A T-Shirt for Tama

… and any other adoptive parents who want not only to display their parental insecurities across their chest, but also stomp on the hearts of first parents worldwide while they’re at it:

If you don’t see why this is offensive, hurtful, and just plain wrong, please read this comment from Paula, adoptive parent AND adult Korean adoptee (published on the New York Times web site):

When people ask me about our son’s “real” mother, I tell them that he has two moms, both of whom are real. Just because his Korean mother is unable to partake in the daily events and happenings of his life does not make her any less of a mother in our eyes. Honoring our son in his totality means recognizing and appreciating his entire history, which includes acknowledging that he is a child of two people who deserve to be called mother and father, without any qualifiers.

As a Korean adoptee myself, I’m appreciative that my mother and father were secure enough and wise enough to let me know that all four of my parents are very, very real and that I am who I am today because of each one of them.”

Of course, Paula’s sentiments made it through Tama Janowitz’s friends and censors The New York Times editorial staff, whereas many, many others did not, my own included. Paula has her own ideas on why, and I encourage you to please read the rest of her thoughtful post here.

A Little Disappointing: On Choices and Options

I know I’ve already discussed Hollee’s second Relative Choices essay “South Korea and Its Children” in a previous post, but I’d like to talk a bit more about the choices and options that she mentions at the end. Obviously, in a perfect world, there would be no need for adoption of any kind. And equally as obvious, that perfect world is unlikely to ever happen. Whatever it is that keeps people from being perfect, whether human nature or original sin or whatever you think the source of bad-ness is, will keep the world from being perfect.

Unfortunately, many people take this admitted impossibility as justification for relying solely on our current reactive and short-term solutions. As in, “But what are we going to do about the children who need homes right now? Children are languishing in orphanages as we speak, while people all over the world are desperate to adopt them. Why do you want to deny these children the homes and opportunities that they so deeply deserve?”

You Must Read This. Right Now.

I was right in the middle of posting the second part of my response to the essay “South Korea and Its Children” by Hollee McGinnis, when I saw a new Relative Choices essay come through on my Google Reader. I was a little surprised, with it being December 1st and Adoption Whatever month being over and all, but there it was.

You must go read it. Right now. It is so many of the things that I’ve wanted to say, and then some.

http://relativechoices.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/well-adjusted/

A Little Disappointing: On Equivocation

I had such high hopes for “South Korea and Its Children,” the second piece that Hollee McGinnis wrote for The New York Times Relative Choices blog. Hollee’s descriptions and retellings of her personal experiences are moving and insightful; in this anecdote (reported in her first Relative Choices post “Who Are You Also Known As?“) humor and grief swirl together:

My parents told me that summer of my arrival I would sing and talk in Korean. Of course they never knew what I was saying. They also told me that in those first weeks I would run up to the front door, throw my body up against it and cry and cry and say in Korean, “Jip e ka le!” My sister, born to my parents and age 9 at the time, thought it might be some strange Korean game. So she would run up to the door, throw her body against it and say, “Jip e ka le!” I can imagine my sister doing this over and over – and turning my tears into laughter. Years later my parents learned what my Korean words meant: I want to go home.

That story still brings tears to my eyes, for so many reasons.

However, when she goes into more detail about her general views and beliefs about adoption in her second essay, things are a bit more muddled. At one point she writes:

In a nation where one in three South Korean parents are willing to send their children abroad for the sake of a better education, it does not surprise me that intercountry adoption has remained entrenched in society. And I hope it will continue.

I’m assuming that she hopes intercountry adoption will continue to exist, and/or that intercountry adoption will “remain entrenched in society” (presumably the “sending” South Korean society). This would be fine by itself, but then she begins the final paragraph of her essay with this:

Personally, I am not for adoption or against it. I can see its value and also its limitation. What I am for are choices.

Wait, didn’t she just say she hoped intercountry adoption would continue, implying that she is for it? (And I’m assuming that she is still talking about international adoption specifically, and not adoption in general.)

But let’s step back and consider what it means to be “for” something. If you are “for” adoption, you probably don’t think that everyone should be forced to go out and adopt (especially not the people who don’t want kids). You probably just think that children who need families should have the possibility of being adopted. And that people who want to adopt should be able to do so. And possibly even that parents/expectant parents who cannot care for their children should be able to “make an adoption plan”. (Gee, if I didn’t know better I’d call that a triple-win!)

Which, it would seem, is what the author does mean. She immediately goes on to state:

The argument for me is not whether international adoption should be abolished or promoted, but rather how to maximize options for children so that all can reach their full potential, be it with those who bore them or those willing to adopt them at home or abroad, or for those children who have no option but to grow up in an institution. (Emphasis mine.)

