I think a lot of people are very naive thinking that a loving home is all that's needed to fix children that are very damaged.
But I don't think that is the case. Most would be adopters are counselled and know what they are getting in to. Sadly some children are just too damaged. I speak as someone who spent 4 years in a children's home and even today I have rejection and self esteem issues and I was not damaged like others were.
The Irish lady who won mother of the year award has fostered/adopted 84 children (or more) she had lost count and all have turned out well to varying degrees except one who just couldn't change and was found dead from a heroin overdose
I am very sorry for your loss. I have read this article before, months ago. I knew that all you wrote about adoptee’s inner struggle was true. all sounds so familiar. i just was hoping not to have to read this post again. I was adopted when i was little. but not little enough to not remember things. my adoptive family is great. they have given me love in every way along with opportunities that otherwise i would have never had like a good education. but as you said very well “Just Loving Your Adopted Child Enough,” May Not be Enough. my parents do not have an idea of how i feel inside. in the past i hated them because they made me different by just simply adopting me. i know they wanted to do good and i thank you for that. now i hate myself for not being able to make sense of all of this and for still feeling so different and little and useless. adoption has its dark side and there is nothing that amazing/loving parents and friends can do. and it is so dark that i will never be able to tell my parents anything about how i feel. they will be scared. this will kill them. they will think it is their fault and it is not. they did not fail. but i cannot say what went wrong. all this self hate, low self esteem, mistrust. multiply this billion times and you will have only a small idea of what can happen inside someone like me. by the way, i had professional help in the recent past. it was useful but i can see that all this crap has come back. i dont think it will never go
I see a lot of parents get stuck, as they don’t want to accept their child is more affected than previously thought, that it might be a lifetime of care, that their sphere of parental influence might be more mental health management than parental shaping, or that the impact of their birth family far outweighs the influence of the adoptive family. Many parents choose to remain in denial because it feels like they’re giving up. This is exacerbated by their kid’s ability to look more functional than they really are, a defense mechanism developed in order to survive.
. I personally believe that placing traumatised children in a family and just expecting them to be normal can be more damaging to the child. I've read accounts of adopted kids missing their foster homes, their foster mothers. And find being placed in another parent/ child situation stressful and triggering. I mean, you can help a child who needs it through a form of guardianship, where the child keeps their identity, but has the benefit of a stable home and financial help.
I personally think what these kids need is long-term therapeutic foster care to heal from their trauma, where there is no recreation of a parent/ child relationship. Where the focus is entirely on the child and their needs. I don't think it's fair that they're adopted by people who aren't able to help them. And I don't think it's fair to use traumatised children to build a family, and for parents to expect the child to be able to 'love' when the child has no idea what 'love' is.
Yes, that's very good. But presumably there would be hefty financial implications for the council. Adoption is lovely and cheap whereas specialist foster care is very expensive.
And sometimes things do seem to be going perfectly well until all hell breaks loose in the child's teens. I have described my brother as a serious drug addict, dirty, dishonest and rude, but as a pre-pubescent child he was engaging and loveable; we were close, closer than I was to my biological siblings. The most conscientious child care worker in the world would have assumed that all was well and backed out of our lives. And after those years of turmoil we are close again. He is a good adult - a bit solitary, a bit set in his ways, never physically well because of his previous drug use, but thoughtful and kind. I would hate to be without him. I guess we were relatively lucky - we still have him, which seemed in serious doubt at one time (he disappeared completely for some years) and - I won't say still like him, but like him again.
But I don't think that is the case. Most would be adopters are counselled and know what they are getting in to. Sadly some children are just too damaged. I speak as someone who spent 4 years in a children's home and even today I have rejection and self esteem issues and I was not damaged like others were.
The Irish lady who won mother of the year award has fostered/adopted 84 children (or more) she had lost count and all have turned out well to varying degrees except one who just couldn't change and was found dead from a heroin overdose
In the UK maybe this is the case, where people adopt from foster care, they're domestic adoptions. And the social workers would have a fully account of the child's history to pass onto the adoptive parents.
International adoptions/ child trafficking, where the they don't really know the child's history, why they ended up in the 'orphanages' etc, they have no way of knowing what the child has been through. And the 'adoption agencies' who sell these children aren't going to tell the truth, because they're not interested in the welfare of the children. And most of the adoptive parents just want to have a family, it's different from fostering/ adopting to help children like the Irish woman you mention.
It's pretty much common knowledge that kids who spend time in these orphanages are traumatised and would probably have RAD. It's all over the adoption community. There's loads on the internet, including accounts from adult adoptees. In this day and age there's no excuse to be naïve. But adoptive parents sometimes convince themselves that 'their child' will be different.
Bear in mind that this boy was moved from Haiti, whereas UK kids don't have that huge upheaval. Also kids adopted from foster care in the UK would have follow-up from social workers, but these international adoptions are purely for profit and building families. Nobody is monitoring the adoptive parents as most adoptions in the US are private.
Yes, that's very good. But presumably there would be hefty financial implications for the council. Adoption is lovely and cheap whereas specialist foster care is very expensive.
