Why Does It Surprise You ?

From a Transracial Infant Adoptee – When you adopt, you are not disillusioned to the reality of privilege. In a lot of cases, you know the situation surrounding the reason adoption is being chosen, and the circumstances. So when your adult adoptees eventually come back and question everything, why does it surprise you ? Why is there such a need to gaslight them about the truth behind their origins ? Or determine the narrative for them ? You knew coming into all of this where they came from and you should have known the trauma you would be placing on them, if you participated. So why is it such a shock when they decide to see the child trafficking for what it is ? Or the fact that you gained from the tearing apart of a family ? As an adult adoptee, all of the above truly does baffle me. If anything, I would expect adoptive parents to be the most sympathetic, empathetic and empowering individuals that they could be. Rather than shocked, butt hurt & defensive about a situation they themselves created. Especially in regards to the child fully recognizing what the industry is and the trauma it intentionally inflicts.

One adoptee responded – I think they forget that we grow up ! Oh, and of course, they believe they are different.

The original poster wanted responses from adoptive parents and one answered – In all 3 of my cases, I knew the circumstances as they were told to me. 2 cases ended up being much worse and one was slightly different. My adult adoptees have not come back to question because they were told their story from birth, and retold as often as they wanted to hear it. As adults, the two older ones have been in contact with birth family. They were given all the truths I knew. Yes, we knew that raising adopted children would cause them different emotions, thought, feelings than raising biological children. Not one of my 3 have compared their adoption to child trafficking, so I have not had that shock to deal with. I have admitted since the first day I held my first child all that I have gained. The biological moms were not teenagers and were not without resources. All of the adoptive parents I personally know are sympathetic, empathetic and empowering individuals. I know that is not true in all cases. I’m so very sorry that so many adoptees have had such traumatic experiences. And I’m thankful that there are groups where adoptees can share what they experienced with others to lean on. There are times when adoption is the best solution for a child to have a stable home. If anyone comments, I will gladly respond.

Another adoptee suspects – Some adoptive parents are so blinded by their “need” for a child that they become deluded and believe that the adoptee is truly “as if born to” and should gratefully play along with their own delusion. They don’t want to discuss the adoptee’s start in life and family because it threatens their delusion.

And one who was in foster care from birth and then put into a forced adoption at age 10 during the LINK>Baby Scoop Era in a closed adoption writes – I also think that too many adoptive parents (and hopeful adoptive parents) really do not recognize the crucial part that they play in an adoption – the rewards are theirs – the power dynamics are theirs too (once the adoption is finalized and they get what they wanted, including name changes, erasure of first family and a new birth certificate that proclaims them as the owners). They keep telling themselves that they are doing it all in the ‘best interests of the child’ (or baby). But is it really ? Could they have imagined a different way to help ? To care for and love ? Could they have fought harder for Legal Guardianship instead ? Can they make the promise that they will do everything possible (and really mean that) ASAP to discover the child’s natural family, heritage, family medical information and to keep the child’s own culture and needs truly front and center as a focus, while that is child is being raised outside of their own genetic, biological family ? Unless an adoptive parent is willing to go all in and do that – they will be shocked when the youth (or adult adoptee) scorns or derides their actual intent notes that they are an integral part of the broken system that helps to keep it chugging along.

A Reality Check

So a struggling mother asks – Is it wrong to give your kid up for adoption if you deal with depression/anxiety and don’t really have much help ? A part of me feels like I will get over everything and be just fine .. another part of me wants to give my kid up for adoption so that they can have 2 parents and grow up in a loving home with good opportunities. Is any of it feasible ?

The reality – Adoption won’t guarantee a better life for your child, only a different one. Adoption is random. Hopeful adoptive parents are not evaluated for mental health, as biological parents are when Child Protective Services is after their kids. Also, divorce is just as common for adoptive parents as it is for everyone else.

Adoption is permanent.

So, you could give your kid away to some random strangers, then go on to win the lottery, meet the love of your life, and meanwhile the adoptive parents could get divorced, lose their jobs, your kid could be raised by an alcoholic hoarder who won’t allow any contact with you, and then when they do find you, they could resent you for depriving them of the life they could have had with you.

