Thoughts on Adoptees and Narratives

I was thinking a few days ago about the power of narratives, both the metanarrative of the adoption-positive culture we live in and the narratives of the movement for adoption reform.

November is National Adoption Month, which means that all members of the triad are out sharing opinions and ideas about this crazy practice that we call adoption. The loudest voices, those of adoptive parents, dominate the adoption-positive narrative. Often viewed as the saviors in the adoption triad because of their heroic efforts of provide children homes, they've helped to construct a narrative that’s become hegemonic in scope. Its important to critique this narrative, as it is swallowed so uncritically and readily that there are few spaces where adoptees can even suggest that there might be some problems with adoption as it is currently practiced without drawing vitrolic backlash.

I’m proud to say that more than a few adoptees have taken to social media to share their stories under the hashtag #flipthescript. #Flipthescript means to call attention to adoptee voices, many of whom directly challenge the adoption-happy narrative that the rest of the world seems to want us to accept as a personal truth. Adoptees who post about adoption reform are indeed “flipping the script,” when they argue that their voices should be taken seriously and given greater space in debates about adoption.

There is currently no shortage of people ready to tell adoptees how to feel about their adoptions. Even in adoptee circles, debates about whether adoption is ultimately a force for good or an instrument of destruction continue to rage, not only in the month of November, but in daily interactions between adoptees. These two polarized viewpoints often clash in public forums about adoption and pit adoptees against each other in a weird emotional competition of who can feel the happiest or most anguished about their adoptions.

On one hand, there are many adoptees who seem to follow the dominant narrative and are happy about their adoptions. In real life, I've met adoptees who reproduce (as we social scientists would say) the dominant adoptive narrative of adoption as a social good and as a winning situation for everyone. They insist with all seriousness that they have nothing but joy and gratitude towards both their birth and adoptive parents. These adoptees often refer to their adoptive parents as their “real” parents and discuss their adoptions in glowing terms. Many claim that they’re very happy with their adoptive families and reject any suggestions that their birth families could have done better.

This adoption narrative often creates an emotional straitjacket for adoptee, as it insists that adoptees feel nothing but love and gratitude to their parents after being “saved.” Some adoptees find it empowering, as it turns what would otherwise be a tragic story into one of joy and hope. Nevertheless, it gives very little space to anyone who might critically question its validity or feel pain or trauma.

On the other side are adoptees who advocate for change to current adoption practices, who often refer to themselves as being “out of the fog,” when they reach a point where they begin to examine critically what, exactly, adoption means to them. Those seen as being “in the fog,” those adoptees who see no need for reform or refuse to search, for example, are assumed to be laboring in a state of massive denial, a state of false consciousness, or a type of Stockholm syndrome. Adoption fog often frustrates adoption refomers who think that they've seen the light about the inner workings of the adoption machine and they often seek to bring this knowledge to others and bring them “out of the fog” where they can see clearly. The logic is more or less that if enough adoptees could agree on the need for reform, we could finally succeed in overturning those frustrating closed record laws and advocate for children in a better way.

This alternative narrative does indeed give voice to a subordinate discourse about adoption and its this voice that adoptees seek to highlight in the #flipthescript campaign. Positive thinking about adoption is still the norm, so this is the minority viewpoint for now. Although it is a critical [and very necessary] narrative to larger debates about adoption, the narratives of adoption as pain are still limiting and prescribing that adoptees follow this script. Adoptee reformers often repeat to non-adoptees, “Listen to adoptee voices,” over and over again, but what do we make of adoptees who refuse to acknowledge the existence of a primal wound? Of those who don’t fit our pre-made narrative of pain and rage? What if adoptees happy about adoption are actually happy about adoption?

