Giving Your Child Away

An adoptee asks – I wonder if it would make a difference if instead of ‘giving up for adoption’, it was changed to ‘giving your child away’? One person noted – “A pig wearing lipstick is still a pig.”

A mother of loss writes – The language is controlled by those who have the power, ie the adoption industry… That’s why everything is a euphemism and double speak. Of course, if it was called “giving your child away to strangers and causing them trauma” – we would never be able to be convinced it was the best for them.

Another adoptee writes – I was not “given up for adoption”…. I was “abandoned.” Nobody would’ve cared to find out what happened to me. In response, someone else writes – “There’s active trauma and inactive trauma. At before the active trauma of adoptee occurs, there’s the inactive trauma of abandonment.. I was removed as a teen and it makes me wonder if I had told earlier then I might have a different label. I’m not a former foster care youth or an adoptee because the system never found me a new home. ‘Abandoned and at risk for homelessness’ [I was homeless]. I tell myself it’s a blessing in disguise, but I feel abandoned twice – by both my mother and again by the system.”

Another mother of loss due to coercion writes – I think depending on the way it is said is what allows people to understand circumstances… I could say “my child was stolen/taken” that relates to coercion/manipulation or kidnapping that CPS (Child Protective Services/Div of Child and Family Services) likes to partake in (which is what happened to me, I was coerced). I could say “I gave my child up for adoption” that relates to willingly having my child adopted for whatever reason. I could say “my child was adopted” that could mean anything. like neglect, CPS involvement, kinship adoption, regular private adoption, foster to adopt situation without CPS involvement, anything…

A former foster care youth shares – I don’t know for sure if it would. I always said I was thrown away because my parents willingly signed me over when I was 14. Whenever I approach them about what they put me through, they brush me off and avoid the subject. I think a lot of people knew exactly what they were doing, and just didn’t care. Even so, there are circumstances where it’s an understandable decision, don’t get me wrong.

One person notes – In most jurisdiction, “abandonment” of a child is a crime. Relinquishment procedures legalize this crime. It would change a lot if we do away with the relinquishment process.

One adoptee writes – I always tell people I was sold and then people get all hurt about it. It’s really not far off…. my aunt offered to take me in, my biological mom agreed but then, ran off. Next thing my aunt heard is I was adopted and my biological mom got a lot out of it.

Another mother of loss shares – I tell people “I was not allowed to parent my child and lost her to adoption”.

A birth mother admits – Every situation is so different. I think the phrases that are used aren’t accurately interchangeable. In my case, I feel the phrase “sacrificed motherhood” is most accurate. However I know other first/birth mothers that “giving up” is more accurate. I’m positive that some would fall under that category… “giving your child away” would be most appropriate. In my experience with connecting with mothers like myself, I find that the most predominant issues that lead to adoption is fear, low self esteem, religious intolerance (groomed from religious indoctrination that is adoptive agency predatory), outright manipulation, and early childhood abuse that leads to the adoption paradigm.

One adoptee shares – I was not given up for adoption. I was taken by my grandmother against my mother’s will and given away to punish her for getting pregnant at 14. Oh, and she made her birth me vaginally without medication for the same reason. And my brother (trans-racial South Korean adoptee) was straight up fucking kidnapped and sold across the world by his pos biological dad. He found his birth mother 3 years ago through a 30 year old missing child poster. Another person replied to that – “I wouldn’t even call myself an adoptee. I would say human trafficking survivor, because that is insane… reminds me of another person I know who had something illegal and similar happen to them.”

One adoptee suggested the sentence – “Letting your child be raised by strangers”. Yet another adoptee writes – I tell people I was sold to the highest bidder. Essentially how it feels. I spent years being told that I was rescued from a life of poverty, and I should have been grateful. As an adult, I realized I was raised by a person who had more money but didn’t love me. My birth parents had a modest living and lots of love for me.

A first mom notes – I did not give my son away – he was taken from me without my consent!

