Motherhood for an Adoptee a Priceless Bond

A must-read for this Mother's Day weekend, a Korean adoptee writes movingly about adoption and motherhood and her son's birth.  ALL of it is worth sharing, but I'm only giving you a snippet so you'll go read the whole thing:

With my son's arrival came something magical: a blood relative I could hold on to.

Family, I know, is not about genes. When you are born in Asia and raised by white Midwesterners and have nine cousins with blue eyes and fair skin, you learn that families can be cobbled together.

But adoptees must believe in the power of biology. What else ties us to our mothers, our fathers, who left us decades ago? Shared biology allows us to tell ourselves that someone out there still longs for us, still weeps for us, still dreams we will figure out how to get home. We yearn for these shadowy figures and the answers only they can reveal.

At the heart of it, though, is the simplest of things. It would be nice to know someone who looks like you.

Those first months as a mother, I searched for my own features in my son's face. We shared deep brown eyes and inky hair, but no distinctive characteristics. "He looks Asian," said a friend, "but he doesn't look like you." I snapped hundreds of photos, but had none of my own to compare them with.

Then a few weeks before my first Mother's Day, while cleaning out my desk, I happened upon a forgotten black-and-white image: Perched on her foster mother's lap is a girl wearing a cap and a checkered wool outfit, just days away from settling in another land, another language.

Chubby-cheeked and full-lipped, she looks timid and bewildered. I knew that look.

I laughed, then cried, then cried some more.

The face is vaguely my son's. And in that moment, I understood that in him are echoes of my birth mother, my birth father.

In all these years, I have never searched for them, believing it would prove fruitless. Yet somehow they have found their way here.

My boy doesn't look like me. He looks like us.

Wow. Just wow.  Zoe is my wondering girl when it comes to adoption, so I always wonder what biological motherhood might mean to her.  Right now, she's convinced she'll adopt, since both the sex part and the labor part sounds completely gross to her, but I wonder if she'll stick to that (oh, I know the sex-is-gross part is going to get jettisoned, I'm not THAT naive!).

Romney on Gay Adoption

I try to avoid politics, but can't here, where it's squarely about adoption! From ABC News:

Mitt Romney has consistently opposed same-sex marriage, but he again expressed support for gay adoption on Thursday, calling it “fine” and noting that it’s legal in his home state of Massachusetts. But he also stated his preference for every child to have a mother and a father.

“I believe marriage has been defined the same way for literally thousands of years by virtually every civilization in history and that marriage is literally by its definition a relationship between a man and a woman,” he told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. “And that if two people of the same gender want to live together, want to have a loving relationship and even want to adopt a child, in my state individuals of the same sex were able to adopt children. In my view that’s something that people have the right to do, but to call that marriage is, in my view, a departure of the real meaning of that word.”

Romney has made statements in the past in support of gay adoption, something social conservatives oppose. He has been consistent in supporting it, but has called for an exemption for religious institutions that have adoption services.

Another Adoptee Faces Deportation

Joining Joao Herbert, Matthew Sherer, John Gaul, Tara Ammons Cohen, Tatiana Mitrohina, Jennifer Haynes, Seo, and many, many more, and those unnamed and unknown, that long list of international adoptees facing deportation because of the failure of their parents to secure their American citizenship is Kairi Shepherd:

Kairi Shepherd was an orphan living in India when a Utah woman adopted her in 1982 — a seemingly good turn of luck for the 3-month-old, which included her obtaining legal permanent resident status in the United States.

But when she was 8, her adoptive mother died of cancer. When she was 17, she was arrested and convicted of felony check forgery to fuel a drug habit. Now 30, she is facing likely deportation after a 10th Circuit Court ruling Tuesday that upheld the federal government’s right to remove her from the country.

Judge Scott Matheson, in a 23-page decision, wrote the court simply didn’t have jurisdiction over determining Shepherd’s legal status.

Instead, Matheson denied her petition based on a series of technical procedures, including a failure to file a second appeal through the Board of Immigration Appeals as well as Shepherd’s attempt to get her petition reviewed prematurely.

Shepherd’s lawyer, Alan Smith, said he was disappointed the court didn’t tackle a "mistake" made by the federal government that allowed an immigration judge to uphold his client’s legal status after she provided a birth certificate, legal adoption papers and the argument she qualified for citizenship under the Child Citizenship Act of 2000.

The next day, however, government lawyers discovered she missed qualifying for the Child Citizenship Act by a few months and appealed the immigration judge’s ruling.

The government was successful.

* * *

According to her sister, when her mother died, she was passed between older siblings. At 17, she was introduced to meth by a co-worker. On top of that, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She served several months in jail and was placed on probation.

"Yes, she made mistakes. And she should be held accountable. But she has been," her sister Kristi Tafoya said at the time. "Why aren’t adopted children protected?"

International Adoptions Plummet

Nothing really new in this story, including the obligatory quote from Elizabeth Bartholet who has never seen an adoption restriction she approves of, but it does talk about stats from countries other than the U.S., which is different:

The number of international adoptions has plummeted to its lowest point in 15 years, a steep decline attributed largely to crackdowns against baby-selling, a sputtering world economy and efforts by countries to place more children with domestic families.

Globally, the number of orphans being adopted by foreign parents dropped from a high of 45,000 in 2004 to an estimated 25,000 last year, according to annual statistics compiled by Peter Selman, an expert on international adoptions at Britain's Newcastle University.

