"Does She Think About Me?"

Maya is talking more and more about her birth parents in the past few weeks.  She's been pretty disinterested up to now, once declaring that talking about adoption was boooorinnggggg!  Even though she's listened in on all of my conversations with Zoe, she needs to plow the same ground for herself. 

The other day she asked, "Do you think my birth mother ever thinks about me?"  I answered that we don't know her birth mother, so we can't know for sure what she's thinking, but that I've talked to lots of birth mothers who say they never stop thinking of their child.  Maya then said, "But she has lots of kids, so I bet she doesn't think about me."  I said we didn't know whether she has brothers and/or sisters in China, but even if she did, I said, I don't think it would make a difference in whether her birth mother still thinks about her.  "I have two kids, and I'd still think about both of you even if I lost one of you."  Maya said, "So you think she'd look at her other kids and there'd be a whole where I'm missing?"  Smart cookie.  "I think it would be exactly like that," I reply.

The Worst Part is Not Knowing

As I mentioned before, Zoe's music class at school has been studying the musical, Annie. She hasn't been bothered by it, and has talked to me several times this week about how much she likes the songs. After seeing the first part of the movie, she said she thought Annie was lucky that her birth parents left a note saying they would come back for her. Now Zoe knows the whole story, including the fact that fake birth parents came for Annie, trying to extort money from Daddy Warbucks.

Still, yesterday she said she wished she were Annie. When I asked her why, she said, "You know." Usually when she says that, I do know -- it has something to do with her birth parents. But I couldn't quite figure out how. After all, Annie didn't find her birth parents, she got fake birth parents. I said that, and asked how that would make her want to be Annie.

Zoe said, "Don't you remember? After Annie came back, the president said they'd tried to find her birth parents but they had died a long time ago."

I'm still not getting it -- "You want your birth parents to be dead?"

"Nooooooo! I just don't KNOW if they are alive or dead! At least Annie KNOWS."

Ahhh. Now I get it. The not knowing has always been hard for Zoe. Zoe often shares that she worries about whether her birth parents are alive or dead. When I told her about the recent earthquake in China, I had to assure her it was no where near where we think her birth parents are -- while also telling her truthfully that I don't know for sure. And maybe there's a little more here, too, though Zoe didn't articulate it. At least there was a reason Annie's birth parents didn't try to find her, they were dead. Maybe Zoe would be more comfortable if there was a similarly good reason her birth parents haven't found her.

If Birth Mothers Can Do It, Why Can't Adoptive Mothers?

In response to this post about Artyom's adoptive mother sending him back to Russia with a note saying she no longer wished to parent him, Anonymous commented:

So if I understand this correctly, the sentiment around here is that: It's okay for the birth parents to give up their child, but not okay for adoptive parents to give up their child.

Short answer -- YES. I hear this question each time there's news of an adoption disruption, as if we were comparing apples and apples. If you are even marginally aware of the circumstances in which birth parents relinquish a child for adoption, you couldn't even pretend that this is an apt comparison.

Within the U.S., the most common reason for relinquishment for adoption is an unexpected and/or unplanned pregnancy, combined with economic limitations (including a lack of education which limits financial resources). Outside the U.S., in all the sending countries in international adoption, the number one reason for relinquishment is poverty.

Compare this to the adoptive parent who disrupts an adoption. Adoptive parents as a whole are better educated and have higher incomes than the population at large. Adoptive parents quite deliberately and intentionally become parents -- nothing unexpected or unplanned there. Adoptive parents are more likely to have jobs, accounting for that higher than average income. Adopted children are more likely to have health insurance than childre in the population at large. Adoptive parents are more likely to have taken parenting classes. Adoptive parents tend to be older at the time they enter parenting than the population at large.

Consider Torry Hansen, Artyom's adoptive mom. She's 33, she's a college graduate, she's a registered nurse. She's employed at a Veteran's Administration hospital, which means she has government health insurance for herself and her child. She has a home. She has a family support network nearby. She has enough money for an adoption, two trips to Russia for herself, and a plane ticket back for Artyom. She has internet access. She lives in America, which automatically makes her more empowered than any birth mother in any sending country in the world.

Can one seriously compare her decision to send Artyom away, alone, with a note saying she no longer wished to parent him, to the decision of an impoverished birth mother in Guatamala? To the decision of an impoverished birth mother in China, who makes her relinquishment decision in the shadow of poverty and government rules she has no control over? To the decision of a Korean birth mother who will be so stigmatized by an out-of-wedlock birth that she's likely to lose her job, be unable to get housing, be precluded from marriage in the future, and have her child stigmatized as illegitimate, too? Can you even compare her decision to that of a 17-year-old in America, whose pregnancy has not been supported by the birth father or her parents, who knows little about welfare support, who sees little assistance in raising her child on the income she can earn with a GED?

I know that not every adoptive parent or every birth parent fits the profiles I've outlined, but the vast majority do. That's why it is a false analogy to claim that what adoptive parents do when they terminate an adoption is no different from what birth parents do in relinquishing a child for adoption. It's insulting to birth parents to make the comparison.

And frankly, it's insulting to adoptive parents, too. It assumes that the intentionality with which we enter parenting means nothing. I do hold adoptive parents to a higher standard. I like what prospective adoptive parent Joanna had to say at her blog, Waiting for Two:

I expect better from adoptive families. Oh yes, I expect better, because adoptive families must go through more to be parents. You must really want it, to have your home checked, your background checked, and to go through hours of parental training. When you sign up to adopt, no one tells you it will be easy.

Yes, we should be able to expect better from adoptive families. As Zoe put it, "a promise is a promise, especially in adoption."

More scanning faces. . .

I posted Friday about my conversation with Zoe about her scanning Chinese faces, looking for her birth parents even here in America. Here's some more food for thought:

From an adoptee's perspective, a link to a previous post -- another story by Tai Dong Huai, the adult Chinese adoptee who writes fiction related to adoption (I posted her story, Backwards , last month). In Chinaman's Chance, her 13-year-old self thinks a Chinese woman her mother brought home might be her birth mother:

This is her , I think to myself. A billion-to-one shot, a near impossibility, yet here she stands. In our kitchen. As if hell just froze over.

