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.

Regardless Of How

Whether you sought out adoption or it dropped in your lap, you STILL adopted and that makes you complicit in separating a family.

Stop using phrases like:

We didn’t know better
We didn’t buy a baby, the baby was offered to us
The birthmother decided, not us

After your initial involvement, if your first thought everyday when you woke up or every night when you went to sleep or every moment in between, was that a mother was separated from her child or vice versa, and that it was a heart wrenching thing that should never happen – guess what, you are still complicit. It does not matter what the natural mother said to you or her family or anyone else involved said that caused it to happen. The simple FACT is that anyone separating these 2 people, that only knew each other throughout the pregnancy, is NOT NORMAL. You honestly should have known that instinctively. If you didn’t, that is on you for not looking deeper before doing it. And if you did research it but pushed it down, you are selfish.

An adoptee writes – Know what my adoptive mom always said to me ? “I had 3 boys and I wanted a girl.” She makes no apologies. It’s selfish AF and she knows it. She fully admits how selfish she was. Times were different then. People truly did not know about adoption trauma. It matters not to her though. She knows she should have known – because logically, it makes perfect sense that a mother and child should not be separated. She fully admits she was thinking only of herself and not of my natural mom. At the very least, as selfish as that is, at least she owns it all without BS excuses.

The Answer

Legal guardianship is the answer. Adoption erases one’s entire identity — changes their birth certificate, their name, their culture, severs their ability to find/know their family as well as family medical history.

Legal guardianship provides a path where the child is in a safe environment while also retaining their autonomy over their identity. It isn’t necessary to steal someone’s identity in order to provide a home for them.

Let’s talk responsibility. Ignorance is not an excuse. So you’re an adoptive parent and you conveniently didn’t realize the adoption industry is corrupt and the trauma associated with it until your family was “complete.” You are still responsible for it. So you’re a natural mom who was coerced. While that is horrible, you are still responsible for signing on the dotted line.

What does this say though about kids who aren’t wanted by family? Shouldn’t someone take them in and give them in a chance? What about someone who didn’t want their kids?

Why not choose guardianship?

Adoptees are the only ones in the adoption triad who had no right at all to consent. Even in the case of a truly forced termination of parental rights, most of these parents had some responsibility for the reasons why their rights were terminated. When we make natural mother’s the victims, we once again erase adopted people. It’s not healthy for adopted people. when their natural mothers make themselves the victim.

Ethical Challenges in Adoption

So often in coming out of the fog of rainbows and unicorns fantasy adoption narratives, many domestic infant adoptive parents will say things like: “I didn’t know better, now I know,” “I was so uneducated before I adopted,” or “No one ever told me about adoption and trauma.”

Seriously that is not ok. You do not get a free pass for being ignorant and expecting others to teach you. I imagine you research the heck out of some of these things: vacations, restaurants, politics, how to do this or how to do that. Many of you probably spend hours on Pinterest pinning away.

How easy is it to learn about adoption trauma or the issues related to adoption ? Just google “Is adoption bad”, “issues in adoption”. In five minutes, you will learn about the 7 core issues adoptees face, you will learn all about adoption trauma, you will learn about the socio-economic disparity of expecting families considering adoption. Honestly, that simple research should lead you to spend more hours researching more in-depth and then, any person with any decent heart would not consider adopting any more.

I tried that google exercise to come up with something to write about today – yep, very quickly a couple of sites were chosen to share from.

At The Imprint, I found – Ethical Challenges Remain in The World of Private Adoptions by Daniel Pollack and Steven Baranowski from March 2021. From delving into the world of Georgia Tann and the Memphis Branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in connection with my mom’s adoption, I already knew a lot about the early days of adoption. Dangerous informal child care arrangements in the early to mid 1900s have been replaced by a patchwork of state and federal laws, regulations and child care practices meant to serve the best interests of everyone associated with adoption, but we continue to allow for ethically concerning “wrongful” adoptions.

Over the last two decades, the National Association of Social Workers developed a Code of Ethics and child welfare practices have evolved and stronger assessment practices related to approval of adoptive parents have been established. Despite these advances, social workers have found themselves observing or being caught up in ethically challenging adoption practices that have continued to lead to unethical family disruptions and poorly implemented adoption policies, all of which have created more “wrongful adoptions” and a continued mistrust of the profession.

Disrupting family structures for the so-called “best interest” of the child is the most ethically challenging aspect of adoption and child welfare practices. The rescuing of “orphan” children from “Third World” countries has led to an increase in human trafficking and is the most blatant form of family disruptions for the sake of making money through the guise of a legal adoption.

All social workers are expected to promote social justice, the dignity of the person and to call out dishonesty and fraud. Ethical social work practice demands social workers focus on the rights of children and families to determine their own future, while advocating for transparent legislative oversight, protections for “whistleblowers” and increased education and social justice activism to eliminate wrongful practices. Another important aspect is the typically rushed adoption placement practice that occurs in many private infant adoptions.

There is more available from the article above at the link shared. The other site I found was at Mom Junction and was titled 7 Common Problems & Challenges Of Adoption written by Debolina Raja as recently as May 24 2022 (just days ago). The image illustrating this blog came from there.

Here’s the list (you can read more about each one at the link) –

Financial Challenges
Legal Challenges
Intercountry Adoption
Health Challenges
Emotional Challenges
Cultural Challenges
Ethical Challenges

Try the google experiment – you just may learn something you didn’t know before. And always, research exhaustively. Something as important as this should not be decided based upon emotions or a desire to “do good” in the world.