What does it mean to be truly child centered when considering adoption? It begins with listening, sincerely and without dismissal, to the adoptees involved. Most importantly, being child centered in adoption means that the interests of the adults are set aside, and the needs of the child are prioritized over all others. Quite often, this is not the way adoption is practiced in the US, although many like to think it is so.
It begins with our first, natural mothers.
I am angry at the way many birth mothers have been treated in the past and continue to be treated. During the baby scoop, some mothers were left to labor in hospital hallways because delivery rooms were only for proper married ladies. In 2005, when Shayanne (who readers will meet in Chapters 15 and 16) was in labor, she was left to lie for four hours in her amniotic fluid after her water broke. The dignity extended to these women has not improved as much as one might hope.
My natural mother may indeed have made some mistakes and used poor judgment. I do not romanticize her but see her for who and what she was at that time. I don’t know her full story, but from the non-identifying information in my file, she was an eighteen-year-old young woman with an abusive stepfather, and a boyfriend who couldn’t support her and wouldn’t marry her.
But she is more than just a sad story and deserved the opportunity to prove that. Automatically assuming her incapable of parenting me is a myth, and she likely would have made a good mother. My adoptive parents also made mistakes and, in spite of that, were good parents whom I love, respect, and cared for through the end of their days.
I am a product of both my first and raising parents. When people with power exert coercive pressures or treat my mother with a lack of care, harsh judgements, or disrespect, you are treating me the same whether you understand the truth of this or not. Biases about her and her situation create the belief about my “need” to be “rescued.” If her options are limited, and you think they deserve to be because she got herself into this predicament, then please recall a certain parable about people carrying stones in glass houses.
She had sex and may not have been as responsible as she could have been about using birth control. For some of these women the sex was not consensual. Now, this baby forming in her womb is unplanned for, but that does not mean she doesn’t want to parent. When you judge her, you are judging my existence. And because she was “irresponsible” I therefore need to be better provided for by others. Maybe some view her as no longer of the same value she was before. These biases were applied to my mother back in 1965 and are still present today.
Our society says to modern mothers, “You’re irresponsible and can’t possibly raise this child, so we’ll take better care of it than you can.” They deem that such children should be raised by another, more suitable, family. We pretend this is her choice, but others have manipulated her options and are profiting from her misfortune.
The outcome of an adoption means that barely out of the womb, I’m separated from the one person I need and know more than any other human being. This is done supposedly for my welfare, and people will say she did a good thing by being so noble and brave. Society then declares me lucky, and insists I agree.
Everyone needs to understand the bond between a natural mother and her infant is not a casual one, and that breaking us apart has consequences. An infant pays dearly for that separation and so will their mother. When we use adoption as part of our social safety net, we fail everyone involved. Financial hardship must not be the only factor in the equation of when an adoption occurs, nor should society or religiously imposed shame. If these are the only reasons an adoption may be happening and the mother wants to parent, then that adoption is unnecessary.
ALL ADOPTIONS CONTAIN TRAUMA
Separating an infant from its mother at birth is inherently traumatizing. These actions will affect both of them for the rest of their lives. This has been shown in a multitude of studies in mammals with rats and monkeys, and much study has been done on human beings. What is unknown is how and at what level that separation trauma and loss of attachment so early after birth will manifest in that adoptee’s life.
Many will say endlessly that the adopted adults they know in their life are fine. Many adopted persons reading this will agree. It is true that many such individuals are successful and appear to have no problems. But consider another view.
Adopted children grow up with messaging they are “chosen, special, and wanted.” If their nervous system is already geared around abandonment because this is how their primal instincts have interpreted their separation, one of the ways this can manifest is a highly driven need to be perfect. The preverbal trauma responds within their nervous systems and intrinsically motivates them to be sure they are wanted and kept. These individuals may be driven to be good or even the best at what they do, which can make them highly successful in their careers and lives, and are traits this society admires greatly.
An adoptee who wants desperately to be loved and to “fit in” with the world around them may develop a “chameleon” personality, which makes them highly malleable and likable to be around. This persona seeps into their being and does enrich their lives, in that they may have many friends and appear well adjusted. On the surface, the world interprets them as happy and maintaining great relationships.
One question worth asking is if the adoptee is more resilient, or did their adoptive parents bond with them more thoroughly, or did they disassociate from their pain in childhood so completely they are not in touch with their honest feelings? Does a chameleon personality know who it truly is or what they want from life? Or, what happens when a perfectionist who equates their success with love struggles with normal human failures?
