Adoption Is NOT Needed

Today’s story –

I’m tired of having to explain this to prospective adopters. Adoption is NOT needed to give a child a “good” life.

I am Latina, and in my culture, aunts and uncles as well as grandparents step up to help raise each other’s children. Even in cases where there is no poverty nor struggle. My parents were middle-class average Joe’s, yet my aunt and grandma still raised me. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I am not an adoptee nor mother but I am a foster parent. My job is to help reunite infants, toddlers, and grade schoolers with their natural families. I get a lot of hate from other foster parents and adoptive parents for saying this, but adoption simply isn’t necessary.

I became a close family friend to some of the families that I have helped to be reunited, and they are all doing so well. All they needed was a little bit of help. I will go as far as to hire a lawyer to fight family separation. I love these kids, and what’s best for them is to be with their own families. Imagine if we had a mentorship-type program where women helped struggling mothers parent their own child, instead of taking their child away from them. Friends don’t let friends give away their babies.

Also, that $30,000-60,0000 that is spent to adopt an infant would go a long way to helping these parents to keep and raise their own children. I have yet to see a mother who genuinely did not want her child, just a mother who is struggling or has low self-esteem. If that is the case, then build her up. No excuses why you cannot do this. In lots of cultures, like mine, everyone helps to raise each other’s kids without anyone taking them away their own parents and erasing their identity.

A Belief That Enables

When you make a decision, you make that decision consciously for only 5% maximum, the rest of your decision (95%) is controlled by your subconscious mind. The decision to adopt a child is conscious but there are subconscious factors below that which are influencing or will influence your experience as an adoptive parent. Some couples adopt for the same reason some couples decide to have a biological child – in order to save a marriage by bonding it with a child. Of course, the couples who adopt generally have other factors – most especially an experience with infertility and failed attempts at using reproductive medical assistance to have a child biologically. In other words, many adoptions actually start out on shaky ground to begin with.

So today, I came across something else that is more than a little bit disturbing. I hasten to add a trigger warning at this point for anyone for whom child abuse discussions might be too emotionally upsetting to continue. Having done my due diligence in this regard – you can proceed reading or leave this blog warned and saved the painful recollections.

It is sometimes asked – Why did they adopt just to abuse them. There is an assumption that adoptive parents wouldn’t abuse their adopted children because they went to so much effort to adopt them. All parents are capable of some degree of abuse – even with a great deal of love and often from ignorance or poor examples growing up. Therefore, it is dangerous to put any adoptive parent on a pedestal because sometimes adoptees are abused. It is a sad fact – and sad anytime any child is severely abused by any adult person for that matter. When the abuse starts… the people around them often say: well, those kids are very troubled and acting out. The adoptive parents are doing the best they can. Who can really blame them for doing what they have to do in order to control that child ?

One reason that it doesn’t shock or confuse me that some adoptive parents might harm their adoptees is that I have become aware of how common a trait of narcissism is among adoptive parents. Wanting a child doesn’t mean you’re going to treat them well. Adoption is inherently a selfish act – regardless of what you believe is motivating you. An adoptive parent may expect their adopted child to be compliant with any of their expectations or demands. That parent may lash out at their adoptee when they don’t meet those. Adoptive parents are not exempt from having anger issues and abusive tendencies.

Sometimes this abuse doesn’t begin immediately but when that cute baby becomes a rebellious teen. One adoptee shared her example – my adoptive mother actually said to me when I was 7 yrs old – “We wanted a baby, and you’re not a baby anymore.” That is how she explained they were going to adopt a baby boy.

Abuse is about possession and control. And in a weird, twisted kind of logic many abusers don’t actually think are they abusive. An abusive narcissistic parent may think they are a really good one. Being abusive goes against the savior narrative that so many adoptive parents have accepted as their reason for adopting. Adoption seems to be a process that attracts people who need to feel good about themselves. And once they’ve completed the adoption, they feel effectively immune from criticism because, after all, it was such a “selfless” act to rescue a child in need.

People adopt simply because they want kids. However, they may not actually have any idea of how to raise those children, once they have achieved that primary goal. These kinds of adoptive parents may have difficulty accepting that the child they adopted is an individually separate person with ideas of their own, desires, wants, and needs that do not necessary mirror the adoptive parent. In fact, often don’t While nurturing plays a role in the kind of person we each become – adoptee reunions with their birth parents after they reach maturity often prove – there is more to the genetic influences than many in the adoption industry want society to believe.

Another example comes from an adoptee with an emotionally immature mother – “She wasn’t able to have children and I think she thought a child would fix her. I was adopted at birth. I believe she thought I’d be a mini version of her but when I had my own emotions and interests, she couldn’t handle it. In came the weird emotional games.” It is way too common for adoptive parents to adopt a baby as a way to fix their own issues. It never works that way.

