Does International Adoption Hurt Women Outside the US?
These are the controversial questions that Katie Leo grapples with in "Feminist lens on adoption" at the Minnesota Women's Press website.
This issue is intensely personal to Leo; she was adopted from Korea before she was a year old. Today, struggling with the pain of her own infertility, she had been considering an international adoption until she began to read the work of feminist authors, adoptees, activists, and others who see a disconnect in the reasoning of feminists/social justice advocates who adopt from other countries.
Leo explains how her views on adoption have evolved:
[H]ere is the story I was told about myself when I was a young girl: You were abandoned on the doorstep of an orphanage with a note that read "Please take care of my child." Your mother loved you very much, but since she was probably a prostitute, a very young (probably teenaged) girl, or a single woman, she couldn't take care of you. So, she did the most loving thing a mother could do, she gave you up for adoption so that you could have a better life.Nearly half of all international adoptions bring children to families in the United States. And for many mothers, Leo's comments may be regarded as 'fighting words'; they intend to parent responsibly, are unable to give birth or wish to provide a home to a child who needs one, and don't see what's wrong with going overseas.I accepted and retold-indeed, even took pride in-this story for years. This narrative, conveyed by my parents who first heard it from the adoption agency, illustrates [a] sort of manufactured positioning...It marks my birthmother with a presumed status, and this status ranks her on a social scale, at an inferior placement that highlights her lack of resources and defines her as therefore illegitimate for motherhood. Her economic and social vulnerability is an unquestioned given.
The story further implies certain suppositions about what "a better life" means. In this scenario, "better" clearly means American, but it also suggests wealthier, Caucasian, and most important, not with my birthmother. This notion of "a better life" has permeated adoption narratives since the practice began, often used as justification for its existence....
But who gets to define what "a better life" means? Colombian-born adoptee advocate Jennie Anderson, executive chair of the Resource Committee of Adopted Adults, pointed out that "adoption is defined by American ethnocentrism. What 'we' do is right. We have the solution for everything. We can take better care of these children than you can."
Leo's perspective - that adoption is "part of a continuum of reproductive rights" - may be seen as radical by some and pragmatic by others. She feels that the "right to raise one's child [should have] the same importance as the right to choose whether or not to bear one."
Are you an adoptive parent, or an adoptee? What do you think?
Comments
We never tell our daughter, who was adopted from China, that she has a “better” life here. At almost 9-years-old, her story is something we talk about, but we don’t know what her life would have been like if her birth family had decided to keep her. Is her life “better” than if she had grown up in an orphanage? No doubt. But we do our best not to talk about it in those terms.
Whether adoption is a feminist issue I think misses the practical point of what do you do with all the children who need homes if adoption isn’t allowed? Until governments like China retract their one-child policy or change the social dynamic that doesn’t believe in adoption, what is the real alternative?
I don’t think adoptive parents should paint any picture of the birth family. As an adoptive mom, I don’t know what the reasons why my daughter was abandoned. I feel the child should stay with their birth families, if this isn’t possible, then domestic adoption and then a lastly international adoption. I do believe I can give my daughter a better life than an orphanage. I try to be the best mother I can, for her birth family and her country.
Yeaah, no way would I tell my daughter, adopted from China in 1998, that she has a better life here. No way do I allow anyone to call her lucky. I am lucky to have her in my life. As I’ve explained to many people. . .as time goes on, I think about her original parents more, not less, and would give almost anything to meet them now. Adoption works for many people and I believe it’s working for us. But as an idea, adoption has undergone so input from different people in the triad that you can’t help but reconsider your views as time goes on. One day, international adoption may not be the show pony it’s been in the last couple of years.
Katie Leo shows a development which is important to understand. She is one of a fast growing adoptee community.
Many of them became scholars and contribute towards a history which was meanly written. The voice of Katie Leo is the of many.
From a historical point of view, adoption is not especially and area of feminist, but on the receiving and claiming side of (intercountry) adoption, the upbringing of adoption mothers show many times the abuse and focus on freedom of choice of mothers ‘to give up their children for adoption’.
To be honest, this is already were it starts. The choice of language. The linguistic perspective of adoption is certainly a field where western feminists put their signature on. In all kind of reports and treaties you can see that the choice of words do help the adopters much more as to protect the mothers and fathers of mainly none western countries. But let me sip this part.