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This is the problem. Like you say, adoption is cheap. But I wonder if they invested in this type of thing that it would work out better in the long run? I.e the cost to the mental health system, prisons etc? And also, happier children, which is the most important thing.
I read this heartbreaking blog by an adoptive parent who adopted from foster care, and said his adopted son would always say 'I don't want to be a son'. I think the boy associated being a 'son' with being abused and that he didn't want to be in another parent/ child relationship. He said he missed foster care because he could just be 'him'. But the adoptive parents were offended by this and took it as rejection, not even realising why the young boy felt like this.
Btw, have you thought about showing your brother all the things I've been posting, the blogs and such? Might help him makes sense of his feelings if he sees other adoptees who've been through the same thing as him?
Btw, have you thought about showing your brother all the things I've been posting, the blogs and such? Might help him makes sense of his feelings if he sees other adoptees who've been through the same thing as him?
Yes, true. He doesn't talk about emotions, but he might read something.
Has he ever been in contact with his biological family?
His father is not known, and his mother refused any contact, saying that her family know nothing about him. (I thought that was very sad btw). Thanks for the material, it is interesting and he might find it helpful.
I thought it was interesting last year when my other siblings were going on and on about the family tree - they are doing a big project tracing it back - and I told them to talk about something else because it was not great for x, the adopted one, and he said firmly that it was fine "because they are my family as well". So at nearly 50 years old, I think he has come to terms with it all.
His father is not known, and his mother refused any contact, saying that her family know nothing about him. (I thought that was very sad btw). Thanks for the material, it is interesting and he might find it helpful.
I thought it was interesting last year when my other siblings were going on and on about the family tree - they are doing a big project tracing it back - and I told them to talk about something else because it was not great for x, the adopted one, and he said firmly that it was fine "because they are my family as well". So at nearly 50 years old, I think he has come to terms with it all.
This lecture would explain why your brother, possibly, ended up taking drugs. Many adoptees struggle with addiction, there's a very real biological reason for it due to the chemical changes in the brain due to the separation from the mother. Adoptees are massively overrepresented in addiction treatments, and in the mental health system in general.
I see this so often with adoptive parents. They use very traumatised children, often from orphanages in poor countries and just use them to build a family. It's never ever in the interest of the children. Sometimes they place the child somewhere else, so it's rejection after rejection for these kids. Makes me so angry.
Notice that it's the 'Adoptive parents nightmare'? And not 'Every traumatised adopted child's nightmare?'. It's never about the child's needs.
Roelie Post, who works a lot with international adoption, works to help keep children in their own country and culture, and to help with whatever issues that lead to children ending up in orphanages. She's done amazing work.
Have to agree with this, too many people see adoption as being an alternative to having a biological child, they use these poor damaged children because they want to be a family and be a parent. Its very selfish in my opinion. I have to say I feel similar about people who use donor eggs and sperm (particularly from another country where details of the donor arnt given, some very self absorbed people even deliberately take this route so their child can never trace the donor), where the child will grow up with one huge piece of its biological identity missing. It took me 18 months to conceive my first child (nothing compared to some I know but I did seriously consider at one point I may be unable to have them) and I always knew I would not adopt or use donor anything if having a child wasn't possible. I don't have a problem with IVF if the child is going to be biologically both the parents. I do understand how heartbreaking infertility is but it seems to make many people become selfish in the extreme where they will do anything to be a parent regardless of how it may affect their future children.
I think people who use adoption as a last option when having a child shouldn't be able to adopt, its not the reality of adoption they want, they really want a biological child and that IMO is not fair on the child. Imagine growing up knowing that not only your real parents couldn't/didnt want to look after you, but you were also a 'last resort' so that your new Mum and Dad could be parents and they did everything they could to have a different child, one of their own, before settling for the worst option, you. Its terrible.
I do think that, although there are often problems, that there are many successful adoptions though.
And this shouldn't be dismissed.
I don't think it's fair to speak for an adoptee's experience unless you've lived their life. They may see their life differently.
And what about the biological families of the adoptees? During the Baby Scoop Era, single mothers were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption and suffered significant trauma from that.
Have to agree with this, too many people see adoption as being an alternative to having a biological child, they use these poor damaged children because they want to be a family and be a parent. Its very selfish in my opinion. I have to say I feel similar about people who use donor eggs and sperm (particularly from another country where details of the donor arnt given, some very self absorbed people even deliberately take this route so their child can never trace the donor), where the child will grow up with one huge piece of its biological identity missing. It took me 18 months to conceive my first child (nothing compared to some I know but I did seriously consider at one point I may be unable to have them) and I always knew I would not adopt or use donor anything if having a child wasn't possible. I don't have a problem with IVF if the child is going to be biologically both the parents. I do understand how heartbreaking infertility is but it seems to make many people become selfish in the extreme where they will do anything to be a parent regardless of how it may affect their future children.
I think people who use adoption as a last option when having a child shouldn't be able to adopt, its not the reality of adoption they want, they really want a biological child and that IMO is not fair on the child. Imagine growing up knowing that not only your real parents couldn't/didnt want to look after you, but you were also a 'last resort' so that your new Mum and Dad could be parents and they did everything they could to have a different child, one of their own, before settling for the worst option, you. Its terrible.