Someone else who suffers from depression/anxiety admits – I go through this thought process with every episode. It’s so hard. Adoption doesn’t always equal better.

Someone who experienced both foster care and adoption notes – People have all sorts of reasons to justify giving up their child. They often sell themselves the line that 2 parents are better than a single one, or they are better off because I am dealing with x/y/z. Your kids love you in spite of all of the hard things in life, and honestly, if its something you struggle with – they likely will too. And no one is better to help them navigate it than their birth parent because often times adopted parents just gaslight their kids and don’t get them the proper therapies and then, its compounded by attachment trauma too. Hugs. You are a good mom no matter how you are struggling because you love your kids enough to ask tough questions about your own mental and emotional health. That’s more than most hopeful adopted parents will ever do!

The issue of abortion often comes up in adoptee circles with a variety of opinions. Comparing the trauma on the biological mother of placing her child for adoption as opposed to what she might feel after having an abortion – studies have found that 95+% of people who’ve ended their pregnancies, have no regrets and felt nothing but relief.

One adoptee says – I’ve had an abortion, I don’t regret it at all. Sure, I sometimes wonder what might have been, but I’m not sad about it at all. At least there’s nobody out there wondering why they weren’t good enough to be anyone’s first choice.

Yet another who aged out of foster care, and was never adopted, says – I’m really really grateful and lucky to have not been aborted. For me, I don’t know if its right to decide for someone without their choice that they’re better off dead than adopted.

Then an all-of-the-above person notes – This is hard… I believe that if someone has never had a child they might regret their abortion. I’m a biological mom and an adoptee … I have my own child I parent, I have a biological child that was given up for adoption, and I had an abortion. By far my abortion was the easiest on me emotionally and mentally. I have been tormented emotionally and mentally by the adoption that turned out a total lie regarding it’s openness. I think about her every single day. I wish I would have aborted her but I was selfish. Of course, I would also rather have kept her, if I had the right mindset then. Hindsight is 20/20. But I also know that if I had never given her up, then I wouldn’t have chosen to have an abortion so easily the next time because giving up another child would have never happened again or I’d be dead. But I know, if I had aborted the child I gave up, I would probably have huge regrets because I wouldn’t know how awful it was to give a child up to adoption.

It always is a matter of perspective and circumstance. This blogger notes – I have a biological, genetic daughter that I surrendered to her father due to my own financial struggles (he refused to pay child support, I went into an employment where I could not take her along with me. I was seeking a financial gain that would support us both – I did not foresee leaving her with her paternal grandmother would become her father’s non-legally mandated permanent custody). Then, I had an unplanned, unexpected pregnancy with no interest expressed by that father-to-be. I did end that one with an abortion. Later on in life, in a better marriage and with good financial circumstances, I gave up my genetics to allow my husband to become a biological, genetic father through assisted reproduction. Many women have multiple varieties of reproductive experiences. I do believe ALL women deserve a legal private choice in all reproductive matters.

No Contact

It is not uncommon now to see adoptees who have gone “no contact” – either with adoptive families or with their original genetic families. I will admit that I had to go no contact with my youngest sister, so I get why sometimes this is the best decision.

For example, this adoptee –

I’m no contact with all of my adopted family and most of my biological family. They’ve hurt me repeatedly by gaslighting, emotional manipulation and abuse, silence, lies (not to mention the outright physical abuse I experienced in childhood)….. and I’m done. Even my biological brother, whom I thought I’d always be close to, has joined in.

When I say I’m cutting toxicity out of my life, I MEAN IT. Friends, family, coworkers, jobs, personal behaviors and mentality – Wherever toxicity might be found, I won’t be. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to please others and fit in because then MAYBE they won’t leave me.

I no longer care.

I’m tired of going out of my way for “family” just to have them talk about me behind my back. I’ve dropped everything to help people who wouldn’t even lend me a smile.

No. More.

Goodbye and good riddance to them all. Best of luck on their future endeavors, but count me out. And though I know it’s the right choice, I’m really needing some emotional support and validation.