About a better life. Even though many adopters say that they will never say this to their ADOPTED children, deep in their hearts they believe instead, that this is true. Training and education learned them not to say these things anymore. But if some can stop unlawful adoptions, illegal practices and child trafficking, especially western (feminist) women can intervene.
But when they really can help to change international laws, treaties to protect (birth)PARENTS by joining and supporting those activities to guarantee equal rights to their own peers, they are not there. Instead, adoption moms rule during international conferences and they press the button for more and faster adoptions. They detect and design new laws so the western world can ‘force’ more adoptions than ever. Yes indeed, the western supremacy and ethnocentricity in a diffuse way do influence the debate.
It is easy to say, that you would never do it, when you already have your adopted child. But to stay away from local, regional, national and international politics regarding this subject, you say indirectly YES I don’t care what happens to al those woman as long they are willing to give up their child for adoption.
It is time, that women stand up as part of the same league as the woman whom (were forced) to give up their children. And that those woman see into the eyes of the these mothers who lost their children.
Adoption was destined and should be, a last resort and not a facility for western couples as a possibility to create their own families. It’s an emergency for children not a trade of for international treaties. It is time people start to see, that adoption, world social and economic poverty and wars (connected with western policy makers) are many times the basic conditions why adoptions exists. Not because of that mothers massive want to give up their children.
Adoptees and (birth) parents are ‘fighting’ an unequal fight for justice and equality. It seems that Human rights stop at the front gate of them who know exactly what adoption means. Never the less if they are happy or not. Time is there to let stories as those of Katie Leo, Jane J. Trenka and many others sink into the bottom of our hearts and minds.
From Europe, The Netherlands,
Hilbrand W.S. Westra
Chair United Adoptees International
We may be writing to the converted here, but please see the link >
http;//about-orphans.blogspot.com
We adopted from Guatemala and we’ve been back twice in the 6 1/2 years since then. The last time we were able to meet with our daughter’s biological family- mother and two sisters. It meant a lot to us to be able to assure her that our daughter was loved and safe. Our daughter was almost 5 at the time, and had expressed an interest in meeting her bio family, since she knew we were going to Guatemala.
Her bio mom said, over and over, that she was so glad for our daughter, that she would have opportunities about which her daughters in Guatemala couldn’t even dream. We just emphasized to her how much we loved her, and how we knew what a sacred trust it was that she gave to us with her daughter, and how appreciate we are that she made that sacrifice for our daughter.
One of the best things about adopting from Guatemala was that, because they were mostly relinquishments, you had that possibility of bio family meetings. Sadly, that is likely to go away, as Guatemala’s adoption laws become more repressive to the bio families. I’m already hearing that abandonments are going up, and that does not serve anyone well,least of all the children, but with the laws being changed as they currently are being done, it is the only reasonable option for many families.
When we talk about our daughter’s bio family, we’re not making it up when we say how much her mother loves her- we’ve met her, spent a day with her, and talked extensively with her, not just about our daughter, but about the reasons for the adoption, so we’ve got that information for our daughter. We hope to be able to visit with them the next time we go, too. Sadly, with finances as they are now, it may be a couple of more years before we can do that.
Adoption is a complex issue, and, while I agree that it would be best if every child could be raised by his or her bio family, that simply is not possible in many cases. For children whose families are not able to raise them, adoption is a great option- it gives them a loving forever family. I know that there are some problems in some adoptions- just as there are in some bio families, so I’m not “Pollyanna” here.:)
Coming from a family with a great grandmother who was informally adopted when her father never returned for her (her mother was dead) and 3 cousins with whom I grew up adopted, adoption as been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
I found an interesting article in a newspaper that was reprinted online, from the east coast, written by a young Korean girl who had my unusual name. It was about her returning to Korea with her white, adoptive parents to look for her biological mother. It was a very honest piece, and she had held some resentment about being abandoned, no matter how it had been explained to her.