"This is Mrs. Lim," my adoptive mom says. "Mrs. Lim, my daughter Leah."

Mrs. Lim's is as razor thin as I am. Her hair, like mine, is very dark brown, black by most light. My 13-year-old nose, uncustomarily long for an Asian girl, seems to be reflected in her middle-aged face.

* * *

I hear my mom on the front porch and I know my time with Mrs. Lim is almost through. My adoptive dad, were he here to give me advice in this situation, would probably say, "Go for it," or "Swing for the fences." So I do.

"Are you my mother?" I ask.

Mrs. Lim stares at me for a few long seconds, and I'm afraid at first that she doesn't understand. I'm sorry, I'm about to say. Stupid question. But she interrupts my thoughts as the front door opens.

"Your mother," she says, "just came in."

And thanks to Lori's link in the comments, scanning faces from a Chinese birth mother's perspective at Mortimer's Mom's blog:

This afternoon, I was at Reno-Depot (Canadian home depot, except green) with Dumpling, picking out paint for her attic playroom.

There was an Asian couple also trying to select paint, and I could tell the lady wanted to talk to me but was too shy.

* * *

They did turn out to be Chinese, . . .Then he told me his wife was having a hard time because she didn't speak either languages, but also because in Montreal there are really a lot of white families with chinese girls, and it's very hard on her.

At first I thought he meant she was opposed to international adoptions or something, but the rest of their story brought me to my knees, right there in the paint department. They have a six year old daughter. But they also have a 3 year old daughter. They lived in Shanghai at the time of their 2nd daughter's birth and were unable to keep her. They had to give her to an orphanage. 6 months afterwards, their papers came to allow them to travel to Canada. After he told me this, he told his wife what he had told me and she began to weep openly, while caressing my daughter's face.

* * *

The part that was the most thought provoking to me is this: I read Lost Daughters of China, I've thought about my daughter's birth family often, but this had never occured to me before: some of these parents will emigrate. Some of them will come to Canada and the US. They are confronted with happy families caring for Chinese children and must wonder if their own daughters are here in North America, if they made it, if they have families now....

How is it that in this entire process, I have never once given the thought to these parents ever leaving China? Why did I assume they ALL stayed there? I realise that the numbers who do emigrate are low, and the chances of any reunification for ANY of the daughters of China are astronomically small, but that woman today, she is looking for her daughter in the faces of every tiny Chinese girl with white parents....

Wow! Even knowing how little chance there is that my children's birth parents will/have emigrate/d (which, by the way, I told Zoe), that encounter still gives me chills. And thanks to Lorraine's comment, we know that there is little to separate American birth mothers and Chinese birth mothers on this front (and I'm looking forward to your blog post on the topic, Lorraine!).

Scanning faces and wondering . . .

We went out for dinner last night to our favorite Chinese restaurant, and Zoe asked me, "Do you ever look at Chinese people and wonder if they're my birth parents?"

I wasn't completely surprised by the question. We hear often from adult adoptees about their scanning faces and wondering. But this is the first time Zoe had said anything that suggested she did that. I guess I would have thought of it more as something she'd do in China, but not here. Clearly, I was wrong about that.

So I responded, "It sounds like maybe you do that, look at Chinese people and wonder. . . ."

Zoe nodded, and said, "Especially if they're really Chinese. You know, like they don't really speak English."

Hmm, so she's thinking her birth family might have emigrated to America. She's said something like that before.

Well, another conversation peppered with many "I don't knows" from me. We talked a little about emigration, and why people might leave their country to go to another one, and the things that might prevent someone from doing that even if they really want to. And we talked about how hard it is for her to want to know her birth parents and to be wondering about them. And I told her that other adoptees wonder, just like she does, if people they see might be their birth parents (I wanted her to know she was normal!).

And then Zoe changed the subject: "Let's talk about ME!" she says (What have we been doing?!).

Me: "What about you?"

Zoe: "You know! How you MET me!"

Ah, yes, center-of-the-universe girl! That's what we're supposed to be talking about at our Chinese dinner -- the moment 2,920 days ago that we met each other for the first time!

Is adoption natural?

Issicat has a great blog post up, about prospective adoptive parents, brain washing, and "natural" mothers:

And here is the other one that cracks me up from the PAP’s. Apparently, I’m not supposed to call the woman who gave birth to me my natural mother. I’m not supposed to call her that because it implies that adoption is unnatural.

Ummm…hmmm…errr….

I got 2 things to say about that.

1. I was raised by my aparents calling the woman who gave me life my natural mother. They didn’t have a problem with it. She doesn’t have a problem with it and most importantly I don’t have a problem with it. . . . I’ll call my mother whatever I want.

2. ADOPTION is not natural. It isn’t. A person giving their child to an agency to be given to complete strangers to raise. Not natural. PAP’s wriitng “Dear Birthmother” letters trying to pimp themselves to women in crisis pregnancy situations in the hope of obtaining said baby… not natural.

You know what is natural? Babies going home and being cared for by the mothers who carried them in their bodies. That is natural. Anything else is just a little sad.

I’m not saying I hate adoption. I don’t. I’m not saying that adoption isn’t necessary in some cases. It is.

But there is no way in hell I would ever call it natural.

And that is something that my aparents seemed to get. My sibling and I …we came from other people. There was and is no denying it. My parents did not find it natural to be raising two children with no medical history. I think they found it pretty stressful, especially when I fell extremely ill as a toddler. I think that time right there, that extremely stressful time showed them once and for all that adoption was a very unnatural situation.

* * *

Adoption natural? No it isn’t. My mom is very proadoption. She loves adoption but she’ll tell you herself, she’s not stupid. Adoption is not an easy or natural road to take.

Oh and she thinks Anita Tedaldi is a shit-head…but that is another story.

Issycat's amom, I think I love you!

The "natural" thing is another one of those "givens" in adoption language -- adoptive parents are supposed to be upset about adopt-a-whatever programs, we're supposed to say we're the real parents, not those pesky birth parents, and we're supposed to say that adoption is natural, just another way to add to your family.

I was brainwashed to believe it, weren't you? I completely bought into the "same as" narrative, that raising an adopted child was the same as raising a biological child, nothing less and certainly nothing more.

