I remember a string of emails that went back and forth between myself and Beth, that particular string stands out above all the others to me, because in them I gave her my (and Rob’s) “rap sheets.” I told her every genetic flaw, bad habit, potential pitfall, that I thought my son could ever face. I was scared that Beth was going to change her mind and not want to risk opening her heart to a child that could be less than perfect, but she thoughtfully and lovingly put my mind at ease. In retrospect I suppose it seems kind of silly, there are people who open their homes and hearts to all sorts of imperfect children, and I was worried that asthma and cat allergies were going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back and send Beth packing. As a Birthmother that was my worst nightmare.
Those emails have been on my mind alot lately, especially in the face of the Mother in Tennessee who put her Russian “son” on a plane back to Russia alone. She packed a bag, arranged for car service in Russia, and pinned a note explaining that she was returning him and an international incident exploded, Russian adoptions between the US are still “suspended.” I have to admit that what I’ve read about this story has caused me to shed many tears, and think back on old, unfounded, fears.
I don’t have any first hand experience with the adoptive parents side of things, and now I’m wondering – are there support systems for adoptive parents? Places that people can go or turn to if they feel like they’re in over their head? Do adoptive parents get over their head? Sometimes do adoptive parents have no choice but to give the child back?
I have a cousin with two daughters from China and she seems to have a thriving support system. There’s a network of other families with babies adopted from China and apparently there are some Chinese people that are even teaching her daughters about the language and custom of their homeland. Her daughters are beautiful, bright, and seem very happy. I have a friend who has a son with Down’s Syndrome and I know that she is part of a support group that she feels is indispensable. Is it just in the area of Russian adoption that there’s a big hole for providing support for adoptive parents? Or is this not even a real issue? Was this particular instance just a fluke?
Posted in Tuesday Topics | 
Tags: adoptive parent support, Adoptive Parents, returning adopted children, Russian Adoption
I know it’s easy to draw conclusions that international adoptees are happy when they are young but I keep up with dozens of international adoptee blogs and most are going through a lot.
Have you read Mei-Lings blog? She says that when she was a child she considered her adoption to be a non-issue. As she got older she continued to say that adoption didn’t mean much to her and her adopted family was the only family that mattered and she had no effects from adoption in her life.
Then she reunited. Cross the globe to her family in Taiwan.
She is anything but happy about the loss she has gone through of her first family and what that has meant in her life.
Her adoptive mother tried to educated her about the language and culture she came from but it all amounted to nothing when she actually travelled to that culture and tried to connect with her biological family.
The heartache is terrible to watch and I really feel for what she is going through.
Adoptees tend to accept what they are told when they are young about adoption when they are young.
As they get older and reunite… for many their original beliefs are maintained, but for many their views on how they feel about losing their biological family and about the entire world thinking that should be ok and they should be ok with it changes.
I think that if we don’t have adequate emotional, psychological, and financial support for expectant parents facing unintended pregnancies, then there is really very little “choice” in losing your child. If you aren’t supported with the resources to be the mother you want to be, how can you make a decision that is an empowered freely made decision?
It’s a decision based on duress of dire circumstances and for that reason I can’t feel that adoption is an ethical thing as it happens now.
LOL might be getting off topic a bit, but I think the idea that you can decide for other adoptees that they are “fine and well adjusted” just because that is your experience is a little unfair. In my early childhood up to middle school people could have said this about me.
I had a lot of struggles through middle school and highschool and even then I was unable to realize adoption may have been a part of that because the teachings that adoption “has no effect on children” are so strong that I had to deny my own suspicions that it had affected me even to myself.
Considering the kind of guy you were with and the fact that you faced an unplanned pregnancy as your mother did… I seems like it may have affected you more than you realize too.
