Oh Barbara.. as always thankyou for your eloquence , your representation of the many truths buried for too long, your calmness in the face of such aggravation … you’re a shining light for the rest of us who’s trauma stifles the ability to ROAR… Thankyou
Bringing the thunder, Dr. Sumner! Thank you for this post.
I am starting to speak more freely, publicly, but a more personal thing I'd say if I could is that my adopters' resistance to hearing me out as I deconstruct and reckon with adoption likely ruined our relationship for good. I would tell them, "If I'm your kid 'as if you birthed me', you have a responsibility to support me through thick and thin, but the moment I began to speak up for myself, you used every tactic you could to wrangle me back into submission and silence. Our no-contact status was avoidable, but you chose the weaker path and won't do the work to reconcile."
My twin sister and I were adopted at 3 weeks. Some of the things my mother said to me when I was growing up just confirm the fact that we were and are viewed as commodities...eg "out of all the babies there we chose you' and my aunt saying 'you never know what you are getting'. To quote a few. Adoptive parents I believe, will always have the selfish view that they are the 'givers' in this situation. Because they will never understand that they are the takers, the stealers of another persons life story, sense of belonging, security and happiness. For myself I have always since I can remember, had a terrible sense of rejection which will never go away. It affects my whole life and my decisions, even still, at 75.
"you never know what you are getting", - my male adopter's workmates said the same thing to him, and of course, this was repeated to me as an example of what a good man he was.
Everyone wants to put a happy face on adoption but it's all about trauma. And adoptive parents can't emotionally support an adoptee, because they also have their own trauma which they haven't addressed (from infertility or other circumstances). It's the adoptive parents' happiness that is the centrepiece of adoption, even as you say, if in getting their needs met their intentions towards the child are positive. The idea that two sets of adults in collusion with courts can decide to keep a person's information and personal history a secret shows how deep all this nonsense goes.
I'm an adoptee who recently sued the government of my birth father's country of citizenship for citizenship there myself, after being denied it by the government due to my adoption. The judge (after many weeks of consideration since there was no case law to deal with a situation like mine) issued the most satisfying opinion in my favour which said that although adoption involves the creation and cessation of some mutual legal rights and duties it does not change certain natural facts about the adoptee, such as me being a descendant of my father, and that it does not terminate the blood relationship between me and my relatives. It was a great victory for me, and a small victory for adoptees' rights in one country. I'm so sorry for all of you who are also adoptees and are struggling or have struggled. We all know it's not popular to express feelings about trauma over something which others commonly think we should be grateful for, and especially not if we reduce the happiness of our adoptive parents.
I'm glad to find your work, Barbara. It's important to show adoption for all that it is, complicated in so many ways, with so much pain. I think the sunlight of the day is the sorely needed disinfectant that the whole adoption-complex needs, particularly in a world with increasing rates of infertility, and young couples who think it is okay to crowdfund to adopt a baby, with no one asking why the money raised doesn't just go to help the (birth) mother keep the baby in the first place.
Every point you make resonates deeply with me - you say: "The idea that two sets of adults in collusion with courts can decide to keep a person's information and personal history a secret shows how deep all this nonsense goes." That is at the heart of it. The ability to recast a person as someone entirely different. And then take away all rights to know and be known. It is, to my mind, a deep and ongoing form of human rights abuse. I'm so pleased you recovered your citizenship. What country are you in, and what is your recovered country of belonging?
No adults could legally conspire to keep another adult's personal history from them; imagine someone in government saying to a random adult "no, we won't give your birth certificate". The idea is ridiculous except for adoptees where it is normalised. It's only because there are children involved that this is allowed. In family court, infants or children are provided with a solicitor or lawyer acting as their legal guardian, who would act solely in the child's interests. I think if adopted children were provided legal guardians in court when adoption proceedings were occurring, perhaps parents could not erase identities, because guardians would be thoughtful enough to object. I was lucky that my adoptive father always understood that I would want to know where I came from, and so is in some ways my model for what a true guardian could be, but so many are not so lucky. This is a very long way of saying that I agree with you about it being an abuse of human rights.
I wanted to argue in court that not allowing my citizenship was a form of grave discrimination against me as an adoptee, for an immutable characteristic, which is generally enshrined as verboten in law by concepts like equal protection (from racism, sexism, national origin, etc.) all the things that a person does not decide about themselves, but in the end my lawyers wanted to argue some different basis in the citizenship law in the country and I trusted their wisdom. And they literally made new new law in doing so, and I am so grateful I had such a wonderful, thoughtful judge (a lady).