To which another first mom (NM) really gets into it all – we don’t “give” our children away freely. Our child is also not a “gift”. “Give up” is another way of saying “surrender”. Surrender is the final, hopeless act of “the defeated enemy” who has been relentlessly attacked during warfare. “The defeated enemy” surrenders by raising a white flag to beg for mercy, to signal their hopeless defeat with dejected humiliation and a hung head. Make no mistake: birth mothers are treated as the enemy. They are told in no uncertain terms that they are “the enemy” to their own child and that strangers will be “better” for the child. Single moms, especially BIPOC moms are policed by foster care and society in a truly heartless and relentless way. Infant adoption agency “social workers” are paid handsomely to covertly wage war on a vulnerable mom. They present themselves as compassionate help, while secretly and tactically convincing her to “freely relinquish” her rights. Maybe change the language to “Adoptive Parents” (AP) pay people to “shake down” and “intimidate” vulnerable, young, poor women in crisis, and they “extort” a baby from her in exchange for its “protection”. Agencies have tactical manuals that have been developed over years of trial and error and are filled with marketing language that helps them wage this war. The primary objective of an agency is separation and destruction of the first family— for their own financial gain. They are mercenaries, paid by adoptive parents. Sometimes these agents believe their own lies— they see the birth mom as a dangerous enemy to her own child, and they imagine themselves as a savior to that child. Usually, APs never see how their dollars fuel this attack, this warfare, on the first family. They just thank the lord that somehow “fate” delivers them an “abandoned baby” who was “destined” to be theirs. And no one addresses the hallow, rubble of a mess left after the NM holds her baby in the air and says “Stop – Please for the sake of the baby – please make them safe.” Once a mother is stripped of her child, there is literally nothing left in her life. I left the hospital and felt like a bag full of crushed glass. Every step I took, I felt like people could surely hear the noise of broken shards shaking around inside of me. I was shattered, and hallow, and utterly alone in the rubble of my defeat. I did give up. I didn’t fight hard enough. I was alone in the aftermath; but many many many people walked alongside me to bully me into that outcome. I say it over and over and over again: it takes a village to raise a child… but it also takes an entire village to separate a mother from her child. Judges, lawyers, doctors, nurses, my own family, my friends all contributed to the final outcome: my surrender. Are there moms who literally abandon their children? Yes. But they are a rare exception. Most birth moms who “give” our baby to another family via domestic infant adoption (DIA) are victims of strategic warfare that extracts a “valuable resource” and coerces a vulnerable person to “freely surrender” that resource, so they can turn around and sell it for a very high price. The entire DIA Adoption industry is built around selling children to the highest bidder (APs). Maybe change the language to: NMs “lose their child” to heartless grifters and child traffickers disguised as “social servants”. And start calling APs what they are: purchasers who fuel a “blood diamonds” of baby trafficking. And start calling adoption agencies what they are: the morphia, grifters, child traffickers.

Clueless

If I hadn’t seen this, I would not have believed anyone could be so self-centered and willing to do something so illegal. Someone had the nerve to post this comment – “I would like to buy someone’s child on credit.”

Initially translated to read – “Furthermore, I would love to bless our family with another baby, perhaps helping a mother out that does not wish to be a mother. I understand the cost associated with this, and wish to help the mother, but I do not have the means currently to finance $50,000 in medical costs and attorney fees. If anyone has any advice, I welcome that. It is on my heart to be an adoptive mother.”

Further translated more directly – “I would like to grow my family by preying upon a mother who doesn’t have the resources/support to parent and instead of helping mothers through temporary circumstances, I’d like to pressure them into giving me their child and convince them it’s actually a good thing.”

The “translations” were simply her calling it like it is – if one is more informed than the average person about adoption issues. Someone said her that she “sounded like Satan was speaking through her”.

She says, “I think they got it a little twisted.” The person in that group tried to use the fact that very briefly she hoped to adopt. She had made one post about affording adoptions. She notes – “When my husband and I started to look into it, we realized it felt really gross and stopped trying to adopt. But God forbid someone see truth and change” (their perspective on the practice).

An adoptive parent admits – many of us had never heard that narrative before. We were told we were doing a wonderful thing. Good for you for challenging that narrative in such a blunt way. Hopefully even if she can’t hear it right now, your comments will make others think.

And this bit of history was shocking for me – Think about what the collateral on the loan would be. From 1619-1865, the collateral was the financed human being. If the loan wasn’t paid, the bank would come by, pick up the financed human being and resell them.

Someone responded with this – FINANCE A CHILD?! JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I’VE HEARD IT ALL!!

Another noted – “This is an excellent example of how people openly and publicly incriminate themselves. Posts like this should be reported to the authorities. Making clear statements of buying a human being is trafficking. Human trafficking is a crime. Period.” To which another agreed that it was is clearly an open offer to buy a child.

Separating The Two

I received a nice message from an adoptive mother who found this blog. I do try to be realistic about adoption. But for adoption, I simply would not exist. Both of my parents were adoptees. Also, both of my sisters gave up babies for adoption – both of these now grown individuals – a niece and a nephew – have met the family who’s genetic inheritance is part of their own. I am glad for these reunions.