Back on topic about International Adoptions…there is a huge support group for adoptive parents of international children. I have several friends that have adoptive children from Russia, Napal, and China. The resources and support available to them is overwhelming compared to anything offered to parents of domestic adoption. These support groups are not only for the parents but for the children. These monthly support groups/pot luck dinners allow the children to socialize with other adoptive children that share their stories and have the same life stories. Of the situations I know of personally, these children were literally dying and saved through adoption. They suffered malnutrition, diarreah and had not been picked up in weeks. These adoptive parents nursed their children back to health and gave their children medical treatment that otherwise they would have never received elsewhere. Many, not all, of these children are abandoned at the steps of an orphanage. Many people are unaware of the steps adoptive parents have to take to be “approved” to adopt a child. Medical historys revealed, blood tests, fingerprinting, various visits and interviews by a social worker, bank records provided, tax statements, essays written about your childhood, and so forth. Adoption is not easy. In Russia’s case it is incredibly difficult and China has weight and smoking restrictions on adoptive parents (try making parents in the US stop smoking and be under a certain weight to have children).
I believe this one particular case and is a single instance. I believe the concern and questions should be placed on the social worker and the adoptive agency that approved the couple to adopt. Post placement interviews are also required for adoption, and in many states this is multiple interviews throughout a year. The question asked is what happened in the follow-up and approval of this couple to adopt.
Hello, I am the adoptee that Rox mentioned. She attempted to explain my perspective about adoption, but as it is very difficult to truly speak for another person, I thought I’d pop by and clarify a few things.
[She says that when she was a child she considered her adoption to be a non-issue.]
This is true. Even though I was both emotionally and developmentally delayed from the time I spent in an orphanage, my parents spent years trying to get me to “catch up” with my peers. But it wasn’t due to my *adoption* – it was due to the deprivation during the orphanage.
[As she got older she continued to say that adoption didn’t mean much to her and her adopted family was the only family that mattered and she had no effects from adoption in her life.]
This is also very true. Up until about 4 years ago, if you had asked me, I would have said my adoptive mom was my “real” (note: ONLY) mother and that my biological mother was “some stranger who abandoned me.” However, I also would like to point out that my adoptive mom ALWAYS spoke highly of my biological mother. *I* was the one who was convinced my own mother had not wanted me, and that dominated my perspective way into my teenage years.
[Then she reunited. Cross the globe to her family in Taiwan.]
It took me nearly 3 years to summon up the courage to go overseas. During those 3 years, I had actually attempted to search for my biological family and was fully prepared for rejection. I used online translators and human translators to communicate through both letter and on occasion, microphone (via computer). It wasn’t easy at all because at the time I couldn’t read ANY Chinese and I couldn’t write any of the language. Over time I began to read other adoptee blogs and absorb other perspective, and to an extent I began exploring my own feelings deeper. The term “real mother” took on a different meaning. “Biological family” took on a different meaning.
In summer of 2009 I went overseas for 3 months to live with them. It changed me in so many ways; both a hopeful period in my life as I finally gained some answers, and bittersweet in other aspects, as I realize there are answers lost within the barriers of language and time. If you were to compare the person I am now with the person that I was before I started contact/reunion, it would be such a radical change as to be considered unrecognizable.
[She is anything but happy about the loss she has gone through of her first family and what that has meant in her life. Her adoptive mother tried to educated her about the language and culture she came from but it all amounted to nothing when she actually travelled to that culture and tried to connect with her biological family.]
This is correct… I was aware to some extent of the loss of language and culture before I went overseas, but it really impacted me when I was in the same room and could not hold a conversation. Words cannot adequately describe how absolutely heartbreaking it felt when I’d see my siblings converse with my mother and I’d sit there like a fool because I could not understand.
You might wonder, well did I take classes? Did I use translators? Yes and yes. But classes would NEVER make me become proficient to hold an exchange beyond that of a 3-year-old. Phrasebooks didn’t help at all. My dictionary was my survival tool, coupled with a grammar book I had bought at my college.
And when I say survival, I mean *survival.* You really don’t know how crucial language is beyond a textbook until you’re faced with a situation in which you’re desperate to communicate your thoughts – and you can’t. You physically can’t. Your mouth cannot produce the sounds accurate enough, and your brain cannot process the syntax of the language well enough to speak sentences properly.
That’s not to say I never spoke – I attempted so many times to have an actual conversation. Many of my conversations were heavily reliant on context and body language. Many times I had to guess and point to my dictionary.
