November is National Adoption Month, and I’ll be posting throughout the month on issues related to adoption. If you want to submit an essay on this topic, you can find my contact info here.
Last year, a couple in Florida – presumably hoping to distinguish their $45,000 adoption crowdfunding campaign from others like it – came up with a gimmick they referred to as the “Baby Draft”: If you donated, you could vote for your favorite football team, and the adopted child would be raised as a fan of whichever team got the most votes. The couple obviously assumed their “Baby Draft” would garner more attention, and thus more donations. It did get attention – much of it negative, with adult adoptees at the forefront of the criticism. Even many people who might have otherwise had no problem with adoption fundraisers seemed to find the campaign tasteless.
The whole idea seemed silly to me (I don’t care about football unless Tami Taylor is there), but on the whole, as an adopted person, I found it only slightly more unsettling than all the other adoption crowdfunding campaigns out there. Shares of these campaign pages appear with some regularity in my Facebook feed — sometimes the fundraisers are for the benefit of people I know, sometimes friends of mine are simply signal-boosting their friends’ fundraisers. They often add a brief personal testimony at the top of the post, like I’ve known these wonderful people forever and if anyone was meant to be parents, they were! or This generous couple needs your help to bring their child home!
I’ve given to a lot of crowdfunding campaigns over the years, and if you’ve ever had a little extra money to give, you probably have too. There are so many worthy causes out there. Chemo Pals. DonorsChoose drives. Families who need help paying their rent, or covering medical bills, or rebuilding after a fire. So what’s different about people crowdfunding their adoptions? Why does this trend make me, and many other adoptees, so uncomfortable? There are many reasons, but here are just a few:
Adoption fundraisers can further promote the commodification of adopted children. It’s difficult to imagine the transactional/business trappings of adoption disappearing any time soon. There are for-profit entities and individuals that privately facilitate adoption. Adoption agencies (including non-profits, which most are) must advertise and cast their nets far and wide for clients who can pay the steep fees. Some prospective adoptive parents pay for professionally designed profiles and ads to help them market themselves to mothers and pregnant women considering domestic infant adoption.
Unless you’re adopting from foster care, adoption is expensive (even with a sizable tax credit). People who adopt are certainly not all wealthy, but they tend to have a degree of economic security and access to support and resources that birth mothers and families often don’t. (You have to be approved to adopt, and an ethical adoption service provider is supposed to take finances into account.)
In our culture, people seem to buy into the notion that if you can afford to pay for something, it should be yours. You can give a child a comfortable life, support and send them to college, and someone else can’t? You should definitely have a kid. Crowdfunding campaigns ask donors to endorse parenthood for people they might not even know, and to do so with their money — the very thing that many people think is what makes one a responsible, “worthy” parent of children in the first place.
Other people don’t need to know personal, private details about a child’s life before they were adopted, or how much their adoption cost. Crowdfunding pages often list all manner of personal details about the specific child in question – everything from birth names and family history to the reason for relinquishment and the exact amount the adoptive parents will need to pay to adopt them. Yes, this is the Internet! We love to overshare! But a child’s life, personal history, and adoption story belongs to them first and foremost. Private information about their birth family, details about abandonment, factors that led to placement, their personal medical needs, any history of abuse or neglect, and any other sensitive information should not even necessarily be shared with everyone in the adoptive family, let alone everyone on the Internet. Nor should these details be shared before the child has even been adopted, years before they are old enough to understand and take ownership of their own story.
(I don’t know why it took me so long to ask for specifics, but I was actually in my twenties before it even occurred to me to find out how much my adoptive parents paid for my adoption. I am happy to tell anyone who asks! I was a bargain. The point is, it’s my choice to share information about how much I cost, just like it’s my choice if I want to explain to you why I was relinquished, what the social worker told my adoptive parents about my birth family, and what my medical needs were at the time. I am old enough to control what’s out there, to consent to my story being shared, to tell it myself.)
Adoption crowdfunding campaigns can (even unintentionally) promote the belief that adoptive parents – due to location, wealth, religion, race, nationality, marital status, privilege, or any other combination of factors – are superior to birth families. Of course there are many reasons why someone might make an absolutely wonderful adoptive parent. But the reason often touted for adoption, the reason some people feel okay asking their friends and people they don’t know to help finance it, is the general promise that adoption gives a child “a better life.”
Donating to a private adoption fundraiser might appeal to you for this reason, even if you don’t know the hopeful parents yourself. “A better life” sounds like an unassailable goal. Still, it’s worthwhile to consider that word, better, and how loaded it really is. Better than what? Better than the life their families or communities or countries and cultures of origin could have offered them. Better, because comparatively well-off and overwhelmingly white Americans can provide a child with anything – at least, everything that’s truly valuable, truly important.
So focused are we on this notion of better that we gloss over any losses, any biological relatives children might have remaining, and barely give a thought to the communities from which they are adopted. If original families are mentioned approvingly in this narrative, it’s usually just to applaud their sacrifice. There’s a connection many people still make, sometimes unconsciously, between worthy parents and wealthy ones.
Adoption crowdfunding elevates the desire or will to adopt to the level of a charitable cause – or even a religious crusade. “Imagine the heartbreak of being an orphan,” read one post I saw last year on Facebook. “This generous couple has said ‘yes’ to whatever child God wanted to give them, and they deserve your support!”
The desire to become a parent is extremely relatable. It’s easy to understand why people would donate to their friends’ adoption fundraisers — it seems like just another opportunity to be generous and practice charitable giving, with the bonus that you might know the people involved. But thinking of adoption, any adoption, as a charity or Good Work is far too simple a portrayal. It suggests that adoptive parents are heroic for adopting, presents children as charity cases in need of rescue, and completely ignores the importance of adoptees’ histories prior to adoption.
Growing up, I was often told how lucky I was to be adopted and raised in “a Christian home” (guess what, guys, my birth family is also Christian!) and “a Christian country.” You’d think by now everyone would know better than to talk about adoption in terms of saving children or rescuing kids from lives as “unbelievers.” But many people have not learned this lesson. Adoption can be a very good thing for an individual child, but it is not charity. It is not a religious crusade. It is never a “miracle,” the hand of God at work, when a child ends up living without their original parents.
It’s not uncommon for people to speak of adoption from other countries in almost vocational terms: “We feel called to adopt from China.” “God gave me a heart for orphans.” Fundraising pages and the posts used to promote them tend to focus on the parents’ journey — their faith, their desire to adopt. But a completed adoption is not supposed to be a reward for those who’ve waited a very long time to be parents. A brief glimpse of a crowdfunding page or a Facebook post about it can’t help potential donors or anyone else understand the reality for adoptees or first families. (Prospective adoptive parents are not especially well served by an oversimplified view of adoption, either — while pre-adoption education and preparation is a lot better than it used to be, particularly for those parents who are open, curious, honest with themselves, and willing to seek out lots of perspectives, the view of adoption as a straightforward happily-ever-after for adoptive parents is still common — and insufficient.)
The best way to help children is to support and preserve original families whenever possible. Many birth mothers and families in this country would keep their children if they were able — but of course, they typically don’t receive the widespread public sympathy and support people are counting on when they try to crowdfund their adoptions. Many children labeled as “orphans” abroad also have living parents or other family members. Sometimes these family members decide (or are pressured) to release the child for adoption so they will have “a better life”; sometimes they never actually made that decision at all – they might have placed their child in an orphanage for a time, thinking it would be only temporary care.
Even if adoption is the best option for a child — which it can be! It was a really, really good thing in my case — it’s still important to recognize that moving children from poorer families and communities and countries to richer ones because people can and want to foot the bill one baby at a time has real consequences — global, economic, personal, and social. And it’s not any kind of real solution for most children living without their families, the vast majority of whom will never be adopted.
Which is why meeting the needs of vulnerable families and promoting family preservation should be the first goal for those who care about the welfare of children. We need to support original families and their communities. We can direct our financial support to meet public health needs, promote women’s health, educate children, provide infants and youth with necessary medical care regardless of whether or not their families can pay for it, de-stigmatize and wholeheartedly support single parenthood and kinship care and other alternatives to adoption, and address the many economic and social factors that ultimately lead to family separation. There’s no reason that adoption can’t exist alongside systems that prop up families, help them stay whole and together, and allow more parents and communities to keep and raise their children.
I’ve explained why, as an adopted person, adoption fundraisers give me a shifty, sinking feeling when I see them pop up in my social feeds. I don’t believe they represent the greatest challenge in adoption. I don’t think it’s necessarily terrible to donate to one. I don’t think we need to spearhead a campaign to eliminate them. What we do need is a lot more education and nuanced discussion about adoption, who it is supposed to benefit, and how it might need to change. We need to skip the easy platitudes and consider the institution in all its complexity — that’s something everyone deserves if we are going to be asked to give our money to support individual private adoptions.
There persists an alarmingly widespread view of adoption as something simple, predestined, or even something that adoptive parents “deserve.” We urge adopted people in countless subtle and unsubtle ways to be grateful for the “better life” they were given and not dwell on what they have lost, including the families and cultures into which they were born. Yes, we might “save” some of them — and I will never discount the things many adopted kids stand to gain, or say those gains are insignificant — but too often we don’t hear adoptees’ voices, drowned out as they are by others.
Too many still unquestioningly endorse a story about adoption that focuses on the wants of adoptive parents and not the needs of adopted people and vulnerable families. As an adoptee, my reservations about the trend of adoption crowdfunding have much to do with the furthering of this insufficient narrative. I want to stress that I do think it’s natural – and admirable! – to want to support one’s friends. The next time you see an adoption crowdfunding page shared on Facebook, you should donate if that’s what you want to do. But even if you do make that donation, or the one after it, or the one after that, it’s worthwhile to continue to think about this issue, consider the experiences adopted people and birth parents are willing to share, and interrogate past and current adoption trends. A worthy practice should be able to evolve, to stand up to the tough questions. The wider discussion surrounding adoption in our society can only benefit from having more thoughtful, compassionate, and well informed people at the table, listening with open hearts and minds.
This is great, and thank you for sharing it. It articulates some of the feelings I’d had about this issue (tbf, i am not an adoptee or an adoptive parent or even a parent.)
Yes, exactly. I’m not any of those things, either, but adoption fundraisers have always given me this uneasy/icky feeling I couldn’t really explain. Maybe it’s because most of the ones I’ve seen are those very religious-oriented ones and I’m wary of all that? Nicole, this is amazing and I’m so glad you wrote it!
The religious ones drive me NUTS. Especially as a religious person, the self-righteousness of these appeals just rubs me the absolute wrong way, even if I know they’re well-intentioned… it’s just… UGH.
Me too! A work-friend and her husband have adopted two Chinese children partially using crowdfunding. The tone of the crowdfunding ads was essentially “help us SAVE these poor, innocent babies from being raised by HEATHENS.”
While i am sure the people in her Evangelical church were turned ON by that message, I was decidedly turned OFF.
Yeah. I was raised evangelical and now I have an extremely strong negative reaction to most stuff that is from that culture. A lot of people are extremely well-meaning with it, but it still just makes my skin crawl.
That’s appalling (them, not you).
There’s been a photo going around Facebook in response to that whole stupid/fake Starbucks cup controversy that says something like, “If one family out of every 3 churches adopted a child from foster care, there’d be no kids without families left in America. But you go on complaining about a cup.”
I get that the implication is that acts, not words, are what makes a good Christian or whatever but it really really skeeves me out that they chose adoption as their “good Christian thing to do.” Totally plays into what Nikki’s talking about with the idea of adoption as charity.
Seriously! It also makes this weird link between consumerism / consumption and having children, which is frankly horrifying.
And it’s not like kids in foster care don’t have families- my adopted brother was a foster to adopt (as a teen), and he has a birth father and grandmother and several other relatives that are still a part of his life, but for various reasons were unable to house him. Of course now he’s also stuck with my family, poor thing, even though he’s now in his twenties and out of the house 😛 (I mean, we’re pretty great, obviously, but once you’re family you’re stuck with us forever)
I’m reminded of the people who complain about animal adoption fees here (not that animal and human adoption is anything alike) and the response is generally, “if you can’t afford the adoption fee, then you can’t afford the expense of actually having an animal”.
I get that you don’t have to be rich to have kids and offer them a great home, but if that’s one of the selling points of you as an adoptive couple (ie. being able to provide for a child), then isn’t asking for money to adopt just a huge red flag for that couple? What if their child gets really sick and requires thousands of dollars worth of treatment? Are they going to crowdfund that? What about school fees, new clothes, camp? How much of this child’s upbringing is going to be crowdfunded once the parents figure out that they can market their adoption story to soft-hearted people?
Oh Nicole, this was great, and I really appreciate you writing it.
I had no idea that was even A Thing, but of course it is. Thank you for writing this! I have no personal connection to adoption and your work on the subject is always so eye-opening.
Yeah, I had no idea it was a thing, either. Always good to have another chunk taken out of my faith in humanity, though.
I didn’t know people crowdfunded adoptions until now, and tbh, I’m a little bit horrified. Partly at the cost that leads people to crowdfunding (I suppose I can understand where it comes from, but it seems to be at odds with the anti-abortion “just give the baby up for adoption” thing, like it’s anywhere that simple to find new parents without skeeziness all around due to the money involved), and also that it’s crowdfunded at all, to the general public.
I’m a little burnt out on crowdfunding, though, I think, which could also be influencing my “horrified” feelings about this.
I’ve loved everything Nikki has written about international adoption, and I’d also like to see a piece from a domestic birth mother who has gone through some of the anti-abortion adoption pressure. I spent a summer looking up referral information for Planned Parenthood, and came across a number of sketchy-looking maternity homes that seemed like they pressured women really intensely into having and giving up their babies (and made it really hard to change their minds). I was naively suprised that sort of things still existed. And then they all had another tab on the website being very sunny and sales-y to prospective adoptive parents.