And the emotional support comes . . . from an adoptive parent. Removing toxic people from your life may be hard but so worthwhile. Rebuild your relationships with a family of choice. Good friends, partners, can go a long way in supporting you. Congratulations on the beginning of a life away from guilt and toxicity.

And this from another adoptee – Hugs! I went no contact with my adoptive parents years ago, no regrets. I had one brief unavoidable blip, which reinforced what a good choice I made. My younger sister, who was only 1 when she was adopted/went into foster care (I was 10 at the time) has minimal engagement with them. They will ask about me but she puts up the boundary. She’s not comfortable giving them updates about my life, since I have no relationship with them.

Irony is – she used to gatekeep me from my sisters, after I was forced from their home at 17 (just one of many previous times) and my biological family before that, so I find it validating that my families don’t get what they want now (at one time, my adoptive mother liked to brag about how I’m doing well because of their sacrifice and the hard decisions they made to help me help myself). When she told me about the reason why my adoptive mother thinks she was cut off (ie not invited to another family event with their biological son) I laughed because it just goes to show how clueless she really is and how little she actually DID listen to me, before I cut her off.

I have little to no contact with my biological family, least of all with their own monkeys and circus. The contact I do have is mostly initiated on my part (zero effort on the sibling’s part to connect with me, minimum from my mother and other relatives) and I’ve gone full no contact at times with my dad, depending on where he’s at in his addiction cycle.

I have no regrets. Only a slight regret for not putting up boundaries earlier because I felt I had to have some contact with some family because you know, I have no family otherwise (my in-laws are not super fans of me either, they are judgmental and don’t understand CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) or why my husband is with someone as ‘broken’ as I am (they see us minimally – maybe a handful of times per year now.) I now no longer give a f**** about what I do or do not say, that may or may not upset them. It used to tear me up and I’d think OMG was I too loud ?, too this or too that, and feel like a big POS and not worthy of their love, until I realized their lack of acceptance had to do with THEIR stuff and NOT mine. Mine was just easier to focus on because I was so transparent about everything, which is not how they roll.

You Should Be Grateful

From her own website LINK>The Adopted Life – “Your parents are so amazing for adopting you. You should be grateful!”

Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily. Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees through sharing deeply personal stories, well-researched history and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption giving way to a fuller story that includes the impacts of racism, classism, family, love and belonging.

The search for her biological family was documented in the 2013 film “Closure.”

From the LINK>Seattle Times – Her new book from Beacon Press, “You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption,” explores Tucker’s life experience, her work with transracial adopted youth and the history of adoption in America. It’s both a powerful manifesto and a hopeful text that calls for reshaping how we talk and think about adoption.

The book uses terms from John Koenig’s “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.” Angela uses terms like “ghost kingdom” and “postnatal culture shock.” Angela says, “in the same way John Koenig feels there aren’t enough words to adequately describe all of our emotions, I feel that way about transracial adoption. We’re kind of boxed into things like, for kids, you’re an Oreo: Black on the outside, white on the inside. That morphs in adulthood, and what I hear adoptees I mentor talk about is [being a] racial imposter. I think it’s important we find new words that can articulate the complexity of our layers and also honor the truth of it.”

“It’s a beautiful thing to grow up having parents who understand at the root that an adoption is a sad thing, that we wish an adoption didn’t have to happen. I had parents who acknowledged that pain for all of us. I know so many adoptees for whom that part is not allowed any space. Even for those adopted for reasons that are legitimate, there’s still a loss. And bypassing that and going straight to, ‘You’re here now, look at this great life,’ many adoptees now can articulate it feeling like gaslighting. ‘Maybe I am crazy to wish for and to long for being connected to my kin. I have my own room, I have three square meals a day, I get to do all these extracurriculars. I must be crazy for not being more thankful for it.’ That gaslighting is, in this sense, synonymous with confusion.”

More in the Seattle Times interview linked above.

Doing Great Harm Unintentionally

A question was asked in my all things adoption group – why when foster and adoptive parents are asked a question and answer it honestly, are they bashed or told they are doing wrong ?