It's not the same. I won't say it's harder. But it is more complicated. And that's what prospective adoptive parents should know and accept.

For me, it was having my new child in my arms that changed me. When she became a real person to me, instead of the abstract notion of the idea of a child, that's when it all changed.

So I forgive prospective adoptive parents a little. They have room for redemption.

What bothers me are those adoptive parents, with their child in their arms, who persistently cling to the "same as" narrative, rejecting that birth parents are real, insisting their child is AMERICAN so needs no special heritage-teaching/culture-keeping, saying that race doesn't matter (easy to say when you're the majority race, impossible for their minority-race child to live), desperately repeating the mantra, "same as . . . same as . . . same as. . . ."

Standard disclaimer -- not all prospective adoptive parents or adoptive parents are like that. But we all know ones who are, I bet.

Heart's Desire

The conversation started innocuously enough. We're driving in the car and Zoe was doing her fake-British accent (don't ask!), She asked what the difference was between Great Britain and England, and I explained that Great Britain included England, Wales, and Scotland. She remarked that she thought Scotland was funny since men wore skirts.

I explained about kilts, and said that men in Scotland pretty much wore kilts only for special occasions, like in China, a girl will wear a qi pao only on special occasions, not every day. That lead to questions from Maya about what qi paos are made of (silk).

And that led Zoe to say she wished our whole house was decorated in silk. Why, I asked? The answer was something along the lines of silkworms are cool, silk is so smooth and shiny and colorful. I took the practical road and explained some of the difficulties of taking care of silk. Zoe thought maybe we should invent a washing machine just to wash silk.

And then she changed tacks. "Well, it's not really my heart's desire to have silk all over the house. I want a mirror like the one Harry Potter saw his parents in (the girls watched their first Harry Potter movie last night). I would be able to see my birth parents in that mirror, because seeing them is my heart's desire."

"Yes, sweetie, I know that's your heart's desire. I hope one day you will see them. I know it's not the same thing, but every time you look in a mirror, you can see your birth parents when you look at your face. They made you, so they are in you."

"I KNOW," says Zoe. She's behind me in the car, but I can tell she's rolling her eyes, even though I can't see her. "You're right, it's not the same. I don't know which parts of my face came from which birth parent!"

I respond, "I can tell that makes you feel frustrated. How else does it make you feel?"

Zoe ponders that and says, "It's sad, but I think I've got an idea. I can marry Harry Potter and he can show me the mirror!"

Now she's going all practical on me. . . . . and fickle, too. Earlier in the day, both she and Maya were moving to Europe so they could each find a prince to marry so they could be princesses.

(But judging from Zoe's latest drawing of her birth parents, I can tell her exactly who they look like -- Yoko Ono and . . . Yoko Ono!)

Backwards

I've posted some stories before from Tai Dong Huai (see here and here), adopted from China as a child, now an adult. She writes short fiction, and frequently touches on adoption issues. I've just run across another one, in the Apple Valley Review, a meditation backwards to her birth mother's childhood full of possibilities:

Every April 1st, my middle school has “Backwards Day. . . .” Needless to say, the next day everything is back to normal.

But what if it wasn’t. What if the clocks continued to tick off the future. . . . I’d return to the womb of a Chinese mother who would first abandon me, then ponder her situation, then agree to lie down with the man who is my father. And before that, perhaps, she would be working in a factory making American sneakers. Then in school, studying mathematics and living with her family. She would be young and beautiful and see her life stretched out in front of her like a lake on which possibilities float like lit paper lanterns on a warm summer night.

What Happens When the Story Changes?

We all know how difficult it is in international adoption to piece together our child’s story. We rely on information provided at the time of the adoption by the sending country’s paperwork and representatives. We supplement it with information we learn from other parents about our child’s area or orphanage. If we’re lucky, we have photos and developmental updates from the orphanage, stories from the foster family. We hire services to take photos for us that we couldn’t take ourselves – finding locations, orphanages, etc, and to track down information like finding ads. We research on the internet – what was the weather like on the day my child was born? What did the night sky look like? We read and research to discover likely reasons why children are placed for adoption in that country, in that area. We take a homeland tour and visit orphanages and finding places, ask to see our child's file.

And we put together our child’s story, piece by piece, hoping we have enough pieces to make a clear picture. We sprinkle the story with “I don’t knows” and “This is my best guess.” But we think we’ve got a fairly accurate picture.

What happens when the story changes?

I’ve blogged before about parts of my children’s stories that I wonder about. Maya’s abandonment certificate says she was left in front of the women’s and children’s hospital. I think it’s possible she never left the hospital, that her birth parents walked out and left her there because they could not pay the bills for a preemie's care. Zoe’s story includes a note – a note said to have been left by her birth family. But two other families in our group got very similar notes, including the same kind of red paper. I’ve doubted its genuineness. But now someone who has reason to know suggests it might be genuine, because Zoe’s orphanage looks like one with an incentive program, where birth parents actually come into the orphanage to leave the children in exchange for money. If so, then the orphanage could have supplied the paper and pens. That explains the similarities in the 3 notes. That makes them genuine. And it makes the abandonment certificate a lie. Maybe the parts that mean so much to Zoe – the three layers of clothing, the little hat, the cardboard box – are all lies.

And then there’s the baby-stealing scandals, first reported in July and expanded upon by the L.A. Times articles. Although my children are not from the areas where it is reported that family planning officials confiscated babies, nor are they from the areas where news is just now starting to come out that the same thing has been happening, the scandals further shake my confidence in the information I’ve been given.

How to deal with all of this? If one knows FOR A FACT that the story has changed, I believe one MUST discuss it with the child. But how? Beth O’Malley says:

If your child is still little, then you are the one to make the emotional adjustment. But how do you handle new information when your child is eight or nine? What about conflicting information? Suddenly everything that you (and your child) believed to be true—is either only partially true or completely false. What can your child believe or trust about his story now? Here are some suggestions for handling situations about new or changing information:

• First of all, as the grownup, it’s your job to come to terms with whatever you learn. Deal with your emotions. Even as you read this article, plan on having a crisis occur at some point in your child’s life. Plan for it by expecting your child to seek information and also to question the accuracy of it all—especially if some of it has turned out to be incorrect.