I in no way mean to denigrate or detract from the very important work that adoptee reform advocates do or the narrative that they've created. I’m personally skeptical of the happiness narrative, as I think there has to be some big wounded parts in every adoptee, even if they’re not cognizant of their pain yet. I am interested, however, in the idea that in creating a counter-narrative of the Adoption Rainbow story, we've painted ourselves into a rhetorical corner. In flipping the script, have we created a mirror image of the original problems of the happiness narrative? In demanding that everyone come “out of the fog,” and insisting that everyone must feel traumatized and awful about their adoptions deep down, are we not creating the same type of emotional straitjacket that we seek to reject? We’re tired of having people tell us how to feel about our adoptions (e.g. permanent gratitude), but then leave little room for adoptees who don’t feel the same way. We insist that they’re hurting and that we know better. We lecture them about our traumas and struggles, insisting that they must have the same sort of feelings and attacking them when they don’t.

How do we, as adoptees who think that adoption needs some serious reforming, feel about people who refuse to fit our narratives of adoptees as suffering from a primal wound? Have we really just come to a higher state of consciousness about our adoptions and the adoption-industrial complex? Is it possible that there are adoptees who really do feel happy about their adoptions?

If we’re going to lead in the world of adoption reform, we’re going to have to lead by example and listen to those people, too and take their adoptee voices seriously. Their feelings are as valid as ours.

Just thoughts.

On the "re-homing" of dogs and children

A Facebook friend of mine, a serious dog lover, posted a Craiglist ad as her status update today, entitled, “rehoming child to new home. Need gone ASAP!!”

The ad opened with an urgent tone:

“Please help! After two long years of being on a waiting list for an exotic rare breed dog, we were finally notified by the breeder that at long last, our number has come up, and... WE'RE HAVING A PUPPY!

We must IMMEDIATELY get rid of our children now, because we just KNOW how time consuming our new little puppy is going to be! Since our puppy will be arriving on Monday, we MUST place the children in new homes this weekend!!!”

This was then followed by descriptions of the two (presumably) adorable children and dire warnings that if no takers appear, the children will be put to sleep!"

At this point, the ad counts of the fact that readers will be building a sense of outrage and indignation towards cruel people who would so callously re-home their children because of the arrival of some new puppy. What kind of horrible people would do such a thing?

Stand back and prepare to be amazed, dear reader. It turns out that this a ruse!

At the very end of the ad, the author suddenly turns the tables on the unsuspecting reader, announcing in a triumphant voice, that we, in our naivete, have been suckered.

“You wouldn't do this to a child, it's not acceptable to do to an animal! If you can't dedicate 10-15 years to a animal, don't get one. Giving an animal up should be a last resort action, based on unforeseen circumstances beyond your control or ability to change. Animals are not things to be disposed of like a toy that no longer interests your child, a hobby that takes too much time, or a family member that all the sudden is inconvenient.”

Gotcha! People aren't really giving children away, silly! Its an ad that hinges on role reversal between babies and puppies designed to call attention to the fact that plenty of new parents re-home their dogs when they have a new baby. Made you think, huh?

I’m a dog lover myself, but after reading this ad, I felt pretty sick.

The shock and gotcha tactics of this ad only work because of the absurd suggestion that parents would give away their children. Its inconceivable, impossible really, to imagine parents doing such a thing. And yet…

Parents do re-home children.

If you don’t live and breathe in adopto-land, you might never have heard about this. Re-homed children are usually international adoptees. Adoptive parents give away children to total strangers when they feel like they can’t take care of them.

International adoption, which has risen in popularity as domestic adoptions in the U.S. have declined and open adoptions have become the norm, have led to some unexpected consequences.

A series of news reports last year brought this issue to light, noting that love from adoptive parents was often not sufficient in and of itself to overcome the traumas and effects of institutionalization of internationally adopted children. These children often display aggressive and violent behavior towards their adoptive parents and create so many problems that adoptive parents throw up their hands in frustration and give the children away to whoever wants them. There are no home studies, no legal exchange of papers and the children are given to total strangers over the internet. It is buyer’s remorse of the worst kind.

Trading children over the Internet as if they’re animals puts them at great risk for exploitation and harm, a process initiated by the very people who have pledged to protect and care for them. Abandoning a child that one has made a commitment to parent cannot be an easy one, but re-homing should never be the answer.