I was born in the US, have lived long term in the UK, and the country which citizenship I gained was in the EU in Eastern Europe. I'm not quite ready to say which country. I'm not sure why but I guess I am just not ready to say.
This comment clarifies one of the structures that continue to support human adoption: "No adults could legally conspire to keep another adult's personal history from them; imagine someone in government saying to a random adult "no, we won't give your birth certificate"."
This left me completely wordless. You said so much. Your story should be widely-known. Its not that uncommon it seems.
I come at it from a different angle but I’m hurt via my son who I relinquished / abandoned to closed adoption from birth. He was so traumatised in his childhood and adolescence by abusive adopters that our reunion is beset with difficulties. I know. I deserve them.
While I can heal by opening the wound he can’t as he’s unable to speak about his adoption with me. I am so sad for him. But I love him.
I am glad your efforts and persistence gained you the citizenship you wanted. Your story highlights the problems with the erasure of heritage and family whether inter-country or not. The judge’s words are key.
I spent so much time angry with my birth parents (and specifically my birth mother, who I learned decided to give me away because her father would learn that she slept with her husband before marriage). It has taken many decades for me (and lots of therapy) to process my feelings toward her and over time (and perhaps because I am in my 50s now with my own grown child) I have come to see her as a real person who has many failings and struggles, and in many ways didn't have the support and love that she needed from her family but instead got a lot of judgement. I feel sad for her and I know she chose what she thought was the only solution. When my grown brothers approached her asking questions (after I contacted them), she told them that if her parents learned about the existence of me then (when she was in her upper 50s) they would disown her even then.
I hope you can manage to keep on showing your son the kind of love that can accept all his feelings and that one day he will realise you are just another person like him, and that it has been hard for you too and that you are not perfect. And that you realise you don't deserve any negative repercussions for giving your child up. You were just another person with whatever personal reasons you had for doing what you did which seemed like the best (or only) thing at the time. I don't think any of us have done any of this to hurt people. Many of us are acting out our own unresolved pain (including the adoptive parents of your son). You didn't know and you didn't want that for him, and there is no way to undo the past so you might as well start from where you are, and get all the help that you need and the same for him. Sending a big hug to you and all of us who have had so much hurt and not enough love support.
So true, thank you. As a late discovery adoptee, there were other layers to deal with:
My adoptive mother’s anger when I found out, and her expression of betrayal and the withdrawal of her skerrick of love. She never again said “I love you”
The big reveal of secrecy that my three siblings and their wives were sworn to for 20 years
My adoptive mother wrote me out of her Will 20 years previously when I moved interstate with my husband for work. To the credit of my “brother” she revised this before her death.
Thank you Barbara. It helps to know that this is what makes the difference between a "good" and "not so good" adoption, and that it is as I thought rather than paranoia
This entire piece was absolutely brilliant—clear, courageous, and deeply needed. Every paragraph pulled me in, but where you really nailed it for me was here: “Your good intentions did not cancel out the harm.” That line landed with such clarity and truth, it stayed with me long after reading. And then came the call: “If you have adopted or are planning on it, join us.” The momentum, the conviction—it all built with such power and purpose. You didn’t just write this—you delivered it. I’m genuinely blown away.
I was a member of New Jersey Care, a coalition of first mothers and adoptees fighting in New Jersey for access to our original birth certificates. We won after 32 years. The main opposition was the Catholic Church. The church was covering up nuns getting pregnant and the children being adopted. New Jersey was the state where they were sent because it was impossible to get information from a private adoption managed by lawyers. Two other groups was the Mormon Church, adoption lawyers and anti abortion groups. I wonder if these are the force working against us in NZ.
In NZ it is the state working most assiduously against adults adopted as infants - the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for Children. We can access our so-called “original” birth certificate - albeit endorsed with adopters full bio details and adoptive name. But this is not an absolute right - mothers are still able to veto our access to her name and details. And our ‘long-form’ or ‘birth printout’ is not available unless the adopted person goes to court, or can prove adopters and both birth parents are dead or the adopted person has reach the age of 120. (I kid you not) Non-adopted people can access their long-form for $25.
what about the narrative "you were adopted to have a better life", expect it wasn't better. im deeply traumatised from all forms of abuse, neglect and just pure evilness. i don't know how to move past that
The 'better life' theory is embedded in the narrativity of adoption. There are so few adoption-informed therapists. For me, the breakthrough towards a greater wholeness came from writing my memoir. I now coach memoir writing for adopted people.
