Adoption is complex for all involved. Yet we brush over anything that contradicts the win/win social good narrative. As a society, we are still trying to make the adoptological family synonymous with the natural family.
This! This is what I keep trying to explain. It is NOT our fault they didn’t love us. In fact based on the psychology of the entire thing, it’s a miracle that more of us aren’t tortured and killed by adopters. It’s a predictable outcome when you sell vulnerable young children to narcissistic psychopaths who want to use them to “feel better”. Sometimes, they’ll decide that what will make them feel better about seeing that reminder of “something wrong” is to make that something wrong suffer or disappear….At best, a somewhat poorly hidden resentment and a bit of grudging effort towards keeping us alive to adulthood is all we can possibly get. The normal love of a parent towards their child is NOT in the cards for us.
The thing that still confounds me - why we still think taking an unrelated child and pretending it is your own is the same as having your own. Why does society continue to act as if the adoptological family is synonymous with the biological? (at least when it comes to infant adoption - but not when using assisted reproductive technologies.)
This piece is so resonant. I believe my existence in my adoptive parents’ home as “an expression of [my adoptive mother’s] failure” to carry a child was not only the root of her treatment of me (despite claiming to love me, which I believe she believed), but was also the root of her denying my racial identity. I am Black/biracial and, while ethnically ambiguous, I am obviously not white. Yet she told me over and over again I was “more white than Black.” Rooted in unconscious bias and racism, yes; but also rooted in the delusion that I was “hers.” For her to be a “good mother” I needed to be “hers.”
Wow, a profound comment. "......rooted in the delusion that I was 'hers'. For her to be a 'good mother', I needed to be 'hers'." I do think that while many adopters choose wilful unawareness of the impossibility of pretending the child is "as if" born to her, they are also caught in a social trap. They would have benefited from therapy for their "wound of infertility." Another mother's child does not salve that sadness. But society told them otherwise.
Why, even possibly, would my birth son's adopters be abusive to him I have asked repeatedly? These words from your post today offer an explanation on the psychological level: "The adopted child, who is an expression of their [adopters] failure, is a constant reminder of ‘something wrong.'" Thank you for the insight.
Thank you, Kate. I think there is a lot more to unpack around this issue. What if our social acceptance of human adoption is a delusional disorder, a mistaken perception revolving around the real-life desire to have a child? Perhaps our collective belief that parenting someone else’s child as if that child is your own is a form of folie en famille, a delusion shared within the fabricated family. Or, further, a cultural delusion of social good – a kind of folie à plusieurs, a collective madness, that has swept most of Western society into its disordered belief system since the mid-1950s.
Hmm. Yes. Myth / delusion created as a way of perpetuating and strengthening this particular form of social construction of family? The nuclear family was very important as a unit of consumptio in the three decades or so after the war when closed adoption was so egregious.
Ahh yes, my adoptive mother was thrilled when people commented that we looked alike, trying to confirm the lineage, but we didn't - except for having dark hair and eyes - different body and skin types, different interests, different personalities, different illness, different, different, different. I definitely felt like I was procured to redress their sense of personal failure/lack, and live the dream they had for themselves but didn't accomplish. I'm 66 and despite 45 years of therapy and healing work I dont ever expect to feel safe, loved or like i fit anywhere in this world, except hanging out with other adoptees who have been strong and lucky enough to have not either suicided or be numbed out in addiction or denial, and get to see the ugly truth of adoption's child abuse.
oh, I hear you. The mismatch was so pervasive. Different in every way. And it was not like they could say - 'oh, she's just like great aunt Mary.' I think for many of us, we felt stranded in a mapless place.
I often hesitate to use the word abduction and it took me years of dedicated (PhD) research to realise it is the most apposite description. How could it be anything but…?
yes I though abduction was too strong a word too, until I had processed what that happened to me as a first mother - there was no choice. Stolen is another word, but in Australia it referrers to the Stolen Generation of First Nations children, forcibly removed from their parents and kin into missions and homes. Another government and church sanctioned atrocity.
The politics of human adoption and how society creates "birth mothers" (limiting their role to the act of giving birth) so their child can be acquired to meet the needs of non-related adults. The column coming on Wednesday touches on the science of maternal separation. For the infant, all adoption is forced, so yes, abduction does feel more correct.
"I thought this American news item might interest you - the kudos and resources given to people who ‘rescue/save’ a stranger’s child, but not given to mothers of their own children.
No sympathy for the plight of mothers who might have been struggling to PAY for and raise their own unwell children…."
Adoption is complex for all involved. Yet we brush over anything that contradicts the win/win social good narrative. As a society, we are still trying to make the adoptological family synonymous with the natural family.