One, a former licensed state foster caregiver who placed her home on hold until she could learn or prepare how to best serve kids and families in crisis, answered – MAYBE because of a rational perceived injustice, based on or due to a reasonable fear. Being complicit in systemic inequities and the oppression of marginalized people. For exercising an INTENTIONAL choice to volunteer one’s privilege to care for families in crisis. Doing so generously with genuine reciprocity and care, being greater than the conditions of extraction and exploitation, is rare. Such preparation includes learning from survivors and the victims who have been the most impacted. A tolerance of ignorance is tremendously difficult for one who knows the realities. The “unintended” harm is inexcusable. Implementing a GROWTH MINDSET is taught in training for FOSTER CAREGIVING – PARTNERSHIP PARENTING. It is a critical cornerstone of any hope of doing good. Hostility is expressed by survivors after having experienced injustice. It is VALID and to be EXPECTED by their OPPRESSORS or those PERCEIVED as representatives of that OPPRESSION. Harm, neglect, emotional neglect through gaslighting and abusive tactics are all too common. It is difficult to not to REACT, impossible to respond RATIONALLY, when faced with distressing questions, apparent or perceived willful ignorance, or simply in the appearance of continuing to promote that INJUSTICE.

The argument always comes up – so you believe a child should be with their parents no matter what the situation is?

One reasonable reply to that was this – there is a lot of room between being with their parents and being adopted. There are some parents who are not safe for their children but that doesn’t have to automatically mean adoption either.

And this response – do you want us to all tell you that your adoption will be the exception to the rule? That you’ve obviously found the ethical way to do things? That your desired child is definitely going to be one of the ones who should have lost their entire family, identity, medical history? That you won’t have to worry about inherent trauma because you’ll pray hard enough and love them hard enough and that’s all you need to do? Sorry, that’s not how this works.

Then this long but rational response – I understand where you are coming from because I was there a couple years ago. This is why we need to read, listen and learn. As adoptive parents, we need to listen to the former foster care youths and adoptees. so we can do better.

We may need to seek out the support of a therapist to process our own hurts…there are therapists out there who are themselves former foster care youths and adoptees. They are more than able to support or coach you through this. Adoptive parents need to heal their own wounds, to make the space needed to acknowledge their own responsibility and the harm they have done by adopting.

We also need to bear the responsibility of supporting the adoptees in our care. That is acknowledging our own place in the trauma first. Then seeking supports to help these children process their own trauma. Finding a qualified therapist (adoption trauma informed) for the adoptee would be the ideal.

We need to be in relationship with the biological families, no matter our prejudice. These children need to be safe, yes, but also in relationship as much as possible. We need to take responsibility to build those bridges – no matter how frustrating it can be – for the benefit of the children. If we can return the children to their family, we need to attempt to do that. If the family needs support, we need to be willing to support them. We need to do everything we can to support reunion no matter the age of the child. Of course, we need to maintain their safety but that doesn’t mean a child needs to be taken away from their biological family. There are many options that don’t include adoption.

I have faced these questions in my own circumstance and recognize that in my situation there were other options I was ignorant of…I regret adopting. I was already the legal guardian but I was not informed by adoptee voices. I was listening to adoption lawyers and adoption agencies – who are only in it for the money. I made a huge mistake not being adoption informed. A mistake that if the affected parties (such as the biological family or adoptee) wanted changed, I would.

We need to acknowledge that we will fail miserably in everything we do because we care for a child who is not our own and is traumatized. If that is the reality, we have to be ok with that. We need to be ok with fighting for trauma informed support – both in the home, at school and in the greater community.

We need to stop blaming the children or the biological families for the children’s mental health issues.

If there weren’t people willing to foster or adopt, the system would operate differently. We need to see this and then, become advocates for the adoptees we care for but also against the foster and adoption systems already in place.

The old narrative of fostering and adoption needs to be torn down and it is our responsibility as adopters to lead this fight…the former foster care youths and adoptees have fought hard enough already.

I love our adoptee but love isn’t enough. I need to do more and I learn about what I need to do by listening to the voices of former foster care youths and adoptees as well as their biological families.

