"My Kid Won't Turn out Like You" (and other Stuff About Growing up, and I do Mean Growing up, Adopted).

Gilligan's Level 2?

I have been turning a post like this over in my mind for quite some time now.  I have been thinking of how to write in a way that combines two goals I have developed: first, to work to eliminate the myth of the "good adoptee"/"bad adoptee" false dichotomy and second, to continue to explore all the fascinating ways that human beings become to be who they are.  It struck me as I was talking to Joy the other night on the phone that I could ponder this question using some of my favorite theory bases.  Why?  Because identity, behavior, and personal value systems, in this case for adoptees, are so much more than the black and white stereotype model where "bad" adoptees are the ones who are "anti-adoption" and it's because they had "horrible childhoods" or "bad adoptive parents" (reverse that to get the explanation of the "good adoptee").  Some people would place adoptees who open their records or reunite under the umbrella of the "bad adoptee."  I once read a post by an adoptive mother (no, not all adoptive mothers are like this) who coined her own (derrogatory) term for adoptees who really love their parents, are loyal, and thus do not seek reunion.  I want people to start seeing past this very old concept, labeling of, and expectations of adoptees and start to consider other things that are not so stereotype-y or negative.  I'll use myself and my own quest for reunion and change from one way of expressing my adoptedness to another, in comparison to some theories I've always found interesting.

Some background?  Well, I was surrendered at three days old, fostered for 4.5 months when I was finally placed in my adoptive home, and adopted at around 9 months of age.  I went through periods of not really understanding adoption as a small child to thinking it made me this magical human being in later childhood.  In adolescence I recall starting out internalizing the stereotypes and messages of shame that surrounded the correlations people made about original parents, adoption, salvation/Christianity, the poor, sex/promiscuity, and views on women in these aspects.  My resolution at the time I was in my later teens to young adult was to accept for myself that I was lucky and grateful to be adopted because I could have been aborted or grown up poor (ouch, it hurts to say that now).  During this time, I had thought about reunion and wanting to know more, however, after seeing my amended birth certificate I had been under the impression that I would never be able to know more and it was too overwhelming to think about my adoption, something that would always be guesses and abstract (so I thought) and never be concrete information.  I pushed it out of my mind.  It started pushing back when I hit my 20's and had a health scare.  With the birth of my first child, I then became overwhelmed with emotion about knowing my first biological relative and the mother-baby connection.  I identified this sense of loss that I had not, until that time, had any words for.  I started my quest to reunite although it was initially still hard for me to do so.  Opening my files and opening my mind to information as I started talking to other people connected to adoption and reading journals and other information on adoption lead to a lot of my opinions on adoption changing and to me rejecting stereotypes.  I found a better relationship (and it already was pretty good) with my adoptive parents (funny how the truth sets everyone free, isn't it?) and I re-connected my relationship with my first mother.  It's been quite a journey from there.

I ask myself all the time, what is it that makes someone change their opinions (or made me change my opinions, rather).  What was it that sparked this urge in me to throw off the overwhelmed feeling of the unknowns and make what I wanted to know, well, known?

Freud

I agree with a lot of the feminist critiques out there of Freud's work, though, I still find much of it very fascinating.  Freud felt that we hold much of ourselves in the unconscious--meaning, human beings are largely not aware of why they do things or feel the way they feel.  Freud said that what is in the unconscious manifests itself in a variety of ways such as behavior or even physical symptoms.  It is when we uncover the unconscious issue and address it that the symptoms will go away.

Perhaps he would say that the health scare and later the birth of my son helped make feelings and the desire to reunite and know more, or question previously held beliefs, surface to the conscious where I had to pay attention to them.

Erickson's Psycho-Social Stages of Development

Did you know that Erik Erikson was an adult adoptee-lite?  Erikson went further than Freud to say that a person's development continues, not just throughout childhood, but throughout the lifespan.  He theorized that a human being's psychological development involves our interaction with society at different ages where we must resolve an identity crisis in order to move on to the next stage.  Age 19-40 is the "Young Adulthood" stage labeled "Intimacy vs. Isolation."  This "identity crisis" is where a young adult needs to work out ways to have intimate, meaningful relationships with others or risk ending up alone and isolated from others (keeping in mind that being a part of a community is interdependence--we all depend on each other to survive).  Resolution of previous stages of psychosocial development are crucial in healthy development in the next stage.  The stage prior to this one during my adolescence?  "Identity vs. Role Confusion."  In this stage, a young person is working out elements of their own identity: they integrate past experiences in anticipation of who they will be in the future.

Could it be that when I gave birth to my first son and held the first biological relative I had ever known in my arms that I was reflecting on my previous stage of development and considering what identity means?  I had said to myself at the time, that even if my first mother did not want to know me when I reunited, she would at least know I was OK, as well as, my children would have the right to know where their mother's side of the family, genetically, comes from.  I could not take away my children's right to know.  Lo and behold, for me, when I gained access to more information and became more open about my adopted experience with others, my relationships, or intimacy, improved.

Jung

Jung theorized about this interesting concept called the "collective unconscious."  It is a mysterious, inter-connectedness of all people.  Perhaps he would say that what could have inspired my desire to reunite, learn more, or question previously held beliefs was an unconscious connectedness to my original mother that gave me the feeling that I needed to explore more.  Interestingly enough, each time as an adult that I had considered learning more about my roots or reuniting, she had been contacting the agency wanting to know if I had been asking about her.  Upon reuniting, we discovered many things in common that have nothing to do with nature or nurture (a Jungian psychologist might argue it could be nature as our collective unconscious is said to be inherited): similar names in both families, shared birth dates of family members, and shared favorite locations despite living in nearly opposite areas of the country.  What explains the synchronicity?