Hi Barbara, I finally have had time to review some of your posts. The intensity and research are commendable. That I'm an American, live in Vermont, and was adopted at ten days of age by mill town workers, and was told of my adoption at age eleven, only to feel glee about having two sets of parents, makes me an odd-ball contributor here. So, I'll keep this first post brief.
My parents, which I call the couple who adopted me, told me I was adopted when I turned eleven. I fantasized on who they might be and loved my parents and two sisters, eighteen and twenty years my senior. My mother never went to school, my father to second grade; both worked in woolen mills. My sisters lived nearby and included me in their families. Not until my mid-thirties, when my parents died, did I pursuit my biological parents. It took a single call to a judge, a day wait, and a response: "What do you want to know, Mr. Sherman? There are no restrictions on your adoption papers."
I was a bastard, product of a one-night stand in the Copley Plaza in Boston. My greatest joy is that my biological mother didn't abort me. That she gave birth in a mill town where many young women like her came to once they showed, then left the child after birth. Probably crying and bloated with milk that had no mouth to go into. But having brought the child to life and in a venue that placed me into working but heart-warm hands.
Using the adoption papers sent me by the judge, I called the library in the town of my biological mother's home and asked if the woman still lived in the town. She did not, but her relatives did. "Might I send along a letter," I asked, "and ask for it to be forwarded to my biological mom." The answer was 'Yes." A month later, a father myself, I was talking with my biological mother. Then visiting her in the flesh.
Frankly, I was more mentally engaged than heart-drawn by her. She never had a second child, was married, and bonded to my son in a way she could not with me. I had parents, deceased or not, who I loved as parents and still do now. Not a believer in God, I do like churches and often sit in them, close my eyes, and revisit the people who adopted me and thanked them for their care. These were working people whose jobs were stable, whose honesty was impeccable. I visit their graves when ever I can, and kiss the ground above them.
I'm a lucky bastard. And may yet write my biography.
Hi Joe, you've nailed the central issue around my work. It is not about good or bad adoption, but about all the ways the law treats adopted people as an 'other' class of persons. If you were able to get all your information and records so easily, that is amazing. So few find it works like that. So many of us are seeking the right to choose - to remain as adopted people all our lives with that status partus sequitur ventrem - passed on to our children - or the right of manumission. xx
Two great, useful, compassionate [adoptive parent] allies using their voices to support adoptees are Lori Holden of Adoption Unfiltered podcast, and Beth Syverson of Unravelling Adoption podcast - two strong, brave women worth listening to. They’re very much ‘on our side’ and on the side of truth and proof that it is possible to ‘come out of the fog’ as an adoptive parent, for the benefit of all.
Always a great post, thank you Barbara. I think I can forgive ignorance of the harms of maternal separation, I also was ignorant until a few years ago and have now radically changed my thoughts and attitudes towards my adoption, past and current adoption practise, and surrogacy. I find unforgivable though the arrogance , and the inability to just stop and think, of this adoptive parent who assumes to know better than you.
I am finding adopters coming out of the woodwork as allies. I
guess I was just broadsided by the clear example of an attitude of ownership and superior rights that should have ended years ago. We are all in various stages of fog lifting.
I know from my 63 year old son that what you are experiencing is not uncommon. The "terrible sense of rejection" is something that cannot easily (or ever) be overcome this late on. So he cannot trust me because I made the only possible choice for me at the time. He is rejected and I am guilty forever. It's pretty rough.
To say "you just don't know what you're getting" is so demeaning and uncomfortable for me to read. The expectation of gratitude for rescuing any adopted person is another level of wrong. What parent says that? If you are "as if" born to those parents then it follows that you never exert emotional blackmail on your child. (Well you just. Don't. Do. That.)
I do like a good chart that lays out the issues in this way. Of course, there are a lot more details, but as a starter, it does give a sense of some of the ways we are treated as 'other' class citizens.
Hi Barabara thank you for your concise and accurate description of how it really is for us.