Excellent post.
In the video I just posted, the psychologist talks about how adoptees enter into a family that isn't genetically theirs and are expected to 'fill an impossible job description'. And it's even worse if the child is already severely traumatised from abuse. They will feel shame that they can't be the child these parents desperately want.
Adoption should always be about the best interest of the child, but it doesn't seem to be. Even the 'old fashioned' adoption where young mothers were coerced into giving up their babies were terrible. The adoptees would have their birth certificates changed, and not enough information on their papers to change, a new identity as if 'born to' their adoptive parents.
Also, I'm sure many adoptive parents haven't got over their infertility issues and this affects the adopted children.
I also agree about sperm donation, and it's kind of even worse as it's done on purpose. People who use anonymous sperm donation are unbelievable selfish. There is a movement now, similar to adoptee rights, where donor conceived people are campaigning to know who their parents are. Even for practical reasons such as medical history, or even fear of unknowingly dating a sibling. http://cryokidconfessions.blogspot.co.uk/
There are also adoptive parents who specifically adopt from countries such as China and South Korea where they don't keep proper records of the biological parents, so their children won't ever go searching. Some adoptees have gone on these Korean tv shows to search for their birth families. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NBACCOgWWs&list=UURGLmvCjvdnqdwL9As4Krkw
Also, surrogacy is a minefield too. Because the babies still form the attachment in the womb, even if the baby is not genetically related.
I think you are being harsh on the parents. They were guilty of being naive. The way you are saying it it's like some posh toffs becoming offended because the child flicked a bogey.
They were under-prepared, ill informed and believed love could conquer all...naive. Not bad.
They were beyond naive, they were absoloute idiots with no basic understanding of child development or psychology whatsoever. Not the sort of person who should be adopting children. Even people like myself who are not going to adopt know that a large majority of these children are damaged and often beyond repair, and it takes someone with much more to give than what is involved in parenting a bio child .Parenting as an adopter is completely different in every way to parenting your own child, that they never even considered this is poor and imo has impacted on a vulnerable child's life. It always seems to be middle/upper class toffs who adopt these kids aswell, despite such people usually living very cosseted ivory tower existences and being unable to relate to the trauma and terrible life circumstances such a child has been the subject of, aswell as having a completely different socio economic background and culture.
It was beyond silly to think they could take a traumatized child from a poor country and for them and their behaviour to be fine and dandy. Such people really shouldn't be able to adopt, it is beyond 'naive' and amounts to cruelty because they have inflicted further pain and rejection on an innocent child's life just because they were selfish, self absorbed idiots that wanted a multicultural family probably so they could show off and act like some sort of Madonna/Angelina Jolie Mother Hen.
It always seems to be middle/upper class toffs who adopt these kids aswell, despite such people usually living very cosseted ivory tower existences and being unable to relate to the trauma and terrible life circumstances such a child has been the subject of, aswell as having a completely different socio economic background and culture. .
I think that being prepared to adopt children is itself usually a pretty compassionate act.
Really? Because I see many (not all) people who are trying for adoption are doing it for rather selfish reasons.
And this very statement of yours is why adopted children are made to feel like they should be forever grateful for being adopted by the kind,compassionate adoptive parents. That they need to live up to expectations because the adoptive parents have been so saintly and have done them such a massive favour in adopting them. A horrible burden to put on an already damaged child, as someone else said already.
Really? Because I see many (not all) people who are trying for adoption are doing it for rather selfish reasons.
And this very statement of yours is why adopted children are made to feel like they should be forever grateful for being adopted by the kind,compassionate adoptive parents. That they need to live up to expectations because the adoptive parents have been so saintly and have done them such a massive favour in adopting them. A horrible burden to put on an already damaged child, as someone else said already.
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There's also an even darker consequence of the 'saintly adoptive parent' myth, is that when an adoptee is abused by their parents they are less likely to be believed.
Until recently, the occurrence of abuse within adoptive families was adoption's dirty little secret obscured by a cultural tendency to believe only good things about adoptive parents. Among my acquaintances are adoptees who attempted to report abuse as children only to be dismissed and disbelieved by people who could not believe that the adoptive parents (perceived as good, selfless, and rescuing) could be capable of abuse. It may seem to some people that the current level of attention to adoptee maltreatment is overkill, but when an issue has long been kept in the dark it is natural and right for it to receive extra scrutiny when it at last comes to light http://www.rebeccahawkes.com/2014/03/yes-we-are-aware-that-bad-things-happen.html
I love this quote
"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE
It is one of the saddest aspects of the class/racial/socio economic divide. That well off, privileged, ignorant people can buy the most vulnerable beings on the planet for their own self satisfaction and ego.
There was a case of 2 paedophiles paying a Russian surrogate for a little boy whilst pretending to be a gay couple, the boy was then sexually abused from being a newborn for years and used in child pornography until it was clocked by police what was going on. I dread to think the despair and pain that poor child lives with now. Sickening, upsetting, it breaks my heart. Something has to be done about this. http://www.theage.com.au/national/couple-offered-son-to-paedophiles-20130630-2p5eg.html
I mostly feel sorry for the poor child, agreeing with everything I have read about the issues he will have had to deal with and face.
