Should You Ask People Who Adopted Honest Questions About Adoption?
In "Top Five Hot Buttons Not to Push!" Pat Johnson stated
that she considers this comment (heard recently by a member of INCIID’s
Adoption Waiting Room Internet bulletin board) insensitive:
"An adult adoptee asked me, 'If you and your husband get divorced,
will you have to give him back?' I was so dumbfounded I didn't respond
how I really should have, which would have been to ask if her parents
would have had to 'give her back' if they had ever divorced."
When you consider that many single parents are forced by community
and family to surrender their adoptable infant son or daughter
because a child needs a "two-parent" family...doesn't
it make sense the adopting people should have to "do the
right thing" and surrender the child also?
Most of the supposedly "inconsiderate" things people
say are actually quite honest. In a few cases, perhaps they show
people's disgust when others purchase the children of the naive,
the poor parents who are sick or otherwise unable to defend their
families. In the presence of the adopted/abducted/purchased child,
it might be best to hold back a few comments, but in general we
think it just seems reasonable to speak honestly, not tip-toeing
around the child-purchase program known euphemistically as "adoption".
Supposedly insenstive question: "How much did she cost you?"
This seems like a perfectly reasonable question to us. In
fact, we would like to know how much our own children sold for.
Some of us are reunited with our children and we do know how much
they sold for.
In response to "Does it bother you that they won't be of your
own?" someone responded "I gave birth to them through
my heart"....
As mothers we would like to see that happen...nine months
of pregnancy, and labor and birth from your heart.
A girlfriend who told me during my infertility treatment, "Why
not just get a dog, it's a lot easier".
No kidding...why steal babies or take advantage of women who
are being mistreated by family - or bred by slaveholding pimps
as women are in many countries - to get a baby?
"What's her mother's name?"
We think this is an excellent question - and would like to
add: How is her mother faring now that you have acquired her daughter?
How are her brothers and sisters handling it? What about her father
and her grandparents?
"Adopted people are flawed"
As the real mothers of adopted people WE know they are not
"flawed" - they are our children. Those of us who are
reunited with our adopted-out children have discovered - to our
horror - how a person may be impacted by
- being deprived of access to and knowledge of true family,
- living in a situation where everyone is unrelated to them
and
- forced to submit to adopting people who insist they ARE
their family, their REAL family, their ONLY family.
She (once again) asked what my "criteria" was for our
child... meaning, had we requested a newborn, toddler, what race..etc.
I told her that all I asked for was that the child be under age
3.
Far from being "saints" taking in children who need
someone, most adopters look for a child that will meet THEIR needs,
specifically their need to be known as "real parents".
With a younger child it's easier to pretend the family of the
child does not exist or is of no importance.
There are many other questions we think should be asked about adoption.
The unrelated people who adopt a baby have been coached by brokers
who pronounce the baby a true orphan or claim that her family "just
doesn't want" her or will soon forget her. Most of the people
who adopt arrogantly believe they are "better" than the
child's true family because of their wealth or status in society.
Most of all - if they are infertile - they are just desperate to
get their hands on a baby. No wonder so many adoption agencies and
adoption attorneys are out there - it's easy to make money off babies.
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