Hollee (and most other people, if the NYTimes commenters are at all representative) clearly wants to keep international adoption on the table, even as she acknowledges that it has “limitations”. But for some reason, she has a hard time coming out and saying point-blank that she is “for” adoption, perhaps in part because adoption as it currently exists is far from perfect in dire need of reform.

After all, it’s hard to be an ardent supporter of something that is so broken, in so many ways.

My Comment on Katy Robinson’s “Helping the Next Generation”

There’s a new post up on the NYT Relative Lack-Of-Choices blog, which you can read here:

http://relativechoices.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/helping-the-next-generation/

Given what happened the last time I tried to do this I’m not sure if my comment will be “approved” or not, but either way you can read it here:

My first thought after reading this piece was, “Wow, I am so insanely jealous that I never had that kind of support when I was that age!” Katy’s essay is intentionally positive, and I certainly agree that the adoption community has learned a lot since the 1970’s when both Katy and I were growing up. The group she mentions sounds like a great resource to the girls and families involved, and also demonstrates to NYT readers just how important these connections to other adoptees really are.

However, I think it is important to emphasize two points: First of all, in addition to connections with other adopted children, connections to similar *adults* are just as important. White adoptive parents need to expose their children to adults from the child’s race/culture, including both adopted and non-adopted adults. Secondly, while it is the case that international adoptees today “have more enlightened adoptive parents, a growing number of books and resources, and a dynamic community of ‘elder’ adoptees,” that does not mean we as a society can or should stop trying to do more.

As many previous commenters (and a certain columnist) have illustrated, not every adoptive parent is an enlightened one, and even if these benighted folk are dwindling in number, it will still be a different world for the children of those parents. We need to look long and close at the impact of international adoption on everyone involved, but especially on adoptees–since we had no choice in the matter, relative or otherwise.

Whose Choices?

Part of my reason for starting this blog was a reaction to the New York Times blog “Relative Choices,” which of course is a terribly misleading title given the blatant LACK of choices for so many people involved. Adoptees aren’t given a choice about being relinquished or adopted, or by whom. I don’t know if older children in foster care would ever be offered some kind of choice about their future, but infants and young children never have a choice. (Which is why, of course, we have “the best interests of the child” at heart in all of our adoption-related doings… don’t we????)

In many cases first parents were either forced or coerced into placing their children for adoption, and so the question of how much choice they have/had in the matter is unclear at best. In those cases where first parents are able to choose the adoptive parents and maintain contact with their children through an open adoption, issues of power and choice still remain. The terms of contact in open adoptions are not legally enforceable, and so the exact nature of those terms and whether or not such contact actually takes place is open to the same power dynamics that affected the act of adoption in the first place.

I’m sure that the NYT folks thought that “Relative Choices” was a clever title, but it clearly reflects their biases toward adoptive parents, who wield more decision-making power than either adoptees or first parents. (This bias toward adoptive parent viewpoints was nowhere more evident than in the frustrating and unethical censorship of adult adoptee voices responding to that awful essay by Tama Janowitz.)

True, those adoptive parents who came to adoption from infertility certainly did not choose to be infertile, and all prospective adoptive parents are subject to laws and the rules of the adoption agencies. Believe me, the power of adoption agencies, lawyers, and organizations/institutions is formidable indeed, and I in no way mean to suggest that adoptive parents have more power (or choices) than this veritable industry.

However, adoptive parents still had/have the choice of whether or not to adopt and what kind of adoption, which seems like a lot more opportunity to choose their relatives than anyone else involved.

Is It Possible…

…to be thankful and angry at the same time? For/at the same things?

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I am thankful to my adoptive parents for everything they have given me.

And I am angry that they didn’t (don’t?) try and understand “my” “issues” with adoption, race, and identity.

I am thankful for my kind, loving, and helpful partner.

And I am angry that I am not fully accepted by my partner’s family, in large part because of my race.

I am thankful for my present relative health.

And I am angry that I don’t know more anything about my medical history.

I am thankful that there are some great, thoughtful, smart, witty people in the adoption world.

And I am angry that there are some really benighted and ignorant people out there as well. (Yep, still ticked about this!)

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Happy Thanksgiving from the Land of the Not-So-Calm.

Bill Samuelson and Tama Janowitz….

…long lost twins?

In response to first mother Lynn Lauber’s thoughtful contribution to the mis-named “Relative Choices” blog on the NYTimes (oh, but that’s another post), commenter and adoptive parent Bill Samuelson offers these choice bits:

“This is all very sentimental and melodramatic. How does knowing who your birth parents are change who you are? There are lots of people (including myself) who have essentially no clue who their grandparents and older ancestors are. So what? How’s this different than not knowing who your birth parents are?“

Um, well, there’s a lot of difference, Bill, but I’m guessing that your questions are rhetorical and that you’re not really interested in the answers. However, I will say that