• Predict and prepare accordingly. How might my child handle this? Is this potentially traumatic information? Will these ‘life facts’ have traumatic impact on my child? Follow your gut instincts and remember that you are the expert on your child.
• Separate your feelings from your child’s. Remember that your child has his/her own feelings and reactions. We parents should sort through ours so that we don’t project them onto our children. For example, our children might have anger about something that saddens us and we have to be ready to react to their feelings. Or, they might be much less impacted than we anticipate. We need to honor and validate their feelings and having sorted through our own first will make this much easier.

• Do your homework. Find out if the information you do have is absolutely accurate. What is the proof? If there is a possible nuance due to translation? If so, proceed cautiously and conservatively. Discuss the impact of translation and explain why new or changed information has emerged. Possible phrases to use are “According to the papers” or “Sometimes the words in one language don’t mean the same in another language….”

Expect all involved to go through a grieving process when new information emerges or previous information proves to be untrue. Your child has just ‘lost’ a chunk of their life foundation and a belief and a piece of identity they have had.

Excellent suggestions. But what if you don’t KNOW, but only SUSPECT that the information is false? Do you disclose?

I believe that I do have to tell my kids about my concerns. I don’t want them to find out on their own, even as adults. I’m quite convinced that they will, as adults, seek additional information. What would I say, then, about why I didn’t mention the birth parent note might be a fake? Or that the orphanage might have had an incentive program? Or that the abandonment certificate might be falsified?

When to tell? Depends on the child. But I think the Ten Commandments of Telling apply here, too, and that requires disclosing all of their story by age 12. Doubt is part of their story. It should be disclosed.

Dinosaur Train: New PBS Kids Show With Adoption Themes

The girls actually slept late this holiday morning -- 8:45 a.m., believe it or not! When I wandered into the family room a few minutes later, the girls were ensconced on the couch, watching PBS. Maya tells me excitedly, "It's a new show about dinosaurs!" As I watch, I see a little cartoon T-rex calling a Pteranodon "Mom." Hmm.

Sure enough, when I went to the website, I discovered it was, indeed, a trans-species adoption:

Each of the 40 half-hour episodes features Buddy, an adorable preschool age Tyrannosaurus Rex, and his adoptive Pteranodon family as they board the Dinosaur Train and embark on whimsical voyages through prehistoric jungles, swamps, volcanoes and oceans.

The title sequence (which I missed the first time -- but it's back-to-back episode day it seems!) shows the babies hatching from their eggs, and Buddy is different. But Mrs. Pteranodon says he's part of the family even though he is different -- after all, "we're all creatures."

But the thing that amazed me is that the episode seemed to be about searching -- searching for Buddy's species. And Pteranodon mom is in on the search, saying something along the line of, "Don't worry Buddy, we'll keep looking for your species." OK, birth parents weren't mentioned, but still, it's a pretty impressive idea to see in a children's show aimed at 3-6 year olds, that an adoptee might want to know its first family (species) and that the adoptive family is OK with that!

I wasn't sure whether the girls saw the parallel to searching for birth family, but when we talked about the show later, they clearly had. They also saw that Buddy didn't feel quite like he fit into the Pteranodon family (he couldn't catch fish the way they do), and that spurred his interest in finding his species. Zoe also thought that wanting to know his species was like her wanting to learn Chinese and all about China, even if she never finds her birth family.

Adoption isn't the focus of the show; rather, they say they want to harness kids' interest in dinosaurs and trains to teach scientific method. It's a brand-new series on PBS, so I don't know how it will pan out in the long run, but so far I'd give them kudos on the adoption themes.

More about Ponyo

I posted before that after watching Ponyo, Maya said, “It was just like adoption!” I saw more differences than similarities to adoption, so I was curious about how Maya saw it. We talked a bit more about it this week, and here’s a pretty good recounting of our conversation, which was no where near as linear as it appears here. Maya was in a completely silly mood, and was throwing in head stands and cartwheels as we talked! But she provided the opening, so I took it!

Maya: I loved Ponyo. I want to be Ponyo!

Me: It was a good movie, wasn’t it?

Maya: Yes, yes, yes, yes! [the silly goose!]

Me: Have you thought any more about how it was like adoption?

Maya: Yes, Sosuke adopted Ponyo.

Me: Really? Do you think so?

Maya: Yes! He loved Ponyo and he promised to take care of her forever.

Me: Who did he promise that to?

Maya: You know, like you did in China – like the . . . the. . . [groping for the word]president?

Me: Do you mean the government?

Maya: Yes, yes, yes! [I didn’t see any government in the movie -- I was fishing for birth parents!]

Me: Why do you think Ponyo’s parents wanted Sosuke to adopt Ponyo?

Maya: They needed to save the world from the monster fish! They had to stay in the ocean. Ponyo wasn’t a fish anymore so couldn’t stay in the ocean with them. She wanted to be a girl and stay with Sosuke.

Me: How do you think Sosuke felt about that?

Maya: He was happy! I want to be Ponyo! I want to be a fish AND a girl! [we’re losing interest, I think].

Me: How do you think Ponyo’s mom and dad felt about Sosuke adopting Ponyo?

Maya: [long pause for a head stand] Sad. They’ll miss her, but I bet they’ll visit her. I’m a fish, fish, fish!

And as usual, when Maya’s done talking, she is D-O-N-E. I had wanted to ask her a few more questions, like what role she thought Sosuke's mom played in this adoption, but we were DONE!

I'm not sure she had focused before on Ponyo's parents as relinquishing birth parents. She was thinking of adoption from Sosuke's and Ponyo's perspectives, and pretty much disregarded any involvement from grown-ups. That doesn't surprise me msuch, since Maya professes to not being very interested in her birth parents (in contrast to Zoe who is ALL ABOUT her birth parents), and seems to want to avoid talking about them or thinking about them. I think that's why we were D-O-N-E talking when I raised the issue of Ponyo's parents. She didn't want to see that similarity to adoption. But I liked her statement, "I bet they'll visit her." She doesn't see adoption as a complete divorce from the first family, it seems. And that's a good thing!

Have you REALLY told her she's adopted?

In the old days, social workers advised adoptive parents to keep the adoption a secret. The conventional wisdom today is that children need to be told they were adopted. So we adoptive parents, a bunch of eager-to-be-perfect parents!, comply. Or do we?