Some adoption advocates argue the decrease is also linked to a set of strict international guidelines known as the Hague Adoption Convention. Devised to ensure transparency and child protection following a rash of baby-selling and kidnapping scandals, critics say the guidelines have also been used by leading adopting nations, such as the U.S., as a pretext for freezing adoptions altogether from some countries that are out of compliance.

"It should have been a real step forward, but it's been used in a way that's made it a force for shutting down countries," Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard Law professor who promotes international adoptions. "That affects thousands of children every year."

She says places where international adoptions are stopped may ultimately see more children stuck in orphanages or on the street where they could fall prey to sex traffickers. "I question whether it's ever true where adoption is all about buying and selling and kidnapping," Bartholet says.

* * *

Other countries that have seen large drops in the adoption of foreign babies include Spain and France, which fell 48 percent and 14 percent, respectively, from 2004 to 2010. Canada remained the same and Italy actually saw a 21 percent increase during that period, according to Selman, who analyzed data from 23 countries that are primary receivers of adopted orphans.

One other way this article is different -- it talks about the demand side as well as the supply side in international adoption. The article notes two factors affecting the demand side: the global economic slowdown causing fewer adoptive parents able to afford the fees; and "[a]dvances in fertility technology and the increasing number of couples turning to surrogacy."

Utah Adoption Council President Resigns Over Birth Fathers' Rights

From KSL TV in Utah:

The president of the Utah Adoption Council resigned Thursday amid controversy over claims the council is working to undermine the rights of birth fathers.

Wes Hutchins was to serve another year as president of the Utah Adoption Council (UAC) — a group consisting of adoption agencies, adoption attorneys, families, and birth mothers and fathers. Instead, he's founded a new nonprofit organization he says will work in the best interests of all parties in adoptions.

There was certainly friction in Thursday's council meeting, as some representing adoption agencies accused Hutchins of having his own agenda. In turn, he pointed fingers at them for not acting ethically in administering adoptions.

"I'm an adoption attorney. I've done over 1,080 adoptions, (and) finalized six adoptions on Friday of last week alone," Hutchins said, following the meeting. "I'm a big proponent of adoptions, but I firmly believe they need to be done legally, constitutionally and ethically."

* * *

"That's one of the changes that we need to make: that fraud is no longer accepted as a method of taking a child from one home, destroying a family, and placing (the child) in another home to create another family," he said.

That opinion conflicts with others who sit on the UAC.

"Wes has had a different vision of what's best for children in the state of Utah," said attorney David Hardy, also a former president of the UAC.

Hardy, whose clients include adoption agencies and adoptive parents, said Hutchins isn't as focused on what's best for the child.

* * *

"There's been a very choreographed effort to sweep birth fathers and others under the rug," Hutchins said.

And some of those birth fathers were present and vocal.

"I do have a voice, and it needs to be heard," said Jake Strickland, a father currently fighting for custody of his child.

"There's two sides to every story," added Bobby Nevares, a man in the same situation as Strickland, "but they didn't want to hear the father's side."

Hutchins said the council didn't really want to hear his side either and accused him of having an agenda.

"If you want to call that ‘an agenda,' then absolutely, call it an agenda. And that agenda is to see that we have a balanced approach in Utah to how we're doing adoptions," Hutchins said.

I've posted before about the unfriendly approach Utah law takes to birth fathers -- see here and here and here and here and here and here and . . . I think I'll be writing about Utah and birth fathers for a long, long time yet.

Top 10 Asian Children's Books Around Food

At JadeLuckClub, an top ten list, introduced as follows:

The pleasures of eating and how food brings people together. This is a concept that is very strong in countries with a strong food culture: the French, the Italians, and of course, pretty much all Asian countries!

The themes in all these picture books and chapter books ring true. Ethnic food that bonds a family into our culture can also isolate them. Our Asian ethnic food is “weird” or “stinky.” In rejecting our food, we feel rejected or at least, on the periphery, longing for “American” food to be like everyone else.

But then that miracle happens, when our food is accepted, enjoyed and even requested. Our complicated relationship food, it turns out, is not so different from any other nationality obsessed with food. And the result is similar — food as pleasure. Family bonded around the dining room table. And meal after delicious meal to build memories around.

We've enjoyed a number of the books on the list, but our all-time favorite is Apple Pie 4th of July.

The Avengers Make Fun of Adoption

This movie isn't on our watch list -- my girls deem it too scary!  But now I have another reason not to see it. At 73adoptee, Triona asks an important question:  why is it ok to make adoptees the butt of the joke:

So there I am, forgetting my woes, laughing at the gang and drooling over Chris Hemsworth, when we get this lovely little tidbit. Thor is trying to explain to the others that Loki is his brother and his responsibility.

Black Widow points out, "He killed 80 people in 2 days."

Thor explains, "He's adopted."

Cue entire theater laughing.... except for me.

* * *

What bothered me is that this is a prime example of how adoptees are one of the last fair sources of discriminatory humor.

* * *

"He's adopted." Why is this joke acceptable? Why did the audience laugh? Why didn't they rise up in HULK SMASH anger like I wanted to and scream, "Hey! That's not funny!"

Go read the whole thing -- Triona makes a lot of good points.

"We'll eat you up. We love you so."

Image from My Green Vermont

I saw the report of Maurice Sendak's death this morning, and was immediately thrust back in time to when Maya joined our family, and I was adjusting to parenting two kids instead of one.  In many ways, we had it better than most -- Zoe and Maya got along really well from the beginning, happily sharing toys and food and baths and beds. 

