Not MY Happy Ending

I know that this conversation is long over, but I did want to respond to a comment that Christina made on a previous post. It got a little long, and so in my usual fashion I am publishing it here separately. Feel free to comment, but I’m pretty much done with this topic after this. I mostly just wanted to get a few last thoughts out there (and more importantly, out of my head).

In that whole second choice/second best discussion, I have seen several references to the idea that just like dating other people before you get married doesn’t mean that your spouse wasn’t your first choice, trying to conceive before adopting doesn’t mean that adoption is somehow second choice/second best. Christina proposed this in her comment on a previous post, but I’d seen it a number of times on other blogs as well. She wrote:

“Just a thought… if you didn’t marry your first boyfriend, does that mean your husband wasn’t your first choice? Because maybe life just happens in a certain order, and in some cases that means couples go through infertility before they realize that adoption is a better choice – before they find that they love their child who was adopted as deeply (or perhaps even more deeply?) as they might have loved any child who came to them biologically. Please understand, I do not mean to negate what you are saying, I’m only trying to add to the conversation a little.”

(For the purposes of this conversation, let’s say that adoption is not a “better” choice than having children biologically, nor do parents love adopted children “more deeply” than bio kids — let’s say that everything is exactly equal. Because if one can be “more” or “better” than the other — well, that door has to swing both ways. And I’m sure that parents who have both bio and adopted kids certainly wouldn’t want their bio kids to feel “less” wanted or loved because they weren’t adopted. I really don’t think think this was what Christina meant to say, so I’m moving on.)

To summarize both the question above and other writings I have seen on this topic**, this line of reasoning suggests that just because something happens before or after something else, doesn’t mean that what happens first is better than what happened second. According to this theory, order and sequence are seen as separate from value and importance, and so the ideas of “first” and “second” in adoption should be used in a chronological sense rather than a preferential one. Part of the logic here says that we don’t go through life straight to our destination: We meander, we discover, and some things “just happen” (or just present themselves) before others. What matters most, we are told, is what happens last – whether the last person we date or the last path to parenthood — because somehow “last” magically becomes “best.” Happy endings for all… and everybody loves a happy ending, right?

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Ahhh…. where do I start? First of all, I think the dating/marriage analogy breaks down very quickly, and for so many reasons. The things that happen “first” on either side of the analogy (dating on the relationship side, and trying to conceive on the adoption side) are vastly different in terms of the length and strength of the commitment that is being sought. If people absolutely insist on making a dating/marriage vs. TTC/adoption parallel, I think a closer analogy would be someone who makes numerous marriage proposals (which entail a longer and stronger commitment than just dating) but is rejected every single time… and  then marries someone who doesn’t have any choice in the matter.

But more importantly, it seems the bigger idea behind the dating/marriage analogy is that regardless of the path(s) that parents took to complete their families, it “all worked out in the end.” I think this idea is attractive to all parents, not just adoptive ones. I imagine that most people who have finished building their families, no matter how those families were built, would say that things worked out in the end, and that the end is what matters — that in this case, “last” is “best.” Within our context of post-infertility adoption, “last” may actually be best — from the perspective of the adoptive parents. From the perspective of the adoptee, however, things are less clear.

Because really, did it “work out” for us to lose our original families, roots, and connections? For the hundreds of thousands of us who were adopted internationally, did it really “work out” for us to lose our languages, cultures, and countries? Given the struggles faced by so many adoptees well into adulthood, it is more the case that we are still trying to “work things out” for ourselves rather than having things “work out for us” in the end. And by the way, there is no “end” to being adopted.

Adoption is a complex package, one that far too many people are eager to tie up with the neat and tidy bow of a happy ending. After all, don’t so many other things in life happen for the best in the end? We snicker as we recall our first-grade sandbox crush and thank our lucky stars that we didn’t marry him/her — and apparently we ask ourselves, “why should post-infertility adoption be any different?”

At the risk of repeating myself and others, adoptees are the only ones who had absolutely NO CHOICE in the matter. Granted, adoptive parents who came to adoption after infertility clearly did not choose to experience the infertility part, but they certainly chose the adoption part. Sure, they had to follow the rules of the road laid down by the adoption agencies and governments, but they were still in the driver’s seat, so to speak. But the adoptees — well, nobody asked us. We were just strapped into the back of the car, and off we went. We felt all the bumps in the road and yet had no idea where we were going, and no say in how ethically (or not) we were being driven. To say that “it all worked out” for us is to speak FOR us, and many of us have been speaking for ourselves for quite a while now. However, we’re not always saying what people want to hear.

Which makes me wonder what the point of these last-is-best, it-all-worked-out-in-the-end analogies even is. Granted, I’m a little sensitive to this these days so it may just be me, but it seems like one of the goals is to convince adoptees who DO feel second-best that they really shouldn’t — you know, because it all worked out for the best and I couldn’t imagine my life any other way and my kids are the best thing that ever happened to me, etc. Again, these things can all certainly be true, but if so they are true from the adoptive parents’ perspective. I think I’ve already stated how I feel about this very AP-centric line of thinking, which was certainly where the bulk of the initial responses to the Lori Tay comment seemed to be located.

So no, I don’t really buy that last-equals-best line of reasoning. If adoptive parents do want to buy it for themselves that’s fine, but they need to recognize that adoptees may very well feel differently, and may even feel invalidated as a result.

In which case the (rhetorical) question turns to one that I’ve been wondering for a while… does anyone really care about adoptees’ perspectives? Or are we more concerned with the adoptive parents, and what they think and feel?

**Edited to add: I want to emphasize that in this post, I’m responding not solely to Christina’s original question, but also to other posts and comments that I have seen expressing similar ideas. The long response put forth in this post is not out of frustration with either Christina or her question, but with the general AP-centric perspective that tends to dominate conversations about adoption. I actually think Christina has done some pretty awesome work regarding her collaborative blog about ethical adoptions from Vietnam, and encourage folks to check it out if you haven’t already done so.