As a former PAP, who is now a P and AP, I am grateful to Mirah, Amyadoptee and Stella for their comments on the last post. Do I agree with all of their points of view? No, but I am still grateful. Because left to myself, I would not have the value of the perspective of the group of people to whom my son will someday belong. The adult adoptee. Do they speak for my son? That would be too simplistic a view, but they do articulate thoughts and emotions, as well as researched facts that apply to my son, and may someday be part of his framework.
I believe discussion is always valuable as a way to lead us to further understanding. To that end, I would like to share my story, and how our family came to adoption, and what we have learned so far along the way.
When we first started the adoption process, I thought we were an enigma in the adoption world. I soon found out that I was wrong. I “met” many families online who had/have similar stories to ours, for whom adoption was not a last resort.
As a young girl growing into a young woman, there was only ever one thing that I knew for sure that I wanted to be when I grew up. A mom. Sure, I had huge aspirations, in fact when I was five, with the encouragement of my mother, I decided that I would have five vocations for the five days of the week and then I would have 2 days off, doctor, teacher, ballerina…I can’t remember the other two. But the one constant was that I wanted to be a mom.
I am not exactly sure why, but as a young child, what I saw in my head when I was a mom was kids of all colors and ethnicity’s. Perhaps it was because we lived in student housing for a large seminary and there were many international families in the the housing complex where we lived. All of us children ran around and played and color was not an issue. Oh, if only that were the reality…
So as I grew up, being the caucasian woman that I am, I assumed that I would either marry a man of another ethnicity, but even with that assumption, I usually assumed that adoption would be how I would build my family. I was very idealistic and even thought my family would be like, at least ten kids of all ethnicity’s and be like our very own little United Nations. I don’t think that anymore.
Within three months of meeting my then boyfriend, I told him that I was adopting my children, and that if he was not open to it, he could move on. He did not move on and is now the father of my 3 kids.
About a month after we got married I started checking out adoption agencies. Most of them had the requirement that marriages be at least one year old at the time of application, so I waited, not too patiently. During that time my husband expressed his desire to have biological children as well as adopted children, and since we hadn’t been married long enough to adopt, we decided to try to get pregnant. It was not a matter that was necessarily well thought out, or a matter of preference, it was simply a matter of which happened first. Pregnancy came rather easily for us, twice.
When our second biological child was eight months old, we started researching agencies again. I got on list-serves like APV. I started reading blogs, both PAP blogs and adult adoptee blogs. Providentially, an adult adoptee who was adopted from Vietnam and I became close friends. At this point in the process, I still had a bit of a Messiah complex when it came to adoption, but the more I read, the more I realized how equally damaging are the “last resort” complex, the “I am saving the helpless orphan” complex as well as parent entitlement.
Even though I was still pretty green, and had no idea how huge, complex and money driven the adoption industry is, my husband and I knew enough at least to look for an agency that at least professed to have a “family for children that need them” mentality and vision statement,as opposed to a “child for a family that wants them” mentality. We also knew enough to look for an agency that had child welfare programs in the country, as well as a proven track record as a humanitarian organization over a long period of time.
We were very blessed(or lucky, depending our your perspective) to have decided to use one of the three agencies that I have come to personally believe have done their very best to remain ethical in their Vietnam programs over the past 3 years(that would be 3, out of 42 agencies).
We asked for an infant, either gender. Along the way, as I began to address my entitlement issues, I came to believe, very strongly, that choosing gender should not be allowed. This opinion is not always popular, but it is mine. I have also come to believe that asking for most qualifications(age, health) is another entitlement issue.
We recieved our referral in January of 2007, we traveled in late March 2007.
I am one of what many current PAP’s call the “lucky” ones. Not only did I get “my” child home, BUT I already had 2 biological kids home.
What I have come to realize through our journey, and I have said on my own personal blog, is that children are not a right. Never. And to see them as such only diminishes the value of human life and reduces them to the status of a commodity. Children(which in my opinion, includes embryos) are not objects to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. It is terrible to lose tens of thousands of dollars on an adoption, but as I am sure many of you PAP’s know now, we are not guaranteed anything when we hand over our money to an organization whose existense depends on money(as all adoption agencies do).
There has been so much that I have realized over the past 3 years since we began this journey. Am I lucky that I have hindsight as 20/20? It depends on your perspective. While I have many assurances that our adoption was ethical, I do not know for sure. For me, when I look at my son, I KNOW that having him in our family, while it is most definitely a blessing for us, may not be a blessing for him. It is not a blessing for his first family. And, in fact, it may be their greatest source of pain and grief. Especially if I am honest and recognize that at this point, the likelihood that his adoption was 100% ethical is small. Is having him home worth not knowing if his first mother grieves her stolen child? As his second mother, there is no way I can honestly say that it is worth it. Because I love him too much. Does it make sense to say to my someday adult son, I loved you so much, I may have participated in stealing you from your biological mother?
If I am one of the lucky Vietnam AP’s, it is at the expense of my son .
What is my point, I can’t reverse this course, I can’t “give him back.” My point is that we have an obligation to use the knowledge we have to change the course for the future. Are all adoptions from Vietnam suspect? I don’t believe so, in fact I know of several adoptions from Vietnam that in my opinion, pass the litmus test for being ethically completed. My point is that I started off this journey at one place, in one position, and am now being moved by information and experience, to another position. And it is good. Has it been difficult- absolutely. There are parts of our journey that were very difficult that I cannot share here because they are my son’s story to tell.
Do I believe that international adoption is 100% corrupt and always focused on the money? No, I do not. I believe that adoption, in its most beautiful and purest form, fills a need. Where the water gets muddy for me is, what am I doing to help create the need for adoption? Is my very participation in international adoption helping to create a market system that is thereby susceptible, and indeed, vulnerable to corruption? Is my lifestyle as a Westerner helping to create situations in other countries that do not allow families to be able to afford to raise their children? What am I doing to stop the need for adoption? I blogged about what I think we all can and need to be doing to change adoption systems worldwide a year ago on this site. Because, if indeed, adoption is all about the children, we can all agree that many, if not most of the time(excepting cases of abuse/neglect etc) it is the best thing for children to stay with their biological families. IF, indeed.