The only thing they wouldn't share was ME!  If Maya was sitting on my lap, then Zoe had to sit there, too.  And if Zoe joined Maya on my lap, Maya would try to push her off! I was still in the middle of my semester, trying to make it through to summer when I could have time off with newly-adopted Maya and adjusting-to-sisterhood Zoe.  So I felt like a three-sided wishbone, tugged between Maya and Zoe and work.

Zoe was firmly in a Where the Wild Things Are phase, and she wanted me to read it over and over and over. . . .  Maya liked it too, and if Zoe wasn't asking me to read it, Maya was thrusting it at me to read.  And every time I got to the lines,“Please don't go. We'll eat you up. We love you so,” I really felt like their neediness, their normal-in-the-circumstances, clingy, crazy-making, wild-thing neediness, was going to eat me up until there was nothing left of me.

So there.  Everyone else's Maurice Sendak reminiscences today are about the joys of parenting or the innocence of childhood.  Mine is about being destroyed by motherhood. Sometimes truth isn't pretty!

Of course, as Zoe and Maya and I became more accustomed to being a family of three, the feelings of being eaten to death changed.  I was able to focus more on the "We love you so" part instead of the "We'll eat you up" part.  And now, I love it when they pull out this old favorite, snuggle on my lap, and let me read to them.

Would you adopt Chardonnay or Chrystal?

This is a truly awful story in the Mail (UK), but not awful for the reason the author seems to think -- she writes about how terrible it is that birth parents give their children names that adoptive parents don't like, and social workers won't allow the name to be changed, and SO THE ADOPTIVE PARENTS DON'T ADOPT!  The author blames the birth parents and the social workers, but gives the adoptive parents a complete pass -- OF COURSE, an adoptive parent won't want to adopt a child named Chardonnay or Chrystal!  Really?!  Here's a sample of the completely horrible, snobbish position of this writer, who says she worked for two years approving adoptions in her county:

Sitting on a Winnie The Pooh blanket, a baby girl waves her chubby arms with joy as she attempts to stack up some wooden bricks, chuckling each time they fall down.

At less than a year, she would be the perfect child for any couple unable to have a baby of their own. You would also assume her time on the adoption register would be short.

But instead of a loving home and the prospect of a good start in life, it’s highly likely she will languish in the care system for some time to come.

The reason? Well, unfortunately she’s called Chardonnay — as opposed to, say, Charlotte — and for this reason she will struggle to be placed.

* * *

The reality is that most children up for adoption, even babies, come from dire backgrounds, where it’s highly likely Dad has been in prison and Mum was addicted to heaven knows what illegal substances and working as a prostitute.

And while some adopted children will go on to have behavioural problems because of their poor start in life, there are still many successful adoptions that take place.

But, unfortunately, the names of these blameless children make their less-than-middle-class backgrounds all too obvious. And most prospective parents don’t want to adopt children who are named after someone’s favourite celebrity or tipple.

For some reason there is currently a fashion, among those whose children are forcibly removed, for calling little girls after drinks — hence two recent babies called Chardonnay and Champagne. There is also a tendency to name girls after jewels, though often misspelt: Rubie, Emmarald, Jayde, Chrystal.

And there are those birth parents who think, why ruin your child’s future with just one dreadful name when you can wallop them straight into the gutter of life with two? So we on the adoption board who are trying to place these children in loving homes are confronted with Gemma-Mai, Courtney-Mai, Alexia-Mai, Lily-Mai, Shania-Rae and so on, names which will mark them out for their whole lives as members of a peculiarly British underclass.

Simply put, the children’s names do not fit with the social demographic of the people coming forward to give them homes.

You might think a simple, and obvious, solution would be for adoptive parents to change the child’s name. After all, under-twos are still young enough to adapt to a new identity and will have no memory of their birth name.

But in the past few years it has become standard practice for social workers to recommend that the birth name be retained, a suggestion which is then rubber-stamped by the judge at adoption hearings.

Changing the name is something adoptive parents almost always want to do, especially if they already have birth children of their own. Naturally you want a new child to blend in with your existing family — but will Chardonnay ever fit in with Henry, James and William? No.

In [one] case, the social workers said that changing the name would be ‘a loss of the child’s family identity’. The proud family identity, presumably, which turned out three generations of career criminals.

It might sound flippant, but I honestly think there would be many more adoptive parents if they were allowed to change the baby’s name.

* * *

It is my view that adoptive parents should have the right to change the first name of a child if they want to, really awful background details should be toned down and dreadful birth parents should forfeit their parental rights entirely.

The Americans say that any American child has the right to grow up and be President. So, who knows, with a few more common sense rules in the adoption system, little Chardonnay might one day grow up to be Prime Minister. Sadly, as things stand, it’s highly unlikely.

This article seems to illustrate every class-based prejudice in the world, and then claims it to be appropriate to have that bias!  The name thing seems to be just the tip of the iceberg  -- can adoption work when adoptive parents and adoption workers have such contempt for the "low-class" birth parents?!

Admittedly, I gave my kids new first names while keeping their Chinese names as middle names. But would I have turned down the referral if I was told I couldn't change their names? No way!!!  Is it a good reason not to adopt, that the child's name doesn't fit the high-class name of the adoptive parents other children?!  No way!!!