I really do understand the point that the author of the Craiglist ad was trying to make about re-homing a dog when a new baby comes along. Its breaking a promise to care for and protect that animal during its life time. But let’s be clear here: adopting a child is very different than adopting a dog. Re-homing children is far more egregious than and re-homing a dog. It does a great injustice to conflate one with the other.

You wouldn't do this to a dog, it's not acceptable to do to a child! Gotcha!

On the practice of re-homing adopted children:

LeVine, Marianne. “Advocates for Adopted Children Decry ‘Private Re-Homing.’” Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2014. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-senate-adoption-transfers-20140709-story.html.

Twohey, Megan. “The Child Exchange: Inside America’s Underground Market for Adopted Children.” Reuters Investigates, September 9, 2013. http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1. 

Adoptee Triggers: Baby Shower Edition

I'm gradually working my way towards the age in which I won't have a choice anymore about whether to have children. A fair number of my friends, however, are right in the middle of the having babies years of their lives.  At one point I had six friends who were all pregnant at the same time (no, they don't know each other).  SIX.

The further I go on my journey thinking about adoption and what it means to me, the more I find things that trigger massive emotional reactions and overreactions to what should be minor, normal things in my life.  Did those six pregnant people trigger me?  Yeah.  Oh, yeah, they did.

They triggered me because hearing all of the happy news about my friends' pregnancies and their growing families brought up my own sense of loss and a deep sadness.  Having a baby should be a joyous moment, but in my life, my birth was surrounded by shame, secrecy, and loss. I don't know how my original mother felt when she found out she was pregnant, but given the fact that I'm adopted, its hard to imagine that she felt joy. [I picture her sometimes squinting at the double blue line on a pregnancy test and thinking, "Fuck. Now what?"]  She was so not overjoyed about my birth that she had to go to another state to give birth and was so not overjoyed that she told no one that she'd had a baby.  She was apparently so not overjoyed that she had a baby that she had to give that baby away to strangers.

Knowing that no one was happy or excited about me being born makes it hard to hear about other people's babies and feel genuinely happy for them.  When the sixth friend told me she was pregnant, I cried.  I cried for the fact that my birth was so shameful for my mother. I cried because no one gave her a beautiful baby shower when she was pregnant with me. I cried because no one congratulated her on her pregnancy.  I cried because she felt like she had to give away her baby.  I cried because there are no artsy photos of me as a newborn.  Its just all so fucking sad sometimes.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Its not about me and why can't I get over it and what's wrong with me that I can't be happy for other people and why do I always have to ruin everything?  I am happy that people are blessed with their new babies and families, but can't out run the huge sense of loss and sadness that creeps up every time I find out that someone else in my life is having a baby that won't be given away.  I get compound guilt on top of the loss and sadness, feeling like a terrible and self-centered friend because all I can think about is my own sad history.

I haven't found a good way to heal or control this reaction yet, so in the meantime, I'm staying away from baby showers.  I just can't make myself go.  I send a gift and a card instead and make up some excuse about why I can't go.  Selfish?  Possibly.  Essential for my health and well-being?  Definitely.

These aren't triggers I ever expected to have.  Every time I think that I've found everything that triggers me, there's something bigger that triggers an even deeper emotional reaction. I'm healing, I think.

Surrogacy and Birth Certificates

At times, I think we're living in the future.  Crazy technologies exist that people couldn't have possibly imagined fifty years ago are now parts of daily life that we don't even consider. Our embrace of new technologies sometimes outpaces our willingness to think about the long term consequences of the application of all kinds of new technologies.

New reproductive technologies have allowed many people who would not have been able to have their own children to have children to parent.  It is an extremely touchy topic these days, particularly in the context of an increasing number of states recognizing the legality of gay marriage and adoption.  

[Standard adoptee disclaimers apply: I don't hate my parents, I don't hate gay parents, I don't hate anyone's parents, etc etc etc.]