An adoptee I respect wrote – I have recently been reminded of the importance to distinguish adoption from the industry and criminal practices that have confused and conflated the two. To regain clarity, it does start with recognizing this distinction between adoption and the industry.

He continues – The challenge comes when we start dismantling the way modern adoption works. The very definition states “the fact or act of legally taking someone else’s child and raising it as your own.” This definition does not identify orphaned child, falsifying birth records, coercive tactics of separating the child from their origins, baby farming, child harvesting, colonization, cultural eradication, and war crimes, leaving it conveniently vague as “legally taking” which all the above has been identified as adoption.

Domestically, foster care is used as a means to adopt, where states have been incentivized to remove children and terminate parental rights which makes them eligible for adoption. Again, this is due to the industry and practices of recruitment, supply and demand, and sustainability of a waning human market.

The majority of laws and policies are focused on making these practices more streamlined and ethical. Curious why this is an issue when it comes to child protection and child welfare, especially since it has been well documented for generations. Books like The Child Catchers, The Girls Who Went Away, American Baby, Relinquished among others have brought up adoption as an industry in great detail.

The problem that remains is how the US continues to be a stronghold for the industry. Those in leadership positions have used pro-industry propaganda: “adoption is an option” and “best interest of the child because it gives them a better life” – continuing to conflate adoption with the industry and its criminal practices.

I have been saying that we need to call it for what it really is… only then can we begin to offer solutions. The first step to problem solving is identifying the problem. To your point, adoption is not the problem, it’s how adoptions are being conducted. Removing children from living parents and relatives through force, threat of force, abduction, kidnapping, coercion, deception, falsifying documents, transporting and “rehoming” and exploitation for profit are all elements of another term: trafficking. Sadly, the vast majority simply refuse to acknowledge this despite the overwhelming evidence. Even with admitting the truth, people argue “but not all adoptions are trafficking” – but we’re no longer talking about adoptions at this point are we?

I want also to share this from a kinship adoptive parent – I feel like a lot of this comes from our consumer mentality (as a nation). Because we’re such capitalists, we think that money is what makes one home better than another. Instead of supporting mothers who are struggling, we often perpetuate the lie that their child will be better with someone who can afford to give them more. So little of the industry centers around children and what’s best for them. Over and over, studies show that mom/family is best whenever possible, but our foster and adoption system don’t follow science.

The adoptee above responded to this with – children (born and unborn) are the focus of the industry as the products/commodities it’s selling. The propaganda diverts attention from this crime by focusing on the buyers and making it into a human rights issue of reproductive rights.

It’s The Industry That Brainwashes

From an adoptee – Let me be clear about my position on adoption. As someone who was taken from his homeland, I have accepted a truth that what happened to me was not adoption. I now work to recover from the brainwashing and propaganda of an industry that originated from human trafficking and child slavery. Such crimes that have found a way to hide behind a more comfortable euphemism: adoption.

At this point, do I get upset when I come across someone who is still brainwashed? Absolutely! It takes me a few minutes to remember I was there once not too long ago. It’s the industry and those who have perverted the term Adoption, and have made the billions off human lives, our lives.

Those who have been brainwashed by the propaganda can not be blamed. I was caught up in the cover-up scheme as well. (blogger’s note – as I was myself, the child of two adoptees.) It is a process of deprogramming ourselves, not from the fantasies or illusions, but from outright coercion and deception. What we refer to as the narratives are in fact the messages produced by the industry’s propaganda machine.

I am fighting in this war against the adoption industry, not against adoption itself. I am saddened that so many continue to be brainwashed, ignorant and stuck in their fantasies, or willfully holding onto their denial. At times it’s overwhelming and hopeless, triggering and depressing, but truth will prevail and I am inspired by the growing number of others who are also fighting against this criminal scheme.

We were once held prisoner by our own fear, but now we are finding strength and courage in community resilience. We are learning how to unite and fight together. Where we are hundreds today, there will be millions in the future.

Is It ?

Adoption is often compared to human trafficking by adoptees and birth mothers. It is easy to see the connection – money is exchanged and a baby is tendered.