A Day For Forgotten Moms of Korean Adoptees

From the Wall Street Journal:

May is a month of quasi-holidays in South Korea. Saturday was Children’s Day and Tuesday is Parents Day. Teachers’ Day is coming up and so is Couples’ Day.

Amid this month of days that promote Korean ideals of family life, the government in 2006 designated May 11 as Adoption Day. The idea was to raise awareness of – and promote adoption by — Korean families.

A less-talked-about element behind Adoption Day is the hope by government officials to reduce South Korea’s reliance on international couples to adopt children from Korean orphanages.

But even less talked about than that goal is the fact that most children put up for adoption are the product of relationships between men and women who don’t marry. And the shame over that is heaped most heavily on the woman carrying the baby.

That’s why, for the second year in a row, several groups that promote the rights and welfare of single moms (unwed, divorced, widowed, you name it) have banded together to declare that Adoption Day also be recognized as Single Mothers’ Day.

They hope to raise awareness that the problems that lead women to give up their babies for adoption could be solved if the government and society in general provided more support to them.

* * *

At the core of the adoption debate is that South Korean policymakers are focused on the symptoms of the issue (for instance, a still-high rate international adoptions) rather than its causes (the welfare of the families putting children up for adoption).

“The international community agrees that the best thing is for a child to be raised by his or her own family, then the second thing is domestic adoption and the third thing is international adoption,” Ms. [Jane Jeong] Trenka says. “Korea is playing around with number 2 and number 3, while we’re asking that they look at number 1.”

“If we know that, of the documented adoptions, that 92% involve single parents, then there’s a pattern here,” she added. “Since we agree that the best thing to do is be raised by mom, why don’t we do that?”

If you're interested in supporting Single Mothers' Day in Korea, click here for more information.

Finding Your Roots, Ancestry & Blank Pages

I just watched PBS' Finding Your Roots with my kids. I wasn't planning to, but they came in on the Ellis Island segment, and Maya wanted to see that part since they studied Ellis Island this year. Then they became mesmerized by the rest of it.

Interesting reactions from them, about ancestry and birth parents and knowing and telling kids about adoption. They're helping me write this post, I'm mostly just taking dictation!

Zoe thought the show was cool because people got to learn about their ancestry and where they came from.  Like Margaret Cho who thought her family came from Korea, but it turns out her genetic roots are actually in China.  Zoe wondered if the show ever did adopted people, and I explained the difficulty in doing so, when original birth certificates are hidden away so that adopted people can't know the names of their birth parents.  Makes for a short search.  Zoe also wondered if a DNA test could show her relatives, and I explained that you need someone else's DNA for comparison to find out if someone is your relative.  She immediately pointed at Maya, saying she thought it would be cool if they were not just adopted-related, but were birth-related.  I asked if it would make a difference -- would she love Maya more or less?  Zoe said no, but it would be cool.

Maya thought it's nice that the grown-ups on the show get to know a little more about their ancestors that they had no idea about.  People don't really know a lot about what's happened to their families, she said, but she would like to know what happened to her biological family.  She said she'd like to know about her actually from-birth ancestors, not about my ancestors.  It wouldn't be the same thing, she thought, for adopted kids to just learn about the adopted parents' ancestors. Zoe thought you could learn about your adoptive parents' ancestry, but it wouldn't help you like learning about your OWN ancestry.

I mentioned a lot of grown-ups, including me, don't know much about our ancestry.  They both thought they felt different about it because they're adopted.  Zoe thought since adopted people don't even know their birth parents, it makes you want to know more about where you came from.  [Indeed.]   She said if you knew the names of your birth parents then you could learn about them, and learn more about your ancestry that way.  Maya thinks it's important that adopted kids know they were adopted, so they know they had another family. But she thinks parents are sort of afraid to tell their kids because they think maybe their kids won't love them if they find out. It's silly to think that, Maya says, because you have two families in one, and they should be ok with that.  Zoe thinks knowing more is always better than not knowing.

Maya said she didn't know even one little thing about her birth parents.  But Zoe said she knew a few things, like they existed.  And if you're from a different country, you know that's their heritage (or at least you think you know! (see Margaret Cho)).  Maya said we can know some things about them because maybe they like the same things we do, like music and dance.  Zoe thought you also know a little about what they look like based on what you look like, like black hair, Chinese eyes, tan skin. 

Maya had the best quote of the night:  "Not knowing about your ancestors leaves you on a blank page and you wonder what kinds of cultures you come from and why your ancestors did what they did and why they liked what they liked."

[Indeed.]

"I Found My Biological Parents and Wish I Hadn't"

From the New York Times Magazine, a rumination on adoption and reunion:

I was young, maybe 4, when I learned where babies came from. I was sitting on a leopard-print couch in my mom’s bachelorette apartment, and her friend decided on a whim to read to me that seminal ’70s book on the nitty-gritty of conception, “Where Did I Come From?” I remember experiencing a gag reflex and wanting to plug my ears and sing lalalalalalala.

“Ewww, that is so gross,” I said.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“No, it’s really, really gross,” I said and held my ground for the next decade.

When I was 6, I learned where I came from, which was one step removed from the usual circumstances. I was adopted. The adoption talk was less nauseating but equally perplexing. My mother, who has a penchant for tangents, got sidetracked by a lengthy explanation of black-market adoptions before reassuring me that that was not how I’d been acquired.