The adoptee community has been up in arms about gay civil liberties issues because the enfranchisement of gay couples as legitimate legal families has immediate consequences for issues of adoption.  It is very hard to write about and analyze the critical intersections of between LBGTQ civil rights and adoption without sounding homophobic. [For the record, I'm a supporter of LBGTQ civil rights.  Greater civil rights for everyone can only be a good thing.] It would never be my intention to come across as insensitive to the very real issues that gay couples face in their efforts to secure their own civil rights, but my fear is that in their own struggles to secure legal rights, gay couples are participating in the oppression of adoptee rights.  

Being recognized as legal family has huge implications for gay couples who have long been denied basic civil liberties and rights that heterosexual couples enjoy: the right to a legally recognized marriage, the right to spousal benefits in the workplace, the right to parent.  Its this last point that has the adoption community up in arms.  The fears are these:

First, that the increased number of legally recognized married couples unable to have their own children [for whatever reason] is going to lead to a greater number of adoptions.   The fear here is that gay couples will want to adopt newborns.  Adoptee rights activists have been trying to decrease the number of newborn adoptions for years now, pointing out that newborn adoptions should be an absolute last resort.  Adoption should only exist to provide homes for children who need them, not for parents who want them. [See the post about the Cheerios commercial.] There is some evidence that gay couples tend to adopt children from foster care, as well as the children considered more difficult to place for adoption.  Adoptee rights activists would love nothing more than for gay parents to adopt foster care kids [who really genuinely do need homes].  We just don't want an increased demand for newborns to increase the already gargantuan size of the current multi-billion dollar adoption-industrial complex.

Second, new reproductive technologies like sperm banks and surrogates are making actual biological reproduction for gay couples a possibility and raising issues about the effects of these technologies on the lives of the children created as a result of their use. Reproductive technologies sound like great news, but there are some very real fears that the demand for these technologies in the pursuit of the creation of children on demand will lead to some very serious ethical problems.  Just recently came this story about a Thai surrogate who opted to keep a Down's syndrome baby twin after refusing the request of the biological parents that she abort. Renting the uteruses of poor women in developing countries preys on the poverty of women in places like Thailand and essentially turns them into breeding cows to create children on demand for cash. Its worrisome that surrogacy is now being marketed as a normal way to start a family.  Sperm banks are no better, as their confidentiality policies leave children without any links to fully half of their biological information and leave them in the same place as adoptees in terms of access to information about themselves.  

Third, the issue of amended birth certificates is the absolutely most sore point about gay adoption and the one that has outraged the adoptee rights community.  The problem is that in their desire to establish their own civil rights, gay adoptive parents are adding support and weight to one of the most despised parts of the entire adoption process: the amended birth certificate.  As most adoptive parents, gay parents want their own names on the amended birth certificate instead of the biological parents' names in their efforts to establish legal parentage.  The adoptee rights community has been fighting for years to halt the mutilation of the birth certificates of adopted people and it is disheartening and disappointing to see gay parents continue to demand that birth certificates be filled with false information that does not reflect the child's biological truth.  If I had one thing to say to potential gay adoptive parents, it would be this: PLEASE HELP STOP THE PRACTICE OF AMENDED BIRTH CERTIFICATES RATHER THAN DEMAND THE LEGAL FALSIFICATION OF THE BIRTH CERTIFICATES OF ADOPTED PEOPLE.  EVERYONE DESERVES TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT THEIR ORIGINS.

The massive ethical problems that arise from the use of new reproductive technologies to create children for families who want them are not new to adoptees.  The adoptee rights community has been talking about this for a long time.  The people who are going to bear the brunt of consequences of these ethical issues are, of course, the children involved.

Adoptees and Amended Birth Certificates In Ireland

Despite the fact that genealogy is one of the most popular national hobbies, its a difficult sport to participate in if you happen to be adopted.  People love discussing families, origins, immigration stories, and making family trees.  These activities are considered trivial concerns for adoptees, who aren't supposed to care about the details of DNA, blood, medical history, genealogy, family roots or origins.

Irish adoptees were back in the news this morning, with the Daily Mirror reporting that nearly 60,000 Irish adoptees have no legal rights to information about their own identities or histories.  The article reports that because Irish adoptees are forbidden from obtaining their original birth certificates, they face considerable obstacles in finding their "real" parents.  [Side note: the article headline really did say, "real parents." Cue the predictable backlash.]  Some adoptees, the Mirror reports, have had their birth certificates forged, making searching for their biological families that much harder.