Doing The Hardest Work For One’s Self

This really does make me think of my mom’s life with her adoptive mother . . . and then there is that painting of me . . . the story below is not my own, though at the bottom is a snippet about me as well.

It took a near death experience (21 days intubated for covid pneumonia while pregnant) and the loss of my 3 year old the very day I came home from the hospital for me to admit I even needed therapy. Though the therapist accepted me based on my grief trauma, most of our time has been spent discussing my childhood.

So many pieces finally fell into place this week. It’s like I wasn’t even aware I HAD all the pieces I needed, much less did I know where to put them. I did some sleuthing to try to get a clearer picture of my very early childhood, because my story was withheld from me and only presented in a very fragmented way.

The messages and calls to the courthouse, the man listed as father on my birth certificate, my sister, her stepmother, and finally the man who raised me yielded little in the way of real answers. The woman who physically abused me caught wind that I was digging and contacted me. She sent FOUR PAGES on bullshit which started off as a sideways apology and ended with her basically saying it was my fault she tortured me. I was 2.

“Dad” (guy who raised me, my sister’s uncle) came the closest to answering my questions of them all. We hadn’t talked for 3 years prior to this. Even when I nearly died, he wouldn’t reach out to check on me. He included in his message a sappy story about how much he sacrificed for me. He insinuated I didn’t care about my sister’s pain, and he closed with a reprimand about how I should feel sorry for HIM because he lost a grandchild. He only met my son once, by his own choice.

My first few years with them were a fantasy. “Mom” hand made my clothes. I looked like I belonged in a magazine. My hair was brushed and arranged until it was glossy ringlets. There were ribbons, bows, ruffles, tights, pinafores, and patent leather shoes. My bedroom was fit for a princess. There was a 4 post bed with a canopy. It was white with burnished gold accents, as was the matching vanity and stool. The bed covering was white and pink ruffles, and the canopy was tailor made to match. Christmas, Easter, and birthdays looked like the toy store exploded into our living room. I had it all.

Once I reached that awkward, gangly phase, it was over. By then they had their own daughter and son, and I was a nuisance. No longer a doll they could dress and pose. I could sense their disappointment. Their delight in me was gone. So I tried harder. I won more awards, I practiced music longer, I earned higher scores in school. The more I tried, the more disgusted they seemed.

I looked back over all the big milestones that mark the transition from childhood to maturity. In my high school graduation photos, he looked angry. In my wedding photos, he looked sick. When my children were born, he didn’t want to see them. When I chose a path for how I would spend my life, it wasn’t good enough. When I chose to move to a new state with better opportunities, I was being foolish. When he finally came to visit my first house, he literally became ill and vomited all over my bathroom.

I failed them. By growing up, I failed them. They treated their children like people, and they celebrated them appropriately in both youth and adulthood. I finally put it all together this week and realized I’ve intentionally kept myself small in my mind, because somewhere deep down I knew that only as their little princess could I feel their love.

I dug through my old pictures and found so many of me paraded in beauty pageants. But this is the one I settled on. It was taken the month after they got custody of me, in their home. I told her – little Sandi – that her work is done. It was never her job to make me palatable to the parents who stole me. I understand why she did. Her life was an exercise in terror, and these white knights were her ticket to salvation. But it was never her job to earn their love, and that isn’t her job now. So she has my permission to rest peacefully. I grew within the soil where they planted this little seed. It’s my turn to do the work of deciding who is worthy of my best efforts.

From the blog author – As a young child, my mom’s adoptive mother dressed and arranged me for a large oil painting portrait she wanted to do of me but now having read today’s story, it speaks volumes. And my mom did have a princess bedroom with a four poster bed. I know that my mom had a very “challenging” relationship with her adoptive mother. She really didn’t share many details of her childhood with me. That probably means something significant as well.

Unequal Treatment

This is really so common for so many adoptees that came out of foster care into families with biological children through adoption. I’m not going to catalog all of it but will hit a few highlights and say only – it is tough enough to come from a difficult environment and feel so completely disregarded. One wonders why these people do it. One theory expressed in the most recent story rings true – My adoptive parents have high status in my smallish town. Both very well known. I now believe we were trophies for them to flash and extra income that paid for fancy car loans.

