Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Oh the Drama!

Everyone wants someone to blame. It's easy for adoptees to blame adoption, their a-parent's high expectations or the agencies "ripping them away" from their "real" parents. It's easy to blame anyone else for problems they have.

Who do biological children have to blame? their parents? School officials? bad relatives? sheesh....the blame game in this country is out of hand. Some adoptees live in a fantasy world were everything would be okay if you were only with their "real parents".....but guess what? They have problems too....everyone does.

I guess it's nice to have a beef...something to complain about, a cause to fight for. Why can't people use it in a more positive way and save children who live in poverty by getting mad enough to collect money to put in a well in their village, help children that are homeless...or something noble....not wasting time fighting against children being adopted into loving families.

I read some of these blogs and it's almost humorous how these people bash even their own a-parents "they couldn't get a baby in the 'natural way' so they had to adopt"....that's bashing your own a-parents - sad.

They like to say aparents are selfish? I guess it's selfish for anyone to have a baby...shame on all parents for being selfing and planning a pregnancy....who is it for? are they having a baby for the baby's sake? At least people who adopt have the baby in mind....not just themselves.

If adoptees are not looked at as grown ups or not listened to...it's not because they are adoptees - there is obviously something wrong in that relationship - either the adoptee is not worth listening to or the aparents are not very good parents --why blame adoption?

Adoptees blaming adoption for everything wrong in their life? Sometimes their own bad adoption may be to blame, I will concede that there are bad agencies and there are unscoupulous a-parents who just want a "trophy baby"...I've seen it. But how many fit this scenerio?? Come on.

I know of a couple here that have been asked to adopt a ten year old because the parents in California don't have time for him anymore (they are a doctor and a lawyer with great careers) so they were going to put him in foster care. They told this family if they adopt him they would give them $1000 a month to take care of him.....it made me so sad. That's a case of supreme selfishness....

When bad things happen and people have problems, take it for what it's worth - life. Yes, you may be adopted, you may live with your biological parents, you may have been brought up in foster care.....your life is yours and it's all about choices.....don't blame anyone for things that you can do something about today.

5 comments:

BB Church said...

"Adoption" is too big a term to easily fit in the parameters set for it by the militantly unhappy.. or the militantly happy. Your tone is celebratory. While adoption may be family building, it is also family destroying, there can't be the one without the other. For every mother that gains a child through adoption, another mother loses her child, and even in the best of circumstances this is the stuff of tragedy, not cheerleading.

In the big picture, away from Harlow's Monkeys and Jacob's wife ("Give me a child lest I die," Genesis 30:1), adoption transfers children of poor families to middle class ones. Your advice to unhappy adoptees to give money to poor villages is interesting, why not advise prospective international adoptive parents to donate the tens of thousands of dollars they'll spend on an adoption to a Guatemalan anti-poverty initiative?

How do you feel about countries like Romania, Russia and Guatemala curtailing or more strictly regulating the removal of the children to US middle class families? I've seen some sites on the net hosted by families waiting to adopt and their professional assistants who are plainly negative when it comes to nations asserting their sovereignty over adoption.

Is adoption transnational, should there be no boundaries for US middle class families to adopt anywhere they wish in the world?

I don't hate adoption. I don't hate my parents, neither adoptive nor natural. I just think adoption is a curious institution that retains a great deal of its power in our society by clouding itself in sentimentality and piety. I like to turn the fan on and clear the air.

petunia said...

I understand what you're saying and agree for the most part. My point about putting money towards helping children in Guatmala or other poor countries is in regards to how the people spend there time and energy not just their money. People spend a lot of time being angry about a bad situation they are in (whether that is a bad adoption, a bad past, a bad marriage, etc). There comes a point when you have to do something other than complain... put that power to some GOOD use.
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People who are working to open adoption records and trying to get rid of unethical agencies are doing something positive- I applaud them.
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Regardsless of how people feel about the actual act of placing a child up for adoption...it's going to happen. It is always sad for the biomothers...unless they are so gone they have no sense. But, making out that adoption is bad for the adoptees or aparents is not a truth. There are bad experiences, I have never denied that, but a baby being placed in a family that will love and take care of them for the rest of their lives is a positive, happy thing. Where it is sad and heartbreaking for one side it is a happy joyous occasion for the other...bittersweet
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As far as different places in the world---children need love and they are not getting that love in orphanages where there's not even enough food to go around much less love. The parents may be so poor they can't take care of them but do the children not get a chance to be loved and cared for? What happens to them if they stay in the orphanges? They are starved of food, affection, nuturing and that has affects on the body, mind and soul. Are people so opposed to adoption that they would wish that upon a child?
In a perfect world, everyone would have babies and be able to take care of them. Since there are those who cannot take care of them I feel there is a balance in the world that there are those who can and will adopt a child and love them as their very own.
It is all a curious situation....
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It IS a sticky situation. Adoption has been around forever (regardless of what some of these commenters will say). People all over the world for all time have raised other people's children.

BB Church said...

"Where it is sad and heartbreaking for one side it is a happy joyous occasion for the other...bittersweet"

In my opinion, adoptees are the site of this confluence of bitterness and sweetness. They embody the bitterness of loss (they lose a mother) and the joy (they gain a mother). There is no one side or the other in an adoptee, there is the full experience. Our society abhors ambiguity (you're either with us or against us), and adoptees are by their nature ambiguous.

I could list the corrupt practices inherent in international adoption country by country, but there is plenty of documentation available. I say inherent because the infusion of monies, most of it private and a significant portion of it in cash, into economies of poverty without structures of accountability or transparency tends to distort rather than help.

petunia said...

I totally agree international adoption is very corrupt...the governments take advantage of all the cash being paid. No doubt about that. The outcome is still that these children get homes, get love.
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As far as adoptees losing I cannot agree (at least for myself and my other adopted friends). I don't feel that loss, I have no memory of her only the memories of my amom and her sweetness and her love for me. I know biomoms don't like to hear that but I was three weeks old when I was placed in their home. Physcholigically i was intact, i was taken care of and loved for three weeks by a foster mother I will never know either. I do think trauma and abuse has everlasting damage on infants but love is love. How can it be a loss when the memories of it aren't even there?
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I have had a comment before about hearing my biomoms heart and remembering her smell but consiously you do not remember that..

BB Church said...

"As far as adoptees losing I cannot agree (at least for myself and my other adopted friends). I don't feel that loss, I have no memory of her only the memories of my amom and her sweetness and her love for me."

Whether you feel it or not, objectively you did lose one mother in the process of gaining another. How you feel about it is your business.