Think Think Think
Shannon comments:
At the risk of offending your China-adoption readers, I’ll just say it: I suppose it is much easier for white middle-class westerners to feel comfortable making connections with other white middle-class westerners who might be raising their kid’s sibling than with an actual MOTHER who is not white, nor middle-class, nor western, eh? Falls right in with the anedotes about not wanting birth parents in the picture.
I really think we should try to look at the issue of contact with Chinese birth parents without putting so much judgement on the motives of adoptive parents.
Of COURSE it would be easier to connect with another American family (or Canadian or Australian or whatever.) For one thing, there is a common language there. There is also the strong likelihood that you wouldn’t be dealing with the vast economic divide as dealing with a poor family in China. And of course there is the huge chasm that the differences in American and Chinese culture would create. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that it would be easier to deal with another Western family.
Let’s look, for example, at Mr. A. Mr.A’s parents came from Taiwan about 40 years ago. Mr. A’s parents made some marginal efforts to connect him with his family in Taiwan: They visited a few times when he was young, relatives visited him in the US, his parents were writing letters back there, gifts were exchanged, etc. Does Mr. A feel any connection with that family now? Mmm, not so much. He has occasional contact with an aunt & cousins who also lived in the US, but even that is marginal.
Adoptive families would be at an even bigger disadvantage than Mr. A’s parents. You would be building a relationship from scratch with practically no cultural comptence at all. Just look at the amount of cross-cultural conflict I have with my MIL, even though she has lived here for 40 years. Can you imagine what it would be like if she was still living in Taiwan while I lived here? Or trying to negotiate a relationship with no clear understanding of the expectations that may be felt by each side of the equation?
As adoptive parents, the decision to establish contact with birth parents in another country is extremely complicated. If we decide to move forward with establishing contact, I am fully aware of the responsibility we will have to negotiate a very rocky cross-cultural relationship until L is old enough to decide how much (if any) contact she may want.
That is hugely scary to me. What if we mess it up for L? What if we do a crappy job and the relationship deteriorates to nothing…or worse? Maybe it is better to leave the responsibilty for those choices to the adoptee.
There is also a big difference between searching and birth family contact and an open adoption. An open adoption in an ongoing negotiation between the families in question. Is an ongoing relationship even possible between an American adoptive family and a Chinese birth family? There just arent’ enough examples to know yet. When you look at domestic open adoptions, a good percentage of those end up closing, even without the same drastic cultural and language differences.
To me, the popularity of the sib-find groups demonstrates the valuing of biological connections by adoptive parents. THAT is what is most interesting to me. Especially because the likelihood of another sibling ending up being internationally adopted is so minescule compared to the likelihood that many, many of our Chinese children have siblings living with their birth families.
It isn’t a huge leap to go from searching among international adoptees to searching in China, though it would be immensely more complicated. I just think adoptive parents have been told that contact would be impossible (by agencies, the media, etc.) they may not have considered the possibility yet.
I’m feeling like I’m over-commenting on this topic, but I did want to point out that an on-going relationship with first family could be as simple as you sending a handful of photos once or twice a year til your daughter is old enough to take over. Because it’s also good for them to know she’s okay.
I wonder if there isn’t some more experience on how to do this effectively in other IA realms. I know that many people with VN adoptions are handed their child from the birthmother/family at Gotcha – and have ongoing contact with the family, often through the agency. I know our agency rep, who is a 2 time adoptive parent from VN – said that they said pictures, updates, and even money towards necessities (she said they paid for a water buffulo for one child’s family) to their children’s families.
Maybe what makes it work is the agency involvement? Keeps it a little more neutral?
Just thinking out loud here, as this is a very interesting and important topic that I had not previously thought through.
i know that I, for one, would welcome the possibility of connecting, but I paralysed by fear. not by fear of finding them or connecting with them, but by fear of not doing so. i cannot imagine starting a search that would lead to nowhere, or straight to heartache for my daughters. In Dumpling’s case, I feel that it would absolutely be futile. She came from a large orphanage known for taking in babies from traveling mothers. however, BB came from a tiny tiny place and I’m sure the orphanage director would probably be willing to indulge our inquiries. But then, what if we find one and not the other? I tell you, it’s just paralyzing.
A well written, thought provoking post I love the way you stretch my thinking.
Well, yeah, it’s much easier to connect with other white parents of adopted children than it would be to connect with Chinese people who live in China, who speak Chinese and who, for whatever reason, chose to or were forced to give up the child I now parent. I think we’d pretty much all agree on that. I find myself very intrigued with the idea of my daughter one day being reunited with her birth family. It scares the crap out of me, yes, I admit it. I don’t find Shannon’s comment at all offensive, but maybe a bit simplistic…with all due respect. Right now this is pretty much uncharted territory. Where do we even begin? I think it’s great that people are thinking this through and will perhaps find a way to reconnect our daughters with their bio parents. I do think that we have to be sensitive to the families who have abandoned children. Some may welcome a connection, while others would probably rather die than have to face a child they were not able to raise. I think a lot (A LOT) of adoptive parents from many walks of life, with children from many nations (USA included) would be completely freaked out by bio parents walking into the picture. Raising a kid is hard enough when you’re just doing it the regular way, good Lord, imagine a hormonal teenager with two more parents! Anyway, good discussion. Also, Shannon, I keep re-reading your comment and I’m trying to figure out why you capitalized the word MOTHER…….was that just to compare the sibling/parent relationship or did you mean something else?