I was adopted to fulfill a need. The need was a barren couple who couldn't have children. I did not fit their mould or match their expectation of what or who an adopted ( read 'bought ') child was 70 yrs ago. I was told until the day my AM died ' I owe her for adopting me'. Tell me ... Adopting Parent. ... when is the debt paid and why is adopting a child so conditional. Would you slam the same conditions on your own birth children. I think not.
All I want at 70, is my own identification ( my papers were destroyed), to know and understand my culture. Do you Adoptors understand or comprehend the impact this has had on my children. They do not know who half of them is. Sure, on their Dad's side they are part Ngati Toa and English, but what about from my side.
Where I think those of us in the reform movement can make a mistake is when we ignore the elephant in the room: the agencies. Just as billionaires point at poor people and tell everyone else, "Look out, the poor are coming for your stuff," the agencies sit back and watch adoptees spar with adopters and stoke divisions with myths about fractured families.
But whether they're in it for profit or in it to feed some internal cultural myth about "saving" adoptees, the agencies are WHY these myths exist. The adoption agencies feed fear to all the parties involved to maintain their position as baby brokers. Laws and lies and secrets are crafted for the good of the agencies, and few protect the welfare of the children.
I'm not a utopianist. I don't think there's a perfect situation where all children are always raised in ideal circumstances. Life is ugly and chaotic and sometimes there will be children raised in suboptimal conditions. But every effort to improve those systems ought to be focused towards the welfare of the children. The only people in the adoptive process who substantially disagree with that philosophy are the agencies, which care more for the immediate success of their child trafficking efforts than about the long-term welfare of the children involved.
And what exactly is their business for being involved at all? Because they have power and money and influence and they shape laws and lies and secrets to serve their interests, not those of the children.
Oh Barbara.. as always thankyou for your eloquence , your representation of the many truths buried for too long, your calmness in the face of such aggravation … you’re a shining light for the rest of us who’s trauma stifles the ability to ROAR… Thankyou
Deb
🌷
Bringing the thunder, Dr. Sumner! Thank you for this post.
I am starting to speak more freely, publicly, but a more personal thing I'd say if I could is that my adopters' resistance to hearing me out as I deconstruct and reckon with adoption likely ruined our relationship for good. I would tell them, "If I'm your kid 'as if you birthed me', you have a responsibility to support me through thick and thin, but the moment I began to speak up for myself, you used every tactic you could to wrangle me back into submission and silence. Our no-contact status was avoidable, but you chose the weaker path and won't do the work to reconcile."
So glad for your voice in this space.
My twin sister and I were adopted at 3 weeks. Some of the things my mother said to me when I was growing up just confirm the fact that we were and are viewed as commodities...eg "out of all the babies there we chose you' and my aunt saying 'you never know what you are getting'. To quote a few. Adoptive parents I believe, will always have the selfish view that they are the 'givers' in this situation. Because they will never understand that they are the takers, the stealers of another persons life story, sense of belonging, security and happiness. For myself I have always since I can remember, had a terrible sense of rejection which will never go away. It affects my whole life and my decisions, even still, at 75.
sad
"you never know what you are getting", - my male adopter's workmates said the same thing to him, and of course, this was repeated to me as an example of what a good man he was.
that's messed up I'm sorry
I agree with you.there was an orphanage down the road, I was told so many times , if I didn't behave I would be put in.there. so cruel
:0(
Nailed it.
Thank you. https://drbarbarasumner.substack.com/p/dear-adoptive-parents
Everyone wants to put a happy face on adoption but it's all about trauma. And adoptive parents can't emotionally support an adoptee, because they also have their own trauma which they haven't addressed (from infertility or other circumstances). It's the adoptive parents' happiness that is the centrepiece of adoption, even as you say, if in getting their needs met their intentions towards the child are positive. The idea that two sets of adults in collusion with courts can decide to keep a person's information and personal history a secret shows how deep all this nonsense goes.
I'm an adoptee who recently sued the government of my birth father's country of citizenship for citizenship there myself, after being denied it by the government due to my adoption. The judge (after many weeks of consideration since there was no case law to deal with a situation like mine) issued the most satisfying opinion in my favour which said that although adoption involves the creation and cessation of some mutual legal rights and duties it does not change certain natural facts about the adoptee, such as me being a descendant of my father, and that it does not terminate the blood relationship between me and my relatives. It was a great victory for me, and a small victory for adoptees' rights in one country. I'm so sorry for all of you who are also adoptees and are struggling or have struggled. We all know it's not popular to express feelings about trauma over something which others commonly think we should be grateful for, and especially not if we reduce the happiness of our adoptive parents.