She didn’t find her bio-mother but did meet young women in situations similar to what her mother had been in back then. Korea has very strict rules and while modern thinkers may reconsider ‘a better life’ as something elitist as a concept, I sense they have little contact with what Asian (or other) women go through in some other societies when they, for various reasons, are not in a family/couple relationship — nor the poverty suffered in other countries, where ‘welfare’ organizations don’t intervene, except to threaten to take the child away if they even care.
I wrote the writer of that article written by the young adopted Korean, to thank her for such a touching account (she had forgiven her biological mother after meeting young women in a similar situation to her mother’s) and then I asked her how her American family had reacted to her search for her original mother. I also asked how a Korean person was given the name she has.
I received an email that night in response, from her American mother. It turned out to be an old flatmate of mine from 29 years before, and we had lost touch. I was stunned for a week at the incredible coincidence of my finding the article and writing her after being touched by it.
I later was able to meet my old flatmate again a few months later, only briefly, while her chorus was in town. But I think adoptions are complicated, whether national or international, and they can’t be categorized so easily. We make conflicts where they’re not needed (don’t we have enough already?). People with different complementary needs meet. The focus should be on how best to handle these so that the adopted one will have a good situation (including emotionally) and that the parents understand the special culture, in cases of international adoption, especially, and their own reasons for adopting.
Adding all these qualms about a falsely perceived value system applying to most when it comes to Americans adopting children who are being offered for adoption — so that we see people only as the American or non-American, looking so deeply into motives when motives are rarely only other-oriented … the roles seen, the stereotyping … it bothered me to read about this.
I do feel sorry for children ‘given’ to Madonna or even to Jolie (to mention two highly questionable examples), but these children will probably grow up feeling sorry for people like me
Most of all, the mothers who are unable to care for them (or unwilling in more rare cases) most want them to have a HOME.
That word involves much more than physical space and a financially comfortable life.
However, people with the financial means and the will to care for a young person needing a home will be more likely be able to provide that than one faced with no way to get food or a healthy space (this includes emotional) for the child.
I am responding to Katie Leo’s article on adoption. Yes, adoption has touched my life. My sister and her husband adopted a baby girl (now seven). This girl was born to a (White) woman who abused alcohol and drugs during the pregnancy (and before and afterwards as well) and whose (Black) partner, the presumed biological father of my niece, was also an alcoholic and drug addict and had an anger management problem in addition.
I find that some critics of adoption have a sort of romanticized view of the conditions (some) adopted children would find themselves in if they stayed with their biological families. Yes, I know that there’s been demonization of single mothers on the part of social conservatives and that in the past in the US and other developed countries many birth mothers were coerced into giving their children for adoption. And I know this happens today in some Third World countries (where in addition adoption is further stigmatized because of an emphasis on bloodlines).
However, the ideas put forward by some opponents of international adoption strike me as unrealistic at best. For example, they say that rather than adopt children would-be adopters (particularly celebrities) should use the money they’d spend to adopt children to instead financially assist biological parents to keep their children. Honestly, what would money do to for instance help a alcoholic and/or mentally birth mother in the former Soviet Union care for a child more effectively? Or end the stigmatization of single motherhood in South Korea? I am not saying that such aid is wrong, just that it might not help all or in some cases even a majority of birth families (with regard to my previous example, one study showed 33% of Russian birth mothers were alcoholics and another 16% were mentally ill).
Another puzzling worldview of anti-international adoption advocates is their portrayal of the practice as another form of colonialism. That’s funny, because the three major sources of adoptable children (Russia, China and Korea) were never colonies of any Western power (well, small parts of China may have been – Hong Kong, Macau, etc. – but not the entire country). And some of the adopting countries haven’t been major colonial powers themselves (Sweden, Norway, Ireland).
I suppose I may be considered heretical in some circles, but I think in some cases adoption may be the better choice for everyone concerned than having a child remain with his or her biological mother. Do I think a 35-year-old woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock should be forced to give a child for adoption? No. Do I think adoption should be presented as one of the options for a 17-year-old girl who does the same? It might be a good idea. To get personal again, I’d like someone to look me in the face and tell me my niece should have remained with her biological mother (who as far as I know is still using drugs) than with my sister and her husband. By the way, if my niece ever wants to search for her biological family, my sister is completely open to that.
I support the feminist movement, but sometimes I think it’s ideological inanity at times will make people question it.