Over the years, I’ve read several things about the way pregnant women are pressured into adoption and the money involved, but on the agency’s side, and the women don’t see any of it for their antenatal needs, and often there’s a competition for adoptive parents’ money and lying to those potential parents about the infants, and so much ugliness, and it’s all about money. I mean, there’s also been loads of movies on the topic? at least, the made-for-tv/Lifetime Movies from the 80s and 90s I saw growing up, and which I’m pretty sure weren’t fabricated out of thin air.
But I don’t think it occurred to me that those high costs/money-skeeziness was so prevalent to have a rash of crowdfunders, or even to be common knowledge. It’s just so ugly. Like it’s buying children, you know?
PLUS the publication of the children’s intimate history and personal details all over the web, when they don’t even have a choice. It’s different from gossiping to everyone in your social circle about Baby’s Bathtub Poop and posting about it on Facebook, and then on top of the Facebook thing, it’s adoption, and all the things Nikki has spoken of on the topic and why it’s so complicated for the adoptees.
This is a wonderfully well-reasoned piece, and it’s important that it comes from an adult adoptee. Your points about broadcasting the personal information of infants/children speak to how crowdfunding adoption focuses on the “we’re getting a BABY!” aspect rather than “we are adding a whole human being to our family (who happens to be, at this point in time, an infant).”
I guess it brings up a lot of issues for me around what is appropriate to crowdfund. I never mind the “my house is on fire / I am ill / life has kicked me in the face, please god help me out” type fundraisers, but somehow the crowdfunding of a completely optional thing feels weird? Am I just being an asshole?
Crowdfunding I have no problem with, a probably incomplete list:
*Unforseen problem happened, having trouble with basic needs, please help!
*I do not have financing, please provide me some money and hopefully I will provide you value for that money.
*If you were considering getting me a gift, please consider chipping in to (this) instead
*I have found a charitable thing that I can’t do all on my own, anyone want to help? (ONLY counts if it’s actually charitable, like providing christmas gifts to a needy family, not voluntourism).
Everything else I can think of rubs me the wrong way.
I once had a FB friend just bring up the idea of crowdfunding for the down payment of a house she was hoping to buy with her husband. She wasn’t making an appeal for money yet — just asking if her friends would be willing to chip in if she did open a fundraising page.
it got ugly so, so fast. I understand why people felt like this wasn’t one of the indisputably justified reasons for crowdfunding, like on your list, but some of them were really rude and condescending in telling her no. It’s amazing how, even when you just suggest you might ask for donations for a thing, people immediately feel authorized to tell you how you should or shouldn’t be spending your money. And you realize how humiliating it is for anyone in need, who asks for any kind of assistance, to endure that all the time, and to feel obliged to act humble and grateful through all the lecturing they receive.
Yeah. It’s one thing if people say “please donate to our IVF fund” or “Please donate to our down payment fund” instead of getting us wedding gifts or something, that makes sense. Not everyone will like it, but I can’t fault it.
But YES, people get weird and rude rather than just saying “no thanks, not my thing”.
It’s so weird when people get rude and aggro about it when it is literally an opt-in thing! If you don’t like it, don’t donate!
“You asked for money, which I may or may not choose to give, but what I AM giving you is ALL OF MY OPINIONS ON YOUR LIFE AND WHY YOU’RE IN NEED OF MONEY, which I require you to listen to and thank me for.”
“And you realize how humiliating it is for anyone in need”
If only everyone DID realize that! (Looking at you, Republicans…)
Oh my god, I have FEELINGS about the clusterf*k of voluntourism. I ran into so many of these western folks in Latin America who were funding traveling and I actually got told multiple times that I was a sucker for not doing it– “it’s so easy!”
And man– having volunteered at a few of the places they were going to, it is SO problematic. A) Those people were often the most demanding and difficult volunteers, B) most organizations can’t do much beyond very simple admin or cleaning with such short-term volunteers, as by the time they’re trained, they’re leaving , C) These volunteers often don’t want to do simple admin or cleaning if they’ve traveled so far and so force themselves into teaching or other more disruptive but “satisfying” tasks that significantly impact, and D) so much time and money is spent on accommodations/ feeding/ managing these volunteers that really should be directed toward the actual work of the organization. Man– so well intentioned, but multitasking your vacation with your civic service just never works.
Oh god yes. My parents go on missions to places like Uganda and Guatemala every year, and while my dad is a doctor (which can provide some value in an under-serviced place), my mother provides childcare and teaches Bible school at an orphanage and always tries to get me to go with her and it gives me the jeepers because Guatemalan people know how to take care of children just fine and they could get good wages for it if you just donated the money instead of doing all this fundraising to send yourself there. yipes.
In general I totally agree that the money spent on volutourism should go directly to the organization instead. The only benefit I can see from it is raising awareness of poverty and struggles of people in other places, with the hopes that the voluntourist will continue to donate financially and help others understand true poverty and how those of us with more resources can help. Unfortunately I think it often results in uninsightful people having a moving “experience” that they recommend to others as a form of personal growth.
Yeah, I like that crowdfunding is an option for bad-thing-happened type stuff that a tight-knit community would traditionally pitch in to help with, and that might otherwise be missed in a more geographically spread out community without a local paper. That model would be likely to help someone who is having a baby and worried about being able to afford to keep it.
Some other things I side-eye a bit, though most are tacky rather than harmful. I haven’t seen any adoption crowd-funding, but everything the article says is so important.
I think in this era of having internet friends one might know better than your meatspace friends that crowdfunding for Life Disasters is even better than it might have used to be, if that makes sense?
Yes! And I think that’s great.
Yeah, I definitely like the community element of it, and in some crowdfunding campaigns essentially you are being asked to contribute money where in a previous generation you would have contributed labor. BUT in previous generations you might also have known that you were going to repay that labor in kind down the road. E.g. the down payment thing – in a close-knit physically local community where people all build their own homes, you would help your neighbor build her house, but that would come with the expectation that when it came time to build YOUR house, she would be there for you (or had already been).
But a lot of crowdfunding appeals are sort of “give us your money instead of a charity”. It draws on the feelings of friendship and community without necessarily providing the assurances that this is an investment in community that will be repaid when you are the one in need. We all say that we give gifts freely, without expectation of return, but the idea that gifts create debt and obligation and that community is built on reciprocity is a very old one, and I think part of why people sometimes feel squicked by personal crowdfunding is because it rubs against that deep understanding.
From the perspective of it being a community thing, I actually don’t have a problem with it, but I imagine that many of the donors and recipients don’t see this as a first step in a life-long relationship of the child with the “community”. And of course there are all the things that Nikki talked about.
I don’t know! I’d like to think that the people who ask for crowdfunding in times of need also fund others when they are doing better. It does tie into the Ask v. Guess thing that someone else mentioned–I might fund someone in need, but I am 100% Guess and have trouble imagining asking for crowdfunding myself, so it feels a bit more like charity than community–but probably some people do both!
Also, giving money directly to someone who needs it is a pretty effective form of charity. Vastly reduced overhead compared to non-profits, and people know their own needs best.
Certainly many of them do! And I’ve done it for friends who have either been good to me in the past or who I know will pay it forward. And agreed. If I’m going to give to education charities, then I shouldn’t object to helping someone I know buy their textbooks.
I completely agree. Gift-giving and hierarchical understandings are used as a means to establish loyalty and reciprocity in cultures where legal contracts don’t hold people to their obligations. Knowing who to trust is determined by a complex web of familial and constructed bonds with people who vouch for others they know. Crowdfunding has zero reciprocal obligation so basically feels like internet panhandling rather than a culturally sanctioned reciprocal agreement. Which obviously, it isn’t.
You are not an asshole! Or, if you are, I’m a much bigger asshole. I tend to come down on the side of “if you are ostensibly the only one who will benefit from this campaign, I think it’s tacky.” E.g.: someone I knew from high school put up a campaign to get his admittedly jacked-up teeth (which is genetic, not a product of chronic drug use or whatever) fixed. I know there are so many people out there who aren’t able to make their income line up with their expenses, and I should stop being such a privileged, capitalist scrooge, but … I don’t know, I feel like broadcasting it to all your friends/followers is just icky. Also – how heartbreaking must it be if your campaign barely gets any funding! I don’t think I could handle it if I were on the other side, trying to get my teeth fixed, and I asked all my friends and only raised $1000 of $7500 or whatever.
See, I think getting jacked-up teeth fixed falls into the area of “optional but really kind of necessary for ilfe” since having fucked up teeth fucks with so many areas of your life (health, socioeconomic stuff, being able to eat delicious crunchy thins without worrying whether or not your fillings will pop out.” But I am generally a “rising tides lifts all boats” person so that kind of thing doesn’t bother me.
See? Proof you’re not an asshole 🙂
And yes I do agree on the “optional but kinda necessary” thing – of course it’d be great if your teeth were better – but I still don’t know that it’d be something to crowdfund. I’m sure more guys would like me if my teeth were whiter and I know conventionally attractive women get better jobs & salaries than girls like me with lots of belly fat and a double chin, but I wouldn’t crowdfund for lipo or teeth-whitening, you know? It still only benefits ME to have those things done, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking my friends for help on such a public stage.
Yeah, I get that asking for like, lipo or teeth whitening is probably not a thing I’d feel comfortable asking for. But I’ve seen people on my timeline ask for money because their front teeth had literally rotted from their skull – that kind of thing is what I’m thinking about.
I just have to chime in to say that non-cosmetic dental work is a WHOLE other ballpark from teeth-whitening. The costs are astronomical, and a shocking number of businesses do not provide dental insurance to employees.
I didn’t have insurance for a couple of years, and when I did get it again, I went in for an exam and got hit with $7,000 of work. And that was with insurance. The consequences of not getting the work done are not just cosmetic; they will affect how much you can eat, whether you’re in chronic pain, etc. your very quality of life long-term.
This isn’t criticism of your reaction to the friend’s fundraiser. I just wanted to point out that, especially in the U.S., being unable to pay for critical dental work is a very real thing.
That is SO true. I didn’t mean to equate “real” dental work with teeth whitening. But I guess I’m just not the kind of person who would EVER ask my friends for money *in such a public forum* even for medically necessary surgery (like if I needed a hysterectomy or something, god forbid), so I have a tough time seeing my friends do something I would not.
Of course, I’m very fortunate to have health insurance and very few medical issues, so, you know, MASSIVE privilege here compared to a lot of people.
I agree with you mostly, but I make an exception when said crowdfunding is kept within the confines of a particular group. Right now I’m using a crowdfunding page to raise funds for a belated birthday present–her beloved bicycle was stolen over a year ago, and we’re trying to replace it. However, I have not–nor will I–post the link on Facebook. It’s been shared in a private message among her closest friends and family. It’s just an easy way to get the funds together and not dissimilar from the time a bunch of friends and I went in on a computer for a friend whose computer no longer worked. I think crowdfunding is okay for unnecessary things if the crowd is only your crowd, rather than everyone you’ve ever known and everyone they’ve known.
Yeah, having jacked up teeth really can affect your ability to get a good job, because it affects the way people perceive you.
Eh, I disagree. After I crashed my bike (during a time when I was barely surviving on unemployment benefits) my friends gave me enough money to buy me new glasses, a bicycle helmet, and a new brighter headlight.
And a good friend lost two front teeth in a similar crash, and after arguing with her insurance for close a year, did a crowdfunding campaign instead, to which I happily donated.
It does feel like a reciprocity thing though–my friends have been so amazing to me over the years and I want to pay that forward.
It feels to me like an Ask vs. Guess culture thing. And I am TOTALLY an Ask person. I find Guess culture to be *incredibly* stressful. I don’t know what other people find reasonable to ask for, and I’m often wildly wrong. Guess culture also feels paternalistic to me? Like, someone is going to decide for me if I’d want to do X favor, instead of letting me decide for myself. I see crowdfunding as the ultimate “might as well just ask and see.” Which means I get to decide if I think it’s a thing I’d like to help or not. Plus, I don’t even have to turn someone down to their face, I just choose to not click “donate.”
When the Ask vs. Guess thing first came out, Captain Awkward linked to it, and in the ensuing discussion some folks suggested that Guess culture might be better described as Offer culture. The idea is that usually in a Guess/Offer culture, people do make Guesses about what other people want, but then they Offer those things and let the other person accept or turn down the offer. They don’t assume that their guess is correct and get offended if they guessed wrong.
Crowdfunding for life emergencies is definitely ask, but I think it’s also a thing where a lot of people would probably offer help if they knew about the problem. So in Guess/Offer culture, a person would just mention that their house had burnt down, and people would offer whatever sorts of help they were willing to provide. And I think that probably works very well in cultures and communities that are strongly Offer/Guess. But there are definitely benefits to using an Ask framework instead. As the post you linked to said: “Guess behaviors only work among a subset of other Guess people — ones who share a fairly specific set of expectations and signalling techniques. The farther you get from your own family and friends and subculture, the more you’ll have to embrace Ask behavior. ”
I’m not sure I’ve previously encountered the idea that in Guess culture other people decide what you will offer. They might have expectations that there are things most people would offer, but in Ask culture you get expectations that there are requests most people would agree to, and I’m not sure there’s that much difference. Going back to the burnt down house example, in Guess culture it might be expected that most people who know the family well and have things they can donate will offer those things; in Ask culture it might be expected that the same group of people will donate things once a donation drive is running and thus someone is asking them. But the cultural expectations of who will do what “favours” aren’t necessarily any different.
I’m not sure I’ve previously encountered the idea that in Guess culture other people decide what you will offer.
