Guardianship vs Adoption

Within adoption reform movements, guardianship is seen as a better alternative for the potential adoptee than the formal process of adoption as it has been practiced over decades.

Guardianship preserves the identity of the child and gives the parents an opportunity to make changes and get any help they might need to be in a better position to parent the child.

What is needed is a complete restructuring of the system (and of the public’s understanding of the system) to get people thinking in a new way. For many years, the public has been encouraged to think of foster care=temporary and adoption=permanent.

It has been difficult to get couples to accept guardianship. This alternative means the child doesn’t feel like it’s fully theirs. So many prospective adopters want an “all in” method and to them adoption finalizes the transfer of a child from one parent set to another, making that child “theirs”.

Guardianship may feel as though it puts the hopeful adoptive couple in a worrisome space of fulfilling a “temporary” role. Not what many of them are seeking when they chose to adopt.

Who Am I ?

“Whose tummy did I grow in ?”

Consider this. Most of us take for granted that we grew inside our mother’s womb. A child that has always been told they were adopted will eventually reach a point where this question will arise in their own mind. In closed adoptions, the child will never be given an answer. In fact, great care has been taken to erase every fact related to their beginning in life.

Georgia Tann often falsified birth certificates and original parental data so that even after records were allowed to be opened for “qualified” persons (the adoptee or their direct descendants) one had to view the information skeptically. I am fortunate that for the most part, the information in my mom’s adoption file seems to have been accurate.

But there was fudging about the nature of her parents who were presented to my adoptive grandmother (who thought very highly of advanced education) as two unfortunate college students who were caught by pregnancy. That was hardly the truth. My grandmother never went to college and my grandfather was a widower 20 years older than her who had already fathered 5 children.

Adoptees in a closed adoption will have their birth certificates falsified (as both of my parents did) to appear that their adoptive parents gave birth to them when they did not. They will have their original name changed to something the adoptive parents want. In my dad’s case, it happened twice, because my Granny divorced the husband she was married to when she adopted my dad. The second husband objected to my dad carrying the vanquished man’s name and so at an age of already 8 years, my dad was given a new name.

Is it any wonder that adoptees often struggle with an identity crisis ? Many adult adoptees believe that adoption should be ended. The children should be given guardians and keep all of their original identity information. Much like in the case of slavery, a child is not something one owns but a human being we are privileged to protect and provide for.

What’s It Like Living A False Identity

As I began to learn about my own parent’s identities (they were both adopted and died knowing next to nothing about that), it very quickly dawned on me how awful it must be, to be forced to live a false identity. Most people never even consider that.

This is the statute for only one state but most states are the same regarding adoption laws.

Why is it so difficult to just love a child in a parental way without the ownership of that child? Adoption legally strips away a child’s heritage and attempts to force another one on them. Is it any wonder that adoptees struggle with identity?

When my cousin from my dad’s original mother and I discovered each other, I said I had his adoption certificate. She immediately noticed something I didn’t, his mother’s name wasn’t on the paper. Instead the Salvation Army had taken “ownership” of him.

One doesn’t own a child like they own a pet or car or house. A child is also a human being. Take away their name and the name of their original parents, what’s left?

Something that is no longer wholly real. Sadly.