Best,
Courtney

Best,
Courtney

What is anti-adoption rhetoric? What does it mean to you? How often do you encounter it?

From my perspective as a woman who lost her child to the domestic infant adoption industry I am floored when I see the RHETORIC on any given site when you type in the words “infant adoption.”

I am surprised, shocked, and stunned that you would think that any woman here in the US or around the world who has lost a child to adoption would NOT have a rather negative view of adoption.

I really doubt that my pain is worse than the woman from Nepal, Ethiopia, or the next up-and-coming country who sells their children into adoption because they care so little for their women or communities. Few of us have a voice to tell you just how horrible it is to lose a child at birth and yet you tell us that it is “rhetoric.” Please!

Perhaps you might consider the following pro-adoption “rhetoric”: the forever family, the unwanted child, the best interest of the child, the 2-parent household, the “better” life… ad nauseum.

So why shouldn’t there be another side of this adoption fairy tale? And why weren’t you expecting it? Did you believe the “as if born to” rhetoric?

If you want to call an alternative view “anti-adoption” and “rhetoric” (as if it doesn’t mean anything) then don’t be surprised that there are as many women out there who think that what you say is nothing more than “rhetoric.” There are as many women who have adopted as those who have lost children to adoption, so don’t think that there isn’t another side out there as equally as effected by adoption as you are. And don’t expect to sit back in your comfortable chair and think that you’re not going to hear about it.

Shocked and stunned indeed – you should try losing your flesh and blood – you will understand just how shocked and stunned a person can be.

The case-by-case basis will always support your position, this is an invalid logical foot to stand on if you will; you cannot prove a generalized thesis by stating the exceptional case–this is the cowardly side of the argument that lends itself to rather conservative diatribes against “crack mothers”, for example, in order to prove that a social welfare system is a “bad thing”–just to paint the company you are lumping yourselves with by making this statement.

“A little reform” is not the answer either. If you had a doctor treating cancer patients with bandaids–treating the symptoms but not the disease–you wouldn’t change to a different color bandaid.

Adoption is based in the leveraging of inequality by a dominant class in order to procure children for those who have none from those who ideally would keep their children except for circumstances that are a direct result of this class difference to begin with.

So you don’t get to have this objective position removed from the fray, when the class position that allows you to adopt creates the problem you are trying to “help” in the first place.

On the international level, your same class is the one that enables, funds, equips, provides for, and sustains economic and political wars around the world that result in the very “orphans” (who all have extended families) that you claim to “save” by adopting them.

This is like a pyromaniac firefighter complaining about his work.

When hundreds of us are advocating for the rights to unsealed birth certificates and the reunification of families, and when hundreds of us are returning to our lands of birth in order to reclaim a sense of identity and work to help undo some of the damage done to these forgotten places in the globe; when hundreds if not thousands of us are activated to help make the world a better place in the bigger picture because we are not so cynical to believe that “there is nothing we can do”, and not just in terms of individual so-called happiness, or a joy-joy so-called perfect nuclear family, might it not behoove you to look at this work and perhaps join in and support it on this activist level–and not on the individual, and–sorry to say it–selfish level, which is just another symptom of the class differential I am describing?

That said, it never even occurred to me that a world without adoption could (or would ever be) exist. I think we’re all in agreement in saying that’s a complete impossibility (even if it were to somehow be declared an illegal act), and I, for one, am so grateful for said impossibility. The very thought escapes me.

I’m not sure if “worry” is the best word to describe my concern. I strongly feel that–even taking adoption outside of the equation–every parent has moments when they think to the future and hope their child will remain as close to them as they are now (as both my kids are toddlers). Does that make sense? Perhaps I wasn’t too clear in that paragraph–I guess the very discussion of anti-adoption rhetoric threw me for a loop. Seriously, though, I do hope that although there may come a time when she might say it out of anger, that she’d never honestly regret growing up as my daughter. I have more several friends who were adopted as infants and offer extremely different viewpoints as to whether or not they feel “slighted” by growing up without their first parent(s).

I’m not entirely certain that I agree that all (per se) adoptive parents consciously or unconsciously put down or ignore first parents. I do, however, think it’s much more common than it should be (read as: at all). But at the same time, I think the progression of thought in adoption has come SO far over the last few decades from when it was a “hush hush” routine, and so much shame and blame was placed on so many first parents and adopted children.

Many thanks for the link to your blog! I’ll be certain to check it out. I’m so curious as to see the status of said debate.

Warmly,
Courtney

I don’t think you need to worry about the love your child feels for you or how you feel about your child. Those things become certain and unwavering over time. People who dispute that our families are even legitinate families will always have their opinions but in the end it’s the certainty you have with your child that counts.

I might part company with you on the need for adoption reform. I think it’s pretty pressing and that more than “a bit” is needed on the domestic and int’l front. I do believe, wholeheartedly, that a-parents consciously or unconciously put down or ignore first parents and often give their kids grief over the topic. But I totally understand your feeling of going “Huh?” about the most unbridled anti-adoption rhetoric. Incidentally, there’s a humdinger going on at my blog now: is adoption = to abduction and are a-parents captors and do adoptive kids have Stockholm Syndrome?

All the best –
Jess
http://osolomama.wordpress.com/