Fate and Orphanages

It never ceases that when an adoptee expresses that adoption isn't always the best thing or anything else that doesn't paint adoption in 100% perfect picture, that someone will feel that someone is being "anti-adoption" or somehow insulting Adoptive Parents (such as Melissa's recent post on Yoon's Blur).  The idea is, that there are abandoned children in orphanages who need homes and that someone who thinks of adoption as a last resort must automatically want children to stay in orphanages for the rest of their lives or must be mad at the Adoptive Parents who saw a need and wanted to give a child a home.  People must assume that there are adoptees who make these opinions consumed by their own pain, not considering the needs of children, and haven't done their homework.

In actuality, many of us have been those children.

After I was born in Tennessee and surrendered at 2 days old, I spent the first 4.5 months of my life in a foster home.  I do not know the names of my foster parents or where I lived.  I don't have any pictures or any real information about my life.  Since my state "reformed" (a word I use lightly because the law still stinks) its access laws 14 years after my birth, I now have my uncensored adoption file.  I know that I lived under a false alias and received medical care as an infant at a doctor's office where the agency presented my identity to my health care providers as being this false alias.  An adoption worker noted that I will get sunburn if you don't put sunblock on me and that I am sensitive to dairy.  I guess nothing else about me was important enough to be written down.

People have suggested that if I dislike adoption it *must* mean that I would have rather stayed in foster care for the rest of my youth, rather than be adopted.

But they're forgetting that I was not magically materialized within foster care.  I was born to a mother; I had a family.  Why was I in foster care to begin with?

I was in foster care because my Original Mother went to the adoption agency for pregnancy counseling and to learn about resources toward parenting and her options.  It was then that adoption was presented to her and my Original Family, and not in a truthful way that actually represented the real laws and policies, and my mother terminated her rights after feeling like there was no other option.  Me thinking that the way my adoption was handled by my agency was not appropriate has nothing to do with my love for either my Adoptive or Original Families.  Why did I need to be in foster care for almost 5 months when my mother signed off her rights less than a month after my birth?  I can make an educated guess but I will never really know.

My parents adopting me out of foster care is also not what I have a problem with.  Although, had they had access to the true details of my life pre-adoption, they would have been able to demand ethics in the situation.  However, the legalized secrecy in adoption does not afford that right to anyone who wants to adopt in an ethical manner, really.  My Adoptive Mom knows a lot more about adoption now than she did when I was a baby and her views just about coincide with mine at this point.  What was unethical is the method by which I entered into adoption in the first place.  My Original Mother never should have been denied resources.  She deserved to know the laws, receive unbiased counselling, and to be informed of her rights.  Likewise, children in orphanages may not even need to be there to begin with if their families were properly supported and informed of their rights.

If we sought to address the reasons why children are entering into orphanages, we can prevent so many losses from happening.  Why are mothers "abandoning" their children in orphanages in countries abroad?  Why are they disenfranchised by terrible poverty?  Why aren't there social welfare programs to help keep families together? 

Adoption is a reaction to a problem.  It will not keep the problem from continuing.  It does not address the problem at its roots.  Adoption will not solve the problems of all of the children in orphanages.  But addressing the reasons why orphanages are being used will.  Not having kids growing up in orphanages, well, that's the goal isn't it?  It's not about being angry with Adoptive Parents either, as I mentioned before.  There are many Adoptive Parents who care about Adoption Reform.  As many people that can agree on working to promote the welfare of children as there can be--the better.

"Women in developing nations who place children for adoption abroad usually do so because they are disadvantaged by terrible poverty and/or by the stigma of illegitimacy." --Fisher, A. (2003). Still not quite as good as having your own? Toward a sociology of adoption. Annual Review of Sociology

Photo credit: Maggie Smith