The adoption competent therapists interviewed for the book all had stories of the 40-to-50-year-old adopted adult who wandered through their doors seeking help, believing they had always been fine. But then, a divorce or death occurred and suddenly they found themselves unable to cope as they had in the past. Feelings, long buried, surfaced in these moments, but if they don’t have the right help, it is hard to accurately diagnose what is going on.
RECONCILING THE COLLECTIVE DENIAL
There are so many good adoptive parents out there, my own included. They loved me unconditionally, celebrated my unique personality and differences, and never allowed me to be belittled or “othered” by anyone around me. They were always honest and, overall, got more things right in adoption than wrong. And people are people, and we are all beautiful and flawed in our own ways.
My father, as a school psychologist of his time, quoted the “blank slate theory” and believed it, as it was the dominant view then. Were he alive and still mentally active today he would be reading the work of Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, and others, and learning how wrong these older notions were.
It would crush him to know that his ignorance at the time may have harmed me or the formation of my little self while growing up. I wish he’d known. If his essence carries on in another plane of existence where he watches over us, I know he’s listening closely and is proud of me. The same is true of my mother. I love my raising parents and cannot regret being their daughter.
I don’t know the answers, but they begin by setting aside the false assumptions that have been built by the adoption industry and our culture’s simplified rhetoric that adoption is a beautiful way to build a family. As a fellow adoptee and good friend recently said, “We’ve all been bamboozled!”
The paradox arises from the idea that when adoption is necessary, it can be or at least should be beautiful. It should be. I want it to be beautiful! If you have a child who is unsafe in their home or truly cannot be raised by its natural mother, then being raised by a new family and given the ability to belong and be healed can be beautiful. But it is born of rupture, of trauma, and a loss so profound it must not be ignored. It is not the adopted child’s responsibility to make it beautiful. This depends on the adoptive parent’s ability to accept their child as he or she is, and understand they need to help them heal. When that occurs, adoption can fulfill its potential.
Healing is possible and necessary and, for many, is a life-long journey. For me it comes down to finding grace and understanding for everyone involved. My first mother and father could not figure out how to make it work, and the world they lived in was uninclined to assist. My adoptive parents loved me dearly, and I them, but collectively we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
I’ve worked hard on myself for years to heal from the more visible and clearly understood problems created through my adoptive mother’s alcoholism and my father’s denial of it. I’m grateful for the Adult Children of Alcoholics groups and mentors who helped me. Those wounds are still present, but the new information learned in writing this book has created an internal revolution that reveals more. In spelunking through the internal caverns of my implicit memories, I now understand my adoption’s impacts. I’ve always believed I was fine, and that adoption never affected me. Ironically, I’ve found new peace in understanding how it did.
New revelations surface where suddenly things fit. I have a chronic inability to understand when I need help from others, and don’t ask for help, ever. That tendency likely formed because when I was born and separated from my mother, my little baby brain thought she abandoned me. I received loving care but that was not enough, because no one understood I needed her, my first mother, and had no words to tell anyone. My implicit memory formed under the emotion of loss, and my cries never brought me the help I needed. Which made it very likely I was less able to bond to my already psychologically insecure new adoptive mother. We were both harmed by the lack of knowing.
I had another epiphany about my innate hyper-vigilism which many adoptees share. My nervous system is geared for subliminal stress. If life doesn’t create stressors for me, I will manufacture them because that is my normal. Even if things are calm, I feel an unease, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.
Putting these patterns of behavior into proper perspective has been revolutionary, because no other therapy has been able to touch these struggles. No one ever told me it existed. Now I know. Had I learned earlier, it is hard to compose an explanation for what might have been different.
Seeing all of this with a clear lens gives me the power and freedom to heal. Being around other adoptees and first mothers has been cathartic for my soul. In them I have a community and safety I never expected to find. Other powerful allies are the adoptive parents who have also moved into awareness of these complexities. I have new friends in unexpected places, with a highly diverse and loving band of brothers and sisters bonded by our trials. Each of us toils separately through our lives, but we are never completely alone because we know there are friends just a call away who understand. Healing in community is powerful, and I invite all within the constellation to join.
Appreciating something that is flawed, holding this duality of thinking and emotional intelligence is hard. My love for both my first and second set of parents is unending. It will swirl around and around and feed back upon itself escorted by an eternal fire. One that was lit inside of me first by my natural mother, then tended by my adoptive parents, and now lives under my care. It glows bright and steady and is mine alone, which is as it should be.
Adoption contains love and loss and forces the human spirit to entertain new ways to experience both of those emotions at the same time. This duality is always present. Adoption is a paradox.