My perception of Offer culture is that “don’t ask for something the other person might not want to do,” becomes, “don’t do anything to make them think you’d like them to do this thing.” Like, if someone were to say to me, “I don’t have a ride to the airport,” then I know what they want and I can decide to offer a ride or not. But I my experience is more like the other person thinking, “It’s too early to expect anyone to get up and drive me somewhere, so I’ll have to find another way to get there,” and not mention this need to me at all because they think it’s unreasonable.That’s what I mean by someone else deciding for me. It might be just people (like me) who don’t know *how* to ask-in-a-way-that-isn’t-asking, so it’s either “ask” or “don’t mention it at all.”
I don’t think having children falls in with other optional things, though it isn’t like a house fire either. Many people who adopt do so because of infertility. Infertility is a medical problem that kicks you in the face and costs a shitload to do what for most people is free. Having kids is a choice until it isn’t. Some people have an intense desire to become parents, it is a biological drive for many as well as a rational desire. Many people who adopt have tried to have children for many years. Infertility treatment can be extremely expensive and usually not covered by insurance. Adoption can also be extremely expensive. So, it’s not like having your savings wiped out by cancer treatments needed to live. But it is a major life event, and a medical issue, that blindsides you with cost and grief.
That said, I think a lot of the language used in the fundraisers is problematic. But I do think it’s important to understand that fertile people and CBCers think of having children as a choice in a way infertile people don’t get to.
I posted this yesterday at the end of the comments. Just reprinting it here as it seems appropriate.
I didn’t read all of the comments, so if this was posted before, I apologize. But, as you mention, there are tax credits for adopting. Credits, not deductions, that allow the adopter to take off adoption costs from their federal income taxes. (obviously, a low tax bill means a low refund)
So if, say, someone has $5,000 of adoption costs (with receipts) they can take the full $5,000 off of their tax bill. Now, the question is, if they crowdfunded that $5,000 do they refund the $5,000 or do they keep it as profit?
BTW, I’m a (non crowdfunded) adoptive parent of both an International child and a from foster care child.
“Adoption can be a very good thing for an individual child, but it is not charity. ” This is so so important and not something I had considered before this piece. I am really looking forward to more articles this month on this topic.
The best way to help children is to support and preserve original families whenever possible
Is that not privileging the biological families rights over those of the child (in cases where the children have been removed from parents by state/county)?
Because obviously adoptive parents are vulnerable to the perspective that they’re the saviour (especially with international and/or cross-cultural adoptions) or that the child is somehow a reward for them; but I think the idea that original families should be preserved as a guideline, while healthy in intent (especially with many countries histories of unnecessary intervention and forced adoption.) can mean children remaining within families which may never parent effectively because it’s considered better to preserve biological links.
(I’m approaching this from a UK perspective, having worked with children’s services here.
I don’t know if this alters anything, I hear in the US there is only the private adoption system rather than any kind of adoption from the state?
There is definitely issues here to be resolved with attitudes towards families where social workers bring their own biases as to which families need intervention; so a family with lower economic status may be assessed as vulnerable where a family with more money wouldn’t; which is obviously harmful to all.
But there’s also the aforementioned attempts to preserve biological links whenever possible, which mean children repeatedly returning to families who’ve abused them because the biological parents’ rights to maintain relationships with their children is seen as more important than the child’s rights to be protected from harm.
There is indeed adoption from the state here as well, and we also attempt to preserve the biological family whenever possible, but whenever possible is meant PRECISELY to prevent the abuses you mention, and includes classes and help and numerous opportunities for the bio family to get their shit together, which I think we probably place the correct emphasis on.
Nikki and other adoption critics do not suggest that leaving kids in abusive birth homes is the answer, and it is unfair to them to imply otherwise. If birth families cannot demonstrate a willingness to meet the minimum standards for safe parenting after counseling and visits, then it is not possible.
Children, if given the chance, will almost always ask to remain in even truly abusive situations, because of the nature of family and childhood and fear and uncertainty, which is a complicating factor in these decisions as well, and I do not envy the underpaid and underappreciated civil servants who have to make and defend their recommendations, especially when the cost of being wrong in either direction is so unimaginable.
That’s very well said, Nicole.
Agreed. Intervene and you deprive a child of their family; trust in the system’s stretched resources to assist families in need, and you’re taking a risk that could result in a different sort of harm. I can definitely see why there’s such a high burnout rate for social workers.
I don’t think this piece is in any way arguing that children should remain in abusive situations, whether they are in a biological family or not.
But there are ways to preserve biological links that don’t necessarily mean “keep the kid with abusive parents” (there are aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc). And breaking those biological links doesn’t always mean the kid DOESN’T end up in an abusive situation, as witnessed (sadly) by the many stories of abused adoptees (often international adoptions, often by “good Christian families”) that have made the news in the States.
The U.S. has a long and extremely sketchy history of taking kids from poorer but perfectly good families and making them available for adoption by wealthy families under the guise of privileging the rights of the child over the rights of the biological family. In fact, many state and federal adoption systems have operated primarily on this basis for quite some time, especially in regards to Native American tribes. In some places, it isn’t even history; it’s ongoing. As many, many people have pointed out, poverty is not abuse, and parents’ rights don’t vanish simply because they’re broke.
This, so much this. I understand what shy is saying, but when you factor race and ethnicity into that system, it really paints a far more messed up picture. I’ve a friend who was raised as an adoptee from Korea, and, despite loving her adoptive parents, she’s written utterly scathing articles about the racism implicit in US adoption systems.
And… well, I’ve seen it called “Child Stealing” by Native American and First Nations activists, for very good reason. It started in selling Pequot and Wampanoag kids to white families to pay for food for the rest of the family, and it’s still going on now, with folks in the Northwest having to go to court to keep custody of their kids in the tribe when one or both of their parents gets sick.
Going to add the Stolen Generations of Australian Aborigines to this as well.
Some of the kids were taken from abusive situations, but the majority were snatched simply because of their race- white families seemed to have more leeway with abuse.
The kids ended up in homes or some cases were adopted out. Either way they lost contact with their families.
There was an implicit view that the adoptees were more able to be “integrated” into white Australian society and that they were being recovered from a dysfunctional society.
It was Child Stealing however much people want to pretend otherwise.
I’ve adopted out of foster care twice. Yes, you can adopt from the state (inexpensively), instead of internationally or via a private adoption.
When looking at private adoption, some mothers would choose to parent if they had financial stability. Daycare is extremely expensive ($250 a week average in my area, half that in my old town), which makes it difficult for mothers with low paying jobs to work, or to go to school to improve their situation. Better mental health services and drug treatment would also allow some birth families to parent instead of giving up their child.
When looking at foster care, there are some families that absolutely should lose their kids. But there are other families that need a hand up from social programs help them hold down a job, put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Drug addiction is a major cause of people losing their kids. Sometimes CPS intervention, and the drug treatment services provided, allow parents to get their acts together and be good parents to their kids. Losing the birth family is traumatic for kids. Keeping kids with -safe- parents is an admirable goal. I’ve seen parents work their butts off to get their kids back and be amazing parents afterwards.
As an adoptive parent, I make an effort to stay in touch with my children’s birth families. My son has several siblings, and a large extended family that are safe to be around. For my other child, she still has contact with an aunt and uncle. My kids are too young to understand right now, but it’ll be important later.
I find the private adoption industry in the US repulsive. It feels to me like people are getting rich off of two families in pain.
The opposition of child’s rights and parental rights is frequently a red herring. Like Nicole says below, “whenever possible” is what federal law instructs, not “at all costs.” And the reason why “whenever possible” is the instruction is that study of children who were removed from homes and adopted out to vastly improved material conditions do not thrive. There is a recognition that the severing of ties with biological family does profound and long-lasting psychological damage which should only be contemplated when parents are unable or unwilling to provide a “minimum sufficient level of care.” The child welfare system is incredibly child-focused and the reason why parents aren’t just tossed into the void is that unless it is truly necessary, such void-tossing actually harms the child. In order to have their children returned to them, parents are asked to do difficult things in a short amount of time, but even in this context, the point is the wellbeing of the child and not about punishing the parents.
Thanks for the article Nicole. I’m now picturing two GoFundMe pages side by side and the comments each would generate: 1) Hello, I’m an unmarried woman in China who has just given birth to a beautiful baby girl. I desperately want to keep her. If we raise $10,000 she can grow up here with her loving family. 2) Hello, we’re a married white American couple who want to adopt a baby girl from China. It will cost $10,000.
You hit the ugly-truth nail right on the head there, I think.
There’s actually something similar to this in Wake Up, Little Susie. One chapter features a letter from a young unmarried pregnant black woman in the ’40s writing to an adoption agency begging for help in placing her child with a family. Another letter, dated THREE DAYS LATER, was from an upper-class infertile black couple begging for help in finding a baby to adopt. The agency’s response to both? “We do not provide assistance to those of your race.” I would have thrown the book across the room if it hadn’t been from the library.
Thanks for this, Nicole. VERY thought-provoking.
i started reading this and haven’t finished. this hits too close to home – i’m a bastard, as well. i’m crying. i hate hate HATE how adoption has turned into a contest or a money grab.
i have a lot of other feels, but i struggle to give voice to them at the moment.
It’s been a money grab for a long, long time, if you study the history. People want kids–or at least, they want babies–and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get ’em.
oh, i’m aware. this is just the newest iteration, where people are publicly passing the bill on to their friends and family. and it hurts. god, it hurts.
Nicole, I always adore what you write about adoption. As an adult adoptee (albeit domestically within the United States) so much of it hits home in words i’ve always struggled to express. Thank you.
This piece especially: “Adoption can be a very good thing for an individual child, but it is not charity. ” is what I have been trying to communicate for years! Adoption is not something you do like dropping off your clothes at Goodwill. But I also struggle to say what adoption IS, exactly.
Adoption is…
From my role as an AP: a way to add a child to our family, which was something we wanted, while doing a mitzvah for a child who needed a family. (Spoiler: Not really. Details at http://thirdtimecharmed.com/wp/)
From my role as a person who was adopted (by a stepparent, not an ‘orphan’ /new family assignment): a way to get a more capable, invested parent who actively chose to raise me.
From my kid’s role as an adopted person who turned out not to be an orphan at all:…to be announced. (She’s 16, has a lot on her plate and doesn’t always want to talk about it, but confirmed earlier today that in fact her adoptive status in the family IS conspicuous to her when I’m discussing the rare disease I have that my bio niece must be screened for.)
From wherever you’re sitting, it’s complicated in ways that ‘help us pay for a baby! OMG Cute!’ don’t just obscure but try to erase.
Which, to Nicole’s point, is…squicky.
You points are excellent (as always), and I’ve gone and taken on your opinions as if I was the one to put a lot of thought into articulating them in the first place (also as always.)
The thing that stopped me nodding along and bonked me in the face was the fact that I’d long accepted a Venn diagram of heavy overlap between orphans and adoptees. I’ve never articulated before that many adoptees are not orphans, and it’s shifted my axis some. It’ll influence the way I read and think about adoption issues now. Thanks for that.
Maaaaaaaaaany are not. I don’t know if it’s safe to say MOST are not (although I think that’s probably true in the U.S.; internationally, ??) – they often at least have one parent or grandparent who, in an ideal world, would naturally assume custody. I’m an adoptee, born and adopted in the U.S., and both of my biological parents are definitely still alive, plus a paternal grandmother.
Just chiming in to say, same here! I am also an adoptee born in the US, and I was most definitely not an orphan, though I have no idea if my biological father was in the picture or not. It was closed, but at the time of my birth both my biological parents were alive, as well as at least a maternal grandmother.
Thank you for this! My husband and I are in the early stages of adopting through DCF (kids in the foster care system) and a huge part of that is our research indicated that private/foreign adoption actually contributes to a lot of unhealthy trends we were uncomfortable with. This reminds me that, for all the risks the type of adoption we’re pursuing has, it feels right on a level that’s beyond the I-want-a-kid one.
gcf, I’m confused by your statement, “our research indicated that private/foreign adoption actually contributes to a lot of unhealthy trends”. What trends?
I don’t know what specifically gcf is referring to, but in terms of international adoption, this great piece discusses some issues with adoption from Korea http://the-toast.net/2015/09/30/history-korean-ad… and this piece is about how broken Guatemalan adoption to the US was, http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-01-08/one-girls-c…
1. Indirect pressure to put children up for adoption because there are wealthy/Western people seeking infant adoption – specifically pressure on single mothers. For example, I had read that in Korea single mothers (particularly if the father was not Korean) are/were pressured to put their kids up for adoption – it seems like by creating this “market” for babies, it justifies pulling support from under women who might want to raise their kids but need the larger community etc. to make that happen. It happens in the US as well when it comes to how anti-choice groups operate.
2. Based on what I’ve heard from Building a Family’s podcast, these days most developed nation can handle/home the majority of healthy infants that are available for adoption, meaning that, unless you are willing/able to adopt a child with a developmental or physical limitation, you aren’t “rescuing” the kids from anything but their native culture.
3. The issue of commodifying so many parts of the process – like where parents who are focused on getting a healthy (generally white) baby are investing money in branding themselves to women who are considering putting their newborn up for adoption.
Maybe trends isn’t the right word: things that happen and should not happen?
There is a place for all forms of adoption but the average cost of private adoption ~$30,000 and I find that baffling and a source of concern. I had a boss who took out six figures in loans to adopt her 2 kids and the mind boggles at so many aspects of that. Our state has tens of thousands of kids in need and the process is not fast or easy but it is essentially free. If you look at this from a capitalist perspective, it’s warped in what it says about ranking and value assigned to children/living beings.