There was the time before I knew and the time after I knew, but I’m unaware of there being any significant emotional shift. If I’d been given the choice of meeting my biological parents or getting a nice dossier on them, I would have chosen the latter. I was never obsessed with being adopted. I was simply curious about my biological parents.

I didn’t feel a strong bond with the parents who raised me, and I had anything but a happy childhood. My mother was overly sensitive; my father, ascetic. I was neither. I felt as if I were living with complete strangers. I suspect that my parents felt the same way. They had always been unnaturally suspicious of me, going so far as to check my arm for needle marks before I’d ever gone to a party or gotten drunk. But knowing that I was adopted untethered me from some of that unhappiness. I was alone but happily so. I was free to make up any story I wanted about where I came from.

The piece also talks about her limited contact with her birth parents as an adult, so go read the whole thing.  I was mostly interested in what she shared about her childhood adoption talks and emotions, including what sounds like a god-awful adoption talk at age 6 (!).

India Supreme Court Asked to Suspend IA

From FirstPost.India, under the headline, Baby Business?:

Pune based NGOs ‘Sakhi’ and ‘Advait Foundation’ had moved the apex court saying that inter- country adoption has turned into a lucrative business, as adoption agencies are giving undue preference to prospective adoptive parents in foreign countries over Indian couples in need of children.

The petition has sought a detailed investigation into the procurement of children through extortion, blackmail, threats and through bribery of government officials. It also asks the court to look into what it is calling the inhuman condition of children in various agencies.

“At present there are 5000 Indian families on the waiting list for adopting a child, whereas 600- 800 children are annually sent abroad by way of inter- country adoption from India. It is significant to note that though we have a population of 110 crore, we send these children abroad keeping our families without babies to nurture,” said Anjali Pawar of Sakhi.

The petition also alleges that many “missing” children reach adoption agencies from where they are shipped out to foreign destinations. “The CBI should probe the link between missing children and children going in inter- country adoption”, they said.

Outrage Over Agency's Bankruptcy

As I was reading this article, I kept thinking, "Why do people doubt that adoption is a business? These parents are outraged when the goods they ordered aren't delivered:"

"Cheats, crook, liars,” is how Elyse Goldshein describes the agency. She and her husband were looking to adopt in 2009. They signed a contract with ASA and paid a $13,000 up front fee. In their application, they specified they did not want to deal with birth mothers who tested positive for drugs. Elyse Goldshein says she was assured by ASA that there were plenty of babies available.

The first call from ASA with a possible match was met with disappointment when the Goldsheins learned she was drug addicted. They reluctantly accepted the match. Weeks later, they say they were informed the mother tried to commit suicide. That’s when they dropped the match and asked for another birth mother, this time telling their case worker they no longer wanted to deal with mothers testing positive for drug use. The Goldshiens say that’s when their case worker told them their expectations were unrealistic, and that sort of demand would result in a long wait for a baby.

"They lied,” said Elyse Goldshein, “but there's really no way to prove that they were lying to us and all there was is that signed contract, and all of our money."

E.J. Graff: Don't Adopt From Ethiopia

E.J. Graff weighs in on the recent WSJ story about the boom in Ethiopian adoption, which focused on the adoption of Melesech, a little girl:

While Melesech's life is materially better, her adoption has not helped those left behind. Her birth family is still, quite literally, dirt poor. So is her country. Other parents are still at risk for dying of malaria, dysentery, and other preventable and treatable illnesses. What Ethiopians really need is a government that is not strangling its development, and forms of aid that actually reach and help individual families. Failing that, is it right to spirit some of their children away?

Here's the rule of thumb: If you can get a healthy infant or toddler within a year, don't adopt from that country. Adopt, instead, from American foster care, or from countries that send abroad very few children, and when they do, the children who are available are older, or disabled, or come in sibling groups, or otherwise have had trouble finding new local homes. Or if you're adopting for humanitarian reasons, donate that money an organization that helps children stay with their families, or brings clean water and mosquito nets and medicines to their villages.

It's far more rewarding to love an individual child than to give to anonymous foreigners. I know; I'm parenting an adopted child. But no one wants to be complicit, even unknowingly, in defrauding a father out of his daughter.

Review: A Brand New Life

A reader, who sometimes comments as Chinazhoumom, contacted me after watching this movie, about a Korean orphanage, with her daughter.  I asked her if she'd do a review, and she has! Her daughter has also added a few thoughts.  Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Review: A Brand New Life

by Carol Mackoul

It started as a regular night. My 7.5 year old and I were watching tv. Looking for something on “On demand”…

Up pops a commercial for this movie A BrandNew Life...to which my daughter says mom can we watch this.

Of course the fibers of mama bear (wanting to always protect and shelter my daughter pop up)....but we are not that house. I believe that knowledge is power. And with the knowledge you can decide how to move forward.

So we had a discussion about what this would be about and that it could or could not be similar to orphanage life in china. (one note my daughter may have only been 14 months old when she came home but she told me , when looking at a picture of the orphanage room...exactly which crib she slept in...(as was later verified by the nanny when we visited her orphanage when she was 4.

I digress but only to point out that our children remember much more than given credit for.

PLEASE NOTE SPOILER ALERT…items from the movie will be mentioned…go watch it…then come back and continue reading…

Although you have an idea of where the film will take you in your minutes that you spend together…you are not sure how you will get there.  I have to say that the story and movie were well done.  I felt that they did not glamorize “orphan” status nor did they “lay it on too thick”.  They showed a window into a slice of her childhood.  Is it better than most, I can’t judge that…is it worse…again that is something that I will never know.

