The process of adoption is considered over when the paperwork is signed, notarized and final – and, perhaps for the adopted parents, it does feel that way. But the process of being adopted, and of being a child coming to the awareness that your familial building blocks are inchoate, doesn’t end when the paperwork is signed or when you reach adulthood. Being adopted is something that many adoptees continue to have to work through – a process that can be made more difficult by the ability or willingness of your parents to understand that it’s not over for you.
For some of the original children of transracial adoption, that difficulty is often heightened by the fact that we are regularly singled out not as our parents’ offspring, but as their adopted children, by virtue of how we look. But maybe that’s changing.
Adoption was first legalized in the 1850s, according to the Adoption History Project, and encouraged “based on child welfare rather than adult interests”. But if that basis was ever true, we saw it change dramatically over the succeeding century. There are many recent stories about adoptees being returned or abused or “saved”; there are any number of examples of exactly the worst possible language used by parents and others in conversations about adoption. I have often wondered, in the act of adoption, how much the adopted child’s reality is taken into consideration at all.
I was adopted in the late 1960s when, despite massive pushback from the National Association of Black Social Workers, white parents began adopting black kids in greater and greater numbers. My own parents, zero-population-believing hippies, told me that they adopted me because “We had two biological children and we wanted another child, but didn’t want to bring another person into an already overpopulated world.” Their decision was definitely more about their interests than my welfare; their ideals, always deployed with love, made it hard to really understand and move on from the pain of being given away.
So I almost never accept invitations to speak publicly about adoption and my own personal adoption story, mostly because the invitations primarily come from groups of adoptive parents. I have never been sure that I could look them in the eyes and tell them that there is something very wrong about adoption, that it’s not the same as having a biological child, that there are so many moving parts and conflicting emotions or that so much language needs to shift and roles reexamined.
Still, I have always wanted to tell adopted parents that when you adopt a child, everyone’s pain is palpable and it should be, because it’s not OK for a baby to be detached and then reattached like some sort of Snap-on tool. And I’ve wanted to acknowledge, and have them acknowledge, that the intentions of all involved in an adoption are not always pure.
Recently, though, I accepted an invitation to speak to a group of parents who had adopted children outside their race, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the focus of adoptive parents is shifting.
I admit that I expected to meet a group of parents with “white savior” complexes who regarded their adopted children of color as “precious gifts” that they had effectively protected from a life of poverty, homelessness or worse. Rather, I found a group of curious, engaged and thoughtful parents who were ready to hear what I had to tell them, however difficult it was to reconcile.
I was moved by their willingness to embrace and help build new narratives for their adopted children beyond the replication of a biological connection – including, if their children desired, reunions with their children’s birth parents on their children’s terms with guided parental support. And perhaps most importantly, I saw them willing to center an understanding of race and racial conversancy as the critical and essential charge for white parents who adopt children of color.
“I think there is a real starvation among progressive adoptive parents to be able to support their kids squarely and bravely in matters of race,” Martha Crawford, a writer, psychotherapist, transracial adoptive parent and co-founder of adoption network All Together Now (ATN) told me.
“They have no language, no skills, no place to practice or build competence. The agencies don’t create much in this area with regard to post-adoption services. That is why we founded ATN. We were starving ourselves and needed a space as white people to practice these hard discussions.”
Arissa Oh, an assistant professor in the history department at Boston College and author of To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption, told me that the current conversation about adoption has come about largely due to the demands made by those of us adoptees who are now grown and want to help improve on the experience. “In the long view, I do think people are taking the importance of talking about race – in intelligent ways – more seriously. And I think a lot of this is because of adult adoptees.”
I agree, but I also know that nothing would change if adoptive parents weren’t willing to listen– and it seems that they are. “There are parents really eager and ready to do the work,” Kera Bolonik, a writer, editor and white parent to a young black son, Theo, told me.
She added that the language is slowly changing too. “For example, we always say to Theo ‘when we first met you’ or ‘the moment you came into our lives.’ And we read books together not only about adoptive families but transracial families, and books with black children and themes.”
I am heartened by this progress: as a child, I had always wished for an acknowledgement that being adopted did make me absolutely different if not lesser than my parents’ biological children, for better conversations and more work helping me come to terms both with my blackness and where it fit in our family. Maybe nobody had the words then – but for the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful that the process of adoption is shifting to focus on the emotional well-being of the children, and who they grow up to become.