I'm glad to find your work, Barbara. It's important to show adoption for all that it is, complicated in so many ways, with so much pain. I think the sunlight of the day is the sorely needed disinfectant that the whole adoption-complex needs, particularly in a world with increasing rates of infertility, and young couples who think it is okay to crowdfund to adopt a baby, with no one asking why the money raised doesn't just go to help the (birth) mother keep the baby in the first place.
Every point you make resonates deeply with me - you say: "The idea that two sets of adults in collusion with courts can decide to keep a person's information and personal history a secret shows how deep all this nonsense goes." That is at the heart of it. The ability to recast a person as someone entirely different. And then take away all rights to know and be known. It is, to my mind, a deep and ongoing form of human rights abuse. I'm so pleased you recovered your citizenship. What country are you in, and what is your recovered country of belonging?
No adults could legally conspire to keep another adult's personal history from them; imagine someone in government saying to a random adult "no, we won't give your birth certificate". The idea is ridiculous except for adoptees where it is normalised. It's only because there are children involved that this is allowed. In family court, infants or children are provided with a solicitor or lawyer acting as their legal guardian, who would act solely in the child's interests. I think if adopted children were provided legal guardians in court when adoption proceedings were occurring, perhaps parents could not erase identities, because guardians would be thoughtful enough to object. I was lucky that my adoptive father always understood that I would want to know where I came from, and so is in some ways my model for what a true guardian could be, but so many are not so lucky. This is a very long way of saying that I agree with you about it being an abuse of human rights.
I wanted to argue in court that not allowing my citizenship was a form of grave discrimination against me as an adoptee, for an immutable characteristic, which is generally enshrined as verboten in law by concepts like equal protection (from racism, sexism, national origin, etc.) all the things that a person does not decide about themselves, but in the end my lawyers wanted to argue some different basis in the citizenship law in the country and I trusted their wisdom. And they literally made new new law in doing so, and I am so grateful I had such a wonderful, thoughtful judge (a lady).
I was born in the US, have lived long term in the UK, and the country which citizenship I gained was in the EU in Eastern Europe. I'm not quite ready to say which country. I'm not sure why but I guess I am just not ready to say.
This comment clarifies one of the structures that continue to support human adoption: "No adults could legally conspire to keep another adult's personal history from them; imagine someone in government saying to a random adult "no, we won't give your birth certificate"."
This left me completely wordless. You said so much. Your story should be widely-known. Its not that uncommon it seems.
I come at it from a different angle but I’m hurt via my son who I relinquished / abandoned to closed adoption from birth. He was so traumatised in his childhood and adolescence by abusive adopters that our reunion is beset with difficulties. I know. I deserve them.
While I can heal by opening the wound he can’t as he’s unable to speak about his adoption with me. I am so sad for him. But I love him.
I am glad your efforts and persistence gained you the citizenship you wanted. Your story highlights the problems with the erasure of heritage and family whether inter-country or not. The judge’s words are key.
I spent so much time angry with my birth parents (and specifically my birth mother, who I learned decided to give me away because her father would learn that she slept with her husband before marriage). It has taken many decades for me (and lots of therapy) to process my feelings toward her and over time (and perhaps because I am in my 50s now with my own grown child) I have come to see her as a real person who has many failings and struggles, and in many ways didn't have the support and love that she needed from her family but instead got a lot of judgement. I feel sad for her and I know she chose what she thought was the only solution. When my grown brothers approached her asking questions (after I contacted them), she told them that if her parents learned about the existence of me then (when she was in her upper 50s) they would disown her even then.
I hope you can manage to keep on showing your son the kind of love that can accept all his feelings and that one day he will realise you are just another person like him, and that it has been hard for you too and that you are not perfect. And that you realise you don't deserve any negative repercussions for giving your child up. You were just another person with whatever personal reasons you had for doing what you did which seemed like the best (or only) thing at the time. I don't think any of us have done any of this to hurt people. Many of us are acting out our own unresolved pain (including the adoptive parents of your son). You didn't know and you didn't want that for him, and there is no way to undo the past so you might as well start from where you are, and get all the help that you need and the same for him. Sending a big hug to you and all of us who have had so much hurt and not enough love support.