The abuse somehow feeds into these adoptive parents’ need to feel like they are doing something good. They are a “strong” parent and showing these troubled kids “tough love.” And then, there’s always the go-to excuse so many adoptees have hard – They should be grateful. They could have it so much worse. Never say to an adoptee sharing their experience something like – Just because you were abused by your adoptive parents, that’s why you hate adoption. Or sorry you had a bad experience. An experience sounds like a short term event. Adoption is lifelong.

Dismissing any adoptees’ discontent and trauma is victim blaming, also called gaslighting. It is an attempt to control the adoptees’ story in order not to break their happy, little “adoption is rainbows and butterflies” illusion.

Erasing History

I think if my mom was here, she’d say much the same. When I found a cousin on my paternal grandmother’s side, she immediately noticed something that had escaped my attention – my grandmother’s name was not on his adoption papers – the Salvation Army owned him. This is the enduring legacy of adoption and I am simply VERY fortunate I was able to track down who ALL 4 of my original grandparents were – not for lack of the powers that be trying to obscure it.

Today’s adoption story (is not my own but I can relate) –

“This is a strange life. Looking back over it now I feel that I was propelled into constructing a life that has been totally separated from who I am. This was deliberately done by the State and its agents once they had got their hands on me and my brother. They stole me from my mother’s arms and then proceeded to lie about who I was, about where I had come from about my ancestry. They deliberately falsified fundamental documents about my identity. The moment that I was born I was unborn. They removed my mother’s name and the name that she had given me from history and acted as if they had never existed when they did exist. They did so on the basis that this history was inconsequential and as such could be wiped like one wipes a blackboard clean.”

“I have had no choice but to struggle with the circumstances of my birth from the very beginning. I was thrust into a battle between life and death, truth and lies, reality and State manufactured fiction. I was born a pawn on the chessboard of the States so called battle for public morality. I was the symbol of the transgression, of the fact that sex outside marriage existed. But no one talks about this fact, no they still see adoption as that of being rescued from a mother and a family that chose not to care for you. It was no such thing. The State set in motion the theory of Closed Adoption through its adoption practices and through the whip of economic compulsion tens of thousands of mothers gave up their babies. There was no money to keep them and no public support or support from their families. All they received was righteous moralistic outrage as their pregnant daughters were sent away.”

I say I can relate because –

My paternal grandmother was unmarried and had an affair with a married man. I would suspect she didn’t know he was married when she first started seeing him in the mid-1930s but I think she probably did know by the time she knew she was pregnant. Self-sufficient woman that she was, I don’t think she ever told him that she was expecting his child. None of his family knew he had any offspring until I turned up. DNA proved to them I was actually related. My grandmother did know who the father was. She gave my dad his name as a middle name and put his photo next to one of her holding my dad at the Salvation Army home for women and children in El Paso Texas that employed her after she gave birth at one of their homes in San Diego California. She applied for employment and they transferred her to El Paso Texas with my dad in tow and that is where he was adopted.

Continuing with this man’s emotional story –

“I feel tired today. I feel tired full stop. For my entire life I have been struggling to deal with the circumstances of my birth. From the very beginning my heart was wounded. When you are given away, rejected, abandoned, it is personal. It hurts. When you are forced to live in a society that acts as if the wound does not hurt, it is suicidal because there is no outlet for the pain. No acknowledgment, no sorrow, nothing but silence. Your life is built on this silence. Holding in the hurt, trying to act as if you belong when you have been permanently displaced, always blaming yourself for how you feel because the whole system has set you up for self-blame. From the very beginning no one listened to your cries for your mother. From the very beginning you were met with silence. From the very beginning your most vital needs were ignored and your heart was hurt. You were separated from your emotional needs and your heart was born under an avalanche.”

“From the very beginning it all felt like it was your fault, that you had done something wrong, as if you had had brought this situation upon yourself simply through existing. From your first breath you were struggling for your life without love. There was no beauty in your birth, instead they had turned your life into a fight for survival and no one took any responsibility. They just left you to it. And that set the pattern of your life, of the life that they had created for you, you were abandoned, rejected and left to it. No one checked on how you felt. No one asked if you were struggling. They just left you on this hard road all on your own having to work out how to survive on your own. A road populated with strangers. And you lonely and you knew what the world could do.”

