Issycat, who calls herself an "ambivalent adoptee" asked: "Are all potential adoptive parents so desperate for a kid that they lose IQ points?"
Apparently, I’m not supposed to call the woman who gave birth to me my natural mother. I’m not supposed to call her that because it implies that adoption is unnatural.....
You know what is natural? Babies going home and being cared for by the mothers who carried them in their bodies. That is natural. Anything else is just a little sad.I’m not saying I hate adoption. I don’t. I’m not saying that adoption isn’t necessary in some cases. It is.
But there is no way in hell I would ever call it natural.
The discussion continues over at AdoptionTalk by an ap who says:
The "natural" thing is another one of those "givens" in adoption language -- adoptive parents are supposed to be upset about adopt-a-whatever programs, we're supposed to say we're the real parents, not those pesky birth parents, and we're supposed to say that adoption is natural, just another way to add to your family.There are a growing number of aps who "get it" - mainly because they have to. It's pretty hard to pretend a child of another race or ethnicity is "the same as" the one who might have been born to you! Most have changed that to the "rescue" myth and how these kids would be starving in the streets or languishing in orphanages of not for their saving graces! Too bad the kids in orphanages are still there, left behind, as orders are filled - via kidnapping, stealing, or coercing - by human traffickers for younger tots.
I was brainwashed to believe it, weren't you? I completely bought into the "same as" narrative, that raising an adopted child was the same as raising a biological child, nothing less and certainly nothing more.
It's not the same.
Is Adoption Natural?
An argument I had seen put forth many years (decades?) ago for this position is the animal kingdom in which we hear anomalies of dogs adopting kittens etc. Cross breed nursing and nurturing.
It is also natural because it only happen when the baby animals are truly ORPHANED - as in their mother abandoned them or died.
THEY DID NOT SEEK OUT these orphans nd pay large amounts of kibble for them! They did not do it to meet any NEED of their own to be a parent because they were barren, or even out of altruism to save the babies from death. They just did what comes naturally - a baby suckles.
It is also natural because the kitten, while it may act like a dog and have some learned behaviors - is still a kitten. No one rewrites its past history and renames it a dog.
Following this example, in-family adoptions are - to some extent -natural. A grandmother or sister raising her nieces or grandkids because the mother is deceased or incapable is a very natural thing. Raising them and caring for them is natural - changing their names and pretending the grandchild is the child of the grandmother is NOT!
For me the line between natural and unnatural is two-fold:
1. Motivation. Is the child being cared for first and foremost for the sake of the child regardless of the caretakers ability to have children of "their own" or not and regardless of their desire to be a parent. The dog did not NEEDm want or seek to have a kitten. The grandmother likewise did not pursue having a baby to raised at this time in her life. They filled a need of the child and did what had to be done.
2. Pretense and name changing. This again comes down to best interest of the child. Long before adoption got all tangled up in laws when a child needed care someone in the community or parish stepped up and provided that care. But because the motivation was as stated above, there was no need to pretend the child was 'theirs' or to change the child's name. It was perfectly acceptable to know that the Jone's were raising the Smith's boy...or that my Aunt Sally was being like a mother and caring for me.
It is the reversal of the natural order that makes adoption unnatural. It si the u=turning it upside down and putting the needs of those adopting before those of the children. It is seeking out often through devious means children to fill a demand that is very unnatural and unsavory and immoral. It is PAYING for them that is unnatural. Buying them. Owning name. Renaming them to make the ownership complete. Eradicating their past. That is what is unnatural.
Perhaps that is what Issycat means in her ambivalence? She, like most adoptees, does not resent having been provided good care - when that is the case - but they resent - and rightly so - the trade off, what was taken form them in exchange for tht care - their kin, hertige and identity.What do you think?