However, I do have sympathy for the mother as well - even though not as much. Life has taught me that there's some incredibly naïve people around and she sounds like one of them. A system where this poor child could be placed in her family, which was obviously totally wrong for him, should not have been in place. The people who put the wheels in motion to have this child adopted by unsuitable, naïve parents and as the oldest child in a family with babies, (I'm no expert, but even I would have thought that would be a disastrous idea), also hold a great deal of the guilt in my opinion.
I don't think it's fair to speak for an adoptee's experience unless you've lived their life. They may see their life differently.
And what about the biological families of the adoptees? During the Baby Scoop Era, single mothers were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption and suffered significant trauma from that.
I don't think it's fair for you to discount what they have said to me.
If an adoptee says they love their adopted mum and dad, and they have had an ordinarily happy and successful life are they automatically lying?
If you think they must be, then where on earth do we go from there?
Do you only believe the accounts of their unhappiness, but not their acceptance and happiness?
It is one of the saddest aspects of the class/racial/socio economic divide. That well off, privileged, ignorant people can buy the most vulnerable beings on the planet for their own self satisfaction and ego.
There was a case of 2 paedophiles paying a Russian surrogate for a little boy whilst pretending to be a gay couple, the boy was then sexually abused from being a newborn for years and used in child pornography until it was clocked by police what was going on. I dread to think the despair and pain that poor child lives with now. Sickening, upsetting, it breaks my heart. Something has to be done about this.
Ugh, it's friggin horrific. The whole 'baby making' trade is sick. There's so much room for abuse but no regulation.
With 'old school' adoptions during the Baby Scoop era, which was roughly from the 40s to the 80s, single women, who were usually poor or with no support system, were expected to give up their babies to married 'more deserving parents', who were usually middle class. These women had no rights at all. Even though the UK doesn't do this any more, it's still happening in other countries. The poor being exploited.
And these 'orphanages' are false. 80% of kids in orphanages have at least one parent. It's nearly always down to poverty that the kids are abandoned. And for example, in China, gangs were kidnapping babies to sell them to adoption agencies.
If you're interested in this, look up Roelie Post, she's doing amazing work with 'international adoption' i.e child trafficking. She began working in Romanian orphanages during the 90s and realised how corrupt the whole thing was, and says that the primarily American (mostly Christian) adoption agencies are moving to other poor or war torn counties to take their babies.
I don't think it's fair for you to discount what they have said to me.
If an adoptee says they love their adopted mum and dad, and they have had an ordinarily happy and successful life are they automatically lying?
If you think they must be, then where on earth do we go from there?
Do you only believe the accounts of their unhappiness, but not their acceptance and happiness?
A person can say one thing and feel another. Many adoptees hide their feelings, that's all I'm saying. I don't think they are lying. You only have to read the blogs of adoptees who are too scared to tell people how they are feeling, due to fear of rejection.
Besides this kind of has nothing to do with what's been talked about in this thread and it's not fair to bring other adoptees experiences into it. I don't see how it's helping?
And like I said, for an adoption to happen there is a birth family who lost a child. Many women were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption. Their experiences count too.
A person can say one thing and feel another. Many adoptees hide their feelings, that's all I'm saying. I don't think they are lying. You only have to read the blogs of adoptees who are too scared to tell people how they are feeling, due to fear of rejection.
Besides this kind of has nothing to do with what's been talked about in this thread and it's not fair to bring other adoptees experiences into it. I don't see how it's helping?
And like I said, for an adoption to happen there is a birth family who lost a child. Many women were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption. Their experiences count too.
That is another rather distasteful viewpoint in adoption circles that is prevalent, that the child is always better off adopted and the birth family don't matter one iota and are a mere inconvenience to the adopted parents family life, and the obvious underlying tone points towards this being down to the birth family not being as well off and/or certain family members having health/dysfunction problems.
Adoption forums tend to give off the idea being economically well off and having a middle/upper class 'perfect' family is the be all and end all of a good childhood, and that other things simply don't matter in comparison, because the child will have 'better economic prospects than they would have with birth family' as if that outweighs everything else they have lost.
That is another rather distasteful viewpoint in adoption circles that is prevalent, that the child is always better off adopted and the birth family don't matter one iota and are a mere inconvenience to the adopted parents family life, and the obvious underlying tone points towards this being down to the birth family not being as well off and/or certain family members having health/dysfunction problems.
Adoption forums tend to give off the idea being economically well off and having a middle/upper class 'perfect' family is the be all and end all of a good childhood, and that other things simply don't matter in comparison, because the child will have 'better economic prospects than they would have with birth family' as if that outweighs everything else they have lost.
And yeah, it always bugs me when people talk about other adoptees as being 'fine' when the adoptee possibly hasn't even looked for their biological parents. Many find that their mothers wanted to keep them but couldn't. The idea that the women 'gave up their babies out of love', is BS. Most were coerced/ forced in the most horrific ways and literally had no choice. Some were even told their babies were stillborn. It was baby stealing. Sometimes the families were involved as they didn't want an illegitimate child in the family.