Smiling…that is how you first see Jinhee.  She is happy…so very happy…just as a child should be.  Not a care in the world.  She enjoys the wind in her hair…like flying away and soaring above all the worries of life.

Laughing at the thought of new clothes…made to feel special…loved by her daddy.  Cared for, tucked in bed…staying warm…staying safe…

Until, that day….the day that changes her life’s course forever…gone is her father…to never return…gone is all that she knows and holds dear.  Gone are the bike rides feeling on top of the world. Gone is the family where she knew “who” she was…to a place…a place we cannot imagine…a place without a mama to tuck you in and kiss your cheek…and to love you no matter what.

Thrust into the first “brand new life”.  Learning the rules, learning to live life in a different place and time. Learning to adjust to life in an orphanage.  She truly believes that her father will return for her and even asked the director of the orphanage to check as she knows her address.

He is never coming back.

I felt that the same “ray” I see in so many of the children adopted from China was seen in Jinhee in the film.  Down deep there is a will to survive.  I see it in coping mechanisms portrayed by one of the girls in the movie.  Her character is the “perfect little girl”.  Speaking English to the adoptive parents touring the facility, smiling, saying she wants a family and to become a doctor.

I see it in the main character Jinhee.  Her will kicks in and she realizes that if she continues down the path she is headed, she too may age out and be “placed” with a family as a servant, as one of the older girls was in the film.

I feel like this a great film to view especially if you are adopting an older child.  All children that become part of your family thru adoption have a past, whether they were placed in your arms at birth or as an older child or teenager.  Their life story was written on the sands in the wind before you (their parent) ever came into the picture.  I feel that it is our responsibility to help them weather the changing tides.  As our children get older and understand more about what may have brought them to our arms…we are there to wipe away the tears, and support them as they develop.  Will we have the answers, no.  Will we be able to take away the pain, not always. But maybe, just maybe we can provide them with tools to grow and develop into the best person that they can be.  And to understand that although they were dealt a hand of cards…they are in control and can choose to trade the hand they had for a brand new life.

Watch this film. 

Watch it without your child.  Absorb the tale and realize that this, although Korea, is not the same as most of our children from China (in that a parent took them to the director).  The end result was that they found themselves in an orphanage and eventually left it for A Brand New Life.

Watch it with your child.  Why? It may be a great tool to open discussion if needed. 

You decide what is best for your family. Every child is different.

Will you cry…you bet.  But will you see our children in the eyes looking back at you from the screen? I did.  I was reminded that so many children wait for a family…and governments take too long to find them homes. While they pass bills and change rules…the children grow up…and if not to A Brand New Life, where will they wind up?

The movie will touch you.  It is based on a lady’s real life.  She was adopted by a Canadian couple many years ago…. 

Let me know what you think…even if you don’t agree with me.

#####

Written by my daughter 7.5 yrs old. (I asked her to write whatever she wanted about the movie-this was written a couple of weeks after watching…

I think that Jinhee’s clothes are cute because one has little flowers straps and lots of white ruffles.  Jinhee’s life was a lot like mine! The main difference is when Jinhee was abandoned she must have been five or six.  I was only one. Jinhee’s best friend was Sookee, they are both Korean from Korea, very near China.  Jinhee was always following Sookee around just like when I was young.

Temperament: Do You and Your Child(ren) "Fit"?

Back in 2009, I attended a parenting session at Chinese Heritage Camp that dealt with the challenges of building emotional connections in adoptive families.  I described it as "a mish-mosh of attachment issues, post-institutionalized behaviors, brain chemistry, and temperament."  The speaker shared the chart above, and asked us to mark ourselves and our children.  Guess what?  My children and I do not fit!

I thought about that session when I saw this AP story today:

It's a concept that parents may not be familiar with, but experts say it can explain a lot about family conflicts: Is your child's temperament a good "fit" with yours?

For example, a stubborn child who's a chip off the old block might have a lot of showdowns with an equally stubborn mom or dad. But contrasting temperaments don't necessarily assure good results: A determined child might overwhelm an overly flexible parent.

Many personality traits like these are inborn, but "temperaments can also be colored by the environment in which children are raised," said child psychologist Brian Daly, who teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

That means parents who take a step back to consider their child's personality traits may be able to tailor their childrearing style to deal more effectively with problems.

* * *

One finding from their research was that a good "fit" between children and parents results when adult expectations, values and demands are in accord with a child's natural capacities and behaviors. Their last book, published in 1999, was called "Goodness of Fit." (Thomas died in 2003, Chess died in 2007.)

But their theory was not just a way of letting parents off the hook by blaming kids for personality traits they could not control. The takeaway for parents was that conflicts resulting from a poor fit between parent and child might be ameliorated if childrearing practices could be changed. The theory has withstood the test of time, with psychologists and other experts who work with children and parents still using some of these concepts today.

* * *

Another thing to keep in mind when a child's personality presents challenges, Fogel said: "This is the temperament she was born with; this is how she acts, this is how you act. You try to find a way to make things better but there's no magic answer, there's no formula."

That, she added, is "the hard part."

International Adoption: The American Dream?

That's the title of an lengthy article in the St. Petersburg Times, addressing adoption in and from Russia, though it's a a bit opaque in figuring the connection between the headline and the main point (if any!) of the article:

When American Denise Wesolowski found out that she could not have her own biological children, she was upset, but years after learning the news, she said she was “glad it worked out that way.”

