Reflection
On May 16th, Korean adoptee Adam Crapser won part of his lawsuit against the adoption agency Holt Korea. This AP article discusses the lawsuit and its findings. Like many other adoptees I have been following Adam’s story for a number of years. When I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I learned that Adam was detained just a few miles from me at the Northwest Detention Center while his deportation case was being processed.
Adam’s story was featured in my research article about transnational adoptees in the US who had experienced an adoption displacement. I define displacement as a scenario where an adoptee is not living with their adoptive parents for a period of time – that is, they have residential disruptions.
When people talk about adoption as “forever family” or in the child welfare/legal sphere as “permanency” they use these euphemistic phrases and words to convey an idea and a hope. The hope is that these children, who have already experienced displacement from their families of origin, will find this new family stable, loving, and supportive. Realistically though, even child welfare and adoption professionals know not all adoptions will be this way. One researcher, Marianne Berry, even wrote “Adoption breakdowns are an unfortunate reality in adoption.” I first learned about adoption breakdowns over 20 years ago when I met a Korean adoptee who had been abused by her adoptive parents and ended up in the U.S. foster care system.
I’ve written before about why I dislike the term “forever family” and I have the same feelings toward the term “permanency.” In my research article, I talk through the many types of “permanencies” that adoptees can experience in their adoptive families – scholars David Brodzinsky and Susan Livingston Smith wrote about legal, residential, and affective (i.e. relational) permanency that adoption is supposed to provide. I added another one – cultural permanency – which is often NOT achieved in adoption.
Due to the lack of ability to collect real statistics on adoption in the U.S., it’s hard to really know how many adoptions break down. Most of the research is very limited in scope – the researchers rely on only foster care adoptions because they can look at data such as who is receiving adoption subsidies. But unfortunately, a parent can (and sometimes do) kick their adopted child out of the house and keep the adoption subsidy payments. It’s so hard to get families to participate in follow-up studies once the adoption has been finalized, and many adoptees experience breakdowns that can’t really be captured by the research.
In my research, I was attempting to uncover the various types of adoption breakdowns – all of which Adam Crapser experienced: loss of legal permanency when his adoptive parents lost their parental rights because they were found to be abusive; loss of residential permanency (multiple times, when Adam was placed in foster care or kicked out of his adoptive homes); affective/relational permanency loss with his adoptive family; and finally cultural permanency loss as no one raised Adam with any connection to his Korean culture or community.
The adoptees in my study were all transnational adoptees – born outside the U.S. and adopted by U.S. parents – a population that has routinely been left out of the adoption breakdown research in the U.S. While some ended up in foster care or were re-adopted (formal breakdowns) it was more common for these adoptees to experience informal adoption breakdowns – that is, the parents effectively decided to end the relationship with the adoptee. Sometimes that meant they kicked the adoptee out of the home, sometimes they were so abusive the adoptee left to live with friends. Several were sent to live with extended relatives and a few were even sent to boarding schools as a way to get them out of the family home.
Adam Crapser’s story likely made the headlines because in his case these adoption breakdowns led to his deportation. I guess people talking about “forever families” also neglected to consider citizenship permanency as part of the equation. The bigger point I want to make, though, is that most adoptees who have experienced one or many types of adoption breakdowns are hidden from our view.
Recommendations
NYT article about ICWA and Native American adoption. The link is a gift for those who do not have a subscription.
This week I want to highlight some folks to follow on Instagram that are not adoption or foster care specific but who offer suggestions, research, and advice I think is helpful for our communities. These folks include:
- Nedra Glover Tawwab @nedratawwab
- Lindsay Braman @lindsaybraman
- The Body Keeps the Score @thebodykeepsthescore
Finally, I want to highlight a resource about foster youth in the form of a community engagement project directed by Yasmin Mistry. The Foster Care Film Community Engagement Project website contains a series of films and other media content with the goal of centering foster youth perspectives and narratives.
Research
This interactive page from Child Trends on child welfare (including maltreatment, foster care, kinship care, and adoption/permanency) is a helpful resource for those interested in better understanding what these aspects of child welfare look like for different states. For example, I looked at Washington state reasons for entering foster care (there can be more than one) and found that the highest percentages of children enter care because of neglect (62%) and parental substance use (44%). More children in Washington state are reunited with their parents (66%) compared to the national average (47%).
Share the Love
Chinese adoptees are a growing group of writers and filmmakers. The (un)lucky ones is a student documentary short created by Chinese adoptee Sophie Rizzo, featuring a Korean adoptee.
Sophie also created a short film, Liminal Space, which captures the dissonance that can happen when a transnational adoptee encounters the culture they lost as a result of being adopted to a family that does not practice what I’ve termed “cultural permanency.”
Harlow's Monkey 