And adoptive parents are nearly always middle-class. It's a huge issue. In the UK babies were taken off these women and given to the adoptive parents, because they were 'better' and had money. It's a sick form of social engineering. There's some information about it here, the Baby Scoop Era. http://davinasquirrel.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/the-baby-scoop-era/
Any adoptions from the 40s to 80s would have happened this way. Adoptive parents were happy to take these babies from the single, poor women who had no power at all.
Also, saying that some adopted are 'OK', I mean you wouldn't say 'I know a someone who lost both their parents at birth, and they're fine with it!!' Of course you can love your adoptive parents and still have issues. And also, the idea that adoptees should be grateful to their adoptive parents may make them feel guilty about exploring how they feel.
They were beyond naive, they were absoloute idiots with no basic understanding of child development or psychology whatsoever. Not the sort of person who should be adopting children.It was beyond silly to think they could take a traumatized child from a poor country and for them and their behaviour to be fine and dandy. Such people really shouldn't be able to adopt,
I think you are being unbelievably harsh about her. 'Naive' is perfectly adequate. It is common, and likeable imo, for people to think that they would love to give a home to an orphan who would otherwise grow up in poverty. They might be wrong in fact (as with Madonna's non-orphans) and they might be wrong in understanding, but it is not cut and dried; I don't think we can pretend that there are not close and happy families including an international adoption. We can't tell from the article, obviously, but there is no reason to suppose that in this case the adopted daughter is not growing up to be one of them. My two best friends at university were both adopted; I have known them now for 35 years, and have yet to see any signs of unusual anguish in their lives. As far as I can see they have both had stable lives; they are both with the same partner they had at university (which I am certainly not) and one of them has weathered very creditably having a child with multiple disabilities.
This was not a case of someone 'unbelievably stupid' who was 'not fit to adopt'; it was a case of someone poorly prepared who adopted an unsuitable child.
It is beyond 'naive' and amounts to cruelty because they have inflicted further pain and rejection on an innocent child's life just because they were selfish, self absorbed idiots that wanted a multicultural family probably so they could show off and act like some sort of Madonna/Angelina Jolie Mother Hen.
Again, that is terribly harsh. Why are people so remarkably one sided in their compassion, as if it will all be used up if they feel sympathy for two people at once? The world is full of imperfect people, but I really think in the years she waited to adopt she focused on more than the showing off potential of the children.
This “Postracial-America Syndrome” of so-called progressives (“I voted for Obama!”), which mistakenly conflates class with race (“My kid’s school is very diverse!“) is a million times more offensive than the outright in-your-face racism of any member of the Ku Klux Klan, or of any White Power movement.
For heavens sake. It is like those 'feminists' who jump on other feminists for some tiny infraction from the code and say that they are WORSE than people who openly and honestly hate women. That sentence I have quoted is, against hot competition, the silliest sentence I have read today.
There was a case of 2 paedophiles paying a Russian surrogate for a little boy whilst pretending to be a gay couple, the boy was then sexually abused from being a newborn for years and used in child pornography until it was clocked by police what was going on.
It is surely possible to take the severest line against paedophiles who adopt in order to acquire a victim without conflating it with naive, uninformed people who adopt a child because they misunderstand the background.
Any adoptions from the 40s to 80s would have happened this way. Adoptive parents were happy to take these babies from the single, poor women who had no power at all.
Kind of, yes, but that seems rather an un-empathic way of describing it. It's not as if they snatched babies off mothers who were begging to keep them. They took babies which had been given up and placed with foster carers. Of course it was a terrible situation that women were forced to give up their babies, but they were forced by social circumstances, not by adopters, any more than a heart transplant patient is responsible for the death of the donor.
And (I have lost my link) I don't agree at ALL with the comment about donor sperm. Of course it is good for a child to have access to their medical history, and they may want to meet the donor, but it seems to me a wonderful way to overcome the dreadful tragedy of infertility, when a couple desperately want a baby. Attacking sperm donation would mean that no same-sex couples, no couples with a transgender member, would ever be able to have children. And please don't even start, anyone, with the line that it is 'selfish' to want a child. It is no more selfish to want a child than it is selfish to want to breathe. Only people who are not that bothered would even dream of using that line.
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But I don't think that is the case. Most would be adopters are counselled and know what they are getting in to. Sadly some children are just too damaged. I speak as someone who spent 4 years in a children's home and even today I have rejection and self esteem issues and I was not damaged like others were.
The Irish lady who won mother of the year award has fostered/adopted 84 children (or more) she had lost count and all have turned out well to varying degrees except one who just couldn't change and was found dead from a heroin overdose
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And an interesting comment from this:
Yes, that's very good. But presumably there would be hefty financial implications for the council. Adoption is lovely and cheap whereas specialist foster care is very expensive.