Thank you. That is a very lovely message and warms me. I so appreciate it.
So true, thank you. As a late discovery adoptee, there were other layers to deal with:
My adoptive mother’s anger when I found out, and her expression of betrayal and the withdrawal of her skerrick of love. She never again said “I love you”
The big reveal of secrecy that my three siblings and their wives were sworn to for 20 years
My adoptive mother wrote me out of her Will 20 years previously when I moved interstate with my husband for work. To the credit of my “brother” she revised this before her death.
I know not all adopters are like this, but I sure do hear many stories that echo this.
Thank you Barbara. It helps to know that this is what makes the difference between a "good" and "not so good" adoption, and that it is as I thought rather than paranoia
This entire piece was absolutely brilliant—clear, courageous, and deeply needed. Every paragraph pulled me in, but where you really nailed it for me was here: “Your good intentions did not cancel out the harm.” That line landed with such clarity and truth, it stayed with me long after reading. And then came the call: “If you have adopted or are planning on it, join us.” The momentum, the conviction—it all built with such power and purpose. You didn’t just write this—you delivered it. I’m genuinely blown away.
I so appreciate reader reviews. Thank you.
I was a member of New Jersey Care, a coalition of first mothers and adoptees fighting in New Jersey for access to our original birth certificates. We won after 32 years. The main opposition was the Catholic Church. The church was covering up nuns getting pregnant and the children being adopted. New Jersey was the state where they were sent because it was impossible to get information from a private adoption managed by lawyers. Two other groups was the Mormon Church, adoption lawyers and anti abortion groups. I wonder if these are the force working against us in NZ.
In NZ it is the state working most assiduously against adults adopted as infants - the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for Children. We can access our so-called “original” birth certificate - albeit endorsed with adopters full bio details and adoptive name. But this is not an absolute right - mothers are still able to veto our access to her name and details. And our ‘long-form’ or ‘birth printout’ is not available unless the adopted person goes to court, or can prove adopters and both birth parents are dead or the adopted person has reach the age of 120. (I kid you not) Non-adopted people can access their long-form for $25.
very sad for new zealand adopted people
what about the narrative "you were adopted to have a better life", expect it wasn't better. im deeply traumatised from all forms of abuse, neglect and just pure evilness. i don't know how to move past that
The 'better life' theory is embedded in the narrativity of adoption. There are so few adoption-informed therapists. For me, the breakthrough towards a greater wholeness came from writing my memoir. I now coach memoir writing for adopted people.
Hi Barbara, I finally have had time to review some of your posts. The intensity and research are commendable. That I'm an American, live in Vermont, and was adopted at ten days of age by mill town workers, and was told of my adoption at age eleven, only to feel glee about having two sets of parents, makes me an odd-ball contributor here. So, I'll keep this first post brief.
My parents, which I call the couple who adopted me, told me I was adopted when I turned eleven. I fantasized on who they might be and loved my parents and two sisters, eighteen and twenty years my senior. My mother never went to school, my father to second grade; both worked in woolen mills. My sisters lived nearby and included me in their families. Not until my mid-thirties, when my parents died, did I pursuit my biological parents. It took a single call to a judge, a day wait, and a response: "What do you want to know, Mr. Sherman? There are no restrictions on your adoption papers."
I was a bastard, product of a one-night stand in the Copley Plaza in Boston. My greatest joy is that my biological mother didn't abort me. That she gave birth in a mill town where many young women like her came to once they showed, then left the child after birth. Probably crying and bloated with milk that had no mouth to go into. But having brought the child to life and in a venue that placed me into working but heart-warm hands.
Using the adoption papers sent me by the judge, I called the library in the town of my biological mother's home and asked if the woman still lived in the town. She did not, but her relatives did. "Might I send along a letter," I asked, "and ask for it to be forwarded to my biological mom." The answer was 'Yes." A month later, a father myself, I was talking with my biological mother. Then visiting her in the flesh.
Frankly, I was more mentally engaged than heart-drawn by her. She never had a second child, was married, and bonded to my son in a way she could not with me. I had parents, deceased or not, who I loved as parents and still do now. Not a believer in God, I do like churches and often sit in them, close my eyes, and revisit the people who adopted me and thanked them for their care. These were working people whose jobs were stable, whose honesty was impeccable. I visit their graves when ever I can, and kiss the ground above them.
