I can't keep up with all the articles and op/eds about adoption! Here are a few that you should read.
- This one from Resist Racism is a must-read, especially since it provides more information and context around the New York Times Motherlode blog post by Anita Tedaldi I posted a few days ago.. What is more shocking to me than the actual fact of the disruption of her internationally adopted son is what she has written about in the past regarding her life and adoption. To say she has contradicted herself for what appears (intended or not) for sympathy over the truth of the matter is an understatement. It is adoptive parent misrepresentation and her ex-son has been cast as the cause when the writer should have been looking more closely in the mirror.
- More about the link above – Thanks to Sharon for providing this link to an NPR interview with Anita Tedaldi, about dissolving her international adoption. The NPR link is http://www.thetakeaway.org/stories/2009/aug/31/ending-adoption/. I think the editor, Lisa Belkin, is fooling herself. She says that people are furious for "talking about it [disruption]." But that's not the point. The criticism isn't about talking about it, the criticism is over the way Tedaldi and Belkin frame the issue. I found both Teldadi and Belkin extrememly annoying, acting like victims in this when I think the only thing I can sympathize with is that they were naive enough to think they were going to be considered heroes for publishing this story. Belkin made some big errors in her editing process and Teldadi could have provided more context to the story about those "inconsistencies" she mentions in the interview.
- For those of you who are unfamiliar with those inconsistencies, you can read the comments where some people have linked to or excerpted pieces of other articles Tedaldi has written, and here at Resist Racism.
- I missed this article
when it was published in late July by a member of Ethica. It is worth
reading. I found a lot of things I agree with in her analysis. Fighting for orphans by Rachel Schatz Wegner is about the FFOA legislation.
- Woman is accused of killing her adopted Chinese daughter. Story here.
- More about adoption fairs from the Guardian UK.
Sue Cotton, head of adoption services at the charity Action for
Children, said that although the parties were "high risk" for the
children involved, they were necessary to counter the "mismatch"
between the kind of children people wanted to adopt and those that were
available.
"Nobody wants to go back to the past, when prospective
adopters viewed children and picked them out of a queue, but the
current mismatch really is dire," she said. "The downside of these
parties is that children will be aware that they are being picked or
not picked at the parties, no matter how sensitive the pre-party
preparation has been. Children who know that families are being sought
for them will always risk feeling rejection, but meeting the adults at
the party will make the letdown even stronger.
"We can't welcome
this idea because we don't know the effect on the children," she added.
"But it is clear that staying as we are is not an option."
Harlow's Monkey 
The Anita Tedaldi post is a tough one. The problem with the relentless personal focus of memoir is that one’s personal story seems to represent more than it actually does. “Proof” for everything turns on personal experience or anecdotes rather than evidence.
I think she was brave to talk about this disruption–but only up to a point. She says she loves her son and will never forget him, but I think the truly honest thing to say here is that she didn’t connect with him and wasn’t able to love him. If she had framed it in this way–and also enlarged the frame to talk about lack of parental attachment as more than an adoption thing–I would have bought her claim that this experience has made her face her own weaknesses. I’m sure it has, but becoming utterly vulnerable (and perhaps less sympathetic) in print is the only justification we adoptive parents have for telling pieces of our young children’s stories.