“That’s because now we have our Anna!” Wesolowski told The St. Petersburg Times.

Back in 1993, Wesolowski and her husband turned to Russia to adopt a child.

* * *

According to official statistics from Russia’s Ministry of Education and Science, during the past 12 years, more than 45,000 Russian children have been adopted by Americans. Thousands more have been adopted by Spanish, Italian, German, French and other families. Taking into account the uncontrolled statistics of foreign adoption in the 1990s, the figures then will have been two or three times higher, experts say.

In recent years, Russia, along with China and Ethiopia, has become one of the top countries from which Americans adopt children.

However, Russia is now becoming a trickier option for foreigners wishing to adopt, as Russian authorities are trying to significantly decrease the number of Russian children adopted and taken abroad for a number of reasons.

In March of this year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for the minimization of foreign adoption in Russia.

* * *

However, Svetlana Agapitova, the children’s ombudsman for St. Petersburg, said that the Russian authorities do not intend to completely freeze foreign adoption.

“The idea is to create a situation in which only accredited and reliable adoption agencies can set up and manage adoptions,” said Agapitova. “They would monitor the adopted child’s life and well-being. There are currently many agencies that don’t have the required status. That is why Russia is now working on certain agreements with other countries regarding the matter,” she explained.

Agapitova said it is impossible for Russia to ban foreign adoption.

“First of all, there is no line of Russian adoptive parents waiting to adopt that would allow for all Russian orphans to find a home,” said Marina Levina, president of the St. Petersburg Roditelsky Most (Parents’ Bridge) charity organization.

* * *

A few years ago, the Wesolowskis decided to try and get in touch with Anna’s Russian family. Lidia, Anna’s birth mother, was very happy to finally learn what happened to her child. Back in the 1990s Lidia, who already had three older children, gave Anna up for foreign adoption when she realized that she wouldn’t be able to provide her newborn daughter, who was deaf, with proper medical care.

* * *

“I truly hope that the Russian authorities keep adoptions open to Americans,” Wesolowski said.

“The help that Anna got from living in the United States was a true miracle. What would her life be like if she had never been adopted?” Wesolowski asked. “She would live with her parents in their apartment and have no access to the hearing world. She would not have learned to speak or lip-read or even be able to go to school. By hearing the success stories of the children adopted from Russia, how could they not want children to have a better way of life?” she said.

I suppose that last part is the "American Dream" part of the article.

I find it's' pretty typical for adoptive parents to play these kinds of "what if" scenarios, imagining that their children would have died, or suffered, or had a terrible life, if they had not adopted them.  Maybe it's true, BUT WE DON'T KNOW! We can NEVER know.  And the more we play that "what if" game, the more we start thinking of ourselves as saviors.  And the more we're asking our children to be grateful. . . .

What's a bit strange about this particular "what if" story is that the adoptive parent is imagining what would have happened if the child had never been placed for adoption; usually it's a "what if" they had languished forever in an orphanage. Here, the adoptive parent speculates on how terrible the child's life would have been if she had remained with her biological parents.

In addition to that WE DON'T KNOW part, it's pretty judgmental and condescending toward those parents, assuming that they would not do the best to take advantage of whatever resources they did have if they had decided to parent.  It's also, in most cases,  pretty ignorant toward a culture we know nothing about, and based on provincial assumptions about the superiority of our own country and culture. Is it any wonder that the phrase "ugly American" has entered language worldwide?!

Grace Lin Recommends Asian-American Books for Kids

At PBSParents, Grace Lin recommends 10 of her favorite books (not authored by her!) about/for Asian-American kids, introducing them with a glimpse into her past:

When I was in first grade, my school librarian pulled out a book to read to the class. “Today,” she said, “we’re going to read ‘The Five Chinese Brothers.’”

“Chinese!” all my classmates whispered and turned to me, “just like you!”

Even as young as I was, I burned with embarrassment, resentment and despair. The Chinese brothers were mustard yellow with weird hats and long pigtails. I watched “Little House on the Prairie” on television and my favorite food was McDonald’s french fries. Those five brothers were not Chinese just like me.

Not surprisingly, the list she gives is heavy on books that modern Asian-American kids can identify with.  The last book on the list, American Born Chinese, is one of Zoe's most recent "favorite reads."

Ten Things

There are so many little things I've been meaning to blog about, none of which seemed worthy of a whole post, or if it does seem worthy, I don't have time for! So I thought I'd try to slap up a list/mini-posts of some of them:

1.  I am so proud of Zoe -- she decided to run for Student Council!  Results released today, so I don't know if she won (about 2/3 of her class ran, so it's hard to call!), which is why I wanted to post NOW.  Because it doesn't matter if she won.  I'm just so amazed that she ran! At her age, I wouldn't have had the courage, the potential rejection would have kept me off the ballot! In her "campaign speech," limited by the rules to 90 seconds, she said she wanted to help make the school a better place, with two planks to her platform:  expanding the school's recycling program beyond paper, and enacting a bullying prevention program "because I've been bullied before and people need to learn to stand up for themselves!" Oh, and in case you're thinking she's too stuffy for words, she's also proposing Taco Tuesday and Wok Wednesday for the cafeteria menu, and Pajama Day and Crazy Hair Day as school-wide celebrations. . . .