I'm a lucky bastard. And may yet write my biography.
Love to Thom and your girls,
JS
Hi Joe, you've nailed the central issue around my work. It is not about good or bad adoption, but about all the ways the law treats adopted people as an 'other' class of persons. If you were able to get all your information and records so easily, that is amazing. So few find it works like that. So many of us are seeking the right to choose - to remain as adopted people all our lives with that status partus sequitur ventrem - passed on to our children - or the right of manumission. xx
Two great, useful, compassionate [adoptive parent] allies using their voices to support adoptees are Lori Holden of Adoption Unfiltered podcast, and Beth Syverson of Unravelling Adoption podcast - two strong, brave women worth listening to. They’re very much ‘on our side’ and on the side of truth and proof that it is possible to ‘come out of the fog’ as an adoptive parent, for the benefit of all.
Thank you for this. They both sound great. They are exactly what we need in our movement to return basic human rights to adopted people.
Always a great post, thank you Barbara. I think I can forgive ignorance of the harms of maternal separation, I also was ignorant until a few years ago and have now radically changed my thoughts and attitudes towards my adoption, past and current adoption practise, and surrogacy. I find unforgivable though the arrogance , and the inability to just stop and think, of this adoptive parent who assumes to know better than you.
I am finding adopters coming out of the woodwork as allies. I
guess I was just broadsided by the clear example of an attitude of ownership and superior rights that should have ended years ago. We are all in various stages of fog lifting.
I know from my 63 year old son that what you are experiencing is not uncommon. The "terrible sense of rejection" is something that cannot easily (or ever) be overcome this late on. So he cannot trust me because I made the only possible choice for me at the time. He is rejected and I am guilty forever. It's pretty rough.
To say "you just don't know what you're getting" is so demeaning and uncomfortable for me to read. The expectation of gratitude for rescuing any adopted person is another level of wrong. What parent says that? If you are "as if" born to those parents then it follows that you never exert emotional blackmail on your child. (Well you just. Don't. Do. That.)
Just read your useful chart. It's all a mess, full of contradictions and unfair again and again to adopted people. It explains so much.
I do like a good chart that lays out the issues in this way. Of course, there are a lot more details, but as a starter, it does give a sense of some of the ways we are treated as 'other' class citizens.
So true Barbara. Thank you for your ongoing challenging of adoption and the scars we carry.
Hi Barabara thank you for your concise and accurate description of how it really is for us.
I was adopted to fulfill a need. The need was a barren couple who couldn't have children. I did not fit their mould or match their expectation of what or who an adopted ( read 'bought ') child was 70 yrs ago. I was told until the day my AM died ' I owe her for adopting me'. Tell me ... Adopting Parent. ... when is the debt paid and why is adopting a child so conditional. Would you slam the same conditions on your own birth children. I think not.
All I want at 70, is my own identification ( my papers were destroyed), to know and understand my culture. Do you Adoptors understand or comprehend the impact this has had on my children. They do not know who half of them is. Sure, on their Dad's side they are part Ngati Toa and English, but what about from my side.
The ripples of adoption are intergenerational
Di
:0(
Where I think those of us in the reform movement can make a mistake is when we ignore the elephant in the room: the agencies. Just as billionaires point at poor people and tell everyone else, "Look out, the poor are coming for your stuff," the agencies sit back and watch adoptees spar with adopters and stoke divisions with myths about fractured families.
But whether they're in it for profit or in it to feed some internal cultural myth about "saving" adoptees, the agencies are WHY these myths exist. The adoption agencies feed fear to all the parties involved to maintain their position as baby brokers. Laws and lies and secrets are crafted for the good of the agencies, and few protect the welfare of the children.
I'm not a utopianist. I don't think there's a perfect situation where all children are always raised in ideal circumstances. Life is ugly and chaotic and sometimes there will be children raised in suboptimal conditions. But every effort to improve those systems ought to be focused towards the welfare of the children. The only people in the adoptive process who substantially disagree with that philosophy are the agencies, which care more for the immediate success of their child trafficking efforts than about the long-term welfare of the children involved.
And what exactly is their business for being involved at all? Because they have power and money and influence and they shape laws and lies and secrets to serve their interests, not those of the children.