“Adoptions resulting from crimes such as abduction and sale of and trafficking in children, fraud in the declaration of adoptability, falsification of official documents or coercion, and any illicit activity or practice such as lack of proper consent by biological parents, improper financial gain by intermediaries and related corruption, constitute illegal adoptions and must be prohibited, criminalized and sanctioned as such.” ~ UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner

One thoughtful response was this – We can no longer afford to ignore those who have been taken, stolen, and trafficked through adoption / for adoption. There are far too many who are victims of war crimes, colonization, and cultural genocide to dismiss the fact that adoption is a criminal industry.

Human trafficking is not just sex trafficking. Multiple sources have indicated the fastest growing criminal industry in the world is the buying and selling of people. It is a $150 billion dollar industry. Surrogacy is a $14 billion dollar market already. It is projected to increase to $129 billion within the next ten years.

This is the future of adoption. While we argue amongst ourselves, the industry continues to grow and expand into new markets. We think we are winning this war as adoption programs are being investigated and closing. However, the industry is simply refining it’s operations and shifting markets.

Understand that adoption was created as a cover for human slavery and human trafficking over 400 years ago. Read Adoption: What You Should Know by Dr. Janine Myung Ja (Vance) for this important history of the adoption industry. (Essay LINK>Dear Adoption, Don’t Use Me from Janine’s twin sister, Jenette Yamamoto)

What we’re up against in the U.S. is that the government has taken a narrow definition of human trafficking as sexual exploitation and forced labor. Monetization of social media content based on the child’s adoption, and turning them into “child influencers” is not considered human trafficking for forced labor in the U.S. simply because they were “adopted” and not trafficked.

Adoption Advertising

This is the state of things on our modern era. LINK>My Adoption Advisor notes – As great as your adoption profile or website may be, if the right expectant parents don’t see it, it doesn’t matter. Today’s generation of expectant parents are looking for adopting parents online.

They go on to say – We provide 2 online advertising services. You must purchase both to get started.

Our Campaign Creation Service allows us to create and activate your campaign. This is a one-time set-up fee. This costs just under $400.
Our Campaign Management Service allows us to analyze your campaign data, optimize your campaign, and report back to you once a month (and answer any questions that come up during the month). This is a monthly recurring cost of $129 EVERY month.

One adoptee activist notes – This is what we’ve always been up against in one form or another. But it is getting even more sophisticated now. It’s important that we all keep on telling our stories.

One says “But it’s not buying a human – it’s just paying fees.” Another adoptee says – “Why the need for an ad campaign ? Money is money ! FYI the ‘fee’ is directly related to what race the baby is !” That has been true for some time now.

The History of Adoption

She explains in LINK>Dame how the historical traumas of family separation have shaped contemporary adoption in the US. How infants and children are valued and for what purposes. And since I don’t believe in burying this country’s history of slavery, I was happy to see her highlight that “Many of America’s earliest relinquishing mothers were enslaved Black women whose children were often sold away from them.”

Or how about this history ? Native American mothers fled to the hills with their children and grandchildren to hide from government officials intent on sending the children to military-run boarding schools. Also in the 19th century, poor white mothers in eastern cities, many of them immigrants, struggled to care for their children due to poverty, widowhood, illness, or simply having more children than they had the capacity to parent. They surrendered them to foundling homes or institutions that labeled the children “orphans” despite the fact they had living parents.

Of course, Gretchen Sisson doesn’t neglect to mention the scandal of Georgia Tann of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis (from whom my own mother was adopted).

A favorite adoptee writer, Tony Corsentino knows Sisson and by chance I received a notification – Relinquished, 1: The Adopter Hustle – from him about the book yesterday. He writes about the title of her book, that it is a verbal adjective for adoptees like him. He also notes that “In another sense, relinquishing parents are themselves relinquished: relegated, marginalized, generally voiceless in the joyful clamor that attends every new adoption.” He writes that – Gretchen notes in her book that “it is adopted and displaced people who have led movements for abolishing adoption as it is currently practiced.” He says further that “The book’s aim is to present the authentic voices of parents who have lost their children to adoption.”

Corsentino goes on to say – “. . . because its arguments are a crucial part of the case for reform and abolition of adoption, I regard this book as a landmark in the history of research on adoption, and one of the most valuable scholarly contributions to the struggle for adoptee justice in the entire history of that struggle.” In his essay, he shares an excerpt that makes the case that it is NOT either adoption or abortion. From pgs 63-64 of Sisson’s book – “women who’d recently had abortions found that none of them seriously considered adoption, mostly because they believed it would be too emotionally traumatic.”

