Just to prove that that bias I talked about in my last post exists.

(http://www.thrivetheblog.org/category/your-advice/)

The second image in Google image search for "adopted." Right after Angelina Jolie with Zahara. That seems to be the way this thing is framed. Idyllic and uplifting or shameful and traumatizing.

So. Rude.

Rude, Stupid, and Annoying Questions People Ask Parents: Is She Adopted? begins with this: "Unfortunately, interracial or biracial couples often get asked if their baby is adopted if he or she looks very much like the other parent." Unfortunately, the author doesn't fully explain why this is unfortunate. The only explanation I can seem to glean from the article is that

even if you are right and the child is adopted, why would you think it is appropriate to comment about this in front of the child? Depending on the situation, there is a fair chance that child hasn't been told yet that he is adopted and your rude comment may have done a lot more harm than you could ever imagine.

This I get. Though I still agree with Hopgood that parents shouldn't hide adoption from their children, this would be a harsh way to find out. The only other reason I can imagine why this might be considered rude would be that this would be an insult to the parent. The reason why this might be an insult would be that 1. the parent believes there is something to be ashamed of about adoption. (They're not really yours). Or 2. It's just an invasive comment. The end of the article seems to implicitly back up these other reasons. The list of related "stupid and thoughtless things that people say when kids really are adopted include:

* Which child is 'really' yours?
* How much did you pay for them?
* Why did their parents give them up?
* Where are their 'real' parents?
* Couldn't you have your own kids?
* Why didn't you adopt an American child?
* Are they 'real' brothers and sisters?
* Do they have the same father? "

I recognize that belief in the idea of "real" and, I suppose, "fake" children is ignorant and unkind, but they only carry weight if the parent feels at least to some extent vulnerable to those kinds of attacks. Also, these are just invasive, personal questions I would be tentative to ask of even my closest friends. But these are much harsher than the article's title question: is she adopted? That such a question would be considered rude, stupid, or annoying indicates to me that there do exist some real biases against adoption, or assumptions about the extent of "realness" in adoptive families.

Unofficial adoption

So I've been talking a lot about formal adoption, but perhaps even more common is unofficial adoption. When families throw their kids out or kids leave, when spouses kick each other out or somebody just needs to get away, friends, neighbors, and family frequently offer up their home, energy, and love. I have several friends who are not on speaking terms with their families, but still have a place they call home, a place to visit on Thanksgiving.

These scenarios illustrate our continuously morphing definition of family. A class I took back in college suggested that one of the dominant components of the Generation X identity was a desire to find one's true family with one's friends. I myself went through a period of time where an ex-boyfriend's mother took me in when I wasn't on good terms with my own parents. Perhaps the definition of family and parents is flexible not only in terms of biological or official relationship, but flexible also depending on the time in a person's life.

For children, I would contend, family should be a little more clearly defined, because for a long time, family does define the child in a big way. The danger of the foster system is that, after years of being shuffled from home to home, children begin to believe they don't really exist for anyone in a consistent way, because no one does for them.

What scares some adoptive parents about telling their child s/he is adopted?

Mei-Ling Hopgood's Lucky Girl asks this question. Adopted from Taiwan and raised in the midwest, Hopgood explains,

I sometimes resented people's assumption that adoptees must automatically, deep down, feel part empty or abandoned, that we must suffer some hole in us that will never be filled because our birth parents could not or did not raise us. I know people think this. I know because psychologists and adoption experts write essays and books about it. I know because of the questions people ask ("Did you always know you were adopted?" "How did you feel about that?") as if being adopted might mean you are somehow incomplete.

I also understand that adopted parents worry a lot about this. I've talked to parents who pine and mourn for their child's birth mother and father and fret over whether their baby will despair at not being able to know or find their birth family. I know parents who fear telling their child that he or she is adopted, which is ridiculous, in my view. The longer you conceal this so-called secret, the more likely it will become toxic.

I think there are people who do feel abandoned and betrayed, but I hear Hopgood's point; an individual's reaction to his or her adoption will depend on that individual's personality and circumstances. I suppose then, the answer to my title question has to be similarly nuanced. Individuals and individual couples will have different approaches to and reasons for their explanations about their kid's adoption.

A few prominent reasons come to mind for parents NOT telling their kids about their adoptions. Jealousy/fear of emotional detachment. Just as there is the possibility for children to feel pushed away by biological parents, adoptive parents could feel pushed away when their children seek out those biological families. Desire to protect their children from painful identity struggle. Genuine belief that adoption does put a child at a disadvantage in some way. Shame at not having been able to conceive a child themselves.

My Nanny and her husband chose to tell the girls from early on, as did Hopgood's parents. One ugly side of that coin, however, was that when my mom and aunt misbehaved, their father would tell people they were adopted, while good behavior was rewarded with "That's my girl."

It seems to me that the honest conversation bit is still families'--of any kind--best bet.

Jesus Land

Julia Scheeres' memoir Jesus Land chronicles her life with her two adopted brothers, both black, and her severely Calvinist parents. The parents adopted the younger of the boys, and Julia's best friend and confidante, David, because they felt that adopting a black boy when they wanted a white child would demonstrate their Christian generosity. They adopted their older son, Jerome, so David would have someone "like him" to play with, though Jerome was violent and too traumatized by his early life to prove as obedient as David was.