My spouse and I are starting to look into this, too, and a lot of what we’ve found is that international adoption is often very unethical (not always, of course) both in the lies that are told to birth families and to adoptive families as well as the often blackmarket nature of many adoptions. For domestic private adoptions, most companies do not have to really follow any adoption-specific rules. This can lead to agencies charging adoptive parents a fortune (adopting a baby can cost between $10k and $40, that is a pretty big difference) as well as pressuring birth parents to make a decision about their child before they are ready or willing to do so. Private agencies also often do not provide any kind of follow-up services for the birth parents or for the adoptive parents.
Sorry for the long answer! It is really frustrating to be any part of this process, and there is a LOT to be frustrated/angry about 🙁
Great, great piece. I agree with absolutely everything you said. As a fellow adult adoptee, I understand just how tricky and slippery it is to unpack complicated discussions like this. Especially because The Adoption Narrative wants to tend toward Meme-ability and soundbites.
Thanks, Mary! EVERYBODY, Mary wrote this gorgeous essay for us about adoption and sibling reunion, and you should definitely read it.
Aw, thanks for the mention, lady 🙂
Thanks for writing this, and for all you’ve written on adoption. I’m adopted (not transracial though..cisracial?) and while I do feel it was very much a net positive on the whole, it’s really something* to after 28 years of a very simple, aggressively upbeat narrative, finally read something that acknowledges the nuance of it all.
*and I am really making the word “something” do way too much work here…it’s really refreshing but also sometimes like so intensely scandalizing in a way that’s almost nauseating? You write something like “The best way to help children is to support and preserve original families whenever possible” and I feel like a scared sheltered born-again teen flipping through a Playboy. Because I was very much raised to view any deviation from that simple happy narrative as something that was personally attacking me and my family, and I don’t even think that anymore but I still feel it all the same. And there’s very little that I encounter in my life that challenges that, but your writing does, so thank you.
You are not alone! ♥️ Thank you for your comment.
Like you I was brought up with a fairly simplistic view of adoption, which was just a lot more common two and three decades ago. We also just didn’t know much about my birth family, because my adoption was totally closed, so rarely talked about them even though I THOUGHT about them all the time. There was not a lot of room for adoptees of my generation, as kids, to think differently about or question anything having to do with our adoptions. Unfortunately, depending on the family culture and how everyone communicates, it can be tough to find room for that even now.
As I mention above, my adoption ended up being a lucky event in a lot of ways. I don’t consider myself anti-adoption at ALL and I know very few people, adoptees included, who would embrace that label. I just don’t have simple cut-and-dried feelings about it, or the institution as a whole. It’s clear, though, that there’s room for improvement! And that should not be a controversial or minority opinion.
Of course you were a bargain! Your adoptive parents could have paid three dozen chests full of precious gems and still gotten the better end of that deal.
In other words, you are amazing. Thanks for writing this.
This is very kind! Thank you so much.
p.s. I can’t believe no one has yet ASKED me how much my adoption was after I said I would tell anyone
I’m sure they probably assumed it was just thousands of rubies and similar, as we’ve established would be appropriate.
But if you want to tell me how much it was, I don’t deny being curious. (It still feels gauche to ask, somehow, even though you said it was ok?!)
It was like $2000 in medical bills (my birth parents didn’t have insurance) and $750 for the adoption lawyer (who was pretty useless, I have to say — we’ve spoken).
ALSO rubies and a chest of gold doubloons
Thank you for bringing that thinking into my mind. I certainly have always thought that any child up for adoption must necessarily to be going to a better home if adopted. And have never really considered that providing more social and monetary support for the original family might change the narrative dramatically.
On the other hand I have always felt sick in my stomach over the purchasing of children. Because that is what it becomes. And once you treat a children as just another part of capitalism, it spawns more nightmarish problems. But no one really talks about the reality that what we call adoption amount to buying a child.
I’ll never forget when I realized that essentially, my parents had to PAY for me. it was a weird realization.
If it makes you feel better, I could show you the big ol’ stack of medical bills necessary to get pregnant and give birth to my daughter. (Or the sick leave I missed out on taking after she was born due to FMLA-related bullcrap.)
None of which I would ever, ever bat an eye at spending, and I bet your parents don’t either.
Oh man, I never meant to imply that my parents regretted it! They spent a BOATLOAD between failed fertility treatments and several other attempts at adoption that fell through – interestingly, at one point they were in the process of adopting three older children from El Salvador, when just before they flew there to make final arrangements, it was revealed that they were being scammed and the children they’d been told about were never up for adoption in the first place. Talk about the complications of international adoption!
But to your point, I know 100% deep down in my soul that my parents do not regret spending a single penny in their journey to my adoption. But as Nicole and Vee mentioned downthread, it’s just something complicated for me to process – that the way I came into my family was commodified, I was essentially the subject of a transaction, etc. I know that this does not make me any less wanted by my parents, but… it’s complicated. Compounding this was the fact that I was put up for adoption as an infant, only days old- and as a white baby in the US, I was IN DEMAND. My parents were informed in the morning that a baby was available, because they were at the top of the list. (Please note: they did not express a racial preference, but rather they’d been waiting so long – six years – that they received the first call.) They were told they’d have to decide THAT DAY, and drop everything to come pick me up. The racial aspects of adoption in America are worth a much deeper examination, but that’s something else that I have weird guilt and feelings over – I know that i was adopted MUCH more quickly due to my privilege.
I agree with ladonnapietra. Parents pay for all children. It’s just more straightforward (and more of a lump sum, rather than onesy-twosy medical bills) with adoption.
No there’s a very big difference between spending money on a child you carried and birthed yourself and paying to claim and raise someone else’s. It’s specific to the adoptee experience and like the commenter above, the realization of having a price tag on me was shocking and heavy to process.
Yeah, I don’t think we need to try and make adoptees feel “better” about the price tag; I think there’s no wrong way for us to feel about it and those are our emotions to own and sort through.
And adoptive parents obviously get hit with all the copays and school things and the other costs, too, in ADDITION to the big lump sum original cost.
Thank you so much for writing this, Nicole — especially written in a way that one can share on FB or elsewhere, whenever the subject comes up. I think it’s highly accessible and, I hope, will do some good to open minds.
ETA: I recently re-read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven, which I first read as a teenager and touched me enormously and perhaps affect me even more now, because I’ve written a good deal (in fiction) about lost children and abuse and that struggle to figure out family and community and home.
It was interesting to analyze the two books, because The Bean Trees was Kingsolver’s first book, and you can see the oversimplification of it (she put a lot of thought and focus instead toward the Guatemalan indigenous people, what was happening in their country, and immigrants).
Then her debut book became a bestseller, and I’m sure she got a deserved earful from the Native American people she only glancingly covered, who have lost (even in the late 20th century) an absolutely heartbreaking number of their children in shady adoptions to white people. I think the number was 1 in 4 Native American children, at one point.
I do think Kingsolver made a good effort to repair that shallow depiction of adoption in Pigs in Heaven, which was both educational about the crisis and explored the heartbreak on both sides, especially when the child in question suffered horrible abuse. It dealt with the initial lack of trust on both sides, and then kinship as a real option.
it was just a really good portrayal of a situation where even when the “rescue” looks 100% legit, there may still be heartbreak incurred, other options missed, and the community and sense of heritage lost will be irreplaceable.
The number was 1 in 4 for some tribes as recently as the early 1970s, which is even more deeply unsettling.
I love Pigs in Heaven and Kingsolver in general, thank you for mentioning this.
I loved this piece and really appreciate the writer’s point of view on what makes this practice unseemly if not outright wrong. I’d like to add another side of the story as an adoptive parent which might be less popular although it supports the same conclusion.
Back when I was adopting my three kids over a decade ago, this kind of fundraising-to-adopt was just beginning. There wasn’t an online thing yet, but there were certainly people blogging about their bakesales and selling off furniture and asking their church for help…
And I thought, these people should not be adopting at all. They have no concept of what an adopted child is going to need after the adoption. They think that their love will be enough, and that for the rest, this child will be exactly like a bio kid would be. They are SO wrong. A child who has spent time in an orphanage, whether it’s 18 months (Chinese, at that time) or 4-6 years (my kids, and often the ones these people were adopting) probably has needs you have not anticipated. These can be emotional, cognitive, or physical, or all three, but they need to be remediated and this can involve a lot of money. You should be saving up for the speech-language pathologist, the attachment therapist, the special pediatric dental surgeon, the Lindamood-Bell tutor. Just to mention things 2 of my 3 kids needed. I mean, the notion that once you’re home from China or Ethiopia or wherever, your expenses are over, is just nuts.
Of course, the fundraising couple could be lucky and get the child who does not need special help. Or else they could just decide that the child is lucky to have been adopted and can just learn how to deal with their problems in the glorious USA. It’s that latter possibility that makes me angry.
It’s scary how prospective parents (bio and non) can underestimate the sheer work of raising a child. My sister’s infertile, and as such she knows a lot of couples in similiar situations, and she said it’s shocking how many in her particular circle mention how adoption isn’t an option they’d consider because of the additional needs that child may have; as if biological children come with a guarantee.
I was speaking to someone about our recent adoption recently and she told me she didn’t think she could ever do an adoption because “you just don’t know what you are going to get.” Which, look, there are some valid reasons to choose not to adopt. I think this series of articles will probably point out a lot of them, and if you aren’t prepared to deal with the ongoing psychological issues involved, that’s a valid reason not to adopt. Further, anyone who would say that really probably shouldn’t be considering adoption anyway. I have a cousin who chose artificial insemination because she had concerns about her ability to bond with an adopted baby or child. But she is the first person to point out that choosing to have a child at all is scary. The baby she is carrying could have any number of issues that our adopted child doesn’t. There are no guarantees.
” the fundraising couple could be lucky and get the child who does not need special help”
I’d say the *child* would be the one who gets lucky in that scenario, but TBH it’s very rare for a child who has been traumatized through the adoption pipeline *not* to have any special needs. It’s disturbingly common for APs to fail in their duty to recognize those special needs until the child has ‘failed to attach’ or adjust as expected.
My child’s needs have not been cheap to treat, and we didn’t knowingly adopt a child who we thought would require hearing aids, or a quiet homeschooled learning environment, or…I’m not complaining that this is expensive, I’m validating that your suggested concern is real. It was real even when we thought we had all the money we could ever need to raise a child.
Thank you for posting this. As a fellow adoptee, you articulated so well many of the things that really, really bother me about the way people talk about adoption. Often I feel the adopted children’s voices are the ones completely drowned out, and the savior narrative and violation of privacy inherent in these crowdfunding campaigns really skeeves me out.
Thanks for your comment! I was telling some friends earlier today, I don’t think I encountered the “savior” narrative in my own home at all; my adoptive parents were religious but did not adopt for religious reasons, if that makes sense? Other people, even some of my adoptive relatives, would say silly things about how I’d have been aborted or abandoned for being a girl and/or raised without knowing Jesus, so wasn’t I lucky? But my parents never did. I’m really, really glad their motivation for adoption was not powerfully faith-based and that they didn’t have a savior complex at all.
I have some friends who are adopted and know good people who have adopted (and, for the most part, adopted thoughtfully). I know that adoption can be and is a good thing for many children, but I struggle to convey both my support for adoption and my hesitation about using it as a cure-all. I appreciate articles like this one that make me think more deeply about it.
I found during our adoption process that so many people treat adoption like some magical cure for abortion, as though there are not biological and psychological costs to both the biological family and the child. I think adoption is absolutely a beautiful thing, but you hit the nail on the head: it should be done thoughtfully, taking into account that a woman does not just give birth to a child and hand it over to a childless couple and everyone lives happily ever after into eternity. I think that her point about the costs is very important: the fact that it’s a big money maker for some people has allowed the process to become about making money and not what’s actually in the best interests of the mother and the child. We fortunately had an excellent agency who always advised proceeding slowly, building relationships with biological families, and offering to pay for independent, third party (i.e., neutral or more concerned for the actual woman’s actual mental health) counseling. Many women we spoke to decided not to place their babies for adoption after all, because we or our agency made suggestions of other ways they might be able to make it work (i.e., really talking to extended family about ways they might be willing or able to help, talking to their churches about support systems that might be available, etc). But so many agencies just want to make that big paycheck and so scared or confused or just plain tired women place babies. When we were searching for an agency we ran across 2 very large ones, supposedly “Christian”, and the reviews were long lists of women who felt completely taken advantage of – feeling pressured to place their babies and made to feel like they were horrible people if they contemplated raising the baby themselves, or being offered counseling services they never received, or if they did receive the services it was just one more way for the agency to browbeat them into placing the baby.
I just want to say thank you so much, Nicole, for all your writing about adoption. I have several amazing preteen relatives who are adopted (through both transracial and same-race adoption) and your pieces A) make me feel like I can be a better relative to them by understanding more about adoption and the conversations around it and B) make me feel better prepared to make decisions about adoption myself in the far future when I want kids.
Nicole, I so appreciate the complexity of your conclusion. Not good clickbait, but good adult thinking about hard issues and good advice for well-meaning sometimes-clueless people like me.
Coming from England, I find the whole process of adoption regarding ‘relinquished’ babies in the US deeply and ethically disturbing. I was going to say it was the crowdfunding I was horrified with, but I think it’s the bigger picture that leads to this which is actually the primary disturbing factor.
I work in adoption in England- I would add that ‘relinquishment’ accounts for 1%- 2% max- of all adoptions in England. Basically, it is virtually unheard of (as someone with a background in sociology, I find this very interesting and I could pontificate about the correlation with secularism and the welfare state, but not to go off on too far a tangent…). Regardless of why a child is taken into care/placed for adoption (abuse/neglect/relinquishment) ALL go through the local authority children’s services. All women stating they are considering relinquishment would be referred here. There are NO private agencies involved- it is indeed a statutory duty that they are managed in this way. Basically, there is NO money or expense for birth parents involved at any stage in the adoption process and I strongly believe no coercion, as the case is not in the control of a service that could financially benefit from it.