The biological children were all younger. The woman notes – I remember thinking their two story home was a mansion. They had a tree house and trampoline. Sooo much property. Any poor kids dream. Even though she also notes – The family who fostered/adopted my sister and I were lower middle class. Their family photos never included the adoptees.

As me and my sister aged things got worse and worse. I had felt very loved initially. Me and my bio sister were much more well behaved than their own. We did as we were told. Mostly because, if we didn’t, we’d be disciplined. My biological sister and I would take on the majority of the house work, simply because the others refused to participate and no one enforced that they helped.

When me and my biological sister pushed back on things, we were told life’s not fair or just gaslit into thinking – it’s what we deserved, as we needed more structure due to our past. My older sister and I were placed into the foster care system the last time at ages 7 & 10. Our emergency placement that night was where we stayed for 2 years as foster kids, until ages 9 & 12, when the family adopted us. Her biological mother suffered mental illness with frightening episodes. She was dependent on sketchy men. They moved a lot, due to homelessness or the men the mother was using for survival. They went without food often.

When her biological sister pushed back harder and grew a bit defiant in her teen years, the adoptive parents went so far as putting her back into foster care. That was devastating for this woman as her sister had been her only constant in life. She admits that her sister was treated much more poorly than her and it causes her to feel regret that she did not stand up for her sister more often. Months later, the adoptive parents brought her sister back home, and readopted her because she had suffered abuse in that foster home. She notes that her biological sister eventually moved out at the age of 18 and went no contact with their adoptive parents for awhile.

She notes – Even so, I was grateful. I had been a good kid and caused as little disruption to their lives as possible. I wanted to please everyone so badly. I thought I should be grateful for what they did offer me because I could’ve had it so much worse without them. When I moved out at age 19, the disconnect got worse for me. My adoptive mother doesn’t acknowledge there’s a disconnect at all. Even though, we live close but go months without seeing each other and weeks without contact. Some outsiders notice how my sister and I were treated differently.

And so now, the woman accepts it for what it was and is. She is willing to play nice for family events and holidays. Without them, she wouldn’t have any family. She responds promptly to any of her adoptive mother’s texts, where the adoptive mother pretends to care. Like, she will make empty promises or fake plans, but clearly she never actually intends to follow through. Which leads the woman to fully believe, anything that does happen is just due to concern for her adoptive mother’s public reputation. What if the adoptee went no contact completely ? Sometimes, the adoptive mother actually follows through and does something special for her, like a baby shower for her 1st child. She notes, however, that it was a very public affair. Anytime, it is something private, her adoptive mother is clearly not as nice.

Tired Of Clichés

A cliché is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel.

It’s hard enough to come out of the “it’s all beautiful” unicorns and rainbows narratives FOG about adoption without having clichés thrown at you. Like this –

Many adoptees would say – I’m so annoyed by people acting like my trauma is a blessing. Or this – I still cringe when I hear someone say “you are so lucky, you were chosen,” Heard that a lot growing up.

“Yeah I’m strong, but it’s despite my experiences not because of them.” ~ woke adoptee.

No Self To Begin With

It is a long story in The New Yorker – The Price of Admission, published on April 4 2022. It is a long, sad story of abuse and gaslighting, beginning in locations involving St Louis Missouri (our urban center). It is the story of a former foster care youth and the agendas of higher education. Mackenzie Fierceton has been a brilliant student, once accepted for a Rhodes Scholarship, and is a committed activist.

I encourage you to read the entire article as I did this morning. Necessarily, I am only pulling out a few concepts I jotted down related to Mackenzie’s situation.

If trauma creates a kind of narrative void, Mackenzie seemed to respond by leaning into a narrative that made her life feel more coherent, fitting into boxes that people want to reward. Perhaps her access to privilege helped her understand, in a way that other disadvantaged students might not, the ways that élite institutions valorize certain kinds of identities. There is currency to a story about a person who comes from nothing and thrives in a prestigious setting. These stories attract attention, in part because they offer comfort that, at least on occasion, such things happen.

