Reflection
I recently read the newly published article, Byproduct of adoption: The experiences and voices of the descendants of Korean adoptees in the Asian American Journal of Psychology by Oh Myo Kim, Bastiaan Filkweert, Xiang, Zhou and Richard Lee. It is not an open-access article, so I’m summarizing some of the main points.
As a parent of two “DoKADs” (descendants of Korean adoptees) I have been waiting for this study’s publication with excitement.
This study was the first I know of to specifically examine the experiences of children of adoptees. In this case, the study participants were children of Korean adoptees including a total of 35 adoptees. I really appreciated the diversity of the sample. So much research on Korean adoption is focused on U.S. Korean adoptees, so I think the research team did a great job of recruitment to get more than half of the participants from outside the U.S. (18 from Europe and 1 from Canada). Here are my reflections on some of the study findings.
Emerging theory
The authors articulated an emerging theory: “DoKADs are intricately connected to the historical trauma of intercountry adoption through their parents, but their connection feels tenuous and ambiguous.” The ambiguous part really struck me. I talk a lot about my experiences of ambiguous loss as an adoptee. Ambiguous loss is a relational loss that occurs that is not easy to define, recognized, or validated. The best way I can describe it is to be “ghosted” but I’ve been thinking a lot more deeply in the past several years about what a relationship is or means. For example, I’ve started to define my relationship to Korea as my birth country as ambiguous even though Korea isn’t a person who ghosted me (I consider my Korean family as maybe having ghosted me). However, if I think about my relationship to Korea as hard to define, unrecognized, and unvalidated, then the term fits. My relationship to Korea is non-reciprocated. Koreans don’t care about me (as an individual, or as a generation of rejected children). Maybe individual Koreans care, and some sub-groups of Koreans might care, but when I consider the political and societal levels in the country, Korean adoptees are largely forgotten. I care more about my relationship to Korea than vice versa.
It’s this lack of connection and ambiguous relationship to my Korean family, and through that, my sense of Korean identity, that I’ve passed down to my two children. And they know and feel that same sense of disconnection.
Findings
I think the findings from this study could be really challenging for Korean adoptee parents to hear and understand. In a way, we are so used to centering ourselves in the story – understandably, naturally, since we were the ones sent away – but part of our experience of disconnection often included the disconnection and rejection of difference to our experiences in our adoptive families. This may be why when we become parents, we don’t fully understand the theories behind intergenerationality and socialization.
In the past decade, a lot more focus on intergenerational trauma has entered mainstream society. We are more likely now to talk about intergenerational trauma, which is how trauma in one generation affects the next generation. Primarily, the effects are due to a couple of reasons.
First, if a parent has experienced trauma and learned to hide, reject, or keep silent about the trauma, they don’t address the experience. This can mean a parent still feels that effect of the trauma and it may affect their behaviors (including parenting) but there is little to no awareness about it.
Second, a parent might be aware and may be intentional about “parenting differently” so of course, that impacts the way they parent their children. This is best done when additional support, such as therapy, can help the parent think about ways to parent their child given their own inner wounds and reactions.
A third response I’ve seen is a somewhat confusing response that I think is both natural and contradictory – and that’s a lack of empathy toward their child. I’ll give you an example. A Korean adoptee parent was bullied for their identity as a child and young adult, growing up in a predominantly white area. Perhaps their experiences of racism and bullying are dismissed and invalidated by their white parents. Now, as parents, their child comes to them and says they’re experiencing identity-related bullying. Instead of empathizing with their child, they tell them they had it harder and dismisses their child’s experiences. This lack of compassion or empathy often sounds like the old adages, “When I was your age, I had to [walk to school up hill, both ways].
Speaking for myself as a parent of DoKADs, I can say I had no awareness or preparation for how my own experiences as a Korean adoptee who was abandoned around my first birthday and lived in two orphanages before being adopted to a conservative white family in suburban Minnesota would trickle down into my parenting. I know I wanted to do two things: try to bring in more Korean culture into my kids’ lives, and support their racial and ethnic identities as multiracial people. But I admit there were plenty of times when I was triggered by their privilege of knowing both their parents, or being able to have any (though limited) Korean culture in their lives as kids. One example from the study was a DoKad participant talking about how they’d once forgotten to send their adoptee mother a Mother’s Day card and how this triggered a big emotional response and rupture with their mother.
I also didn’t really recognize how my complicated relationship with my white adoptive parents – their white grandparents – would trickle down.
In the study, DoKad participants shared experiences of trauma and abuse. Sometimes they were the subject of the abuse while other times it was acknowledgment that their parents were abused by their adoptive parents. I also didn’t really recognize how my complicated relationship with my white adoptive parents – their white grandparents – would trickle down.
Another takeaway has to do with the “adoption fog” and the ways some DoKads described their own adoption fog.
There are so many more findings presented in the article. I really appreciate the work by Dr. Kim and her team. This is an important continuation of Korean adoption research and I am looking forward to hearing more of the intergenerational impact of adoption on children (and maybe someday even grandchildren?).
Recommendations
To learn more about DoKads, the following social media and websites have additional information.
Reads
A couple of memoirs, articles, and books that came to my attention the past few months include:
- Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Belonging, and How We Find Ourselves in Language by 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin. Shin is a poet, writer, editor, and good friend. This memoir is non-traditional and non-linear (my favorite kind of memoir) told in a series of essays. Learn more in this interview with Shin.
- Torn From the Root: A Memoir of a Black Transracial Adoptee. Roorda is well-known for her speaking and as co-author of the In Their Own Voices series.
- Stranger in My Own Story by Erik Mohn. Mohn is a black, transracial adoptee. I’ve seen some social media and news stories promoting the book, but unlike Shin and Roorda, I don’t know much about Mohn and I haven’t met him.
References
Kim, O. M., Flikweert, B. S. V., Zhou, X., & Lee, R. M. (2026). Byproduct of adoption: The experiences and voices of the descendants of Korean adoptees. Asian American Journal of Psychology. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aap0000425.