And sometimes things do seem to be going perfectly well until all hell breaks loose in the child's teens. I have described my brother as a serious drug addict, dirty, dishonest and rude, but as a pre-pubescent child he was engaging and loveable; we were close, closer than I was to my biological siblings. The most conscientious child care worker in the world would have assumed that all was well and backed out of our lives. And after those years of turmoil we are close again. He is a good adult - a bit solitary, a bit set in his ways, never physically well because of his previous drug use, but thoughtful and kind. I would hate to be without him. I guess we were relatively lucky - we still have him, which seemed in serious doubt at one time (he disappeared completely for some years) and - I won't say still like him, but like him again.
I always imagined the way it went down was kind of like the scene in Ab Fab where Eddie find out Saffy is having a mixed raced baby....
In the UK maybe this is the case, where people adopt from foster care, they're domestic adoptions. And the social workers would have a fully account of the child's history to pass onto the adoptive parents.
International adoptions/ child trafficking, where the they don't really know the child's history, why they ended up in the 'orphanages' etc, they have no way of knowing what the child has been through. And the 'adoption agencies' who sell these children aren't going to tell the truth, because they're not interested in the welfare of the children. And most of the adoptive parents just want to have a family, it's different from fostering/ adopting to help children like the Irish woman you mention.
It's pretty much common knowledge that kids who spend time in these orphanages are traumatised and would probably have RAD. It's all over the adoption community. There's loads on the internet, including accounts from adult adoptees. In this day and age there's no excuse to be naïve. But adoptive parents sometimes convince themselves that 'their child' will be different.
Bear in mind that this boy was moved from Haiti, whereas UK kids don't have that huge upheaval. Also kids adopted from foster care in the UK would have follow-up from social workers, but these international adoptions are purely for profit and building families. Nobody is monitoring the adoptive parents as most adoptions in the US are private.
This is the problem. Like you say, adoption is cheap. But I wonder if they invested in this type of thing that it would work out better in the long run? I.e the cost to the mental health system, prisons etc? And also, happier children, which is the most important thing.
I read this heartbreaking blog by an adoptive parent who adopted from foster care, and said his adopted son would always say 'I don't want to be a son'. I think the boy associated being a 'son' with being abused and that he didn't want to be in another parent/ child relationship. He said he missed foster care because he could just be 'him'. But the adoptive parents were offended by this and took it as rejection, not even realising why the young boy felt like this.
Btw, have you thought about showing your brother all the things I've been posting, the blogs and such? Might help him makes sense of his feelings if he sees other adoptees who've been through the same thing as him?
Yes, true. He doesn't talk about emotions, but he might read something.
There's quite a lot of stuff out there by transracial adoptees, which might help him. I'm assuming it was a domestic adoption?
http://transracialeyes.com/category/transracial-adoption/
http://birthproject.wordpress.com/
http://www.thelostdaughters.com/search/label/race%20matters
Has he ever been in contact with his biological family?
His father is not known, and his mother refused any contact, saying that her family know nothing about him. (I thought that was very sad btw). Thanks for the material, it is interesting and he might find it helpful.
I thought it was interesting last year when my other siblings were going on and on about the family tree - they are doing a big project tracing it back - and I told them to talk about something else because it was not great for x, the adopted one, and he said firmly that it was fine "because they are my family as well". So at nearly 50 years old, I think he has come to terms with it all.
And this shouldn't be dismissed.
There's this as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pX4C-mtiI
This lecture would explain why your brother, possibly, ended up taking drugs. Many adoptees struggle with addiction, there's a very real biological reason for it due to the chemical changes in the brain due to the separation from the mother. Adoptees are massively overrepresented in addiction treatments, and in the mental health system in general.
Have to agree with this, too many people see adoption as being an alternative to having a biological child, they use these poor damaged children because they want to be a family and be a parent. Its very selfish in my opinion. I have to say I feel similar about people who use donor eggs and sperm (particularly from another country where details of the donor arnt given, some very self absorbed people even deliberately take this route so their child can never trace the donor), where the child will grow up with one huge piece of its biological identity missing. It took me 18 months to conceive my first child (nothing compared to some I know but I did seriously consider at one point I may be unable to have them) and I always knew I would not adopt or use donor anything if having a child wasn't possible. I don't have a problem with IVF if the child is going to be biologically both the parents. I do understand how heartbreaking infertility is but it seems to make many people become selfish in the extreme where they will do anything to be a parent regardless of how it may affect their future children.
I think people who use adoption as a last option when having a child shouldn't be able to adopt, its not the reality of adoption they want, they really want a biological child and that IMO is not fair on the child. Imagine growing up knowing that not only your real parents couldn't/didnt want to look after you, but you were also a 'last resort' so that your new Mum and Dad could be parents and they did everything they could to have a different child, one of their own, before settling for the worst option, you. Its terrible.
I don't think it's fair to speak for an adoptee's experience unless you've lived their life. They may see their life differently.
And what about the biological families of the adoptees? During the Baby Scoop Era, single mothers were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption and suffered significant trauma from that.
Excellent post.
In the video I just posted, the psychologist talks about how adoptees enter into a family that isn't genetically theirs and are expected to 'fill an impossible job description'. And it's even worse if the child is already severely traumatised from abuse. They will feel shame that they can't be the child these parents desperately want.
