Dear Adam,
I agree wholeheartedly that adoption brings into greater relief issues that affect just about everyone on some level. When you’re born to one set of parents and raised by another—when your nature and your nurture are separate entities—universal ideas like identity, family, independence, and belonging are no longer taken for granted. Getting to know my birth family has certainly expanded my sense of nature and nurture, in that I’ve come to understand that who we are doesn’t have to be either a tabula rasa waiting to be written on or a prescribed set of inborn traits; rather, we can exist somewhere between these two extremes, as a combination of so-called inherited and so-called acquired aspects. Is it a coincidence that though my brother and I aren’t biologically related, we look the most alike of anyone in our family? That though my birth sister and I didn’t grow up together, we share a compulsion for tidying up the instant we enter a room? Maybe, maybe not.
If there’s a main character in Melosh’s book—other than the adoptee, the birth mother, and the adoptive parents, of course—it’s the social worker. What I’ve long been fascinated by is this concept of “fitness”—of the child, of the potential adoptive parents—and the authority of the person who declares it. In the 1930s and ‘40s, when adoption was becoming an established practice in the United States, social workers purposely resisted placing newborns, to afford themselves time to evaluate the children, physically and psychologically, before deeming them “adoption material.” The Children’s Bureau of Delaware, Melosh explains, “regarded adoption as appropriate only for selected children, whose ‘eligibility’ it determined through careful study and observation.” The agency never placed children younger than 6 months and more often waited until the children were 9 months to 1 year old. After World War II, as society gained confidence in the idea that adoption was the “best solution” for children born out of wedlock, the demand increased faster than the supply, and adoptive parents underwent intensive evaluation, as well.
These screening processes of course put a tremendous amount of power in the hands of the social workers and adoption agencies, the nexus of the “triad,” if you will, as does the policy of closed records. On the one hand, why should anyone have to be raised by unfit parents? But on the other, who should have the power to decide who is “fit” and who isn’t?
These days, that power is shifting away from the institutions and toward the birth mother, or the birth mother and adoptive parents together. As open adoption becomes a more common practice, a birth mother is increasingly involved in the placement process, sometimes meeting with potential adoptive parents while still pregnant, selecting her child’s parents, and continuing an ongoing relationship with them as the child grows up—while remaining, as you rightly pointed out, respectful of them as the child’s true parents. I was also glad to learn from you that the potential problems with open adoption—parents’ disagreement, child’s confusion—usually exist as abstract concerns, not practical obstacles.
Given this progressive climate, why is it so hard to get a straight answer about how easy or difficult it is to adopt today? Some people are adamantly opposed to international adoption across the board, seeing it as the worst illustration of the ugly American writ large—a woman coming into a third-world country to get what she wants or congratulating herself for an act of global-minded charity. Elizabeth Bartholet, author of Family Bonds and mother of three boys, two adopted from Peru, explains that those who criticize international adoption as a type of capitalist imperialism understand it as “the ultimate form of the exploitation that some see at the heart of all adoption—the taking by the rich and powerful of the children born to the poor and powerless.” While this may accurately describe some particular cases, in general, what is the alternative for a baby literally left on a doorstep—as a colleague of mine was, 30 years ago in Korea? Who is helping poor Chinese women keep their female babies? Meanwhile, other equally extreme-minded people argue that it’s selfish to give birth yourself anymore because of all the abandoned children already in the world who desperately need families. So, which is it? Are either of these points of view valid?
Again, I’m interested to hear your take as an adoptive parent on these volatile points—points that I, by the way, as an unequivocal supporter of adoption, and in particular of open adoption, don’t feel ambivalent about. I thank you for participating in this little chat, Adam, and send all best wishes to you and your family.
Your friend,
Sarah