“These feelings about adoption were equally held by focus groups of both “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” women, all of whom considered adoption to be emotionally painful not just for mothers, but for the children who would be relinquished. In another study examining the decision-making of women who’d had an abortion, most of them were unequivocal in ruling out adoption, with one participant alluding to the flawed reasoning of anti-abortion advocates: I don’t want to give my child away to nobody, and I’m not … and that’s the part they don’t understand. I can’t just be bearing a child for 9 months, going through the sickness and then giving my child [away]. I can’t.“

Tony adds – “Our social world involves . . . Adoption agencies and hopeful adoptive parents (that )have become entrepreneurial; they hustle for birthparents.” “chasing pregnant people, luring them, seducing them.” They “use the techniques of search engine optimization to ensure that a wide range of phrases a person with an unplanned pregnancy might Google will call forth ads promoting relinquishment for adoption.”

Please DO read his entire essay !!

Beware Of Offers Like This

It doesn’t only happen in adoptionland. We’ve had offers to “go around” the middle man regarding hunting leases and real estate. Those in the middle have the ability to protect BOTH sides in a variety of transactions. One of my sisters did her adoption through an attorney. The other one through a Catholic charity. Both of my parents adoptions had “middles” too – Tennessee Children’s Home and The Salvation Army.

Something like this was sent to an expectant mother who had already said she wants to parent her baby – “We are looking to do a private adoption. You do not have to go through an adoption agency. We can give you $3,000 and that is the same amount of money you would get through any agency.”

Offering to pay an expectant mother for her baby is actually a form of human trafficking.

Committing Fraud

Not my thoughts but I understand how this person feels and agree with the sentiments –

I would like to see further restorative action to press criminal charges against every state in the US that has and continues to withhold birth records, as well as for falsifying these official documents. IMHO these documents post-adoption aren’t your “original” birth certificates, these that are being withheld are your real, actual birth records. The “amended” or adoption certificates are not valid documents of your birth.

In fact, the state goes so far as to commit both birth certificate fraud and human trafficking by falsifying your birth records. Human trafficking involves deception and the falsification of official documents. The UN considers falsifying documents in their definition of “illegal adoption”. As investigations are uncovering falsifying documents in international adoption and governments are having to issue public apologies for their actions, where International Christian Adoptions adoptees are holding these countries accountable for their crimes, the US is not any different in falsifying these official documents.

It’s not just about restoring human rights to an entire population that has deliberately and systematically been commodified and dehumanized by these same states. Adopted people are not seen as human beings, we are commodities. These states have committed crimes and rather than being accountable, they have written and passed their own laws in order to legally protect themselves from being held accountable for their crimes. Falsifying documents is more than a violation of human rights, it’s a crime. It’s time the US is held to the same standard of accountability as other countries for committing such crimes as falsifying documents to conduct human trafficking through adoption.

Now a couple of thoughts from your blogger here –

Finally, this is a good question – Why are the original birth certificates are not being provided once an adopted person is an adult ? I believed when I tried for my dad’s with California – they just don’t want to do so much work. They don’t want to open those floodgates.

Also brought up – issues of inheritance. That was a factor for my adoptee mom and her adoptee brother when their adoptive parents died. Not that they were harmed but I understand there were laws specific to Texas regarding their circumstance of being adopted persons and that their adoptive parents could NOT disinherit them.

It Is Hard To Do

From an adoptee – Coming out of the fog is hard. It’s a bit like jumping out of a building but instead of dying before you can even hit the ground, you hit it, hard, and break every bone in your body.

This is to say that coming out of the fog (losing the cognitive dissonance you’ve been living with your entire life) is first of all very painful and second of all takes a long time to heal. Then, even when it heals, it never feels quite right again.

This is only the effect of coming out of the fog and not a lifetime of adoption trauma.

Anger is part of the grieving process. We talk about grief in adoption in a relatable way: We grieve the loss of our first parents. That’s true, but it’s also true that as we come out of the fog, we begin to grieve the things we believed to be true.

Loving adoption, supporting it, and verbally confirming the societal bias that adoption is a loving way to support children who can’t live with their families for some reason, and then leaving that behind when the fog lifts is a huge change, and when huge changes occur in our lives, we do often grieve.

We grieve the person we are leaving behind, the assumptions that we once carried, and the comfort of the lies we told ourselves. (Blogger’s note – while not an adoptee myself, I’ve been greatly impacted by adoption – both of my parents were 1930s era adoptees. Learning who my original grandparents were, who who all deceased by then, had an unexpected but profound effect on me. I would assume I am still processing my feelings 6 years later.)

