Thursday, March 31, 2011

Adoption Agencies from the Inside: One KAD's Perspective

An adult Korean adoptee who worked for a large adoption agency shares his perspective on the business of adoption from the inside, as a guest poster at Slant Eye for the Round Eye:
In the whole scheme of things, this adoption agency was good to me. It brought me to the states as a seven year old and placed me with my adoptive family in rural Minnesota. It was somewhat involved in my reconnection with my birth family in Korea. It additionally created a new position for me after I was let go by the second largest adoption agency in the state. And I made lifelong friends there; I consider one of its past vice presidents and directors true adoption advocates. Yeah, it was good to me.

Conversely, I was good for the agency. What better way to recruit adoptive parents than have a composed, well adjusted, transracial Korean adoptee who loves adoption? (“It’s the best thing since milk and cookies!”) What better way to engage potentially pissy adult adoptees than with an adoptee who openly talked about his pissy, non-well adjusted past? What better way to confront strong adoptees, with constructive arguments against adoption than with another adoptee who could easily express, with conviction, equally compelling arguments in support of adoption? Yeah, I, the poster boy transracial adoptee, was good for the agency. I played the “good Asian” role very well.

As they say, all good things must come to an end. I left the agency in 2006, absolutely disgruntled with the whole “adoption thing.”
It's a long post -- go read the whole thing, it's well worth it!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

All jobs suck - they just suck in different ways. So he found people that he had to work with that he didn't like? Customers who were jerks? Oh my goodness. Who would ever have thought that could happen at a job.

Von said...

Seems you missed the point anonymous as you often do, about the ethics of the adoption agency and of adoption in America.

Anonymous said...

I can understand why Anonymous#1 (which is not me) missed the point. I think Kevin missed an opportunity here by writing his blog post in a very pissy tone. I greatly value his experiences as an adult KAD and as someone with behind-the-scenes adoption agency experience, and I'm glad he got a chance to share those experiences. But I admit I had a hard time reading past the tone he used in presenting his arguments. To be clear, I'm not saying he doesn't have a right to feel the way he feels, and I'm not criticizing him for being a so-called "angry adoptee." I read "angry" blogs all the time. I gain a lot of insight from them. But this just came across, well, pissy. I think it detracts from the info he is trying to convey.

Anonymous said...

i agree. it seemed like he was venting.

Kevin said...

Hello Anonymous 1 and 2! I was informed that there were some dissenting voices to my post, which is fantastic! As I wrote in follow-ups to other folks, I think it's incredibly important to have different voices; I still have an open invitation to adoption agencies, in particular CHSFS, to respond. Nothing gets done unless there is a conversation.

So, why don’t you come over the original post and engage the rest of us?

Kevin