Throughout, Scheeres describes her parents' rigorous Christian values and demonstrates how their love of God seemed more often than not to get in the way of their love of their children--adopted or otherwise. Throughout, they also received seemingly endless praise from their church community for their selfless, Christian behavior.

This for me pinpoints exactly the danger of the idea that religious devotion in and of itself proves one's qualification for parenthood. It also highlights that the love or lack of love parents have for their children is not dependent on biological relation.

Frequently, I think international adoption is seen as a more humanitarian gesture. This is in part because frequently people adopt from countries with less extensive health, social, and economic security than is in the U.S. It is also, I think, because that child requires more effort. The love from internationally adoptive parents is assumed to be greater because they worked harder for that child, in theory. That child is more of a burden, though the parents would probably never frame it as such. In this instance, however, David's "burden" on his parents is that he is black. That was their benevolent Christian gesture. As Scheeres writes,

My parents didn't set out to adopt two black boys. They wanted the white kid on my sister's pediatric ward.
...But the adoption agency peristed. There were scads of other children who needed homes, they said: black children.
...To reject a black baby would have been un-Christian, a sin. God was testing them. This was a chance to bear witness for Jesus Christ, to show the world that their God was not prejudiced and neither were they.
...Years later, I learned that the first time my mother touched David, she feared "the black would rub off on her hands."

In contrast to the foster homes that felt obligated only to keep him alive and collect a check, Julia Scheeres parents "would keep him alive and save his soul." Soul harvesting seems like a crappy reason to adopt a neglected child.

Ricky Martin and "Religious Disapproval"

This article came out in 2008 when Ricky Martin's announcement about his twin boys, born from a surrogate mother, was met with hostile remarks most notably by the Cardinal of Honduras and a Mexican talk show host. Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez apparently said “What Martin did diminishes the dignity of a human being. You can’t just buy or rent life. It’s even worse when someone famous and in the public eye is doing it.” A few years ago, Martin had said he planned to adopt a Rainbow Family: one child from every continent. (I assume that mission excluded uninhabited continents.) I think the Catholic leader probably wouldn't have objected to adoption, which is arguably "buying" a child. I suspect that if Ricky Martin had been married to a woman, this also wouldn't have been an issue. Martin is now out as a gay man, but there had for years been speculation about his sexuality. The overlap between the "morality" of parenthood and religious doctrine is really muddy and complicated. Because so much of the Latin world is Catholic, the popular media frequently carries religious subtext--either in contrast (think scantily clad, busty ladies on popular TV) or more directly. (Of course I'm not excluding this phenomenon to Latino cultures and popular media; this struggle exists in the U.S. as well with Protestant churches.)

This may be why the Mexican talk show host felt comfortable saying, "I don’t think it’s right to deny children of maternal figures, just because you have a big ego.” This gets at my earlier post about the lack of evidence proving children suffer from having parents of just one gender. But furthermore, I struggle with this idea of the ideal family circumstances. Community approval is certainly not the primary evidence needed to prove a family's righteous behavior. I've been reading about some very subtly abusive, or at least of dubious mental health, heterosexual married couples who adopted children from other countries. I'll have to chew on this one a bit more.

The Adoption Market

I've been looking at a remarkable website: a sort of classified section for prospective adoptive parents. There is a lot of repetition in their little blurbs. Of course there is regular emphasis placed on the "loving home" that the family can provide, but also all the letters are direct appeals to the biological parents. I tend to think of the adoption process as almost always handled through an agency of some sort, but this showed prospective parents advertising directly to biological parents.

The website, Adopting.com, also features child listings, with a sort of CraigsList-type format and little bonuses typed by some children like "New," "Reduced Fee!" or "Grant Available!" The children are primarily from Haiti and Eastern Europe. Looking at an individual child's profile, I'm reminded of the profiles you can find at animal shelters as well. This "little guy," for instance, has won the hearts of many. There is basic medical info (HIV, syphilis, and TB tests) like with pets, and there is a bit of a story for each child. There is real practical reason for this kind of presentation, but I cannot dismiss that this is a market of children.

Also, there is heavy emphasis on the children being in need (but not too much), about their being in good spirits, and about their being brave. Constant reference is made to their smiling. This article talks about how smiling children or infants are seen as healthier and more adoptable. In several instances, I noticed in the pictures that the oldest children smiled the broadest, even if they had suffered considerably. Like these brothers, aged 2, 6, and 8. The oldest brother is smiling most broadly. It is certainly possible that that is a very happy little boy. It is also possible that he understands to some extent that he needs to sell himself to provide a home for himself and his two younger brothers. The adoption agency hasn't missed the difference. They assure prospective parents that the two-year-old, Michael, "is a happy boy, just apparently not in the mood for a photo."

I don't like to think of the adoption market in purely economic terms, because I think that's a reductive analytical lens. At the same time, though, there are striking parallels. The idea of "damaged goods" is still there--those children with special needs, physical, developmental, behavioral, etc. The age of children contributes to this idea. An older child is like an older animal; if the adoptive family doesn't get to see the new family member in the "cutest" stage, the parents may feel gypped.

Adoption, like other systems, has different markets and different avenues for tracking down the "right" pick or product. My Nanny (adoptive Grandma) found out about my mom through her brother, the doctor who delivered my mom. It was a different era in adoption; there was probably significantly less paperwork and screening across the board. However, it was also one of those instances in which the number of hands who passed along the baby was greatly reduced from comparable scenarios in large adoption agencies. It was a different market.