Comments on: Questionaire 3 (this one is a doozie)

By: bittersweet anniversary at mimiboo.net

bittersweet anniversary at mimiboo.net — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:20:29 +0000

[...] And that train of thought has led me to think about other adoptive avenues, even those I have less experience with. American teenage parents encouraged to give up their babies, rampant bribery and corruption, finders’ fees; flawed systems both domestically and internationally. The enormous amounts of money that change hands. I’m linking here to another wonderful post by AmFam, who puts it into words better than I possibly could. I find myself agreeing with pretty much every word of her post. Adoption is not about us, the adoptive parents. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It seems to me now a necessary evil; there will always be children whose parents can’t or won’t take care of them, for whatever reason, and those children will always need homes. But many, many children are adopted whose first parents could have cared for them, with a little support, a little encouragement. Social service programs that work, instead of giving lip service to family support. International programs that condemn human rights violations which lead to the abandonment and “confiscating” of hundred of thousands of children, separated from biological families who might want very much to keep them. [...]

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:57:59 +0000

Yet another post that makes me grateful that L has you and that you acknowledge this loss.

I’m about to turn 35 and I’m just now starting to get how deeply my own adoption has impacted my life. If anyone, and I mean just one goddamn person had given even the slightest nod to the inherent loss that started my life, well, I might not be sitting here trying to shrug off the guilt that I’m just more comfortable around my birthmom than my parents.

Well, maybe not, I did grow up Catholic so I’m likely to still feel that guilt. But to have this giant, unspecific pain tucked inside your heart growing up and have nobody you love recognize it for even one second? That sucks.

If nothing else, L doesn’t have to grow up with that particular pain.

By: chris

chris — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:45:07 +0000

As you know, I didn’t adopt. To an extent, some of the reasons we didn’t adopt are ones you stated, although in a different way that I won’t bother going into here. However, I am the child of a parent who was very young and poor when she was born. My mother often told my sister and I how a young infertile couple (she was a nurse, he was a doctor) wanted desparately to adopt us when we were born. She agreed, but then my uncle came to the hospital and absolutely forbade her to do it. She told us this story when we were growing up as a way of telling us how lucky we were that we weren’t adopted out, but it’s funny. It had the absolute opposite effect–my sister and I used to imagine our lives with that other couple, who, while we couldn’t articulate it as young children, would have certainly been better parents than our own. And it wasn’t a matter of material things, I can assure you. I’m sure if we had been adopted by that couple or another we would have wondered about our bio parents. I’m sure we would have experienced some loss. But we wouldnt’ have had to live with crazy parents.

In a perfect world, girls who aren’t ready to be parents will get all the support and encouragement they need from their families. That world doesn’t exist. If it did there wouldn’t be abuse and neglect. Not every person is ready to be a parent.

By: figlet

figlet — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:42:29 +0000

Wow. So many comments and I am too lazy to read through them. But what I thought reading your post is that it speaks to two issues. The micro issue (child’s need for a loving home) and the macro issue (when we adopt internationally AND domestically, we perpetuate a system that is riddled with injustice.) On the micro level I am fairly confident that my daughter is thriving in a way she probably would not have in an orphanage. On a macro level, I can see that my desire to adopt a child has played a role in perpetuating this system. At this point, it is what it is, meaning she is our daughter, she lives in our home, we love her mightily and will do what we can to guide her through life. But I have to say, that macro issue is never far away for me and I was surprised when I realized that I feel it more intensely the longer our daughter is in our family. Great post.

By: Anne

Anne — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:45:01 +0000

Honestly, I have to believe that L is much better off being in a loving family than she would have been growing up in an orphanage. Sure, there are great losses. But she had already lost her family. Adoption did not cause that. Adoption provided her with two wonderful parents and a big sister who love her. She never would have experienced that love in the orphanage – And that would have been a tragic loss.