Of all the twists and turns in the adoption community, one new thing I have noticed is a small crop of adoptive parents who profess to understand everything that is wrong with adoption, and believe they connect completely with birthparents and their unique issues. This is no small feat in my mind. I will not mention names, or point fingers, but it suffices to say, they are out there. Many readers here may already have met someone like them, and will know what I am talking about.

Let me just say, I know some things that are wrong with adoption. I also see through the lens of my own experience, so I frequently miss stuff here and there. I do still have some varied perspective, in fact I have rarely mentioned that I am also a birthfamily member. My brother placed several of his children in closed adoptions. I do not however, by any stretch of the imagination, think that even this makes me fully informed about the birthparent perspective on adoption. With experiences so unique to every situation, I do not know how anyone can claim to understand it all. I pretty much do well to process all of my own, individual journey.

This crowd of adoptive parents I spoke of, talk about open adoption like they have experienced it with complete clarity, and as few of the rest of us do. They fully believe they understand how the rest of the adoption community is messing things up. Yes, what’s going wrong with adoption is our fault, not theirs. They did it right and ethically, and that lets them off the hook. Oddly they often appear to agree whole heartedly with those who do not favor adoption under most all circumstances, and yet they adopted, or are in the process of adopting themselves. Huh?
Everything they speak of seems to be about birthparents, and what birthparents need. An adoptive parent thinking of their own family and their adopted child’s needs would be so, so wrong to these people. I even heard one of these adoptive parents felt it was their responsibility to ask their child’s birthmother if it was “ok” if the adoptive family added another child. They needed her permission? Talk about self- effacing behavior. In fact, I feel these adoptive parents often take this show of their birthparent understanding to the extreme. They point fingers at other adoptive parents (the rest of us) who they believe just do not get it, and there fore couldn’t possibly be trying.

I think I do get one thing, I think these folks are so anxious not to suffer from the guilt that adoptive parents can often feel, about taking a child however freely given, from another mother to raise as their own, that they block a few details. They have truly blocked out the truth of their own adoptive parent status. They try so hard to separate themselves from those few adoptive parents who do not work to create empathy and understanding in their own adoptions, that they have removed themselves from us all. It often appears they prefer to be at odds with adoptive parents, yet they are still adoptive parents themselves.

Birthparents and adoptees who are on the extreme fringes of adoption animosity really love these people! Yes, the anti-adoption movement can’t wait to find more of them. Only problem is how do they find them before they have adopted. These adoptive parents seem to feel like they are firmly entrenched in the birthparent camp of adoption divisions, because they understand things so well. I think however the day will come when they see that do not understand as well as they believe, as no one can every fully claim to know another’s experience.

I think this new sub-culture of adoptive parents has sprung from the new and more intense relationships of open adoption. They talk about reform, and ethics, and adoptive parents, as if they are looking down from their pedestal of knowledge and shaking their heads at the rest of our sad muddles. Some birthparents seem to love these particular adoptive parents, after all they just know their place, they talk the talk, get the rhetoric, they understand the issues, Or do they?

They almost act as if they hate the institution of adoption, and yet they have adopted, and perhaps are prepared to adopt again. They would have us believe that adoption just was their luck of the draw. They never mapped it out, or persuaded it in. They let themselves off the hook that the rest of adoptive parents can fully expect to be hung out on.

I really think this new group of A- parents has actually aligned themselves in such a way as to avoid feeling responsible for participating in the less than favorable avenue of adoption. People may well look down on those who place their own babies for adoption, but society also takes a very harsh view of those women who take the babies, those of us who adopt. Most of our society does not understand women who would do either.

Being the focus of so much animosity can be overwhelming, so as humans we find ways to cope, to conform. I wonder if this behavior I described has become a coping method for those adoptive parents under the pressure of the increasingly more and more open adoptions of today. If that is the case, then I am afraid it is a problem that will only grow as the world of open adoption becomes ever more open and more complex.

Further reading. . .

The Kind Of People Who Take Babies Away

Open Adoption - Prepare To Be Unprepared

Pity? No Thanks

Adoptive Moms and Birth Moms



Photo