Anger is part of that grieving process, and each grieving process is different. Some people will always be angry. Some will spend their lives in denial (the fog).

If we are angry, there are a number of reasons but grief is an important part of it.

We are not (always) mad at you, as a person. We may be angry with adoptive parents, but more often than not this is not personal and not personally directed at you. When it is personal, it’s because you have triggered one of our privileged voices, often by gaslighting, demonstrating fragile behavior (cognitive dissonance), or you have challenged someone by calling their lived experience their opinion and justified your behavior by saying you’re allowed to have your opinion [on their experience].

Some people are angry with adoptive parents in general. You might not understand it, but there are points that I could make which would indicate this anger is justifiable. Most of us are angry with the adoption industry and an extension of that anger is that we are angry with the people who feed the demand that drives this industry. Without demand, there is no industry (and we already know there aren’t hundreds of babies waiting in an orphanage to be adopted).

Anger with people who participated in the system of oppression is natural. I’m not a professional therapist, just a life coach. Whether or not this anger is healthy or if it is merely a coping tool for trauma that masks other big emotions, I can’t say. Either way, anger is part of processing what has happened to us that we had no control over. When you see our anger, it is because we are hurt and we are healing.

Adoption is a multi-billion dollar per year industry in which people (infants, children) are exchanged for as much as $60k each. It’s really easy to overlook facts that don’t agree with your personal cognitive bias, especially when you benefited from this industry. If you paid an adoption fee, regardless of who received that fee or what they did with it, you exchanged money for another human being.

It might be hard to see yourself as having participated in human trafficking but you did. Even if money were not involved, we are still talking about the redistribution of human children.

You can see, no doubt, that the objects of that trafficking (adoptees) would be angry to have been trafficked. Or, if you cannot cognitively comprehend the word “trafficking” in this situation, you can understand that adopted people are goods that were exchanged from one bearer to another.

Being adopted is a lifetime of ongoing trauma and chronic stress. It doesn’t go away when we turn 18. It doesn’t stop when we meet our biological families. It doesn’t end because we are in therapy.

When you accuse adopted people of inappropriate anger, you are contributing to the ongoing chronic stress and trauma we experience as adoptees because you are asking us to perform for you. In order to feel “safe”, many adoptees will, and, this is SUPER important, so please listen! You’ll never know they’re performing for you, you’ll just think they’re better people for not “attacking” you. You should know, then, that we are, at all times, under a high-pressure situation. You might step on a landmine without knowing you were stepping on a landmine but it’s a landmine nonetheless.

Therapy doesn’t always help. Sometimes it harms. We promote therapy as though it is the panacea for all trauma. And many people, when facing opposition to their cognitive dissonance use therapy as a way to gaslight and abuse. “You need therapy!” as a response to someone’s heartfelt outpouring of emotion is arguably always abusive. (This leaves aside that it is always dismissive and used as a way to silence the person expressing themselves due to the need to protect themselves from further trauma/abuse.)

Most adoptees who have seen therapists have, at some point, encountered a therapist who didn’t have good training in adoption trauma (even if they thought themselves to have been trained). These therapists often follow the larger social narrative of adoption as “rescue” and further silence us by correcting our emotions (due to their own natural defensiveness and cognitive distortions) or they avoid the subject altogether, leaving the adopted client confused and gaslit.

Adopted people aren’t to blame for our trauma — adoptive parents are. Some of you are already thinking “Trauma happened because of the birth parents and I had nothing to do with their decisions!” First of all, if you adopted an infant privately (not through foster care), you did have something to do with their decision, even if indirectly (through a lawyer or agency). This is a matter of fact, regardless of any coercion you participated in directly — but a lot of you — especially the ones accusing adopted people of being “hateful” did participate in coercion directly.

The trauma of adoption is not a single event but a series of events that are ongoing throughout our lives. Those events are often facilitated by, or at least not prevented by, the adoptive parents. You can never protect your child entirely, but you can learn to support them better by increasing your emotional awareness and maturity. When you accuse adopted people of being angry, hateful, or blaming adoptive parents for their problems, you are in fact deflecting your own culpability onto the object of a contract to which you are the subject and therefore the beneficiary.

To put it simply, you accuse us of shifting our own blame onto adoptive parents because something in you has been confronted and you may be experiencing some form of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Shifting the blame you hold for participating in an oppressive system onto adoptees and expecting us to solve the problems created by our adoptions — on our own! — is not the way you want to present yourself to the world.