I hear it from so many adoptive parents -- "Of course, she knows she's adopted." But as we continue to talk, it is revealed that she doesn't know she grew in someone else's tummy. She doesn't know she lost her first family before she acquired her adoptive family. She's never heard the phrase, "birth mother" or "first mother" or "tummy lady" or "China mom."

All she knows is that she was born in China, that nannies took care of her until her forever family came and "adopted" her. You could have easily told her you "kerflummoxed" her, or "askewlated" her, or "droomextruded" her. These are just as much gobbledygook as "adopted" is, unless you REALLY define it.

And defining adoption requires TWO parts: 1) yes, the easy part for adoptive parents, that new parents made her part of their family and it is permanent; AND 2) the part that happened before adoptive parents entered the scene, the fact that she was born from and to another woman, who relinquished her.

Every child is different, and they are ready for more information at different ages. But I think it's never too early to tell them THEIR story, starting before birth -- "you grew like a flower in your birth mother's tummy until it was time for you to be born." There are lots of advantages to saying this earlier rather than later.

First, it gives us practice in saying "birth mother" or "tummy lady" or whatever words we decide to use. For some adoptive parents, especially those who suffered through infertility before adopting, it might be difficult to talk about. Starting by saying it to your child in infancy gives you the chance to mess up or choke up or tear up when it doesn't matter, and be more comfortable when your child is aware of what you're saying.

Second, it makes it a matter-of-fact thing, without baggage for anyone. Some parents seem to think they should wait to explain about birth parents until children can understand ALL aspects, including reasons for relinquishment, issues like abandonment and one child policies and social preferences for boys, and poverty and disability and war . . . . Sheesh, if you waited for all that, the child would be an adult! And if you've waited, no wonder you're scared to introduce the concept of birth parents! But by waiting, you take the risk that someone else will get to tell her. Not what you really want, is it?

Third, it gives our children the vocabulary they need to ask us more questions when they are ready. I've had adoptive parents tell me their child isn't interested at all in her birth parents, that she never asks anything about them. And then it turns out that they've never really explained adoption to include birth parents. No wonder she isn't asking any questions!

So have you REALLY told her she's adopted?

"Adoptress" Letter

On an adult adoptee's blog, this letter from an adoptive mother:


I enjoy reading your blog and was hoping you wouldn't mind my asking you a question.

According to the laws of our and another country, I am an adoptress of two little girls. Now, I do NOT call myself a parent. I am NOT their mother and they are not allowed to call me "Mama" or "Mom" or "Mommy" or anything like that; I am Miss XXX and I am an adoptress. Likewise, my husband is NOT their father. Our parents are NOT allowed to call themselves grandparents and the girls are not allowed to call them as such. Our siblings are not allowed to call themselves Aunt or Uncle. We are NOT their "forever family".

Their mother is dead; she died giving birth to them. We have continued contact with their father and family, including siblings and uncles, in the country in which they were born; THEY are their forever family. We visit 4 times a year for 2 weeks at a time and are making preparations to move to that country so that they can grow up surrounded by their own culture and so that they can know their family. I am not naive enough to believe that this will, in any way, make up for having been removed from their country originally and it will in no way be the same as if they were growing up as natives, with their parents. I realized too late my mistake in wanting to raise a child (the adoption had been finalized, but we hadn't yet traveled) and will spend the rest of my life attempting to make up for it for these little girls. I wish I could undo the past, but I can't. Before we left the country with the babies, we met secretly with their father with our own interpreter and asked him to please take the babies back, that we would pay for all of the medical care that they needed and support his entire family for the rest of their lives if he would only take them back and raise them (it would have taken so little from us to make this possible, and we are not wealthy by any means). Sadly, he considered them expendable; five children were enough. If they had been boys, I'm sure it would have been a different story. And if their mother had survived, I'm sure she would have gladly brought them back to her bosom.

The problem we are having now is that these little girls, who are now 3 andhave been with us since they were 5 months old (they are twins), are starting to ask why they can't call us "Mommy" and "Daddy". They don't understand why nephews and nieces can call their grandparents "Grandma" and "Grandma", but we won't let them do so. They know they have a Daddy, they know they have brothers and sisters and uncles. We send letters and pictures
and drawings and there are photographs up all over the house. They know that they were "adopted". They know other "adopted" children via cultural events and ask why they call their adopters "Mommy" and "Daddy" but we won't allow them to do the same. They even know a foster child who calls his guardian "Mama".

Needless to say, we are not very popular in the "adoption" community, which is okay with me, but the girls are starting to wonder why they can never go to so-and-so's for a play date. Why some of the children are starting to tell them that their "Mommy and Daddy" don't want them playing with them because their adopters are "crazy". Even though we are only the adopters, we do love them and it hurts us to see them struggle with this. Sometimes, I want to cave and just say "it's just a name", but then I read yours, and others', blogs, and realize that it is NOT just a name and I want to honor that. I want to honor their mother. I want to honor their father. I bought the privilege of raising them (when I was doing it, I didn't think about it this way, as I had bought the story the agency gave us about why fees had to be charged, but I know now that I DID buy them). I bought the privilege of reading bedtime stories, kissing boo-boos, making cookies, doing their hair, teaching them to read. I don't need to be called by a name that I will never know (I've been in menopause since I was 13; I have premature ovarian failure and, instead of going through puberty, I got to have hot flashes). Don't get me wrong, if I COULD be a parent, I would love to be a parent. It just will never happen, and I was okay with that before I even graduated from high school. I did, however, want to raise children and thought that this would be an okay way to do it. I do know that I was wrong, dreadfully, horribly wrong, but I can't fix it. All I can do is try to do better for these girls and work to make sure that other children do not suffer from the naivete of adopters like myself, or even from the adopters who do realize what they are doing and try to pretty it up.

