- "Police: Girl Tried to Poison Adoptive Family With Bug Spray"
- "A 13-year-old girl is accused of poisoning her adoptive family in the Orlando, Florida area."
One absurd CafeMom blogger points out that it is 2010, after all! This bugged-out blogger writes: "We get it. She was adopted. Which means the people she tried to poison are her family. Not her adoptive family."
No. They are her adoptive family, NOT her real, natural family that she was born into. The law and biology say so! You don't have to believe in evolution or in God to believe that fact.
It's the huge, enormous, large tusked elephant in the room.
And a girl of 13 KNOWS IT! She knows it every day of her life when she looks into a mirror and when she looks into the face of the stranger she is told to call Mommy. She knows it when she learns about procreation and when her class does a family tree assignment. She may also know it when she is teased at school, or told by "cousins" that she is not related, which many adoptees are made to endure, albeit silently
And yes, it is 2010 when the majority of non-relative, non step-parent adoptions are inter-country and a majority of those are inter-racial as well -- making it pretty darn obvious to one and all that adoption played a role in the formation of this newly re-constructed family unit! It's no secret, nor should it be.
David Kirschner wrote a BRILLIANT article in the Fall 20110 Bastard Quarterly, reviewing the DVD of Orphan. In it he gets to the root of this fau-phobia or faubia about revealing the truth of one's adopted status when it is not in a way that flatters or nobilizes the adopters for rescuing a wretched unwanted street urchin...and of course that real reason is that it dents the flow of kids and thus cuts into the livelihoods of those who depend upon the redistribution of kids for fun and profit!
Yes, it's the adoptive parents who are screaming in protest...but that is because they are vested in justifying their roles in perpetuating the demand that creates the supply and the corruption, coercion and exploitation it takes to keep up the supply. When one adopts they seem to automatically gain membership into the choir and as part of the price they must pay, they must sing out loudly in praise and become door-knocking, blog writing evangelic proselytizers for the joys of adoption, Hallelujah, brother...pass the tambourine and the collection plate!
The choir leader and papal head of the religious zealousness, no other than the NCFA. The church of REBIRTH through adoption - with actual birth certificates to prove it!
So much a part of adoption is this flag waving and drum beating that adoptive parents who speak out against any aspect of adoption...who dare to claim the King has no clothes - are ostracized and called bad parents! It's a sacrilege, after all.
At the recent conference at St. Johns University in NY, David Smolin was one of the keynote speakers. he described how he had and wife discovered that the sisters they adopted from India to add to their already large family, had questionable beginnings. It was alleged that they were stolen from their mother. When the girls learned enough English they told the Smolins that they were told by the orphanage never to reveal the truth.
The Smolins went back to their very reputable state-side agency for answers and were blocked every step of the way. The mother who had allegedly been available to sign final papers just three months prior suddenly became unable to be found! And the Smolins were told the truth didn't matter. It was their job to help their daughters cope with what was and their continued pursuit of their biological family indicated their lack of commitment to parent the girls! They were bad parents for seeking the truth!
The message is clear: lies are to be protected and the truth kept secret in the upside down backwards world of adoption. the truth is only to be revealed at the behest of the adopters - as EVERYTHING in adoption is under THEIR total control and caters to them and their wishes. When it is in their favor to reveal it, when it makes them shine in the light of nobility as saviors...Hallelujah and Amen...let's BRAG to everyone that these are our ADOPTED children!
At the same recent conference Adam Pertman (EBDAI) led a panel discussion on adoption in the media and this very subject was discussed: When is it appropriate to reveal a person's adoption status in a news article and when is it as insignificant - or even in poor taste - as revealing one's race?
The answer was very simple: When it is germane to the story.
A very young girl attempting to kill her mother is not a common occurrence. It's news. The fact that the mother is not her biological mother, or that the child may have a "checkered" or troubled background (i.e. multiple foster care placements) prior to being adopted is likewise quite relevant to the story! or, she may, after all, have "bad blood"! Inquiring minds want to know, and hopefully further new reports might even reveal some more juicy details.