I remember being horrified when i read that in the US, adoptive parents could be in the labour room with the birth mother or, to be fair, involved in her life at any point prior to the child’s birth. How is that fair or not complicit in forcing the mother’s hand, should she be having doubts? That is not conducive to making an informed choice free from the values and pressures (even if not directly voiced) of others. In England, if mum was considering relinquishment, the child would be placed in foster care (at the cost of the local authority, NOT out of the parents’ pocket). Birth parents are also not legally allowed to sign consent to adoption until the child is at least 6 weeks old and active ‘family finding’ for adoptive parents cannot start until after consent has been obtained- i would guess because it would be seen to be ethically and morally ambiguous to do so, given the gravitas of such a decision. I strongly feel this ‘breathing time’ should be practised in the US- god, it’s been practised in England since the 60s! I think the English system also shows just how crass the US system is. Money DOES NOT have to be involved in adoption, it’s just that it’s normalised as such in the US.
I was actually having a discussion about the US adoption-relinquishment practices and my colleagues genuinely thought I had got it wrong and that i was spouting a load of tosh. The whole team was completely aghast because it is that alien to actiually think the system could EVER be allowed to work in this way. Really hoping US adoption laws regarding potential/relinquished children will one day be more ethically sound, progressive and built upon the crux of children’s and family’s rights, rather than steered by a seemingly profits (and somewhat religious) based infrastructure.
“I was actually having a discussion about the US adoption-relinquishment practices and my colleagues…. ” — honestly, that is a huge step right there.
I have heard that adoption as it is practiced in the US does not really exist in other countries, though I have never had anyone line it out so well before. Thanks for sharing with us (and others, especially those that may not want to hear it. you are my hero).
I didn’t have any idea that US-style adoptions are so different from other parts of the world. That’s fascinating info, thanks for sharing.
There are a bunch of reasons why the U.S. adoption system is the way it is, and some of them go back over a hundred years. They aren’t all the result of unchecked greed, though plenty of them are. Many of the costs associated with adoption were implemented in a genuine effort to ensure that only dedicated and thoroughly prepared adoptive parents would be considered, in an effort to avoid precisely the problems that arose from the foundling industry in the 19th century in England. (See: Oliver Twist.) Then there’s also the reality that pregnancy in the U.S. is expensive, and up until very recently, many insurance plans were allowed to opt out of covering it. The average price for delivery hovers around $30K, for instance. Defraying a birth mother’s very real expenses is, frankly, the least an adoptive parent can do, given our lack of a nationalized health system. Does this get twisted fast into a crass commodification system? Sure. But there’s an ethical and rights-based infrastructure behind it, if you know where to look.
1/1: Thanks for your response, Iadonnapietra. I hold my hands up and will admit I hadn’t really addressed or thought about the hospital expenses involved in the US. We really are so lucky to have a service like the NHS and I hope that Obama’s plans for affordable health care and subsidies become extended. The NHS was not around when my dad was born, so i know changes can and do happen. I’m not naive to think the US will ever get anything exactly akin to the NHS, but I hope that one day, healthcare in the US is majority based upon need rather than privilege. Can I ask has Obama’s legislation improved things at all for expectant mum’s considering relinquishment, possibly due to financial worries?
I can completely see the rationale behind adopters paying a birth mum’s medical expenses in many ways, but this is again something that skews the process and potentially forces hands. I truly feel for birth mum’s who are put in this position when their choice to place their baby for adoption may be, for the most part, based upon financial factors. Coming back to crowdfunding, if financial constraints are the principle reason for relinquishment, why not crowdfund to help support women who are struggling to pay medical and/or practical costs, rather than potentially force her into making one of the most monumental decisions in life- to give up her baby? The effects of this are life-long and life-changing for all involved so why is the go-to answer so often adoption? I’ve observed that a lot of adoption crowdfunders and agency’s involved in relinquish-adoptions have Christian values at their very core- yet isn’t ‘charity’ and support for those less fortunate than us a key Christian value? Surely supporting a mum financially is therefore the most moral, appropriate and least draconian reaction? The problem is, people will skew the meaning of scripture to meet what serves best their own interests….I’m sorry, but if people can spend millions on ‘sponsoring’ animals and shelters as they do through charity and compassion, surely they can afford support to people in need too. Family preservation, where safe and manageable, should be the main beneficiary of support and not adoptions where they could be prevented by practical means. Adoptions due to perceived/lack of finances were very common cases in England until about 40 years ago. My agency has been going 100 years and reading records from this time that state ‘i dont want my baby adopted but cant afford to keep him’ are beyond heartbreaking; i have worked with birth mum’s who feel so aggrieved that they were not afforded the support that women in exactly the same position do today in England. Thankfully the adoption system, along with political and social ideology, has progressed massively since the 70s onwards. I am thankful that our welfare state and support for single mums and low-income families has improved massively since then. Relinquishment dropped sharply from the mid 1970s onwards in England- this came about at a time that the welfare support was increasing, alongside the legalising of abortion. I feel both have a strong correlation.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘Many of the costs associated with adoption were implemented in a genuine effort to ensure that only dedicated and thoroughly prepared adoptive parents would be considered,’. I’m not sure how cost’s need to be necessarily connected with this factor. In England today, I would still say having dedicated and prepared adopters is the primary focus, but their financial status has only minimal correlation to this. That’s not to say we disregard financial stability- we have to have sight of bank statements, direct debits, employment contracts etc to ensure that people will be able to financially cope; but again, their financial position is only one element and we are not looking for them to have thousands in the bank. During the adoption process, prospective adopters do not have to pay for anything, save for a one off medical with their doctor, which costs about £75 (about $110..i think) and that is it. You would certainly not be approving people who are in extreme debt or on the breadline, but you are not seeing money as the be all and end all. The adopters we take come from a wide variety of financial backgrounds and some of the ‘best’ adopters are those working in lesser paid ‘blue collar jobs’…..
Back in the day, it wasn’t unusual for kids to be adopted for the express purpose of labor, especially around farms. (See: the first couple of chapters of Anne of Green Gables.) This was obviously non-optimal, at least for families that didn’t have a Matthew around, and the easiest way to sift out the people who were adopting for economic reasons was to institute economic consequences. That ballooned into the current ginormous costs, which still include things like background checks and legal processes to ensure that the adoptive parents really are just looking for a kid to love and take care of.
2/2: …I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘Many of the costs associated with adoption were implemented in a genuine effort to ensure that only dedicated and thoroughly prepared adoptive parents would be considered,’. I’m not sure how cost’s need to be necessarily connected with this factor. In England today, I would still say having dedicated and prepared adopters is the primary focus, but their financial status has only minimal correlation to this. That’s not to say we disregard financial stability- we have to have sight of bank statements, direct debits, employment contracts etc to ensure that people will be able to financially cope; but again, their financial position is only one element and we are not looking for them to have thousands in the bank. During the adoption process, prospective adopters do not have to pay for anything, save for a one off medical with their doctor, which costs about £75 (about $110..i think) and that is it. You would certainly not be approving people who are in extreme debt or on the breadline, but you are not seeing money as the be all and end all. The adopters we take come from a wide variety of financial backgrounds and some of the ‘best’ adopters are those working in lesser paid ‘blue collar jobs’.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the state covers all costs related to children considered for relinquishment/formally relinquished- it’s important to keep this in mind as it is of no financial benefit for them to do so, yet it is in law as it ensures the rights of both child and their right to family life are preserved and respected. The law also considers that mother’s cannot reasonably be in the right frame of mind to consent to such a huge decision at a time that her hormones are going haywire- i find this really important and again, thankful we have this acknowledged! Ethics and adoption don’t seem to go together in some US practice, but they should , regardless of financial burden to the state- and yes, i do know this is ideal world talk :(… In terms of costs to the state in England, the state are paying the foster carers’ weekly fees for at least 2 months, they are paying for all court applications and costs, they are paying for the salary of the social worker/s involved and the family court worker who also has to be involved. The state are willing to pay for this as it is what is ethically right and what ensures the child’s right’s and welfare remain paramount. Ideology seems fundamentally different in the US, but as you say, Iadonnapietra, the system is different on so many levels, from politics down to business models, down to social values. We could probably go on and on forever. I just find it sad, overall.
It’s gotten to the point where everything in the US is about money. We are nothing if not crass here.
I was adopted more than 30 years ago as a newborn. The lawyer handling the adoption drove my birth mother straight from the hospital to the courthouse to sign me away. Then he called my new parents to come pick me up from the maternity ward. I was disgusted when I learned this little fact.
On a good note, I will be reuniting with my biological siblings in a few weeks! They were a little shocked but ultimately excited to learn they had another sister.
This was fantastic, Nicole. I don’t know an enormous amount about the adoption industry, but when I first heard that for-profit adoption was a thing it made me really unsettled for reasons I couldn’t articulate. And that example of the people who promised to raise their kid as fan of a certain sports team made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I hope this piece makes an impact on the dialogue around this issue.
Nicole, I just wanted to say thanks for writing such thoughtful, eye-opening pieces on adoption. This is an area I haven’t thought a lot about, and every time I read your work I find myself confronting knee-jerk reactions and lazy assumptions within myself. So thank you for helping me realize that this is an area where I really need to educate myself!
I think it’s a little weird to ask strangers to fund you for the privilege of having a child. Maybe you should earn your own way into that to qualify economically? I can kind of see applying the ‘it takes a village’ mentality to it, but it’s a lot more consequential than other crowdfunding projects, like funding a film. The exceptions would be if someone wanted to adopt a kid with medical or other special needs, or the child of a friend who was killed, or a kid from foster care. If they are willing to take on something like that, then I think they deserve all the support they can get.
As an adult adoptee, I am opposed to crowdfunding for adoptions.
The cost to adopt a child (especially from overseas) towers over the amount of money that could help the child’s family to keep him/her, and improve the family’s situation in many ways, or even their community, WITHOUT removing their child from his/her family and community.
Also, the fees for these adoptions don’t even go the the communities or families, but go instead to lawyers or adoption agencies who already get paid heftily.
Too often, adoption is charitable – no way. It’s trafficking. It’s supplying too-often first world, privileged, selfishly-entitled people with children who have lost so much or are going to have to lose so much of themselves so that adopters can reach their dreams. What about the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of these children and THEIR families?
What ever happened to: if you can’t afford it, don’t get it? Or live within your means?
There is so much corruption and commodification already that benefits agencies and privileged hopeful adopters. Buying babies only promotes more of this. And they already get a nice tax credit. What about these children’s families? They get a hole in their lives.
What ever happened to: if you can’t afford it, don’t get it? Or live within your means?
I am guessing that you have been fortunate enough to avoid dealing with infertility.
Uh no. I grew up dealing with infertility. My entire life since I was removed from my country was living with and accommodating other people’s infertility. They never sought therapy to help them deal with their grief of infertility, so instead our family was chaotic, my adopters got divorced. But, yes, they did teach me to budget and live within my means (not that that was a big problem, I spent little of what I made, and I had lots of comforts).
But, I lost my entire family, country, history, identity, community, and language (and previous life/relationships) so that an infertile couple could pretend to avoid their own self-esteem issues.
Am I grateful? You betcha. NOT.
So, seek some therapy if facing infertility leads you to assume that you’re the only person with problems in life, and to assume that you know all about other people’s experiences.
And another lesson – if you’re infertile now, fundraising and adoption won’t change that condition at all.
Thank you for your concern for my mental well-being! You may find this reassuring: http://the-toast.net/2014/10/27/employer-put-fml-…
Related: pretty sure I’m not the one who needs therapy, here.
This is obviously a touchy subject, but if this is hitting too close to home you might want to take a break from this thread!
Respectful disagreement = totally welcome here, but if it’s getting hard to be polite and compassionate, please consider stepping back from the discussion for a while. I don’t think it’s appropriate to be telling other commenters to get therapy. Thank you!
KOOLAID MAN EDITOR BUSTS IN:
Yes, Nikki is correct. Let us all consider therapy for its numerous benefits, and refrain from suggesting it specifically to others.
I think the poster was asking if you yourself or your partner was infertile. Not whether you’ve had relationships with people who are infertile.
It doesn’t matter. Many adoptees deal with infertility. Both their own and the effects of their adopting parents. It can often be devastating for all involved. Adoption is not a cure for infertility, but because some people believe it is, it can have consequences on adoptees and their parents you can’t imagine if not dealt with properly.
Adoptees who are infertile can have a full understanding of what it’s like. Those who haven’t won’t. Just like an Adoptive Parent will never fully understand what it’s like to be adopted.
No, adoption and third party reproduction aren’t a cure for infertility. But for some people it is a solution for childlessness.
Regardless of how a couple decides to proceed with their lives they must deal with their pain. It has consequences on others in their lives such as spouses, family members and friends. I can speak from personal experience.
With respect, adoption is not a “solution for childlessness.” Adoption is about the child and their best interests, not the adoptive parents or filling a hole in their lives. It’s meant to be a way of providing children living outside of family care with a permanent, loving and nurturing home. Infertility is heartbreaking for many (my parents could not carry a pregnancy to term and I have some limited idea of what they went through), but that doesn’t make adoption the “solution.”
I’ve spent a lot of time talking with and working with people directly involved in adoptions, and all of them recommend that their adoptive parent clients deal with their strongest feelings surrounding infertility (if it is an issue for them — for many adoptive parents, it’s not), and mourn if necessary, BEFORE adopting a child. When it isn’t faced or dealt with beforehand, or when adoption is seen as the “solution,” as you say, it can have consequences for others, including their children.
