Sometimes I wonder how I really feel about adoption.
On the one hand, I cannot stand the very cavalier attitude that seems so prevalent in our society. People seem to think that adoption is such a good and noble thing. My experience with it, and that of many others, is that adoption is not such a good and wonderful thing.
This prevalent attitude drives me to the extreme of hating adoption. And often, I do hate adoption. With everything that I am. With everything that I've been through. Even though I don't hate my adoptive family. I just cannot stand the thought of more people suffering through the life that is adoption.
And yet... I wonder sometimes, if I really hate adoption. I certainly hate the way it is treated in the media. I hate the way it is often glamorized. I hate how adoptees' feelings are often ignored and minimized. I hate that our identities are stripped from us and replaced with falsehoods.
Is that enough to hate adoption? I don't know. I don't hate people who adopt. I don't hate people who relinquish for adoption. I sometimes have issues with their attitudes, but that isn't hate.
I don't know. I'm not interested in absolutes merely for their own sake. But I see so little straightforwardly good about adoption, and so much unacknowledged complication, that that I don't know what, if anything, could be salvaged about it. I just want to wash my hands of all of it.
But there's always the skeptical part of me that wonders if I haven't missed anything.
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My son is in a speech therapy group and the mom's wait in the waiting room during the group. This is my second week and I've already found out that 3 of the 6 kids are adopted. The mothers all sit in the room and talk gloriously about adoption and how much it costs and how horrible the paperwork is, etc. It is so hard to sit there and hear this. They truly sound like it is all about ownership ~ that is the reason it is hard. Like babies are blank slates that are valuable for that reason alone, to fulfill their need to be a mother. The one who adopted from guatamala said they had a "problem" because her adoption was hindered because of a mud slide which slowed them getting to the birthmother to sign. It is hard as an adoptee.
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