I know you have thought about this, but I wanted to comment. I agree with Mortimor’s Mom that it is all very paralyzing. I have also read many adult adoptees feel that it is wrong to search for birthparents because it takes away those adoptees choice. It is difficult to figure out what is best with our children. On one hand I feel it is important to give my child that connection if at all possible. And wouldn’t it be ideal if it happened when they were young so that they could grow up knowing it as part of their story. On the other hand there are going to be some of our children who do not want this knowledge. This subject has come up before on IAT and it is alway gets some emotional responses.
My experience is not 100% parallel since mine was a domestic adoption, but in my sister’s case, my mother accidentally gained access to her birth mother’s name. As a result, she quietly gathered as much information as she was able to get her hands on throughout the years. Once my sister was older and expressed an interest in finding her biological parents, my mother shared all that information with her. I wasn’t as fortunate to have access to that level of information, but then searching in this country isn’t horribly difficult to begin with (assuming the birth parents are open to contact).
My mother chose to play a passive role until she was asked for information. I think it is very rare that a child would not want that information. Contact is a different issue though, and that’s where I do think you can run into trouble. Once you establish contact, there is no going back. I’ve learned that somewhat the hard way, and it has stopped me from contacting my birth father, even though I know his name and address. It opened up such a can of worms when I met my birth mother’s family that I don’t want to go there.
But still, it’s nice to know that I could contact him if I wanted to…
My one fear in searching is this: what if the birthparents are jerks? What if they try to yank around my daughter(s) like a friend’s birthmother and siblings are doing to her? It’s driven my friend from her birthfamily, after longing for them for many years.
Of course, my daughters’ birth families could be worrying that we are jerks. It does go both ways.
If nothing else, you should seek out the birth parents so you have something to blog about. Your day-to-day life really isn’t that interesting. Why do I even read this blog? ..and why are my comments always blocked?
Well yes. But that seems obvious, which is why I wasn’t sure why you seemed puzzled about it (or mused about it in a puzzled tone) in your post. I do think it is fair to acknowledge all those people who say they didn’t want birth parents in the picture, though. Lots of people say that. And I’m not so sure they don’t overlap at times with people looking for adopted sibs.
It’s quite hard to do any open adoption. Under the easiest circumstances there is the incredible gulf of privilege between the ones with the legal rights to the child and the ones without it.
But you asked. Or I thought you did. So I answered. Perhaps I misunderstood your point.
p.s. I capitalized mother for emphasis. Meaning that mothers hold a particularly sticky psychic slot in the culture and in the minds of adoptive parents. Also just to establish mothers versus siblings.
Shannon, thanks for the clarification on your use of capitals for the word mother. I guess I wasn’t really questioning your comment, musing is probably a better word for it. Perhaps my hackles were up a little bit since we were talking about Chinese adoptive parents where it is particularly difficult, if not impossible to have any kind of communication with the birth family. It might be a little weird that some people are over the top trying to find bio siblings for their children, but want no mention of bio parents. Maybe that was your point in the first place…did I just miss it entirely? I do agree with you that the number of people who don’t want contact should be noted. I wonder if statistically, Chinese adoptive parents are less likely to want contact than other adoptive parents. If that’s true, is it just because we enter into the adoption knowing full well that most likely we won’t ever have the opportunity to establish contact? I understand what you’re saying about the gulf of privilege between adoptive parents and birth parents. Maybe this is a little sensitive for me (and other Chinese adopters) because one day our little girls have to come to terms with the fact that they were abandoned. As adults we have a better understanding of the Chinese abandonment process, but how in the world do you explain that to your child? It would make a much nicer picture if mommy went to the hospital and picked up her baby all swaddled in pink. In NO WAY am I trying to say an open adoption is a rosy picture, either…..I know it comes with it’s own set of circumstances, which I’m sure can be overwhelmingly difficult at times. I will say this, though, the one thing that I’ve noticed among some Chinese adopters is the refusal to refer to the bio mom as “mom” or “mommy” and the insistence of calling her “the tummy lady” or such. I just do not understand that. And with that I’ve just taken up too much space on this subject! Thanks for engaging us on this topic.
Hiya, Dawn suggested I come here and read often.
I am probably jumping into this conversation mid-stream, but let me say this at the very least. One of the things that bothers me about the adoption community is the tendency, if not eagerness, to jump to the absolute worst conclusion about peoples’ motivations. Yes, some people did and do choose international adoption because they don’t have to deal with birthparents. But not all choose international adoption for that reason, my husband and myself included. However, our reasons are personal, partly to do with us being older adoptive parents and quite frankly, having a better chance at adopting internationally. Still selfish reasons to adopt internationally, but not to escape the “evil birthparents.”
We are, in fact, considering searching for our son’s birthmother and there is a Yahoo Group devoted to people who are considering, are in the process of, or have contacted their children’s birthparents — these are all international adoptive families. There are now 1025 members in this group.
Our situation is complicated and not something I’ll go into online, but it’s not as straightforward a decision as it might seem.
The thing is, when someone makes assumptions about adoptions and motivations for different types of adoptions, unless the adoptive parents have specifically said, you just don’t know. And even if they have said, some of us don’t tell the whole story because part of the story is private or part of it is our children’s story or their birthparents’ story.
Oh yes, the Yahoo group is:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BirthParentContact/
just saw this and thought of you….
http://www.thenewhomemaker.com/houskeepers-for-homemakers
I love the name of the book they mention: A Housekeeper Is Cheaper Than a Divorce: Why You Can Afford to Hire Help and How
This sounds a bit trite, but I think it’s great that you’re actually thinking all these things. Too many parents who adopt are of the mindset that they’re doing the children a favor and don’t think about what they’re removing the kids from.
But sometimes, the reality of being a girl child is pretty horrifying. Saw this article today and thought you might be interested.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-needles11sep11,0,5389283,full.story?coll=la-home-center