“Adult adoptees now aren’t the products of the resources (support) we have now. In 10+ years, we will be able to ask adult transracially adopted people how we did. And it is so case by case. Each adoptee and adoptive parent is different. This is why it’s so important and more and more resources are written and made available to adoptive families. Education is the start, action is the progress.”
While I don’t necessarily disagree with the last part of the comment by an adoptive parent on Facebook in a discussion about transracial adoption, I vehemently disagree with the first two sentences of the statement. Not to mention that finding out after the fact is probably not what you really want to do when parenting. I have been part of the online adoption community for the past six or seven years. That was, and still is, the automatic default answer to reject listening to adult adoptees.
Just like adoptive parents believe they are truly more advanced than what those from previous decades knew when raising their children. You see it play out today from just the last twenty years or so. Those from 1990 decade – didn’t know what the adoptive parents from 2000 decade forward knew. Those from 2000 decade – didn’t know what adoptive parents from 2010 decade forward know. While all of that may be true in some circumstances, it may also be false, especially when those from the prior decades have already parented through the teen and young adult years – as compared to those whose kids are ten and under, and have yet to hit any of the really challenging times.
Hindsight is a very valuable tool to utilize as a resource in how to do the best job you possibly can today.
What also hasn’t changed is that the adoptee is still adopted. That comes with it’s own unique set of challenges to be dealt with at many points throughout their life. When you can say all adoptee’s of today truly feel exactly like they were born into the family – then you can use the excuse that you don’t need to listen to the adult adoptees. Until then, the adult adoptees of yesterday, are still your best resource to understand what it may be like for your adopted child of today.
The adopted ones blog 
Brent Snavely
August 29, 2013 at 9:44 pm
Reblogged this on brentsnavely and commented:
Ah, yes… let us change a few superficial things so as to avoid dealing with the underlying issues…
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eagoodlife
August 29, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Agree, the underlying lack of ethics and corruption are the same or worse as the markets in the sending countries get cleverer, the agencies get smarter at their selling techniques and procurement.Open adoptions provide many difficulties for adoptees as we see from what they are writing about it right now.Things may look good to adopters but they do not from the adoptees angle.It’s the same old adoption just rebadged. I has always begun with loss and trauma, always will.On day we will truly understand how horrific a tragedy that is and what an inhumane act……
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eagoodlife
August 29, 2013 at 10:41 pm
Reblogged this on The Life Of Von and commented:
Adoption rebadged is just the same old adoption, it all begins with loss and trauma, always has always will.
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everyoneactdead
August 29, 2013 at 10:54 pm
Adoption is different now…oh that drives me up a wall! It makes me think of how agencies promote adoption as a luxury cruise to first mothers, because you get to “choose” a family and levels of openness and everyone treats you like a queen!…while pregnant.
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cb
August 30, 2013 at 12:56 am
We are always being told by many of today’s APs that adoption is different today because it is more open and thus we older adoptees are anachronisms from a different era whose viewpoint is therefore irrelevant. Those very same APs will not hesitate to then quote their adoptee friends who are also “older adoptees from a different era” and tell us how their adoptee pals are beyond thrilled to be adopted and have no wish to have anything to do with their “birth people”.
Now one might think that when it comes to open adoption that perhaps we closed adoptees who are in contact with our bfamilies might in fact be slightly more “relevant” than those closed adoptees who have no desire to be in contact with brelatives for the simple fact that we, like open adoption adoptees, actually know our bfamily and are trying to construct a relationship with them. Apparently not.
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thealmostdaughter
August 30, 2013 at 2:19 am
Reblogged this on The Almost Daughter & More and commented:
Adopted is adopted is adopted.. The trauma still remains as does the lasting pain.
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shadowtheadoptee
August 30, 2013 at 3:26 pm
Adoption is not, and never will be the same as “being born into” a family. I don’t care how educated, informed, or evolved you are. It’s not the same, and no one will ever make it the same.
Paps, and Aps, that buy into the whole “just as if” theory, are lying to themselves. Adoption is different, not worse, not better, just different, and it always, always will b. That doesn’t mean there isn’t love, or that it’s not a strong bond. It’s not the same as “born into”.
They seem to forget that in the middle of the sacrficing, selfless, courageous, and brave first parents, and the ever-so grateful childless, more financially stable, better educated, and prepared couple, is the gift, the miracle, the addoptee, a human being, born to one set of parents,taken away, and given to another set of parents. You will never erase biology, and the effect of that loss on the adoptee.
I haven’t said anything here that everyone involved with adoption doesn’t already know. It seems to me that people go to a lot of trouble to try to convince themselves that the skunk smells like a rose.
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Heather
August 30, 2013 at 11:48 pm
Very well put shadow.