We are also not very popular in our family, who don't seem to understand why they are not allowed to take on names that don't belong to them. But, they are adults and they can deal with it. My only concern is for these girls. How can I help them around this issue? Do you have any ideas for "names" to call adopters that would respect the girls' family while at the same time be palatable to those, like yourself, who were taken/bought/stolen from their parents? They are starting to just want to be like everyone else, and I'm sure this will only become more difficult as they get older. What would have helped you understand this at their age? Am I contributing to the problem without seeing it? (I am only human and while I am trying, I make mistakes and will make plenty more before my time on this earth is through.) These girls didn't ask for this. In fact, they deserve so much better than this. I know I made the mistake, but is there anything I can be doing to help them?

I would be very thankful for any thoughts you may have and I support your work wholeheartedly. I believe that this system IS broken. It doesn't serve the children, and it doesn't serve the mothers. It only serves the adoption industry and adopters like myself. And I tell my girls that it was wrong, that my husband and I were wrong (in an age-appropriate way, of course; theolder they get, the more blunt I will become about what it was that I and my
husband did). I was just so naive. I remember learning from the social worker that their birth certificates would have OUR names on them, and I actually thought I could just ask them not to change the names of their parents, to leave them on there. It made no sense to me! I made color copies of their birth certificates and then changed the copies to put their parents' names back on there. I know that they aren't "legal" birth certificates, but they are the truth.

I am so sorry that anyone has to go through that which you and so many others have been.

OK, if you've read here long, you might think I'm pretty extreme in my insistence that my kids have two real moms, me and their birth moms. You might think we go too far to honor their first families. You might think me a little off plumb on the whole birth certificate thing. You might think we harp too much on heritage/culture/identity, going to the extreme of living in China for a time. But I only have one thing to say about this adoptive mom:


Crazy much?


Or am I off plumb with that judgment? I want your take, so I'm putting up a poll. Not cool to have told you my opinion before polling, but I just couldn't hold back! And please comment. I'd especially like to hear from adoptees and birth moms on this one.

Adoption Goes to School ALREADY

I can't say that I'm surprised that Zoe is already drawing and writing about her birth family at school. Yesterday she only had a half-day, but today was a full day of school and the teacher gave them free time to draw.

Zoe sits at a cluster of desks with three other students, and when she drew her birth parents, the kids were all curious and asked, "So this is what your birth parents look like?!" (Like quasi-stick-figures would somehow capture that!). Zoe corrected them, "No, this is what I THINK my birth parents look like." That's why she wrote "THINK" in capitals and dark ink after she drew the picture. (And notice that her birth parents have glasses, as usual. She's convinced they have them since she does. And also notice that they are smiling -- she draws them with tears on their faces most of the time, since she thinks they are sad and missing her.)

On the back of the paper, she also made the "What I think/What I know" distinction, which I think is great. We are always talking about what we know and what we don't know, and what we think or what we guess; I'm glad to see that it's been making an impression. She's beginning to see what is fantasy and what is reality when it comes to her birth family. And she's come a long way from when she was so frustrated by what we didn't know that she couldn't get past that to do any imaginary thinking.

She's never before shared with me the I Think: "I think my birthparents had more children that went to orphanages. They look like me." We've talked about the fact that she MIGHT have siblings in China, that her birth parents might have had a child before they had her, that they might have felt they needed to have a boy child. But we've never talked about the possibility that other siblings might have ended up in the orphanage.

I wonder where that's coming from. It's true, of course. We've all heard of such cases of multiple girl children being abandoned, one at a time, as the family tries for the boy they think they need. I don't know if Zoe has figured that out on her own, or whether it's an idea that comforts her -- it has been disturbing for her to think her birth parents kept some children, but relinquished her. We'll be talking more about this in the days to come!

Zoe showed her teacher her drawing and writing, and she simply said, "Thank you for sharing that with me." No shock, no intrusive questions, no instructions not to think or to think in a different way about her birth parents. Good answer!

Nora’s Journey: A Korean Adoptee’s Life in a Chinese Family

A really fascinating story, published in a Japanese-American newspaper, of a Korean-American child adopted by a Chinese-American family in 1917:

My grandmother, Nora Kim, was born in 1917 as Esther Yoon, the fourth child to Duggar Choi Yoon and Byung Hi Yoon in Upland, Calif. Her eldest siblings, Gilbert and Anna, were born in Korea, and her brother Paul was born in Hawai‘i. After Grandma was born, her mother fell ill and her father — we believe in a state of panic — hurriedly arranged an adoption of the new baby through the church. Her mother knew nothing of the adoption until she recovered from her illness.

Grandma was adopted by a Chinese couple, Tom Chung and Yuet Lan Lee, and re-named Nora. They had been married for several childless years, but after adopting my grandmother, they had three boys in succession: Daniel, Andrew and Wilbert. Grandma’s adoptive mother had been born in San Francisco, the daughter of a wealthy matchstick factory owner who then moved back to China. She remained
behind in San Francisco, as she was an American and did not want to live in China where she would be “forced to marry some old Chinaman.”

* * *

Grandma was raised Chinese American, speaking English and Cantonese at home and learning her father’s Toisan dialect at Chinese school.

* * *

When Grandma was 12, her adoptive mother died suddenly. Her death was abrupt and shocked the family; she took ill for a short time, and then one night, her father called for a doctor because she had taken a turn for the worse. She died later that night.

After her death, her husband fell apart. In the area of Los Angeles where they lived, word must have traveled to Grandma’s Korean family about her adoptive mother’s death, because shortly thereafter she was called to her principal’s office at school. A woman and her daughter were waiting for her there, and introduced themselves as her mother and sister, Sarah.

“I didn’t believe them, I thought they were crazy!” Grandma had never heard of Koreans, much less suspected she was Korean herself. In her world, Asians were either Chinese or Japanese. Her mother and sister visited her again at school, and then were asked not to come back. “I would see my Korean mother once in a while, standing outside of the school gate, watching me. I was a little scared — I didn’t know what to do. I asked my aunt about it, and she told me to ignore them. Then she shooed me out of the room to talk to my father. I bet that’s what they were talking about.” Grandma learned later that her Korean mother would sometimes disappear from her cleaning shop to watch her in the schoolyard.

One day, the same woman and a man came to her house. They told her they were her parents, and would like her to come visit their home and meet her brothers and sisters.Grandma asked her Chinese father when he got home if what they said was true, but he never addressed the adoption. He just said that maybe she should go and visit. So one day, she did.