Kohlberg

As a result of his research, Kohlberg described six steps of moral reasoning categorized by three different phases of moral growth.  The first phase is characterized by an individual choosing actions purely based on self-preservation and what benefits self.  The second level involves someone choosing moral action based on how others feel and will view them.  They follow the rules to avoid consequence.  The third level of moral development is where an individual has developed their own value system by which they make moral decisions.  The individual has risen above worrying about whether others think they are "good" or "bad" and acknowledges that a decision being moral is more important than the backlash that may be received for going against conventional wisdom.

I moved out when I was 18 and clearly remember spending my early 20's deciding on what I believed and what I didn't: what was important to me and what wasn't.  Did I perhaps develop different opinions and seek reunion because I entered a new level of moral reasoning and stepped away from worrying about being the "good adoptee"/"bad adoptee" to do what I think is right based on my own morals?

Please do not misunderstand.  I am not saying that "Amanda's views" = "third level of moral reasoning."  I am saying that someone choosing morality based on their own values they've accepted for themself (even if those values are different than mine or anyone elses), rather than being dependent on what others wish for them, has reached what Kohlberg would called the last stage of moral development.

Gilligan (Carol Gilligan)

Gilligan's moral development theory is a deeper view into Kohlberg specifically based on how women develop moral reasoning.  Level one is where a woman makes decisions based on purely selfish ideals.  The second level is the one encouraged and expected of women in our society: where we make decisions based on what others expect of us, specifically self-sacrificial decisions.  What is often considered "moral" behavior for women is to never consider their own needs but to continually sacrifice for others.  However, there is a third level.  At this level, a woman has come to realize that her needs are just as important as anyone elses.  She has come to put her needs and the needs of others on an equal plane to make fair decisions about what moral actions to take.

I remember growing up having questions about my life pre-adoption and my original family but being very worried about hurting others  by asking, so I never did.  I remember having a health scare in my early 20's where I really did need medical information and felt the need to learn more about my roots and even then couldn't find it reason enough to hurt my parents feelings by seeking more.  I still have the emails from my first time contacting the post-adoption social worker at my agency.  I was preoccupied with hurting everyone elses feelings that I could not take my own into consideration.  When I became an Adoptee Rights activist, gathered to courage to tell my parents what I wanted, open my records, and seek reunion, was I learning to put my needs on an equal plane with others and recognize that I had a right to know?  I was important?  My needs mattered too?  It's not that no one else recognized that my needs mattered.  I needed to learn to recognize this and then use that recognition to let others know what it was that I needed so that they could support me.

On a side note, consider then how it feels for a female adoptee (sorry men, not meaning to leave you out but I'm still discussing Gilligan here) to decide that she does have the right to know more and that her rights should be equal to others, and to experience having the law reflect level #2 of morality where she as a woman and an adoptee cannot be equal to others.  I have read in several places that women are more likely than men to seek information and reunion: is it possible that the societal expectation of women to accept second best and not-quite-equal has something to do why it's so hard for legislators to draft bill assigning full rights to adult adoptees?  Could that be why someone once called me, in response to something I said about Adoptee Rights, a "stupid selfish woman"--because I was breaking a taboo, overthrowing my role as an adoptee to be silent and gratefully accept things however they are and as a woman by pointing out my own rights and needs as deserving consideration?

Wrapping it up....

My point being, there are a variety of ways that people process information and come to be who they are.  Let's not forget what many feminists would propose (note how all the above theorists, except one, are men?) as well as what Constructivism would tell us: that every individuals is unique and the human experience is unique to each individual.  We gather information about human beings, identity, behavior, and development by listening and talking to one another.  Theory gives an interesting perspective to consider but I don't think anything replaces truly listening.  There are many ways to consider how I or anyone else came to the path that we are on or why we hold the opinions and values that we do.  Certainly the "bad childhood" + "bad parents" = "bad adoptee who reunited and hates adoption" formula doesn't fit me.  It doesn't fit hardly any adoptee I know or have met.  I really think the adoption community needs to put that thinking aside to consider less condemning, less restricting, less censoring views of adoptees and how we process information and adoption.  I believe the next generation will thank us all for doing this and thus creating a more adoptee-friendly society.

For a very interesting comparison of an adoptee's development to Erikson's theory, see the book "Being Adopted: the Lifelong Search for Self" (1993) by Brodzinsky, Schechter, and Henig.  For more on Neo-Freudian/Jungian views of adoptee development (what I'd call "Liftonian!"), see the books "Lost & Found: the Adoption Experience" and "Journey of the Adopted Self: a Quest for Wholeness" by BJ Lifton.  "Journey of the Adopted Self" contains fascinating accounts of Lifton's conversations and interactions with Erik Erikson.  Please also check out my post about research discovering that there may be as many as five phases of adult adoptee processing of adoption issues.

*As you all know, I'm not a psychologist.  I don't intend for people to take my comparisons to theories and research and apply them to themselves or others.  If you have an emotional, psychological, social, spiritual (etc) concern, please see a professional.