This! This is what I keep trying to explain. It is NOT our fault they didn’t love us. In fact based on the psychology of the entire thing, it’s a miracle that more of us aren’t tortured and killed by adopters. It’s a predictable outcome when you sell vulnerable young children to narcissistic psychopaths who want to use them to “feel better”. Sometimes, they’ll decide that what will make them feel better about seeing that reminder of “something wrong” is to make that something wrong suffer or disappear….At best, a somewhat poorly hidden resentment and a bit of grudging effort towards keeping us alive to adulthood is all we can possibly get. The normal love of a parent towards their child is NOT in the cards for us.
The thing that still confounds me - why we still think taking an unrelated child and pretending it is your own is the same as having your own. Why does society continue to act as if the adoptological family is synonymous with the biological? (at least when it comes to infant adoption - but not when using assisted reproductive technologies.)
This piece is so resonant. I believe my existence in my adoptive parents’ home as “an expression of [my adoptive mother’s] failure” to carry a child was not only the root of her treatment of me (despite claiming to love me, which I believe she believed), but was also the root of her denying my racial identity. I am Black/biracial and, while ethnically ambiguous, I am obviously not white. Yet she told me over and over again I was “more white than Black.” Rooted in unconscious bias and racism, yes; but also rooted in the delusion that I was “hers.” For her to be a “good mother” I needed to be “hers.”
Wow, a profound comment. "......rooted in the delusion that I was 'hers'. For her to be a 'good mother', I needed to be 'hers'." I do think that while many adopters choose wilful unawareness of the impossibility of pretending the child is "as if" born to her, they are also caught in a social trap. They would have benefited from therapy for their "wound of infertility." Another mother's child does not salve that sadness. But society told them otherwise.
I completely agree.
Why, even possibly, would my birth son's adopters be abusive to him I have asked repeatedly? These words from your post today offer an explanation on the psychological level: "The adopted child, who is an expression of their [adopters] failure, is a constant reminder of ‘something wrong.'" Thank you for the insight.
Thank you, Kate. I think there is a lot more to unpack around this issue. What if our social acceptance of human adoption is a delusional disorder, a mistaken perception revolving around the real-life desire to have a child? Perhaps our collective belief that parenting someone else’s child as if that child is your own is a form of folie en famille, a delusion shared within the fabricated family. Or, further, a cultural delusion of social good – a kind of folie à plusieurs, a collective madness, that has swept most of Western society into its disordered belief system since the mid-1950s.
Hmm. Yes. Myth / delusion created as a way of perpetuating and strengthening this particular form of social construction of family? The nuclear family was very important as a unit of consumptio in the three decades or so after the war when closed adoption was so egregious.
Gosh yes all of this - thank you for so brilliantly articulating so much of the hard stuff for us all, much appreciated ! 🙏🏻
Ahh yes, my adoptive mother was thrilled when people commented that we looked alike, trying to confirm the lineage, but we didn't - except for having dark hair and eyes - different body and skin types, different interests, different personalities, different illness, different, different, different. I definitely felt like I was procured to redress their sense of personal failure/lack, and live the dream they had for themselves but didn't accomplish. I'm 66 and despite 45 years of therapy and healing work I dont ever expect to feel safe, loved or like i fit anywhere in this world, except hanging out with other adoptees who have been strong and lucky enough to have not either suicided or be numbed out in addiction or denial, and get to see the ugly truth of adoption's child abuse.
oh, I hear you. The mismatch was so pervasive. Different in every way. And it was not like they could say - 'oh, she's just like great aunt Mary.' I think for many of us, we felt stranded in a mapless place.
yes, all the important information on navigating life was left behind when we were abducted from our mothers .
I often hesitate to use the word abduction and it took me years of dedicated (PhD) research to realise it is the most apposite description. How could it be anything but…?
yes I though abduction was too strong a word too, until I had processed what that happened to me as a first mother - there was no choice. Stolen is another word, but in Australia it referrers to the Stolen Generation of First Nations children, forcibly removed from their parents and kin into missions and homes. Another government and church sanctioned atrocity.
The politics of human adoption and how society creates "birth mothers" (limiting their role to the act of giving birth) so their child can be acquired to meet the needs of non-related adults. The column coming on Wednesday touches on the science of maternal separation. For the infant, all adoption is forced, so yes, abduction does feel more correct.
looking forward to Wednesday's read !
What readers say:
"I thought this American news item might interest you - the kudos and resources given to people who ‘rescue/save’ a stranger’s child, but not given to mothers of their own children.
No sympathy for the plight of mothers who might have been struggling to PAY for and raise their own unwell children…."
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/they-are-absolutely-angels-on-earth-family-fosters-and-adopts-medically-complex-children/
- Mary