I don't know if in Ireland adopted people are subject to the same type of legal falsification (read: forgery) as adoptees in the United States, but it wouldn't surprise me.  Despite public pretenses of adoption as a wholly positive event, it is still shrouded in secrecy and the birth certificates  of adopted children are routinely mutilated in order to make the child appear legally as if born to the adopted parents.  Even today with "open" adoptions being the norm, childrens' birth certificates are regularly changed to hide other people's identities and histories and proclaim new ownership as if a birth certificate was somehow as malleable and temporary as a car title.

Secrecy and the legal fictions necessary to create a new family start the snowball of lies that continue to torment adoptees.  The very foundations of our lives have been fictionalized--is it any wonder that so many of us struggle with questions of identity?  I read recently on an adoptive parent blog that adoptive parents should make sure to write down and document their "adoption journey" so that they could share this history with the child someday.  I hope that someday adoptive parents understand that their child's story is different than their own.  My personal story didn't start with my legal parents--it started it very different circumstances that I was never supposed to care about or want to know.  

The shaky foundations of secrecy and lies that built the modern practice of adoption are part of the reason that its so hard now to reverse sealed record laws and restore adoptees' legal access to their own information.  A healthy sense of self can't be built on lies and neither can a legal institution that's supposed to be devoted to the welfare of children.  We deserve nothing less than honesty, openness, and transparency in order to combat the shame and secrecy of earlier eras that resulted in unjust and unfair laws.

Primate Maternal Deprivation Experiments

Among the many things that Google sends me alerts for, news about non- human primates seems to generate the greatest number of posts. When I originally set up this news alert, I thought that I'd get periodic conservation stories and occasional feel-good news about chimpanzee retirement. This was not to be because of two interesting and interrelated factors I've learned:

1. Non-human primates are often in the news 
2. Non-human primates are often the center of great controversy

Today's news, brought to us by the website Isthmus, has to do with proposed maternal deprivation experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  If you aren't already up-to-date on non-human primate research history, UW was also the university where psychology Harry Harlow conducted his experiments to measure love and attachment on monkeys in order to evaluate the nature of the maternal bond.  Harlow's research was, and still is, quite controversial.  At its worst, it subjected baby monkeys to extreme psychological damage from which they never recovered.  Harlow's experiments, nonetheless, yielded some important findings; namely, his research showed that the maternal bond between a mother and infant is about more than just a physiological need for food.  Mothers, Harlow discovered, play a crucial role in the psychological and emotional well-being of their young. Today, this sounds like a complete no-brainer [and clearly, Harlow never interviewed actual, you know, mothers], but at the time, this was quite revolutionary thinking.  This research helped to destroy the popular idea that children shouldn't be touched or nurtured, lest they become spoiled and needy, as well as called into question the conventional wisdom that dictated the institutionalization of orphaned children.  Most importantly, Harlow's research indicated that children need families, and specifically, nurturing from the mother, in order to flourish.

Fast forward to today. UW is still in the non-human primate research biz, despite the fact that non-human primates are being retired and the validity of experiments with them and their applications to humans are being called into question.  UW's latest experiment involves, 

"...[the removal of] 20 newborn rhesus monkeys from their mothers, give them anxiety-inducing tests for a year, and kill them along with another 20 infant monkeys used as a control group. The researchers hope to learn more about how trauma and stress early in life affect emotional development in humans -- and how it can be treated."

Killing baby monkeys in the name of science has provoked a strong outcry from the UW community. Several people have also questioned the ethical issues surrounding the intentional creation of depression and anxiety in the animals for the purpose of developing medications to treat these conditions.  The loudest outcry seems to revolve around the issue of taking the monkeys away from their mothers at birth.