“. . . Mackenzie is being faulted for not having suffered enough. She was a foster child, but not for long enough. She is poor, but she has not been poor for long enough. She was abused, but there is not enough blood.”
~ Anne Norton, Political Science Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who has provided a home for Mackenzie

Regarding the question about being a first generation student at a university – Mackenzie had e-mailed the associate director of admissions and recruitment at Penn’s social-work school to ask how former foster youth should answer the question. “I personally believe the education level (or/and financial status) of the biological parents would be irrelevant,” the associate director responded. “The youth should select into the option that provides them access to the most funding—which would be to indicate that they are a first-generation college student.”

“When we allow stereotype to be our stand-in for disadvantaged groups, we are actually doing them a disservice. That’s what scares me about this case. It’s, like, ‘You’re not giving us the right sob story of what it means to be poor.’ The university is so focused on what box she checked, and not the conditions—her lack of access to the material, emotional, and social resources of a family—that made her identify with that box. Colleges are in such a rush to celebrate their ‘first Black,’ their ‘first First Gen’ for achievements, but do they actually care about the student? Or the propaganda campaign that they can put behind her story?”
~ Anthony Jack, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who studies low-income and first-generation college students

“There have been moments of almost panic where I am just cognitively questioning myself, like, ‘Did I misremember something?’ It’s easy to slide back into that state, because I want anything other than the reality—that it is my bio family who has caused so much harm—so I will do backflips to try to make it not true.”
~ Mackenzie Fierceton

It is a very real case of gaslighting – “You start to think that maybe you had it wrong and that maybe it actually did happen the way that they say it did,” Mackenzie wrote. “And then you just throw away the real memory, the true one, and replace it with the one that they have fed you a million times, until that is the only thing you can remember.”

As an addendum, Penn did release her Master’s Degree. From The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Infertility and Narcissism

So many times, I have read adoptees speaking of their adoptive mothers as narcissists. It seems that Infertile women have a higher rate of narcissism. Many of these women become adoptive mothers. The findings of a research study (Psychological profile of women with infertility: A comparative study) revealed that infertile women group differed from fertile women group with respect to narcissism, dimensions of attachment style and uses of defense mechanism. The primary infertile group also showed marked difference from the secondary infertile group with respect to those variables.

Though I did love my adoptive maternal grandmother, I am forced to realize that she likely was a narcissist. I had to look up the definition. “Personality qualities include thinking very highly of oneself, needing admiration, believing others are inferior, and lacking empathy for others.” My mom struggled with her, never felt she quite measured up. My adoptive maternal grandmother was a phenomenal person and well regarded in her own circles but I do believe she damaged my mom’s own self-esteem.

Some of the comments I read in a group that seeks the ethical reform of adoption included these –

I am unsure if the narcissism pre-exists and adoption amplifies it, or if adoption creates narcissism. I think you would have to be a narcissist to think you are superior to an actual mother and have the right to take her baby, keep her baby, and deny / control her contact. Along with belittling her and gaslighting the mother and her child. To invade a mother’s pregnancy and birth, smear their infertility over her and her baby, and exploit her – that takes a particular cruelty and ruthlessness. While dressing it up as being ‘noble’ or ‘kind’ to the rest of the world. Glad this is being looked at. There’s plenty of infertile women who don’t adopt out of empathy for the mother. They accept their childlessness.

My observation too, narcissism in so many adoptive mothers with weak, ill equip adoptive fathers trailing behind them, trying to pick up the broken pieces but failing miserably. It’s a terrifying thought – children being adopted into these unstable and often unsafe environments

Mothers who had narcissist as parents are a target group for adoption predation. The roles that narcissists put their children into, now that they are mothers, allows them to be exploited by adoption counsellors in order to procure babies for their clientele, the prospective adoptive parents. These mothers are far easier to manipulate and their trauma is exploited, which often hasn’t been addressed or dealt with previously. Like all that is bad in adoption practice, it exploits the trauma and uses it as emotional impetus for an outcome against the mother and against her keeping her baby, along with the impossibly brief time frames allowed for her to make a decision. The ultimate goal – relinquishment.