it good for children…or harmless? Innocuous?
I AM stand-up, PROUDLY, ANTI unnecessary adoption and ANTI lies and secrets in adoption and ANTI falsified birth certificates and ANTI corruption and exploitation, and those who are not should be ashamed! I have not one ounce of shame at being angry at those tragic atrocities. I think adoption is good for some who want children. I think adoption – AS IT IS CURRENTLY PRACTICED IN THE U.S. – is NOT good for ANY child or children.
YET…having said all that does not mean that I am unaware there ARE mother swho do not want their children no matter how much help they are offered. I already addressed that perviously. It means we need to scrap everything as it currently exists and restart from the ground up a child and family centered practice of alternative care that meets the needs of the few truly unwanted children and not adults who want to own and posses them, and does not use them to “cure” infertility or as replacement children. It uses them for nothing but rather helps meet THEIR unique needs in the best way possible without trading off their old family for a new one. Without obliterating their past for the hope of some magical brand spanking new future.
The more we allow and accept the erosion of mother/child bond, the closer we move to a world in which wombs are replaced with machinery and wealthy narcissists simply clone themselves (as they already do their pets) and the underclass slaves are sterilized.