Perhaps I used the term solution incorrectly as I can see how you took it that what. What I meant was if someone or couple doesn’t have children adopting is one way of them becoming parents. Thus they would no longer be childless. Yes, the primary focus is and should be about the child’s needs. Not every who pursues adopting has the ability to provide a child they adopt with what they need. And that’s unfortunate because those kids deserve better.
Though you may have been raised by adults who went through infertility you have as much understanding of what they went through as they do about what it’s like to be adopted. As for dealing with the strongest feelings of infertility anyone should deal with them no matter what path the go down. It can have consequences on so many different people and aspects in that couple/person’s life. The same can be said for anyone who has dealt with any trauma or loss in their lives. Unfortunately our society is not really empathetic to these people.
if you can’t afford it, don’t get it? Or live within your means?
I agree with some of what you’re saying — but I left this point out of my post for a reason! I do get why people say this; raising a child is EXPENSIVE. But people also say this about poor and working-class parents and single parents and use it as an excuse to be butts about people with less than them who they view as a burden on the system.
Nikki,
Yes, poor people get a bad rap by everyone else. They’re the scapegoat for not living “responsibly” or within their limits. But, also their limits are pretty slim. And they’ve still got existing mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, books or other things to buy. They (hopefully) aren’t asking for 20-50-80 THOUSAND dollars for to fulfill their own dreams. Those children already exist, those families already exist. Just separating them due to poverty would be quite shameful and difficult for them. Threatening them with removing their child would be horrific.
However, for adopter fundraisers, these children aren’t part of their families. These children already have families. Elsewhere. They are burdening all of us taxpayers who are subsiding their lofty adoption tax credit for their personal dreams. They’re asking many of their friends, neighbors, and strangers to share their burden for their personal dreams. And if they’re able to adopt, they STILL have the costs of raising them, just like the poor family whose child was taken away because they were too poor or didn’t have the money for better resources.
For the record, the maximum tax credit for 2014 was $13,190 per child: https://www.irs.gov/uac/Top-Ten-Facts-about-Adopt… It’s about $10K over the standard EITC credit, and it’s between a third and a sixth of your average adoption cost.
“Lofty” is not generally the adjective that goes along with it.
As someone who can’t have children–little did I know I’d run out of eggs before I hit 35–I’m finding my only option is adoption. Is there any way I can do that, though, which is ethical, and where the child won’t grow up resenting me for not being their biological mother? Should I just give up? What’s the right thing to even do? I want to do the right thing, I want to behave in a way that’s ethical, that’s beneficial for the child, but I’m a lower middle class white woman–is that even possible, other than abandoning trying to adopt at all? I honestly don’t know.
There totally is. Many, many kids in the foster system want nothing more than to have a parent, and a considerate and thoughtful one who mulls over ethics is probably at the top of their list, even if they might not put it quite that way. There are also plenty of adoptees who are perfectly fine with the families they got as babies and haven’t been resentful at all. My best friend from childhood is one, for instance.
There’s also the reality that lots of kids who aren’t adopted grow up to be resentful of their biological parents, so that’s not necessarily something that you’d avoid with a bio-kid.
I think we need to be careful, though, not to suggest that an adoptee who grows up to have complicated feelings or even resentful feelings (I don’t resent my parents for adopting me. Which I shouldn’t have to say, and yet I am) is a BAD outcome of an adoption, and an adoptee who doesn’t think about these issues/is “perfectly fine” is a GOOD outcome. (I don’t THINK that’s what you’re saying, I just thought this might be a good time to put that out there.)
I’m uncomfortable with the idea of telling potential adopters to “hope you don’t get one that makes waves!” As you say, adoptees have all sorts of different feelings about adoption in general and their adoptions in particular. And for a lot of us, these feelings shift quite a bit over the course of our lives. None of the feelings are wrong or undesirable or make for “bad” adoptees as opposed to “good” ones. They just are.
Oh, totally, and I didn’t mean to imply that they were. My friend actually put quite a lot of thought into how she felt about having been adopted over the years–I know, because she talked to me a ton about it–and I think one major factor that influenced matters was watching another friend of ours deal with her mother, who had her as an unmarried teenager and intensely resented the long-ranging changes that teenage motherhood had made in her life. Watching our mutual friend deal with her mom’s very vocal dismay at having kept her put my best friend’s birth mother’s decision at age 17 to give her up for adoption into perspective.
(Which is something that I hadn’t really figured out until just this moment, so maybe I am not the most perceptive friend ever.)
But yeah, don’t hope for the ones who don’t make waves. Hope for kids who come to their own understanding of how the situation works or doesn’t for them, and do what you can to tip it to the former.
I can’t answer to the ethicality of the process, but I can definitively answer the ” Is there any way I can do that, though, … where the child won’t grow up resenting me for not being their biological mother?” question.
I’m adopted. I’m 29, and I honestly have zero resentment to my parents for not being my biological forebears. So it’s definitely possible!
What likely helped on that front:
a) My parents never hid that I was adopted. I literally don’t remember finding out, because I was too young. Really, really don’t hide it from your kid. Treat it like any other fact about them, like when their birthday is or what color hair they have.
b) I was a cis-racial adoption. So there’s no sense of missing out on my “real” culture, or a sense of lost roots. Not that that’s guaranteed in trans-racial adoption, but in that case it’s probably more important to ensure your child has connections to that culture as well as your own.
c) My parents in no way treated me differently from my brother, their biological son. (He was an unexpected “miracle” baby; they adopted me because my mom’s doctor told her she’d never get pregnant, and she’d had something like 3 miscarriages before adopting me.) If you don’t have other kids, it’s probably less key, but don’t treat them any differently than you would a biological child, aside from medical history differences.
Now, I was adopted essentially as soon as I was born, not from a foster system, so I have no memory of any other family at all. I’d imagine it’s harder with foster children, but I can’t think that it’s impossible.
So don’t give up because your child might resent you for it! And I wish you the best of luck in the process!
You can never hope to 100% control how any kid, adopted or biological, will feel about how they’re brought up. You just can’t. I’m a parent of two. We are all trying to do our best. I certainly don’t resent my adoptive parents for not being my biological parents — that would be fairly ridiculous of me; that’s not something they can help!
Adoption from the U.S. foster care system is not simple either, and there are many issues to be aware of, but those adoptions are typically free/subsidized so cost is not a factor. If my husband and I ever have more kids, it’ll be through fostering/foster-to-adopt.
It can still be pretty pricey, though. My coworker spent $15K on home studies, background checks, and tribal genealogy studies before her foster daughter ever walked in the door, and that was before the adoption process even got rolling. It may depend a lot on the kid in question and the state, though.
Adoptees don’t necessarily resent their adoptive families. I certainly don’t resent my mom, I love and admire her!
To be honest, most of the adult adoptees I know who don’t like their adoptive families had emotionally abusive parents who probably should not have been allowed to adopt in the first place. The complaints I hear about adoptive families in the adult adoptee forum I hang out in are the exact same kind of complaints I hear about bio-families in the comments at Captain Awkward or on DWIL.
I mean even in the most ideal cases, adoption, from the child’s perspective, involves a loss which is serious and needs to be addressed. Adoptees have some emotional needs which are different than those a biological child would have, but allowing/encouraging them to talk about whatever negative or sad feelings they might have and not taking it as a personal rejection or insult goes a long way. Far too many adoptive parents expect their children to just be happy and grateful, when even for those of us who have had a mostly positive experience, it’s much more emotionally complicated than that.
My cousin did what’s called an “open adoption” for their oldest child, and I think for the second child too. In an open adoption, the child always knows he/she is adopted and the two families stay in touch — the birth mother can visit. In my cousin’s case, her son regularly sees his birth siblings and has a really strong relationship with one of his older birth sisters in particular. I don’t know why his birth mother gave him up (it had something to do with having a large number of children already, but I don’t know any details and don’t want to presume). So far it seems to have been a good and very gentle way to go for all parties (my cousin’s child is still in elementary school). The birth mother visited a great deal in the beginning, and but she doesn’t reach out much now as the child has been getting older – that just happened gradually. It fits the model of “family is complex” and “the more people who love you the better,” not anything simple or straightforward, but it seems very respectful of all concerned to me. It’s harder to do because of course not many women are in the situation of giving birth and then wanting to give up the baby for open adoption in the US, but if you have the stamina to look, it might be a good option for you.
My aunt works in facilitating open adoptions, and I think it has a lot to recommend it.
Massachusetts has a program where you take a 10 week course with other potential adoptive parents of kids in the foster care system – you should see if your state has such a thing as it can give you a lot of information about what to expect. One thing to remember is this: there’s no way to assume or guess what will happen when you raise a tiny human, whether its biological or otherwise. My impression is that adolescence=resentment over something, regardless of the details.
The right thing to do is figure out if you are ready for a lifetime commitment and then pursue whatever course aligns with that decision:) Adopting through the state is the most affordable way but it is relevant to consider whether you have a supportive structure around you to help with the finances and flexibility that having a kid requires.
The program we are applying for means that we will have very little time to find child care once a placement is determined for us (bio parents get 6-8 month lead time) and, because the child starts as a foster, we are not eligible for FMLA or adoption/maternity/paternity benefits when the child(ren) arrive(s). This has been the source of many 4am brainstorming sessions for me.
The podcast associated with https://creatingafamily.org/ was informative for us – particularly the question of transracial adoption and the cost of private adoption.
FMLA lady here! You are indeed eligible for FMLA for foster care. The Department of Labor says so: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs28f.p…
ZOMG! The DCF people couldn’t answer our questions at all about this. Thank you!
Glad to help! Please also check with your employer(s), because it’s possible that they’ll cut you some slack on adoption/paternity/maternity benefits if they offer any.
I’m on the other end of this, being incredibly lucky that my biological father wasn’t able to raise me. The “everyone does better with their buo-parents” rhetoric that gets thrown around makes me actually angry. The ability to reproduce does not make you a good parent.
Neither does having money.
Not trying to contradict you, just agreeing that this whole parenhood/family stuff is complex and highly individual and our underlying assumptions about the whole thing need to be reexamined.
I too would not have done well if my biological parents (mother, in my case) had kept me — I mention in the post that my adoption ended up being a pretty darned good thing! This really isn’t about specific adoptees, it’s about the troubling practice of crowdfunding and how the entire conversation around adoption is generally framed.
But this is also totally a “both/and” thing where we can very much dislike the ways in which adoptions are handled while supporting that there are kids who need new homes. Money doesn’t just prevent biological parents from parenting or pre-adoptive parents from adopting. The prominence of money is adoption is a barrier to homes for kids who need them, in various ways. Fundraising is a myopic approach to adoption that ignores the systemic influence privilege and power has on entire communities of people.
I am personally glad that I was adopted. I would have been the youngest of 7 in a single parent household. So while my mom has always lead me to believe that my original family did love me and certainly would not have been abusive, I can’t help but think that my life really was better with my adoptive family. However, going through the process of adopting a baby ourselves my husband and I learned that there really are a lot of times this isn’t the case. We were approached about a Marshallese baby at one point and felt very, very uncomfortable with that. After doing research we basically concluded that we would be exploiting a woman from a culture where adoption is something much more organic and seemingly less traumatic. We were approached about a lot of shady situations. And even the baby we did adopt we don’t believe is “better off” with us, necessarily (not a trans racial or international adoption, btw, just a standard, low income/incredibly young birth mom situation). We hope that the adoption is helpful for the bio-family, allowing them time to attend school/be emotionally ready to be parents. But we don’t know that for a fact. Plenty of people become parents, attend school, and adapt quite well. Maybe our birthmom just internalized all the “adoption is best” rhetoric and would have made a different choice with more education on the topic.
Sorry that got a little rambling. In summary, yes. Very complex.
Nicole/Nikki, your adoption essays are amazing, I got practically giddy when I saw that we’ll be getting a whole bunch of thoughtful adoption pieces all November! If they have your stamp of approval, I know they’re going to be great.
I’m not involved with or affected by adoption in any way. But the questions of belonging and deserving and what true altruism is are so, so important, and adoption (including foster care) raises all of those issues in a very high stakes situation. Placing a child vs wanting a child are both logistical and existential problems at the same time, it’s probably easy to get caught up in the details (like being approved to adopt or finding a foster family). But what is a home, really, and how do you know what’s best for someone, and how can you be sure that you’re doing what’s best for them when you have something to gain?
Also, the religious aspects are absolutely shocking to me. I recognise the vague language about a “better life” (meaning “with more money”, as if it’s easier to move kids around than money), but explicitly wanting a kid so you can raise it to be Christian is a 19th century opinion to me. I thought it was a fringe opinion, something that people like the Duggars might believe.
You would be amazed at how big that fringe is, in certain parts of the U.S.
Probably. We have conservative Christians and a Bible Belt too, but they’re far too few to dominate the culture. They know that most of the county is pretty secular, and I can’t imagine that they manage to believe that secular people are strange or rare. I’m well aware of evangelical culture (at least, as aware as you can be by paying attention and reading a lot of American internet, I guess), but straight up saying that kids need to be rescued from heathen families so they can know Jesus? That’s worse than I expected.
In all fairness, it often gets couched in slightly fuzzier language about rescuing kids, especially girls, from cultures where they’re likely to be married off at 9, or ensuring that they’ll be able to have a good education at a private school (which will of course be Christian; that goes without saying). Most of these people are genuinely and deeply concerned for the well-being of kids around the world, but they also can’t fathom life without Jesus and their churches.
(My grandparents were hardcore Evangelicals.)
