Last week I attempted to make a critique and because of my bad judgment in timing, botched my message up completely. I wanted now to clarify what I was trying to say. People incorrectly assumed that I am anti-adoption and anti-Christianity. There were two points I made in that post last week, and this post is expanding on point #1.
I really wanted to say that people don’t need to go overseas in order to help kids without parents. I felt that there was a lot of emphasis on the family’s organization promoting international adoption. I am a staunch advocate that we need to take care of our own kids too, and as a country we are failing at that. When the earthquakes in happened in China, adoption agencies were being flooded with people calling about how to adopt the orphans. It happened in with the tsunami in Indonesia and the southeast Asian countries in 2004. Yet there are thousands of children in foster care in the United States and these kids are just as "deserving" of families as kids in other countries.
I originally linked to one of the One Church One Child programs which was founded in Illinois. Basically, the One Church One Child program was to promote and recruit adoptive families within faith organizations. The premise and belief is that since there are more churches in the U.S. than there are children in foster care, that if every church congregation would be committed to supporting the adoption of one child or sibling group from foster care then there would be no children waiting for adoption.
I am NOT saying that children in other countries are less "deserving." I AM saying that children in THIS country are JUST AS "deserving."
What I get so frustrated by is the way our society has privileged the foreign "orphan" over the domestic foster care child. I believe (and this is just my opinion) that the continuation of our country’s participation in international adoptions has not just positively affected children in these countries, but has hurt those countries – and their future children too – by enabling these countries who don’t have to have child welfare services and/or programs to continue not caring for their children because international adoption BECOMES their child welfare program.
I also really think that when people from the U.S. (and other places too) adopt despite the warnings that children are being procured illegally that we really smear adoption and make it worse.
And I am so tired of the misinformation out there about adoptees and first parents.
We/they/all of us need to look at the
underlying reasons why children are parent-less and maybe that
preventative part makes us overwhelmed. We might feel we can’t eliminate poverty, or war. We can’t control natural disasters. We aren’t able to cure AIDS. We haven’t gotten rid of chemical dependency or mental illnesses.
But we can take in a child – that much we can do.
I’ve said it again, I’m sure you have all heard it over and over – adoption should be about finding families for kids, not finding kids for families. Children are not pets at the pound. Yet, I’ve had prospective and adoptive parents get angry at me, saying that this is a nice ideal but ultimately it should be the family’s choice who they want to adopt. Foreign adoptions are preferred and the reasons that are given are usually 1)because the myth about the birth parent coming back and taking the child away and that 2)American kids in foster care are more damaged.
We put up with those opinions and biases (and by "we" I mean those of us who work in the adoption profession/industry) because we have to. The social or adoption worker’s job depends on the adoptive parents so everything is tailored to accommodate them. And that’s when the demand for certain kinds of kids over others, and the justifications that are made for illegal adoptions, makes me feel like nothing is ever going to change and that adoption is just about this big old industry of parents buying babies.
We talk about the "best interests" of the child, but let’s be honest. Who are we really catering to?
It seems like a no-win situation sometimes.
Believe it or not, I think that adoptive parents often suffer just as much as the adoptees. When adoptive parents are told that kids from foreign countries are blank slates, they have been duped. When adoptive parents are informed that birth parents in foreign countries never come looking for their children, they have been misled. When adoptive parents are told that adopting kids from other races or cultures won’t impact their lives and the kids will never have any issues related to racism or racial identity, they have been lied to. When adoptive parents are told that all they need is love and their family life will be happily-ever-after, they have been deceived.
I come to the subject of adoption through the lens of my own experiences and those of friends I know and love. I have never said that I was unbiased or that I look at these things from a completely unemotional place. The thing is, I know that I have these biases. I know that I view life through my own frames. But there are many times when I do bite my lip. There are lots of times when I try to look at the adoptive parent from their perspective. I don’t always succeed, but I am always trying.
I think that adoptive parents must recognize their biases and look at things from the perspective of the adoptee. (edited to add, and the family of origin, including the mother, father, siblings and extended relatives who might all feel the grief and loss of the adopted individual).