“Even though nobody said anything your birth set the path that you would follow as you tried your best to come to terms with it by outrunning your hurt heart. You felt that, in the silence, that this pain, this sadness that you felt in the world always must have been a sign that something was wrong with you. And there was, but no one would tell you what it was. And so in the absence of an explanation you labelled this hurt, this feeling as meaning that there was something wrong with you and so you locked up your heart and who you were. It was clear that you had to become someone else, you had to not be the person that you had been born to be. And you were right. They did not want the person that you were born to be. They did not want your ancestry, your mother, your personality and who you were deep inside. No, they just wanted a blank slate, a void, a nothing who would be exactly what your adopted parents wanted you to be. They called this attachment. You attached by disassociating from yourself, from your thoughts, your feelings and your emotions. You were to become “as if born to” these adopted parents and their names would be writ large on your birth certificate.”

There is more, much much more. I won’t go on but adoption hurts. Loss of identity hurts. No family history hurts. It even hurts children like me who’s two parents were both adoptees.

Accepting Reality

. . . really ought to be accepted. An adoptive mother writes, “My hearts desire was to be a Mom. If I could have carried and delivered a biological child, my health insurance would have picked up most of the cost. I certainly couldn’t afford to pay the entire hospital bill out of my pocket.”

“I think there are more reasons than just financial ones that an expectant mother considers when deciding to place their child for adoption. I can understand your feelings.”

“There is no insurance to help pay for the process. I certainly couldn’t afford the adoption process out of pocket without fundraising. It does seem like we adoptive parents are ‘buying’ a child. The whole process needs to be revamped. There needs to be more programs to assist hopeful adoptive parents afford the process or lobby government for better adoption credits, funding, etc.”

“We were helped and supported by so many in our family and community. I do feel it is unfair for people to say, ‘don’t adopt if you can’t afford it’. Some of us have no other choice but to seek outside funding to realize our dreams.”

Infertility – maybe it is God’s will ? Infertility isn’t fair, but it still doesn’t entitle you to someone else’s baby. Dreams of having a baby are a part of life for many people. But not all dreams are possible to realize. Try getting a puppy. No one is entitled to children. It’s not a need. It’s a want. It’s a BIG want, but it’s still just a want.

If God doesn’t make mistakes, then the mother into who’s womb that baby you want to adopt was placed was the right one to begin with. It’s a shame that struggling mothers need to worry about basic necessities after having a baby. I sincerely wish society would band together to assist struggling expectant mothers rather than prey on their vulnerability when it is time for them to give birth. Adoption is not the natural order of life and should happen only in the rarest of circumstances. It should never, ever happen due to a lack of money or support. We are a failure as a society because this happens.

A difficult to hear but totally reasonable reply to the above could be – “Why is the dream always to get their own baby and not help someone with their baby ? Is it that hard to be a good human? Women that are dealing with a crisis pregnancy should not be shamed into giving that child away simply because they are not as well off as hopeful adoptive parents. Why does someone that has more money deserve to raise that child more than that child’s own mother ? Why don’t we as a society support women so they can parent their children. A struggling mom is deemed at fault because she got pregnant but can’t afford to raise her kid ? Maybe we need a better social system in this country so there isn’t such a class disparity. Fundraising to take someone else’s child away from them when they are struggling financially is disgusting. Hopeful adoptive parents are no more worthy of being a parent than anyone else.”

One woman replied to the above – “Fun fact: My brother and his wife have two biological daughters born almost exactly two years apart. When the second daughter was about 2 months old, they finally received their last hospital bill for the birth of the first daughter two years prior. This was a regular, uncomplicated vaginally delivery with no extended hospital stay and no special care for the baby. Both parents had health insurance through their employers. This idea that adoption is so much more expensive than giving birth to a biological child is a myth. Especially in the US.”

Personally, I really like this reply – “Why don’t men have to have a certain financial reserve in the bank before they have sex ? Why do they have sex with women if they are not able and willing to support a child ? Why have sex if you can’t take care of a baby ? It makes no sense. The responsibility for a child’s conception is NEVER about the man’s responsibility. Ever. And men are the ones who also overwhelmingly push for laws governing a woman’s body. ”

A 69 year old woman who was adopted and then gave up a child as a very young woman admits, “No one comes out of adoption without deep sorrow, the pain of never being good enough lasts a lifetime.”

There are many people who have been touched by adoption that are making an effort every day to make adoption a rare event.

Today’s Teens Are A Lot More Understanding

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is believed to be caused by overwhelming experiences, traumatic events and/or abuse during childhood. This came up today in association with a former foster care youth who had a terrible experience in foster care, is now in her teens and wants to share that with others.

One mature woman shared her experience – I went into the system at 3, taken from mom at 5, and emancipated through marriage at 16. I tried to share my story. I got a lot of rejection from other teens. That was a different time, though. Teens these days are a lot more understanding of trauma and mental illness and they welcome the opportunity to hold space for those who have gone through horrific experiences.