Thanks! I’m hoping to publish some great pieces this month; we’ll see what submissions we get. Not that we have to just run this stuff in November, of course. I realized that the last essay I wrote about adoption was EXACTLY A YEAR AGO TODAY, though! Apparently that’s what I do on 11/11.
A lot of the religious/vocational language around adoption by Christians is really odd to me. My parents were religious, but not Evangelicals, and I honestly cannot recall them EVER presenting my adoption as them ‘saving’ me or doing God’s work. (They also knew my birth parents were Christian; oddly enough this was one of the few facts they had gleaned from sessions with the social worker who met with both families.) But yeah, that adoption-as-religious mission is definitely not limited to a tiny fringe.
Thank you for such a wonderful piece, Nicole.
Adoption (especially transracial adoption) has been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve been with the same person for years now; we live together and have been discussing marriage/kids/our future (it’s scary!). Due to medical issues, pregnancy would be a huge health risk for me, but we both still want children. Naturally, the idea of adopting has come up.
Your pieces here on the Toast were actually my first exposure to the intricacies of the adoption process, so I’d like to thank you for that. I have to do some research to figure out what would be the best, most ethical way to adopt a child and ensure no one is being coerced. My boyfriend and I have loosely agreed to adopt domestically and with no preference for race, but I know a *lot* more research is needed. Thankfully, it’s a few years off.
Complicating the process are our families. My family wants to know why I haven’t had children yet when all of my cousins have, and the one time this came up at one of my boyfriend’s family functions it was painfully awkward. We offered a very general statement about the relatively small likelihood of having biological children and the possibility of adoption, and the predominant reaction was confusion; then one of his aunts offered up “Oh, you can adopt from India then!” and that was met with wide approval. (My boyfriend’s family is of Indian origin, although I am white.) Something about that comment felt… off. I can’t precisely articulate it, but in addition to the many questionable aspects of international adoption, I wouldn’t want to choose a child just to “match,” and… I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. Would it be a better choice to adopt a child with similar cultural roots to one of the adoptive parents?
If anyone has any resources (preferably written by adult adoptive children) on transracial adoption into families where the parents are of different races/cultural backgrounds, it would be much appreciated. My over-specific google searches haven’t turned up much, I’m afraid.
I don’t know anyone with this particular experience, but this research study has summarized the research out there concerning the effects of transracial/transethnic adoption: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC23669…
The conclusion states that “The current research literature […] suggests that transracial adoptees—both domestic and international—are psychologically well adjusted, exhibit variability in their racial/ethnic identity development, and along with their parents, engage in a variety of cultural socialization strategies to overcome the transracial adoption paradox”.
This could be a good place to start if looking to learn more about the effects of such adoption. Hope this helps 🙂
Thank you! I hadn’t even thought to look for scientific studies, oops. Much appreciated.
You are awesome and right on, as always.
💙
Thank you for this article. I am looking forward to reading more of these throughout November. It hits home for me because I’ve been actively thinking about adoption from foster care. Maybe this is a completely different topic than this essay discusses, but it prompted some thoughts in me.
I am the type of person who wants to help people. And I do want children. I am married, and my husband and I have talked about having kids soon. When I told him that I have been thinking about looking into adoption (and/or foster care, though he seems more amenable to adoption), it stopped him in his tracks, because he’d never considered that. As far as we know, we don’t have any fertility issues. But (and this is going to sound awful, but bear with me), when we decided to get a dog or a cat, we were encouraged to adopt one, because look at all these animals that need loving homes. And I’m most definitely not comparing children to animals (well, I am, but in an analogy … ugh — I promise I understand how wrong this sounds!), but there are so many kids that need loving homes — we hear so many horror stories about foster care — that I don’t understand why adoption, at least in the U.S., is mainly considered to be a last-resort option for those who can’t have their own biological children. Because I feel (and this is just me, I’m not judging others) that it would be selfish to bring a child into this world when there are already so many that need homes and don’t have them.
And then I read this article, and it discusses how adoptive parents often make adoptions about them. Again, the article is more related to private adoptions, but I find myself struggling with this: Where’s the line between wanting to adopt children who really need homes and having a savior complex? This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot as my husband and I try to decide what we want to do about children.
Sigh. And I realize I just kind of vomited a bunch of personal stuff into a comment section, but it’s The Toast, and this isn’t really a topic many of the people in my life know much about. Long story short, I appreciate this article, and I’m looking forward to see if there are others in the month that might help me to navigate through this stuff.
A big part of why it’s considered a last-resort option is because it’s entertwined with our deep-seated cultural weirdness about women’s primary identity as mothers and the obsession with defining the nuclear family as the primary social unit. See also: every thread on IVF or reproductive technology ever, in which adoption is suddenly the One Best Way to have a kid. Make up yer minds, people.
I’m a foster parent. I would suggest – the line you are working to find exists in a shift in perspective. A parent who wants to adopt children because they want a child, because they feel “called”, because they want to “complete” their family, even becuase they have a genuine desire to help a child is doing it from a problematic perspective. Because those people are starting with themselves, and not with the child.
If you can step back and assess what your home truly has to offer a child, to focus on what you can give instead of what you can get, and to know the limits of what you can give (can you support relationships with biological family? Can you support reunification efforts for children in foster care, can you find cultural and race peers for your child if you are in a transracial adoptive situation, can you support a child’s lifelong medical or emotional needs that might stem from the trauma they have suffered, or prenatal drug exposure, or genetic predispositions, or or or…etc). To really come at it from that perspective is a big shift, and opens you up to a lot of new questions about fitness for adoption, and about the true need for adoption. Children available for adoption are not coming out of a void. Adoption is not about finding kids for families, it’s about finding families for kids, and ideally recognizes and honors the trauma inherent in that need.
This is all a bummer. Fact is, adoption is a bummer. It sucks that it has to exist. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t joyful adoption stories, or kids who really do benefit from a home that meets their needs and gives them a permanent family. But that shift in perspective has to happen, that’s the line, who is this for? You sound like a self reflective person. I think you will figure it out.
Thank you.
Excellent eye opening article, Thank you. I wish the government would make it easier for parents to adopt right here in the USA and clean up the foster care system.
Can someone please please please write a “How To Adopt the Right Way” article for The Toast? I’m grateful for all of the well-thought-out articles on what NOT to do but honestly they are making me feel like adopting is wrong and no intelligent, conscientious person should do it, despite adoptees adding disclaimers about how they personally don’t resent their parents or their adoptions or etc. Of course, if the general consensus is that adopting IS wrong, then okay.
I nominate http://intensedebate.com/profiles/si1verdrake for this task.
It’s a truly difficult piece to write. Because the practice is so varied. But generally I think one can avoid most un-ethical practices by adopting through foster care and by committing to being open and honest with the adopted person about what is known of their origins, even if it is a tough conversation to have.
So do you think the only ethical way to adopt is through domestic foster care?
Short answer: I do believe that adopting through domestic foster care circumnavigates a lot of potential issues with adoption. It basically ensures that large sums of money are not being exchanged for the procurement of a child, as well as ensuring that the child in question actually, legitimately, needs a family and is not “available for adoption” due to coercion from an agency or the coercive forces of economics or negative associations some societies still harbor toward single motherhood.
Longer answer: There is more to say on it, though. There are probably some private agencies that are more ethical than others, but weeding through them one by one is something much more involved. Also, some things I am ethically uncomfortable with may not be issues for some prospective adoptive parents.
To me, an adoption is ethical when the focus is on finding a family for a child that needs one, rather than procuring a child for a parent who wants one. I also believe that an ethical adoption is one that does not erase the child’s pre-adoption identity. To me, knowledge of his or her origins should be as complete as humanly possible, and ties to biological relatives maintained (unless there is a compelling reason such as safety, to sever them). To me, an ethical adoption should not require tens of thousands of dollars from anyone. And an ethical adoption is one where if the child is placed as a newborn by the first mother, the placement is done completely free of any coercion by adoption agencies, family attorneys, prospective adoptive parents, or even the mother’s own family. I would also be much more comfortable knowing that a first mother who voluntarily places a child for adoption has been made fully aware of any social resources available to her that would help her parent her child if she wants to.
To some prospective adoptive parents, one or more of these issues are not a big deal. So the bar for an ethical adoption may be set at a different level for some. But I am heartened to see that many prospective adoptive parents are asking more questions, and asking them publicly. Because any reform of the way we practice adoption in the US is going to come from those hoping to adopt, as they are the clients and target audience for most adoption-related services.
I think that private adoption can be a good thing if handled correctly. I think that generally involves more than just throwing money at an agency, though. Relationships with biological families, getting to know the birth parents can be very helpful here. You want to be sure that they really know all of their options, that they really have thought through all the possibilities and consequences, and that they aren’t just tired and scared. It might mean that you invest a decent portion of time in someone and they change their minds, and it might take a lot longer. We talked to a lot of mothers who ended up deciding not to go through with it after realizing there was help available to them that they hadn’t thought of, or after speaking with a therapist who really discussed what the costs were and helped them explore whether the benefits and the costs balanced for them or not. It also means really screening the agencies. We looked into some well known agencies that looked great on the surface and turned out to be using practices that ranged from “gray areas” to “technically legal, but definitely unethical”.
Going through the state system is a little better as far as children being removed from their parents for very good reasons, but even then you get issues of parental rights being terminated too quickly because the adoptive parents have money or political power or connections. And you have to be sure in that case that you are really prepared to deal with whatever issues arise – often the children in the foster system need serious medical and/or psychological help to deal with the things that have happened to them and to deal with being separated from their families and it doesn’t really help them for families to take them because they want a kid and then aren’t prepared for how difficult it might be.
I don’t think it’s impossible to do conscientiously and intelligently. I just think that makes it a more difficult process. And possibly even more expensive, although if that money actually goes toward helping someone make an informed decision or helping them make it to the next month where they realize they can make it work after all then you’ve actually done some good. Rather than lawyers and agencies receiving astronomical fees that are out of proportion to the amount of work they actually do.
This was really long; sorry. I have feelings about this, but no expert knowledge.
I think this piece would be IMPOSSIBLE to write. First of all, for some people, there isn’t a “right way” to adopt; adoption is genuinely NOT the best decision for them/their family. Could you really write an article on the “right way” to plan your family going the biological route? I mean, a lot of us try, sure. And then life happens.
Just as I don’t think there is one “right way” for people to adopt, I don’t think it’s wrong across the board, either. Maybe if you’re thinking about adopting, some of the pieces adoptees and birth parents write are hard to read. They are still really IMPORTANT to read, because those are the perspectives that don’t get shared or talked about or prioritized as much. And reading about these issues and the things in adoption that should change, even if challenging, is still going to be way easier than actually adopting and raising your own kid who has all of these questions and feelings that will change over time.
I value all of these perspectives and am learning a lot, but I haven’t seen much that discusses what things should change TO; the problems and what is wrong with adoption are discussed in detail, but I would also like to hear what things are valuable and positive that would be the ideal alternative to the mistakes that are often made. As in, I get what is wrong, now can anyone tell me what things are good?
Start with the premise that adoption should always be about finding homes for children who desperately need them, and not about finding children for people who desperately want them, and you can’t go too far wrong. We have more than 100k children in US care right now who need permanent homes. Knowing that statistic, one has to wonder why anyone would even consider going the private, domestic infant route or exotic, intercountry route – unless they were in it for the gratification of their own needs/wants, such as the “white Christian saviour” itch, the womb-wet, “as if born to” itch or other entitlement-tinged desire.
And sure, many of us had satisfying or okay adoptive experiences. That doesn’t negate the underlying premise for why adoption may not have been the best or right option. Or the fact that it always starts with loss. An adoptive mother tweeted beautifully during last year’s National Adoption Month: “If you cannot hold room in your heart for that loss, you shouldn’t adopt.” Or as the Rev. Keith Griffith, MBE, put it: “Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful.”
I was adopted from Ireland under a scheme that was this side of legal, and that saw our mothers horribly mistreated. These were women who very much wanted and were able to parent, but were prohibited by religion, society and access to support. I ended up in a comfortable middle-class home with a relatively okay upbringing. That fact doesn’t dismiss the unsavory aspect of Ireland’s adoption trafficking to the US. So it can be both things.
As long as you understand and acknowledge all of this, and carry complete openness and honesty with your child, you’re doing it right.
With all those kids in Foster Care I wonder why anyone would want to conceive a child when they could just adopt those in Foster Care? Or do we only hold PAPs to that guilt shaming standard?
Your comment made no sense. “PAPs” generally just refers to “prospective adoptive parents.” It doesn’t draw a line under who is a PAP because they can’t have children or because they can, but want to provide a home for a child who needs one, or perhaps even a combination of the two. I know many people who are physiologically capable of having children who opted to adopt from foster care.
So there is no guilt-shaming standard. I would have no way of knowing which person reaching out to adopt from foster care is physiologically incapable of having a child. Many same-sex couples adopt from foster care (at two times the rate of their hetero counterparts, according to the Guttmacher Institute). I personally don’t care who adopts from the care system – my point is, when adoption was developed as a social policy 70-plus years ago, those are the children for whom it was originally intended. Not for womb-wet infants taken from women who actually were guilt-shamed by society.
My comment makes perfect sense if you have dealt with infertility which I’m assuming you haven’t. The “Just Adopt” because there are a ton of kids who need homes gets thrown at infertiles all the time. My point is that fertile people are never told that. Why is it the responsibility of infertiles to save the worlds children?
And BTW I’m infertile and will not be adopting. Why should I be guilted and shamed for not adopting but fertile couples aren’t?
You keep bringing infertility into it when I’ve clearly stated not all people who choose to adopt are infertile, although many are. I do believe that infertility is an unacknowledged loss, just as losing a child to adoption or a child losing his mother to adoption are. Those losses need to be acknowledged and properly grieved, and society doesn’t give us much to help.