Grandma met her brothers, Gilbert, Paul and Chuck, and her sisters, Sarah and Mary. The eldest sister, Anna, was already out of the house — married with a baby. Because her adoptive father struggled after his wife’s death and eventually lost the house on 9th Place, Grandma went to live with her Korean family.

Click here to read the whole thing! And marvel at the relative openness of adoption at that time -- the birth family knew at all times where she was. Still, not the halcyon days of yore -- she was not told she was adopted or Korean until she was 12 and her adoptive mother had died.

Transnational Adoption & the "Financialization of Everything"

Interesting article by Jane Jeong Trenka, to be considered together with the report of the birth mother presentation I attended last month:

International adoption is often seen as a mutually beneficial relationship between children in need of a home and financially stable adults wanting to raise a child. But it is also big-money business. In line with neoliberalism, or the hollowing out of government services, many adopted children are born to single mothers who are offered little to no resources to care for their children. International adoption agencies have stepped into this gap by offering homes, and making a profit in the process. The transformation of adoption into a global business creates a further incentive not to assist mothers, who may turn to adoption out of desperation, not desire. Adoptee activists are working to shed light on this issue. Focusing particularly on South Korea, author and co-founder of Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK) Jane Jeong Trenka argues the process should be re-engineered to put the money and fateful decisions back where they belong: with the mothers and their children. TRACK is now working with the Korean government to get the the voices of birth parents and Korean adoptees heard in South Korean adoption law revisions.

Summer Re-Run: Zoe Talks Adoption

Zoe Talks Adoption -- Sept. 18, 2008

Adoption is hard to understand because you don't know who your birth parents are and you don't know why they let you go and where they live and their phone number and address. Ex: You might be wondering about adoption and what adoption is, well adoption is when you get born and your first parents give you away. End of example.

I think about my birth parents like every day. You too might be wondering about your first parents, too, just like me. If you do, here is some advice, some things that help me:

1. Talk about your feelings, like

• Talking to my mom about adoption so I can understand more about it.
• Thinking about my first parents in my dreams at night and then I can explain to my mom on the way to school the next morning so she knows.
  
• Explaining to my mom about how sad I am so she can understand how I feel.
  
• My mom telling me it's okay to be mad and sad about being adopted. I don't have to be happy about it all the time.

2. Go to live in China like a real Chinese girl, going to school and walking everywhere. You can even go visit your orphanage and see how they loved you and took care of you.

3. Even if you don't go live in China, you can learn about China so you can understand more about your China family and why they couldn't keep you.

4. Reading stories about adoption helps, and reading my own lifebook helps too. I liked making my own book about my first parents and my adoption, and writing about my feelings in it. You can use your imagination to draw pictures of your first parents.

5. I like being with kids like me, adopted kids and Chinese kids, because they might have the same feelings I have. But they might not, too.

[OMG -- I promise, every word is Zoe's! She wrote this out yesterday while waiting for her ballet class to start, and I had no idea she'd written it until she showed it to me today and asked if I could post it on the blog. Yes, she did it as a numbered list, I just reorganized it a bit and combined a few things for ease of reading. I'm in awe -- Zoe, Born Blogger!]

Summer Re-Run: Adoption is Hard to Understand

Adoption is Hard to Understand, August 28, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, we were eating breakfast at Whataburger. Maya was cadging bites of my biscuit smothered in sausage gravy (how very Southern of us!), and Zoe was rummaging in my purse for a pen and something to write on (she finds the cardboard-thingy they put in a package of tights, don't ask what it was doing in my purse!) A typical weekend morning for our clan.

Zoe is scribbling away, and I'm trying to get my fork back from Maya, and then Zoe passes me a note: "Adoption is hard to understand." Too many people around to talk about it, so I write back: "Yes, but it helps when you talk about your feelings." Zoe jots a short answer: "True Mama." I like that: is it "True, Mama" or is it "True Mama"?!

When we were at second-grade orientation last week, the school counselor was introduced. Zoe asked me later what a counselor was, and I was explaining that it was someone you could talk to about your feelings. "Ohhhh, like talking about my birthparents." Right!

I also reminded Zoe that her Mimi was a counselor (she worked with terminal cancer patients, not school children). Zoe's response: "So that's what makes her a great grandmother!"

Summer Re-Runs: The adoption story

We're nearing the blog's one-year anniversary, and I'm feeling a little nostalgic. I thought I'd re-run some early posts while we're on vacation! If you come here looking for more than pretty pictures, I hope this will satisfy your appetite! And if you're new to the blog, it'll give you an idea of where we started.

The adoption story, August 15, 2008

The adoption story we tell always starts like this: "You grew like a flower in your birthmother's tummy until it was time to be born. Your birthparents couldn't take care of you, so . . . . " (I can't take credit for the "you grew like a flower" line -- it comes from one of our favorite books,
Over the Moon, by Karen Katz. I love to use stories to discuss "issues" with my kids!).

Well, for the first time, in June, Zoe asked WHY -- "WHY couldn't my birth parents take care of me?"

Like most of these things, the question came out of the blue -- we had just come home from somewhere, and Zoe and Maya had immediately fallen to the floor of the family room to play "Warriors," a game involving a cadre of knights and Polly Pockets standing in for the princesses. I followed into the family room a bit more slowly, and Zoe looked up at me and asked the WHY question.

I admit, I was surprised. We talk about her birthparents fairly often, she is sad that we don't know who they are, but she's accepted the "couldn't take care of you" line for years without question. But I guess it was about time. From what I've read, age 7 is a pretty common age for that big question.

I answered, "Well, sweetie, since we can't ask your birthparents, we really can't know exactly why they weren't able to take care of you the way a parent would want to. We can only make some guesses based on what we know about China. Do you want to look at your lifebook, and talk about what some of the reasons might be?"

(I'm a HUGE proponent of lifebooks -- more about them later, but look at Beth O'Malley's site for the BEST info about lifebooks.)

Zoe said yes, so we pulled out her lifebook and talked about China's one child policy and the social preference for boys. Zoe didn't have much reaction, but I knew we were no where near finished talking about this!

Report: Korean Birth Mother Presentation

Sorry it’s taken me so long to report on the birth mother presentation. I planned to blog about it as soon as I got the girls to bed last night, but I was exhausted, and went to bed at 8:30!

