Lately I've been thinking a lot about how the topic adoption is addressed when it comes to the batfam in both cannon and in fandom. This isn't meant to be like a call out to any writers or fans, I just think this is part of a larger cultural discussion of adoption. I will be discussing things I dislike personally when it comes to how it's represented, but there's a lot of nuance here. This is also my personal feelings on this, as someone who was adopted and knows other people who were adopted. I think adoption in the US is pretty misunderstood and often glorified. I think that the cultural understanding of adoption, raising a kid that wasn't born to you, and the legal process of adoption get lumped together.
I think a lot of people don't really know how adoption in the US exactly works. Adoption is when your birth records are changed to being the legal child of the adoptive parent. You are issued a new birth certificate with the adoptive parent listed and your previous records are sealed and can only be accessed by petitioning the court, and they can say no. It also severs all legal ties to your biological parents. This does give you the legal rights of a biological child, like being automatically included in inheritance and being next of kin without additional paperwork.
A legal guardian is someone who is given temporary or permanent custody of a child, is fully responsible for the child, and has all the same rights as a parent other than legal recognition of parentage. Also inheritance and next of kin assignment is not automatic and needs to be handled separately.
A foster parent is in charge of caring for a child, but does not have legal custody. The child is considered a ward of the state but you are in charge of there daily care and housing. Also the goal of foster care is supposed to be reunification. There's also a lot to talk about regarding the foster system, but that'd be a whole other long post.
I clarify these things partially because I see them mixed up in discussions often, but also to get into the matter of adoption records. So as I stated previously when you are legally adopted your original birth certificate, medical records, and many of the documents from the adoption process are sealed and cannot be accessed without petitioning the court and proving "reasonable cause" for unsealing them. Apparently them being your personal records is not reasonable cause enough. All of your legal ties to your biological parents are severed, in some cases they are given visitation if it's an open adoption but they don't have custody or even legal ties to the kid, they're just allowed to see them sometimes. Many adopted people, including myself, disagree with this process and want the legal process to change so that we are not deprived of legal documentation of our own history.
A lot of us feel that the right to these records is a human right, and sealing them is another instance of the system treating us like property.
(There is also a lot to be said about infant adoption, and how adoption agencies prioritize them, and neglect older kids because more people want babies and are willing to spend more money to get a baby. This leads to struggling mothers of new borns to be pressured to give up their kids rather than being given help, as well as instances of human trafficking because there are several adoption agencies that have been caught buying babies from traffickers overseas. Also the amount of money people pay for babies kind of makes it feel like human trafficking anyway. This is a huge issue in the US right now, not really related to this topic, but as someone adopted as an infant I just wanted to get this tangent out, and also I think it's something more people should learn about.
I'm not calling all the parents who have adopted infants human traffickers by the way, this a critique of US adoption agencies and the system they built.)
Now onto actually talking about bat media, one thing I always see talked about is how Bruce didn't adopt Dick until he was an adult. This is usually explained in comics as either the courts wouldn't allow him to adopt Dick as a single man, which was the case in the 40's comics as that usually wouldn't be allowed in real life, or Dick didn't want to be adopted because he was still grieving his parents. The latter is actually very common, especially nowadays, most grieving kids don't necessarily want a new birth certificate that says their dead parents never existed.
I think that the treatment of this in both fannon and cannon as a mistake Bruce made that needs to be rectified is weird because it is a very real and valid decision, and treating it as something bad implies that adoption is inherently better than legal guardianship. The only difference between a legal guardian and an adoptive parent is the process of sealing records and cutting legal ties with the birth parents, as well as automatic inheritance. A legal guardian has all the parental rights of an adoptive parent, and the legal status doesn't say anything about the relationship with the child. Also Bruce did in fact change his will to include Dick.
Bruce adopting Dick later us usually seen as formality, often because he adopted Jason as a child, but I think we should start considering legal guardianship as a completely valid route to go, without putting adoption on a pedestal as a better option. This isn't to shame anyone who writes this plot point in comics or fan fiction, most people don't know the nuances in adoption and the struggle for adopted people's rights, but I think glorifying adoption often just silences these conversations about the downsides of adoption in the US.
(Here's some panels of Bruce talking about not adopting Dick as a child and adopting him as an adult)
Tales of the Teen Titans #50 1984
I was gonna talk about instances like Cass and also Clark who's in the same boat with not really having previous records, Clark coming from a planet that blew up and Cass being raised in isolation (considering she had to threaten David Cain into telling her when she was born, I'm gonna assume she wasn't legally documeted.) and not having a legal identity for a good part of her life. That being said I don't have a lot of experience with kids who don't have legal records before being adopted. So if anyone has anything to add on that topic feel free to. I think this is a very case by case thing.
I think media as a whole conflates the actual act of raising a kid as your own with the legal process of adoption. There has been a lot of push to change how the legal process of adoption works and to regulate the adoption industry, but it's still an ongoing fight. Most media doesn't portray the ugly side of adoption which skews people's view of it. I hope to see more media in the future begin to explore the nuances as the cultural perception of adoption is very limited. I also highly encourage anyone to do further research into this topic, so I'm leaving some sources here at the end of the post. After all there's a lot I didn't talk about, and I am just one adopted person sharing my experience not the all knowing adoption god. I hope that this post inspires some people to do more research into adopted people's rights, and begin thinking more critically about how it's portrayed in media.
(Resources in the Reblogs because tumblr hates links)
(Also this is the third version of the post, the first one I decided I didn't like so I deleted and re-wrote it, and then tumblr ate my next draft)
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