Perhaps you might want to have a read of http://www.culchieworks.com/blog/2006/03/01/the-h….
This is exactly my point. Pushing infertiles into adopting from Foster Care serves no one and is unfair when no one says this to fertiles.
Ok. Clearly you have an axe to grind with infertility. I’m not going to go any further on this with you, except to say that NO one is pushing infertiles into foster adoption. What I am saying is that adoption was originally intended as a social policy to find permanent homes for children in care who need them. That’s historical fact. It should still be about that – always. But we’ve turned it into a game of ‘covet another woman’s baby’ and attached huge price tags to it. That and this insane notion of crowd funding to adopt are what’s wrong with adoption today (among other things).
I am merely suggesting we need to go back to adoption’s original intent. And that applies to ANYONE who adopts. Not just infertiles.
I realize you have an issue with infertility. I’m sorry you feel marginalised by society for it. That should give you some empathy and understanding for how adoptees feel. But it does not entitle you to another woman’s child. If you feel you can open your heart and home to a child who needs one, the more ethical route to take is adoption from foster care. That’s all I’m saying.
Clearly you have an axe to grind with adoption. No where have I ever said that anyone is entitled to a baby. And I’ve clearly said that my wife and I aren’t pursuing adoption of any kind and that crowd funding for adoption makes me uncomfortable.
I agree with you that adoption should be for children who need families to raise them.
You are wrong that no one is pushing infertiles into adopting. Any time an infertile discloses that they are infertile to someone who asks the “do you have kids” question the “Just Adopt” comes up more times than not. In the adoption community infertiles who are interested in domestic infant adoption are pushed to adopt from Foster Care when the kids in Foster Care have nothing to do with Domestic Infant Adoption. Advocate against Domestic Infant Adoption but don’t feel the need to propose an alternative.
I recognize you have issues with adoption and have been hurt by it. I empathize with your pain but realize your pain has nothing to do with my pain or anyone who is infertile’s pain. If you care so much about the children in Foster Care waiting to be adopted, perhaps you should open up your heart and home to a child and adopt that child.
It’s true that many people blithely suggest adoption to infertile couples. They ALSO blithely suggest adoption to single people who want kids. Adoption is altogether treated as “Plan B” (or, I don’t know, Plan C or M or Z depending on the other options on the table) for parenthood, as if it’s just like having a biological child. It’s not. It doesn’t mean no one should do it, but it also shouldn’t be just lightly suggested, to ANYONE, in any situation, as a solution to another issue.
I’ve been watching this thread and I think we’re very close to derailing the conversation about ethical adoption practices. Also, for the purposes of this conversation, no one is guilting or shaming anyone into adopting, so your above comments don’t really make sense in this context! If this conversation about adoption is hitting too close to home, I would ask you to consider taking a break.
I agree with you that Adoption is treated as Plan B for a lot of people who pursue it. To me that is unfair to the child. I couldn’t imagine the feeling that I was a back up plan.
I disagree about no one guilting others into adopting from Foster Care. The below comment is exactly that and has nothing to do with unethical behavior in Domestic Infant Adoption:
“We have more than 100k children in US care right now who need permanent homes. Knowing that statistic, one has to wonder why anyone would even consider going the private, domestic infant route or exotic, intercountry route – unless they were in it for the gratification of their own needs/wants, such as the “white Christian saviour” itch, the womb-wet, “as if born to” itch or other entitlement-tinged desire. “
The quote you pulled is not about guilting infertile people into adopting from foster care — I don’t even think it’s about guilting people into adopting from foster care, generally. I think they’re pointing out that adopting via other routes might present more ethical stumbling blocks, and they think that foster care adoption is perhaps more selfless. I wouldn’t have phrased it the way the commenter did, but it’s still not the same thing as “guilting” people into adoption from foster care.
I respectfully disagree
Speaking as a person who was adopted and who just became an adoptive parent, I particularly relate to the point about giving a child “a better life” and being lauded for it. I feel like besides denigrating the biological family it implies that at some point the child should feel grateful that they were adopted. I don’t know much about my own biological family, but I have met my daughter’s bio-family. They are lovely people who love her very much. We are not giving her a better life. We are giving her a different life. This version happens to have more money, and I happened to be much more ready to be a mother. But had her parents decided to raise her, her life would not have been worse. There might have been less money and more difficulty, but she would not have been abused or neglected. My husband and I left our adoption hearing feeling incredibly guilty. The judge went on and on about how wonderful it was that we were willing to adopt this child and save her from some horrific fate, when really we are two people who wanted to be parents very badly and were able to afford to adopt a child. We feel grateful that the biological parents have allowed us to raise their child. And I hope she never believes that she should feel grateful to us for adopting her.
I just wanted to say that your summary brought tears to my eyes – thank you for writing this from your perspective.
Thank you, Nikki; your posts on this subject are always really thoughtful and interesting, and I appreciate them very much. (Admittedly, all of your posts are great.)
The narrative around adoptive parents “deserving” a child reminds me of another side of the issue; every now and again, I see people arguing against abortion on the grounds that there are lots of childless people who would be so grateful to have the chance to adopt your unwanted baby, and who deserve the opportunity to be parents. It makes me really uncomfortable; for one thing, it really oversimplifies the adoption system, but it also ignores the experience of the person who actually has to give birth to the child. I may feel bad for people who can’t have children and want to adopt, but I don’t owe them anything, especially not putting myself through pregnancy and labour.
(I have never been pregnant/had a child; I just hate this argument so much.)
We ran into a lot of this when we started trying to adopt. People who felt like they shouldn’t have an abortion because so many people wanted to be parents. And no one had discussed with them that there is a financial, psychological, and physical toll to be paid with adoption. It’s not like you give birth and then go back to normal just because you didn’t bring the baby home with you. You still have hormones, and physical recovery, and breast milk to deal with, not to mention the possibility that you work for a place that might expect you to come back to work more quickly than you are able or ready to do. I firmly believe adoption can be wonderful, but the idea that it’s a miracle cure or that it should be an easy decision is terrible.
pro-lifers trying to use adoption to make their arguments need to stop talking about adoption FOREVER. they don’t understand it (to be fair, a lot of people don’t) and it’s beyond insulting to adoptees and birth moms.
It’s almost as though adoption wasn’t their actual topic of conversation.
Same; the “they DESERVE a child” argument seems to me the grossest entitlement. How does it not reduce a child to anything but a commodity?
Blame that on parents and society in general that has created the concept of people with children being more valuable members of society than those without children.
As a Pro Choice Infertile, I have no issue with those who decide to have abortions. Their ability to conceive has nothing to do with my infertility.
The anti-abort crowd don’t understand that abortion and adoption are not the yin to the other’s yang. Abortion is the decision to legally terminate a pregnancy; adoption is the decision not to parent.
Fantastic article. Thank you for sharing!
I have a few questions/points on this, though I definitely thought it was an amazing article (that I already shared several times).
1. Why does it seem like adoptive parent’s must be 100% selfless when that isn’t even close to the percentage of biological parents’ motivations (if their child wasn’t an outright accident to begin with)? Why is it that adoptive parents get a seemingly stronger microscope over their intentions?
2. While I completely agree we need stronger safety nets so that people don’t need to put their child up for adoption for financial reason (or just for difficulty related to finances or underfunded treatment programs, etc), one person’s 30, 50, or even 100k dollars isn’t going to fix that theoretical biological parent’s life by itself. Plus as long as adoption stateside does cost that much, it’s a huge sum of money, and the selfish aspect of getting to be a parent is probably going to part more people with that sum than just the general idea of making some random person’s life better so they don’t need to pursue adoption.
3. A commenter posted about a “cooling” period to ensure there wasn’t pressure or duress from the adoptive parents on the biological ones. I agree with this in sentiment, but as someone who has fostered children before, if the biological parents are unfit, the longer the child is left with them, the more fucked up the children become (especially in the earliest days). If the child is going to be raised by someone else, the sooner and the more permanent that placement can happen, the better that child is served by it. I’ve watched as kids get torn apart from their siblings and the yo-yo placement damaging their stability all in the name of preserving biological connections until it’s absolutely clear they aren’t getting better. This is not in the best interest of the child.
4. People have spoken about the great expense of raising a child, as if a person who cannot come up with the one time all-at-once adoption fee will not be able to come up with programs, grants, or savings in time for therapy or other expenses from raising a child as they come up. I think that’s a very tenuous point.
Hope this doesn’t come across as too combative, as I agree with the article, these were just my thoughts and I’d love to hear some responses as more food for thought.
1. I think what you’re seeing is the backlash. Adoptive parents are often showered with praise about how selfless they are, when that’s not generally true. It’s not that adoptive parents need to be completely selfless in order to be good parents, but when parents really believe that they’re being selfless, rather than being honest about the degree to which they are NOT being selfless, they’re generally pretty terrible parents. So, yeah, you’ll see a lot of people who were adopted (and others who have seen some bad stuff go down) get very insistent about this.
Birth parents are not regularly told how they are selfless saints for having children, so the societal context of a birth parent doing the “but i GAVE BIRTH TO YOU” guilt trip is very different for the child to experience.
I believe Ben was referring more towards couples who conceive/raise their children as needing to be 100% selfless like its stated that Adoptive Parents must be. Let’s face it anyone attempting to become a parent by any means is almost always doing it for self centered desires rather than it being a selfless act.
I didn’t know this was a Thing but I’m glad I found about it through this thoughtful piece. Thanks.
As an adult adoptee, thank you for writing this. I am so happy that adoptees are now being given more and more opportunities to speak our truth.
I am an adoptive parent, and I used to work for an adoption agency, so I have thoughts about this. I agree 100% that a child’s information is theirs, and should not be shared. These fund-raisers give me the willies, because if nothing else, that child’s community will see them as a charity case.
Adoption is always a response to loss, and is always complex. My suggestions for thinking about ethical international adoption (I don’t know much about domestic adoption)- 1 avoid the current “hot” country. It’s almost always popular because there aren’t enough safeguards in place. 2 avoid any agency or program that talks about very young infants with no medical needs. 3 look at school age kids, or kids with identified medical needs. They are the ones who need families. 4 know that it’s always complex. In China, the narrative that families were abandoning healthy girls because of the one-child policy hasn’t been true for a long time. Children are abandoned because of residency permits being denied to the floating population, and because of birth defects caused by out of control pollution. In Korea, adult adoptees pushed for a law to force unwed mothers to add babies to the family register in order to legally relinquish them. The result was that babies were abandoned instead of being relinquished, making them legally unadoptable. 5 there are no guarantees. Every child is different, every child has needs.
Thanks for posting this. As an adoptive dad, the rhetoric around my wife and I “saving” our son or him being so “lucky” to have us really rubs me the wrong way, and it’s good hear this from an adult adoptee too.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve always thought I would like to adopt, so it’s good to read perspective of adoptees.
First let me say that I would not have felt comfortable crowdfunding to adopt a child had my wife and I pursued adopting.
I think there are two issues here, first the issue that adopting outside of Foster Care is so expensive and second is why the desire to parent is so strong. On the first issue I believe we need cost controls on what an adoption agency can charge. Rather than the Adoption tax credit which IMO just acts as a subsidy for Adoption agencies I believe that putting a ceiling on adoption agencies would lower the cost for people to adopt. On the second issue people with children need to recognize that society outcasts and isolates those that lack children. They are seen as less than by society. Changing those attitudes and treating the childless better would go a long way in lowering the demand in adoption from those who are unable to have children.
Thank you for sharing this.
There are millions of us, and millions of our stories.
This needs to be heard
Ack… My folks did the best they knew. I’m lucky to know such love
1,000 times yes! I have felt this for so long, but you put it better than I ever could. Thank you. I will share this everywhere!
I didn’t read all of the comments, so if this was posted before, I apologize. But, as you mention, there are tax credits for adopting. Credits, not deductions, that allow the adopter to take off adoption costs from their federal income taxes. (obviously, a low tax bill means a low refund)
So if, say, someone has $5,000 of adoption costs (with receipts) they can take the full $5,000 off of their tax bill. Now, the question is, if they crowdfunded that $5,000 do they refund the $5,000 or do they keep it as profit?
BTW, I’m a (non crowdfunded) adoptive parent of both an International child and a from foster care child.
Here is a fabulous organization that has a Unity Initiative. The purpose is to keep families in tact by sponsoring medical treatment. I highly recommend donating to this initiative. I am an adoptive mother to 3 boys, and our family is a sustaining donor to this initiative. http://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com/programs/med…
The quote you pulled is not about guilting infertile people into adopting from foster care — I don't even think it's about guilting people into adopting from foster care, generally. I think they're pointing out that adopting via other routes might present more ethical stumbling blocks, and they think that foster care adoption is perhaps more selfless. I wouldn't have phrased it the way the commenter did, but it's still not the same thing as "guilting" people into adoption from foster care.
What does that mean?? You still don't have the right to a child (and I'm betting you mean a baby, not an older child) just because you are infertile. It's tough, but you don't get to have someone else's baby. No matter what country you go to or what you promise to pay.
BRAVO!!! Well said. Every reason you gave is logical; your conclusion very well said!!
I wrote on this topic as well: “Adoption Fundraisng: Who Benefits?” I hope you’ll read it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mirah-riben/fundrai…
Obviously not. But to say having children is a choice like teeth whitening or house buying is ridiculous. For some people, it's not a choice. That doesn't give anyone the right to a child. There is a difference between having a choice and having an entitlement. I'm pointing out the distance between the two.
Just because your kidney is failing doesn't mean you are entitled to someone else's kidney. When shit goes wrong in your life, it doesn't entitle you someone else's being. Doesn't mean it's a choice.