Adoption should always be about the best interest of the child, but it doesn't seem to be. Even the 'old fashioned' adoption where young mothers were coerced into giving up their babies were terrible. The adoptees would have their birth certificates changed, and not enough information on their papers to change, a new identity as if 'born to' their adoptive parents.
Also, I'm sure many adoptive parents haven't got over their infertility issues and this affects the adopted children.
I also agree about sperm donation, and it's kind of even worse as it's done on purpose. People who use anonymous sperm donation are unbelievable selfish. There is a movement now, similar to adoptee rights, where donor conceived people are campaigning to know who their parents are. Even for practical reasons such as medical history, or even fear of unknowingly dating a sibling.
http://cryokidconfessions.blogspot.co.uk/
There are also adoptive parents who specifically adopt from countries such as China and South Korea where they don't keep proper records of the biological parents, so their children won't ever go searching. Some adoptees have gone on these Korean tv shows to search for their birth families.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NBACCOgWWs&list=UURGLmvCjvdnqdwL9As4Krkw
Also, surrogacy is a minefield too. Because the babies still form the attachment in the womb, even if the baby is not genetically related.
They were beyond naive, they were absoloute idiots with no basic understanding of child development or psychology whatsoever. Not the sort of person who should be adopting children. Even people like myself who are not going to adopt know that a large majority of these children are damaged and often beyond repair, and it takes someone with much more to give than what is involved in parenting a bio child .Parenting as an adopter is completely different in every way to parenting your own child, that they never even considered this is poor and imo has impacted on a vulnerable child's life. It always seems to be middle/upper class toffs who adopt these kids aswell, despite such people usually living very cosseted ivory tower existences and being unable to relate to the trauma and terrible life circumstances such a child has been the subject of, aswell as having a completely different socio economic background and culture.
It was beyond silly to think they could take a traumatized child from a poor country and for them and their behaviour to be fine and dandy. Such people really shouldn't be able to adopt, it is beyond 'naive' and amounts to cruelty because they have inflicted further pain and rejection on an innocent child's life just because they were selfish, self absorbed idiots that wanted a multicultural family probably so they could show off and act like some sort of Madonna/Angelina Jolie Mother Hen.
There is a huge power imbalance in adoption. This article cover problems with white privilege and class within adoption.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/racism-class-and-adoption/
And this
http://transracialeyes.com/2014/01/09/insane-immoral-demonic-addressing-denial-in-adoption/
Really? Because I see many (not all) people who are trying for adoption are doing it for rather selfish reasons.
And this very statement of yours is why adopted children are made to feel like they should be forever grateful for being adopted by the kind,compassionate adoptive parents. That they need to live up to expectations because the adoptive parents have been so saintly and have done them such a massive favour in adopting them. A horrible burden to put on an already damaged child, as someone else said already.
There's also an even darker consequence of the 'saintly adoptive parent' myth, is that when an adoptee is abused by their parents they are less likely to be believed.
http://adoptionsurvivor.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/the-value-of-the-abused-voice/
Until recently, the occurrence of abuse within adoptive families was adoption's dirty little secret obscured by a cultural tendency to believe only good things about adoptive parents. Among my acquaintances are adoptees who attempted to report abuse as children only to be dismissed and disbelieved by people who could not believe that the adoptive parents (perceived as good, selfless, and rescuing) could be capable of abuse. It may seem to some people that the current level of attention to adoptee maltreatment is overkill, but when an issue has long been kept in the dark it is natural and right for it to receive extra scrutiny when it at last comes to light
http://www.rebeccahawkes.com/2014/03/yes-we-are-aware-that-bad-things-happen.html
I love this quote
"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE
It is one of the saddest aspects of the class/racial/socio economic divide. That well off, privileged, ignorant people can buy the most vulnerable beings on the planet for their own self satisfaction and ego.
There was a case of 2 paedophiles paying a Russian surrogate for a little boy whilst pretending to be a gay couple, the boy was then sexually abused from being a newborn for years and used in child pornography until it was clocked by police what was going on. I dread to think the despair and pain that poor child lives with now. Sickening, upsetting, it breaks my heart. Something has to be done about this. http://www.theage.com.au/national/couple-offered-son-to-paedophiles-20130630-2p5eg.html
However, I do have sympathy for the mother as well - even though not as much. Life has taught me that there's some incredibly naïve people around and she sounds like one of them. A system where this poor child could be placed in her family, which was obviously totally wrong for him, should not have been in place. The people who put the wheels in motion to have this child adopted by unsuitable, naïve parents and as the oldest child in a family with babies, (I'm no expert, but even I would have thought that would be a disastrous idea), also hold a great deal of the guilt in my opinion.
I don't think it's fair for you to discount what they have said to me.
If an adoptee says they love their adopted mum and dad, and they have had an ordinarily happy and successful life are they automatically lying?
If you think they must be, then where on earth do we go from there?
Do you only believe the accounts of their unhappiness, but not their acceptance and happiness?
