GET OVER IT!!

First it was the movie Orphan that got aps panties into bunches, and now this?

In the OMG Department this morning, is this comment:

"....on ABC, a tearjerker reunion series called “Find My Family” has angered some members of the adoption community with its attempts to reunite grown adoptees with their birth parents, a practice that, according to the critics, can marginalize the parents who adopt and raise children."

The excerpt above is from "Two Reality Shows Stir Publicity and Anger" in the NY Times today.


It compares Find My Family to outrageous ethnically stereotyping MTV reality show, as if there were any comparison.  It states the show "has been called exploitative by some groups that represent adoptive parents, while online discussion groups of people who gave children up for adoption have hailed the series for its potential to help break down legal obstacles that have sometimes made such reunions difficult..."

“The show is very exploitative,” said Martha Osborne, the founder of RainbowKids.com, an adoption advocacy Web site. Osborne said she supports efforts to allow adoptees and birth parents to exchange medical information. But the show’s methods bother her, she added. “Anytime you film somebody in real time having an emotional breakdown,” as “Find My Family” repeatedly does, she said, “that is exploitative.”

On FirstMotherForum.com, a blog that discusses issues among women who had given children up for adoption, Lorraine Dusky, one of the site’s authors, praised the series: “Maybe this will be heard by people who think it is unloyal somehow for a person to search out his or her roots, parents, family, when it is a most natural desire of consciousness.”

An ABC spokeswoman said on Friday that network executives were not available to discuss the series. But the network seemed to anticipate the objections. Before the show was broadcast, it made available to reporters taped interviews with the show’s co-hosts addressing several issues. Each of the hosts, Tim Green and Lisa Joyner, addressed the question of, as ABC put it in the materials, “why the show is not exploitative.”

“I personally wouldn’t have gotten involved with the show if it were exploitative,” Joyner, who was adopted as a child and who has adopted a child herself, said in one of the interviews. “We’re not dealing with a thousand-dollar or million-dollar prize, or a shot at fame. The only prize – the only ultimate gift that these people get – is their family.”

Any adoptive parents upset about ANYTHING affecting their ADULT children need to GET OVER IT!!  Does their "entitlement" and "ownership" have any expiration date prior to their death? The answer is: not for SOME.

Let me preface the remainder of my rant by saying that "some of my best friends" are adoptive parents and that, like any other segment of a society, cannot be painted with one brush stroke. Some are extremely open-minded, caring and selfless people who "get it." But things like this boil my blood, though it is an inevitable outcome of the adoption system we created and live with in these united states.

It is the nature of the beast - whole adoption process that puts aps in the driver seat with no co-pilot. It's ALL about THEM: what they want. They get to make all the choices: how much they want to spend, what age and gender they want, what health issues they are "willing to accept," what nationality they prefer, whether or not they would allow any contact with the birth family...and how much and when they are "willing" to tell their child.  All choices are THEIRS. They hold all the cards because they are the only paid customer and the only one who is catered to.

The entire murky industry exists because of their desires!  And, THEY get more sympathy and compassion and understanding than any other member of any so called "triad." Triad my behind -- it's a royal PYRAMID with them holding the major portion AND the crown on top.

It all revolves around THEM!  And their power and control reigns over even their adult children, many of whom live in fear of "hurting" them so they don't search or search in secret. What a rotten shame SOME of them can be so cruelly controlling and so lacking in understanding of the normal, healthy, human needs and desires of anyone other than themselves.  What shame that parents who would worry about adult reunions are so insecure about their ties to the children they raise....children who are clearly old enough to marry.

They are NOT the only ones who suffered a loss prior to adopting!  Their kids - the ones they "love" so much - lost too!

GET OVER IT!