I am SO glad I went to this presentation. It was incredibly powerful and emotional. (That emotion was the cause of the exhaustion, in fact!). The two birth mothers spoke very honestly about their experiences, and as the friend who accompanied me said, the wounds were so obvious on them.

One birth mother was 25, and is now in college studying social work and working with the Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) in Seoul, S. Korea, the same organization through which she placed her child. She looked like a typical college student, except that she looked 16! She had long hair and was wearing a pink flowing skirt, a sparkly tee, multiple necklaces and earrings, cool glasses, and a completely closed expression. She said she had broken up with her boyfriend before she knew she was pregnant. When she contacted him to tell him, he said he didn’t want a baby and she should get rid of it. She went to get an abortion, but couldn’t go through with it when she heard the baby’s heartbeat. She intended to keep the baby, but with morning sickness she couldn’t work, and asked a social worker friend for help. The friend told her about Eastern, and she went to their unwed mothers home. She saw women there who had kept their babies, which gave her hope that she could do the same. She wrote her mother to tell her of the pregnancy and that she wanted to keep the baby. Her mom was completely opposed to her keeping the baby. After much thought and counseling and input from her mother, she made the hard decision to place her baby. She wanted the baby to have two parents, since she was raised by her mom alone. She wanted international adoption, because it would be “semi-open,” meaning that she would get information about the baby once a year. After deciding to relinquish her child for adoption, she was able to visit the baby once a month until the child left Korea.

She said the hardest part of adoption was once she had made the decision. She couldn’t handle seeing babies the same age as hers. She would be in despair, thinking, “Why me? Why can’t I have my baby when these other people have their babies? Why did I only get to hold my baby for a few hours?” She said at times she thought of suicide, and felt she had nothing to live for. She blamed her mother, she blamed herself. She tried suicide once. And another time when she thought she couldn’t live another minute, she heard from the agency that they had received an update about the baby from the adoptive parents. That was and is her greatest joy, getting updates about the baby. She decided that she wanted to improve herself, and live a good life, for her baby, whom she described as “my joy, hope, and life.” She said she knows the most joyous day will be when she can see her baby again.

One reason the updates about the baby were so important to her is that she drank at the beginning of her pregnancy and is so sorry about that, and worries about the effects on the baby’s health.

The older birth mother was 33, and had placed her baby for adoption 2 years ago. She was a little plump, and simply dressed in a blouse and khaki capris. She was single and pregnant, and she told us about going into labor at home, and not being able to make it to the hospital. She was alone, and had to cut the umbilical cord herself. The baby was fine at first, but became sick. She took him to the hospital, where he had to stay for a week. She didn’t know what to do, planned to raise her child, but contacted Eastern for help. She stayed at the home for unwed mothers with her baby. Every day she changed her mind about what to do. First she wanted to raise her baby, then she’d think what was best for the baby would be to place him for adoption, and then she’d change her mind again. She worried that she wouldn’t be able to give her baby opportunities, was worried about the social stigma of unwed birth that would attach to the baby. She said that when the baby was inside her, it was possible to think of them together as just one person, but when he was born and became another person, she had to think more about what would be in his best interest. Six weeks after the baby was born, she decided to place him for adoption. At first she wanted domestic adoption in Korea, but there was no possibility of an open adoption in Korea. With international adoption, she would be able to hear about the baby through the agency, and could perhaps see the baby again one day.

The worst day was when she took the baby to the agency for placement. She bathed and dressed him, and he was very, very fussy. He was usually a happy baby, so she thought he knew what was about to happen. At the agency, she felt cut in half, holding the baby with one hand and signing him away with the other. Going home alone, she could still hear his cries and smell baby smells. She would find her body still rocking him when he wasn’t in her arms any more. Once the baby was gone, she had so much free time and nothing to do but think of him and eat and eat and eat. She began drinking as well to deal with her grief. She changed from an optimistic person to someone mired in grief. She drank for 1.5 years, and is better now. She wants to do well for her baby. She has a new job, and they know about her baby, and they have been very supportive, even letting her take time to come to America to make this presentation.

She also was able to visit her baby before he left Korea. It was wonderful to see him each month, but hard to leave each time and hard to wait for the next visit. She wanted to make the visits, though, because she never wanted him to think she had abandoned him. And on his first birthday, the agency had a birthday party for him and she attended. She was so happy to see him there – he walked! And she loved to see that he liked to eat, just like her. She was very happy to see something of herself in her baby.

After the birth mothers and others talked (more about that in another post), there was a Q & A period. We were asked to write our questions on an index card and pass them up, and the moderator asked the questions.

The first question was, “Why did you come to talk to us and are you glad you did?”

They both answered that they wanted to puncture stereotypes adoptive parents might have about birth mothers. They wanted to stand up for the unwed mothers of Korea. And one said she wanted to know what life in America was like so she could see what life for her baby was like.

The question I asked was, true to AdoptionTalk, “What do you want adoptive parents to tell their kids about birth mothers?” I was almost sorry I asked, because it brought the younger birth mother to tears. But she said that before she was a birth mother, she had a very negative impression of adoption and birth mothers. She had watched TV shows where Korean adoptees said that their birth mothers abandoned them, and she thought that was how babies were adopted – they were all abandoned. She spoke forcefully and said, “I did not abandon my child.” She said she loved her baby and made the best decision she could for her child. She wanted adoptive parents to tell the children that their birth mothers loved them and did not abandon them. The older birth mother said the same, and added, “Sometimes love isn’t enough. I wanted my baby to have a better life. Tell them we love the babies, but we made a decision for their life.”

I also asked about how many women who are served by Eastern decide to parent rather than relinquish their children, and what services are offered to them. The social worker from Eastern said that currently 30% of the women at the unwed mother’s home decide to parent their children. She said that in the past it used to be very rare, but the trend is for more women to parent. She says that Eastern helps with counseling, short-term help with diapers and clothing, and help finding long-term housing. She also said the Korean government offers some support for single parents, but that it is not adequate.

There were an adoptive parent and an adult adoptee on the panel as well, I’ll post more about what they had to say later.

The birth mothers cried, the social workers cried, the adoptive mother on the panel cried, the audience cried, I cried. And it was so worth going!