So here's my question: if we, as a society, recognize the inherent ethical issues of removing baby monkeys from their mothers, why do we not extend that recognition to human children?  Human children get removed from their mothers at birth all the time as part of the adoption machine and I've yet to hear an equal outcry.  If we can recognize the psychological dangers and potential damages to breaking the maternal bond in animals, why do we refuse to consider that removing baby children from their mothers at birth creates trauma and ruptures the maternal bond that's important for normal psychological development?  Instead of raising ethical issues, society assumes that children removed from their natural families and placed with strangers should be full of joy and gratitude and grow up like their peers raised with their natural families.

Here's some news: getting a new family doesn't make the trauma and loss of the original somehow easier to cope with.  Remember the monkey experiments?  Removing babies from their mothers at the moment of birth [or any time, really] causes psychological harm.  If we can recognize the ethical issues and potential for psychological problems in non-human primates as a result of removing baby monkeys from their mothers, we should be able to draw similar conclusions about doing the same to human children.

End.

The Cheerios Effect: André, Jonathan & Raphaëlle’s Story

Its things like this that can put me right over the edge on an otherwise quiet Friday night.  I confess, I was bewitched by this video: the story is touching, the little girl is adorable beyond words, and they appear to be a happy and beautiful family.  I'm haunted by the part where one of the men mentions the tension during the period when Raphaelle could, "go back in her biological family." The message is pretty clear here: adoption is a socially acceptable way to build families for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to have children of their own. Furthermore, the ad implies that this little girl is much better off with this set of parents than her original family.

[Standard adoptee disclaimers apply here:  I do not hate my adoptive parents.  I do not hate adoptive families.  I strongly support gay parenthood.  I am not angry.  I don't have a miserable life. Etc.etc.etc.]

However, I beg marketers with all of the civility that I'm capable of: please stop using adoption stories to sell products.

This isn't the first instance of hawking a happy adoption story to sell consumers some new stuff along with their shiny new babies.  Remember the awful Kay Jewelers ad? The majority of the outrage about the Kay Jewelers ad came from adoptive parents angry that the ad glossed over their painful realities [and possibly brought home the reality that adoption is a financial as much as an emotional transaction?].  The ad angered adoptees as well, who astutely noted that the ad never so much as mentions the actual adoptee [who, as the standard narrative dictates, never has a voice]. The ad also failed to say anything about the baby's biological family, presumably because biological families are so eager and happy to dump inconvenient children into the arms of total strangers and then run.  Badvertising, all the way around that pissed off adoptive parents, adoptees, and first parents in less than thirty seconds.  Way to go, Kay Jewelers!

Perhaps learning from the Kay Jewelers uproar, this ad takes a different tact--we're touched by the love story between the two men and their love for their adopted daughter is palpable. Its a more tolerable ad because of its approach. We're pulled along by the tangible emotion here.  Nevertheless, its still using happy adoption stories to sell products.

Adoptees are people with individual stories.  Some of them are blessed with happy stories. Some of them have sad stories.  In the diverse [and often divided] community of adoptees can't speak for anyone but myself, but I resent having adoption stories used in this way.  It looks to me like just another happy story that covers a whole host of things about adoption that we'd rather not think about: race, class, financial transactions, broken families, the infamous adoptee issues, shame, guilt, lies, and secrets.  And that's just for starters.

It is quite socially unacceptable these days to criticize gay adoption, but its important to think about whose interests are being served and for what purpose.  I've seen a lot of angry stuff coming out of the adoption community in the past few years about the rights of gay parents to adopt, to the point where one might be tempted to think that the rights of gay parents and adoptees are incompatible. It is frustrating as an adopted person to watch the civil rights struggles of some groups of people surpass those of the children whose best interests are supposed to be at the center of adoption.  Its heartbreaking to watch a new wave of adoptive parents insist on their names on the amended birth certificate instead of insisting on legislative changes that would preserve the information on the original birth certificate of adoptees.

But this post isn't about gay parenting.  This is about using adoption stories as marketing ploys to sell products.  In our adoption-centric world, this is probably a marketing strategy that will succeed.  Nevertheless, by over-dramatizing the happy parts of adoption in order to sell Cheerios, it continues to trivialize the voices of adoptees and their very real pain and struggles.  We're people, not marketing tools.  Our stories are ours.