Another person was very supportive of this teen’s desire saying, It’s her story and she’s old enough to share. Will she receive backlash….possibly. But I bet she’s going to get more support vs. backlash, which is what she is seeking. She’s seeking a community that says “I hear you and I understand”.

Foster care children have been stripped of everything. It is hard to understand why people would take children into their home for foster care and not intend to make them feel at home. Examples –

Only buying the child the bare minimum or giving them hand me downs. One mature woman who was once in foster care shares – It always made me feel less than or like a charity case.. often I was given her biological daughters clothes/school supplies from the previous year etc. I remember the first time I got my own winter coat at around 7-8 years old. It was like Christmas to me.

It is no wonder children subjected to these situations develop personality coping mechanisms. Schizophrenia and DID are often confused with each other, but they’re very different things. Schizophrenia is a psychotic illness: symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, disorganized thoughts, speech and movements and social withdrawal. It does not involve alternate personalities or dissociation.

People with DID are not delusional or hallucinating their alternate personalities. Individuals with DID may experience some symptoms related to psychosis, such as hearing voices, but DID and schizophrenia are two different illnesses. There are very few documented cases linking crime to DID. The idea of an ‘evil’ alter is not true. People with DID are more likely than the general population to be re-traumatized and experience further abuse and violence.

Personality disorders are a constant fixed pattern of feeling and behaving over time, usually developing in early adulthood. Personality disorders, like borderline personality disorder, involve extreme emotional responses and patterns of behavior which make it hard for the person with the disorder to have stable relationships and function in society.

DID is a dissociative disorder. Rather than extreme emotional reactions to the world, people living with DID lose contact with themselves: their memories, sense of identity, emotions and behavior. Unlike personality disorders, DID may first manifest at almost any age.

Adoption Or Foster Care

I’ve been reading a book about one girl’s experiences in foster care to better inform myself about a system I have no experience with. Adoption ? Though not adopted myself nor have I given up a child to adoption, I have LOTS of experience – both parents were adoptees and both sisters gave up a child to adoption. I also spend significant time each day within a private Facebook group that includes original parents, adoptees and former foster youth, and adoptive (or hopeful) parents. I learn a lot there that broadens my perspectives.

Some of the major differences I am understanding – foster care does not alter the child’s identity (doesn’t change their name or birth certificate). Foster care is less permanent or certain. The goal in a lot of foster care is eventual reunification of the family unit. The quality of foster care varies but a bad placement can be gotten out of. Not all foster parents treat the foster child well nor do they really care about what is happening to the child. Some actually do it for the money (NOT saying most or all do it for that reason).

Adoption is a PERMANENT solution to what is a temporary problem when talking about an unwed mother or a poverty situation. Adoption does provide a more certain home environment than foster care does but the double edge sword is that if it is an awful placement, most of the time the child is simply trapped there (I’ve read enough nightmare stories to believe this). That said, there are also “second chance” adoptions where the adoptive parents want to be rid of a troublesome child. This is very sad for the child as it sends a debilitating message about the worth of that child.

Most of the time, adoptive parents change the child’s name and to some extent their cultural identity if it is a transracial adoption. Some adoptive parents hide the date and/or location of the child’s birth to place an obstacle in the way of the parent/child unit reuniting. Genetic family bonds are broken or permanently lost. Even when such direct family is recovered later in life, so much life experience and inter-relationship is lost that it is nearly impossible to rebuild. I understand this as I have been able to learn what my own parents could not – who my original grandparents were. Along with learning that, I have acquired new family relationships with genetically related aunts and cousins.

I acknowledge that not all children are going to be parented by the people who gave birth to them. This is a reality. I would also argue that as a society we do NOT do enough to keep families intact and could do much better. I would further add that MONEY plays a HUGE role in perpetuating the separation of mothers from their children. That money could be better spent with less traumatic outcomes on the natural family and its supports.

Betrayal

It may seem harsh but for a lot of adoptees, the giving up was a betrayal. The handover that can be felt by the adoptee, continually felt throughout their life. The rejection. The abandonment. The unanswerable questions.

It is a forever loss – permanent.

Even in the pre-verbal infant – adoption – is “remembered” on an emotional, cellular level. This in turn causes lots of behavioral and self-worth related issues. Often the adoptee can not explain why they feel as they do. Why they act out like they do. Their anger is in a very deep place that cannot be released because the adoptee is unable to express the emotional context of their feelings in language.

It is impossible to proclaim adoption good or bad in all circumstances. There are true orphans and then there is the exploited single mother. There is the profit motive to take her baby and sell it to a couple who has the means to meet the demanded price.

All children are priceless but the adoptee has been priced and that price paid, not only by the adoptive parents but by the original parents and their kin – and most especially, always, by the adoptee’s own self.