Language is fundamental to building up a relationship, and in time I suppose I could actually form some semblance of one if I immersed myself. But the lost years… can’t ever be redone, and that is one of the most profound reasons why the loss is so particularly rough.
I am happy that I have had a good life so far with my adoptive parents, but am heartbroken at the sacrifice and cost that this adoptive life had. I am saddened for what my biological parents lost – their daughter, me. I am heartbroken for the frayed relationships that may never really form.
I am, in a sense, grateful for the adoptive parents I was matched up with. And simultaneously, I sincerely wish my adoption had never had to happen in the first place. Welcome to the paradox of adoption in another adoptee’s mind.
I have to admit that for the first time I had a hard time responding to comments because I feel like I need to be on the defensive. I had written this lengthy post but it all boils down to this – It’s easy to look at any of the decisions I’ve made in my life and attribute them to me being adopted, but the truth is you can’t really say that I made any of the decisions I made because I was adopted because I will never NOT be an adoptee. There’s no way to raise another me, this time with my birthmother, and see what happens.
I do enjoy a good healthy debate. Amanda, I appreciated your insightful comments. Most of the adoptions that I see here on the Gulf Coast are domestic adoptions and let’s face it, I haven’t needed a support group for an International adoption so I’ve never looked for one. I also had no idea anything happened after adoption as far as continued visits or post-placement visits.
I also appreciated hearing about Mei’s story, first from Rox and then from Mei. It’s a hard story to hear, one that makes my heart ache and I have no words or pithy sayings to add – just thank you for the courage it takes to share.
Joy thanks for responding so compassionately, I did go a little off topic of your post, and I’m sorry if my thoughts made you feel on the defensive.
REally as one adoptee/biological mom to another… I really didn’t mean it as something to be defensive about. : )
It’s much harder to identify ways we may have been affected by adoption as adoptees because as you said, we’ve always been adopted! We can’t really ever know what of our issues have to do with that and what of our issues are just “who we are” or what came from biology, or what came from our raised environment. I think it’s some of all of the above, but which is what is really hard (impossible) to determine with any accuracy.
Apparently adoptees are at a much higher risk of facing an unplanned pregnancy (as are girls who are kept children of an unplanned pregnancy, and in general all humans have a high chance of dealing with that situation the way our parents did, for better or worse.
We’ll always have fairly different feelings since I believe that single parenting if done with knowledge of the special issues that come with it, and with adequate support, can have an equally positive outcome for a child as adoption.
And since adoption wasn’t what wanted for ME, i feel like women who want to parent but feel inadequate should be encouraged to find support and solutions to the problems that are making them feel inadequate.
I know I just wanted to keep my daughter. Period. I also wanted whats best for her and that was the method used against me in convincing me I wasn’t good enough.
I think whats best for the child can be accomplished either through adoption, or by providing the needed support to the expectant mom so that she can give her child the best life.. with her.
(My daughters adoptive parents got divorced when she was two, and she has still grown into a loving beautiful happy girl, as I think she would have with me as well.)
Rox, I think that you’re right that we’ll always have fairly different feelings about adoption and our experiences with it, and like all parents (biological, adopted, single, whatever) we make the best decisions we can for our children and we hope that they are the right ones for them. At the end of the day I think that’s really all any of us can do.
I have to admit that I don’t follow the news excessively because I get overwhelmed easily. I was very sad to hear about the Russian child, though I don’t know what brought the adoptive parent to such actions. I would hope there are support groups and things. I also would hope that someone attempting to adopt a child would consider it a permanent choice. Not, “well, I can return the kid later if it doesn’t work out.”
I have to admit that I don’t follow the news excessively because I get overwhelmed easily. I was very sad to hear about the Russian child, though I don’t know what brought the adoptive parent to such actions. I would hope there are support groups and things. I also would hope that someone attempting to adopt a child would consider it a permanent choice. Not, “well, I can return the kid later if it doesn’t work out.”
Bruce, I agree with you 110% – I never realized that returning a child was even an option. Even now, with a little more time to reflect on the situation, I still think no matter what sending the child back alone, on a plane, was unconscionable.