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Judith Land
August 30, 2013 at 4:17 pm
The spectacular transformation of social media and revolution in communication since the invention of the computer allows women and men to spontaneously interact with each other worldwide. Changes in philosophy and ways of thinking can instigate revolutions and the invention of the worldwide web has lead to the decimation of language, geographic and political barriers as impressively as the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. This rapid transformation has altered perceptions worldwide by increasing the public consciousness of social injustices, world hunger, racial equality, global warming and economic development. When a topic imperatively requires the reader to experience a shift in understanding of life’s trajectory for children who are orphaned, fostered and adopted by altering the public consciousness, the topic resonates globally, and makes for a lively discussion.
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Luanne
August 30, 2013 at 5:32 pm
It’s apparently human nature to want to believe things are better today and we have learned so much. Any student of history knows that that is just b.s.
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c
September 1, 2013 at 1:26 am
“This is why it’s so important and more and more resources are written and made available to adoptive families. Education is the start, action is the progress.”
I just wanted to point out also that most of te resources and education in adoption have been developed by adoptive parents and are very APcentric.
It seems also that this education is being geared towards making sure one’s adoptee is “happy” – not so much “happy” as an well-rounded person with the usual queries and concerns about things like normal people, but “happy” as in accepting of being adopted.
To me, a well rounded adoptee is one who can separate their feelings for their family from their feelings about how they came into their family and look at them through separate lens. However, it seems that for many in adoption, the “ideal” adoptee is often one that is unable to do so.
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lea
September 3, 2013 at 6:55 pm
what I hate is I was adopted and my adopters had no money and then I am told by people that I don’t need money because I am adopted I hate how I neve rhad money as a adopted child and people made fun of me for it
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lea
September 3, 2013 at 7:04 pm
I hate how my adoptrs never spent monye on me and then hey told me they spent money on me and I should be thankful m adopters never spent money onme and people made funof me for having no mony and living in ugly house
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lea
September 5, 2013 at 5:39 pm
my adopters never spent any money on me I don’t understand why I was forced to live in a sittuaytion like that and I was told everyday how lucky I was lucky that my adopters would not spend money on me how awful it is to be treated that way people made fun of me because I lived badly because I nevr had money plus I had to work hard and have nothing my whole life and people where mean to me plus I never having any money I was stuck getting to go no where I was stuck ina ugly house with nothing coudlt even leave my town
I nevr had friends the whole world hates me everybody hates the adoptee but why
my adopters never spent any money on me and where mean to me why where they allowed to adopt I have no idea why I wouldn’t have let them adopt me if I had a choice I never was allowed to make choices for myself I grew up in a ugly house where everybody hated me
I feel so sad because how I had to live being adopted it was awful and no support from anybody my adopters where mean to me and nbody cared I never had a family or a mom or dad while everybody else has a mom and dad that is so sad and on top of that everybody was mean to me that’s what you get for being adopted and I didn’t even chose this awful situation
(admin just combined all recent comments made on this post into one comment)
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veggiemom
September 9, 2013 at 12:41 am
APs may talk a good talk now but nothing has really changed. You can see it in AP forums every day with the talk of tummy moms and the idea that school age children are too young to “get” adoption and the list just keeps going. Sadly, as long as the system is set up to fill PAP orders for kids, it will never change.
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TAO
September 9, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Veggiemom – one of the downsides of the PC language – their true feelings only come out in language like Tummy mommy terms. Funny I was trying to think of how I could introduce my family using “Tummy” – I’d like you to me my “Tummy Aunt Julie”, my “Tummy Uncle Ray”, my “Tummy Cousin Megan”…it’d be a blast. The advent of needing to add a qualifier before the identifying term luckily happened long after I was adopted. Never had to deal with “birth”, “first”, “natural”, “tummy” or any of that. Reasons for the use are ridiculous…
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shadowtheadoptee
September 10, 2013 at 3:37 pm
O.K. I’d like to introduce you to my , uhm, “tummy” daddy, D? lol uhm, lol And people get confused now, as I talk about my families trying to explain that I have two fathers and two mothers, which one is which, and oh, my how I wish I could see the looks on their faces as they try to put the pieces of the whole completely confusing puzzle together. lol
I’m J and W’s youngetst daughter, but D and E’s oldest daughter. I have 4 siblings, but oly grew up with one older brother. Yep the qualifier of ” tummy” will clear up all the confusion. lol I’m so glad someone finally found a word, the all incompassing word, toclarify and explain it oh, so, perfectly. Problem solved. lol
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Geochick
October 21, 2016 at 12:34 pm
As an adoptive parent, I believed the first two sentences when we were going through the process, but that has changed dramatically. Parenting is always hindsight. My parents screwed up royally yet they thought they were doing a good job. My approach is to be empathetic towards my kids and to validate ALL their feelings about adoption.
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TAO
October 21, 2016 at 12:53 pm
Thanks Geochick.
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