Ugh, it's friggin horrific. The whole 'baby making' trade is sick. There's so much room for abuse but no regulation.
With 'old school' adoptions during the Baby Scoop era, which was roughly from the 40s to the 80s, single women, who were usually poor or with no support system, were expected to give up their babies to married 'more deserving parents', who were usually middle class. These women had no rights at all. Even though the UK doesn't do this any more, it's still happening in other countries. The poor being exploited.
And these 'orphanages' are false. 80% of kids in orphanages have at least one parent. It's nearly always down to poverty that the kids are abandoned. And for example, in China, gangs were kidnapping babies to sell them to adoption agencies.
If you're interested in this, look up Roelie Post, she's doing amazing work with 'international adoption' i.e child trafficking. She began working in Romanian orphanages during the 90s and realised how corrupt the whole thing was, and says that the primarily American (mostly Christian) adoption agencies are moving to other poor or war torn counties to take their babies.
A person can say one thing and feel another. Many adoptees hide their feelings, that's all I'm saying. I don't think they are lying. You only have to read the blogs of adoptees who are too scared to tell people how they are feeling, due to fear of rejection.
Some useful articles
http://www.rebeccahawkes.com/2014/02/five-categories-of-adoptees-missing.html
http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2013/02/round-table-emerging-from-fog.html
http://www.adopteerestoration.com/2013/02/im-adoptee-and-i-dont-have-issues.html
http://www.adopteerestoration.com/2013/03/horrible-things-people-would-never-say.html
Besides this kind of has nothing to do with what's been talked about in this thread and it's not fair to bring other adoptees experiences into it. I don't see how it's helping?
Maybe you should watch that video on adoption trauma. It's very informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pX4C-mtiI
And like I said, for an adoption to happen there is a birth family who lost a child. Many women were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption. Their experiences count too.
That is another rather distasteful viewpoint in adoption circles that is prevalent, that the child is always better off adopted and the birth family don't matter one iota and are a mere inconvenience to the adopted parents family life, and the obvious underlying tone points towards this being down to the birth family not being as well off and/or certain family members having health/dysfunction problems.
Adoption forums tend to give off the idea being economically well off and having a middle/upper class 'perfect' family is the be all and end all of a good childhood, and that other things simply don't matter in comparison, because the child will have 'better economic prospects than they would have with birth family' as if that outweighs everything else they have lost.
And yeah, it always bugs me when people talk about other adoptees as being 'fine' when the adoptee possibly hasn't even looked for their biological parents. Many find that their mothers wanted to keep them but couldn't. The idea that the women 'gave up their babies out of love', is BS. Most were coerced/ forced in the most horrific ways and literally had no choice. Some were even told their babies were stillborn. It was baby stealing. Sometimes the families were involved as they didn't want an illegitimate child in the family.
And adoptive parents are nearly always middle-class. It's a huge issue. In the UK babies were taken off these women and given to the adoptive parents, because they were 'better' and had money. It's a sick form of social engineering. There's some information about it here, the Baby Scoop Era.
http://davinasquirrel.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/the-baby-scoop-era/
Any adoptions from the 40s to 80s would have happened this way. Adoptive parents were happy to take these babies from the single, poor women who had no power at all.
Also, saying that some adopted are 'OK', I mean you wouldn't say 'I know a someone who lost both their parents at birth, and they're fine with it!!' Of course you can love your adoptive parents and still have issues. And also, the idea that adoptees should be grateful to their adoptive parents may make them feel guilty about exploring how they feel.
This was not a case of someone 'unbelievably stupid' who was 'not fit to adopt'; it was a case of someone poorly prepared who adopted an unsuitable child.
Again, that is terribly harsh. Why are people so remarkably one sided in their compassion, as if it will all be used up if they feel sympathy for two people at once? The world is full of imperfect people, but I really think in the years she waited to adopt she focused on more than the showing off potential of the children. That is insanely hostile.
For heavens sake. It is like those 'feminists' who jump on other feminists for some tiny infraction from the code and say that they are WORSE than people who openly and honestly hate women. That sentence I have quoted is, against hot competition, the silliest sentence I have read today. It is surely possible to take the severest line against paedophiles who adopt in order to acquire a victim without conflating it with naive, uninformed people who adopt a child because they misunderstand the background. Kind of, yes, but that seems rather an un-empathic way of describing it. It's not as if they snatched babies off mothers who were begging to keep them. They took babies which had been given up and placed with foster carers. Of course it was a terrible situation that women were forced to give up their babies, but they were forced by social circumstances, not by adopters, any more than a heart transplant patient is responsible for the death of the donor.
And (I have lost my link) I don't agree at ALL with the comment about donor sperm. Of course it is good for a child to have access to their medical history, and they may want to meet the donor, but it seems to me a wonderful way to overcome the dreadful tragedy of infertility, when a couple desperately want a baby. Attacking sperm donation would mean that no same-sex couples, no couples with a transgender member, would ever be able to have children. And please don't even start, anyone, with the line that it is 'selfish' to want a child. It is no more selfish to want a child than it is selfish to want to breathe. Only people who are not that bothered would even dream of using that line.