2.  We went to see Chimpanzee the first day it was showing, and the girls loved it. The cinematography was amazing, and even more amazing is how a bunch of humans managed to get all that footage! The anthropomorphizing was very strong, of course, and it would have been interesting to see the movie without the narration to see if we would have put the same human interpretation on the animals' conduct. Afterward, talking to the girls about the adoption themes, they were very intent on pointing out how different the story was from their adoptions. Zoe first noted that Oscar, the baby chimp, got to stay with his birth mother for a long time, unlike her. And Maya pointed out that Oscar's mother died, "she didn't just leave him somewhere." Their disparate responses are so like them -- Zoe who misses her birth mother and wishes she'd stayed, and Maya who says she doesn't think about her birth mother much, but who harbors anger about abandonment.

3. For Spanish class, Maya had to research Chilean culture, and in the course of the project, I found a Pablo Neruda poem I love:

Brown and Agile Child

Brown and agile child, the sun which forms the fruit
And ripens the grain and twists the seaweed
Has made your happy body and your luminous eyes
And given your mouth the smile of water.

A black and anguished sun is entangled in the twigs
Of your black mane when you hold out your arms.
You play in the sun as in a tidal river
And it leaves two dark pools in your eyes.

Brown and agile child, nothing draws me to you,
Everything pulls away from me here in the noon.
You are the delirious youth of bee,
The drunkedness of the wave, the power of the wheat.

My somber heart seeks you always
I love your happy body, your rich, soft voice.
Dusky butterfly, sweet and sure
Like the wheatfiled, the sun, the poppy, and the water.

4. Have you watched the Anderson Cooper (CNN) special on race and children? It didn't really reveal anything I didn't know, but it was nonetheless fascinating.  It confirms what I blogged about here -- not talking about race with our children doesn't make them colorblind, it makes them convinced that their parents don't like people of other races.  Also interesting was the change between age 7, where kids thought it was ok for kids of different races to be friends, and age 13, where more of them said it wasn't ok.  Why the shift?  The experts said it was that at that age, kids are starting to get different messages about race from their parents because of their parents' concerns about interracial dating.

5.  Last week, at a restaurant, I was talking to a friend about the Anderson Cooper episode on race and children while our kids played.  As we were leaving the restaurant, I spied the special being replayed on television, stopped and pointed it out to my friend.  The kids stopped, too, and watched for a moment a segment where an African-American boy was saying that he didn't think kids with different skin could be friends.  Maya immediately turned to me and said, "That's just sad! Why does he think that?!"  We had a long talk about it on the drive home.

6.  Ballet recital is coming up, and Sunday was picture day, which means too much makeup and cool costumes and showing off at Mimi's over-60 apartment complex, where the girls are always a big hit.  That led to an after-photos photo shoot there:

The ballet this year is Hansel & Gretel; Maya is a redbird (who wickedly eats the trail of bread crumbs) and Zoe is a villager (who is obviously well-to-do given the princessy costume!).

7.  Has anyone heard anything about the Encarnacion Bail Romero trial?  That's the undocumented worker who lost her son to adoption while she was in jail.  After reversal of the case by the Missouri Supreme Court, there was a trial over the issue which started in February. I haven't found any news in the media at all since the first day of trial. No hint of the court's ruling.  Anyone out there know anything?

8.  Oh, and how about another birth-mother-as-pass-through-body story?  Edie Falco, in this People article, tells us, “The second you are handed a newborn it is yours. It doesn’t matter what body it came out of. I’ve never felt more strongly about anything in my life."  Sheesh. How dismissive and cruel to think of your children's birth mothers in this way.  And this after saying that she's going to wait a while before explaining to her 8-year-old (8-YEAR-OLD!) that not everyone is adopted: “I’m thinking I’m going to wait with that as long as I can, the fact that some of the ladies keep the babies for their own. We will get to that.”  And THAT after saying the stigma of adoption just doesn't exist the way it used to -- what exactly does she think her actions are showing her kids about the stigma of adoption?! It's so effing stigmatizing she can't even bring herself to tell her 8-year-old the truth about it! (OK, maybe I could have done a full post about this one!)

9.  Last night on the Jon Stewart show (yes, that's where I get all my news, though I'm far too old for the target demographic!), he interviewed Zach Wahls, the 20-year-old author of My Two Moms. You may remember him from this video of him addressing the Iowa House Judiciary Committee about full marriage equality. I just downloaded it to my Kindle as my Mother's Day present.  We may have only one mom in our family, but I figured I could learn a lot from this nontraditional family!

10. Remember the millionaire polo tycoon who adopted his adult fiancee so that she could share in a trust he was trying to keep away from the family whose son he'd killed in a DWI accident?  Well, in case you're curious, John Goodman was in fact convicted for that drunk driving homicide. Still doesn't answer the question about the legality of the adoption, given its non-traditional purpose, or what effect it will have in a civil law suit by the victim's parents, but still, a guilty verdict.  Yesterday was supposed to be the sentencing hearing, but it's been postponed until May 11, because a juror testified that he felt pressured into the guilty verdict, and that he wasn't convinced of the defendant's guilt. Six other jurors and two alternates said there was no pressure.  I don't think the defendant is likely to get a new trial because of the issue, but we'll have to see. That alone shouldn't do it, but it looks to me like the defense is gearing up to complain that this is proof that the trial court should have moved the trial to another location because Goodman couldn't get a fair trial in Palm Beach, and that's a more persuasive claim. Goodman faces up to 30 years in prison.