Shook-up CafeMom blogger wants us to know that biologically related children kill their parents. Yes, it even has a name: parenticide. But it is also true that there are a disproportionate number of adoptees who have committed these types of crimes. David Kirschner knows this all too well as he has been involved in the trials and or sentencing phase of many of such cases, explaining the role of adopted child syndrome as a causal factor, as a history of spousal abuse is a factor in some spousal murders. Also making it relevant.
Dr Herbert Weider, a psychiatrist: "The traditional blood-kin family is composed of one mother, one father, and their child or children. The adoptive family is composed of two mothers, two fathers and a child common to them. Although society, and to some extent adoptive parents, would like to pre-tend that it is exactly like a traditional family, it is the differences that are extremely significant in each member's life. [emphasis added]"
Weider was speaking about it being important the importance of the difference being recognized within the family. However, when a crime takes place, when one is identified as a suspect or us charged with a crime...the ever shrinking post Internet "private" becomes public.
It is germane to a news story when an abused, tortured or murdered child is a step child or an adopted child of the abuser. Familial connections are important!
The answer lies right in the question: What Does Adoption Have to Do With Poisoning Your Mom? Everything. It is part of their relation to one another as much as the fact they are mother and child. If a husband kills his wife, is it relevant that they were just married a week ago? If a wide murders or attempts to murder her husband, is it relevant that she was a mail order bride?
Adoption, adoptees, adoptive parents are not subject to, nor do they need or want, special rules that apply just to them Adoption is NOT sacrosanct! Let's stop infanticizing all the parties and "protecting" them from the truth and their reality.
4 comments:
I was upset with how the girl's story was depicted, but for different reasons.
Her adoption status wasn't listed to add to the facts. It was to associate her adopted status with her deviance. While on one hand it might cause people to come closer to the conclusion that being adopted can really suck, on the other hand, it perpetuates the idea that adoptees are deviant and need to be feared. As an adopted person, I have to live with those assumptions and stereotypes that other people make. Who in the world is going to want to give us our birth certificates if stuff like this is always associated with and seen as caused by adoption? If we're all stereotyped as deviant and to be feared? This is what concerns me when journalists write with the intention for this correlation to me made.
I also disliked Orphan for the same reason. While it didn't go the direction of the rosey stereotype of adoption, it went the equally harmful direction of the stereotype that adoptees are dangerous and disturbed. Again, it doesn't make me as an adoptee feel good that these assumptions and associations are perfectly socially acceptable for others to make about my minority group.
It's not fun to read the news and have a part of your identity be a joke, be used for thrill, or be repeatedly associated with stereotypes and to never be able to look at anything in the media that portrays adoption that does so realistically.
I feel for you. I reeally do, but please consider:
First of all, the movie "Orphan" was pure fiction AND the character was not an orphan! She was a height challenged adult. Does it then make the implication that all tiny people are deviant or killers?
As far as the fight for access to birth certificates, activists need to be diligent to keep the "rights" aspect separate from search and reunion, as they are separate issues. And, you counter any media or legislative or public attempt to suggest danger...with the fact that people find one another every day even with the records sealed! That is WHY it is an issue of equal rights!
NOTE: The one reported case of an adoptee who "stalked' his mother (Roger Siegel) found her without the records being opened!
And...all the cases of murders of adoptive parents by their adopted kids, have nothing to do with opening records.
And BTW - do news stories of adoptive parents starving, burning, raping, caging or killing their adopted kids - or sending them back to Russia alone on an airplane - turn public opinion against adoptive parents??!?!!
Amanda,
I think in the end we all need to live our lives, hold our heads high and prove all stereotypes wrong. I say this as a mother who relinquished a child fro adoption; a birth mother...for many synonymous with a slut, an unfit mother, a low-life, a whore...
Look at the gay rights movement for inspiration. Gays are thought by many to be sinful...pedophiles...all kinds of negative things. But they stand firm and demand equality in marriage and even in adoption.
Equality is the cure for discrimination and bigotry based on negative stereotypes.
Interesting isn't it the bias in the reporting?No-one has yet suggested the adoptee may have tried to poison the adopter because she was not a good adoptive parent, had been unrealistic in her expectations of adoption and the adoptee, or was in some other way responsible.
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