What is adoption trauma anyway?
So, a lot of kept think that adoption trauma is the child going through say foster care or the orphanage, and then coming out fucked up. (Probably as a result of through the grapevine talk about Eastern European orphanages) But Adoption trauma is a lot more complex, which is also why a lot of adoptees present with complex PTSD.
Adoption trauma includes, but is not limited to:
Genetic separation from our family. For us, it's often a death, but without the certainty since the majority of us can't find our birth families. Often adoptees have crippling abandonment issues.
Lack of mirroring in our immediate family so that we often feel separate.
Separation from siblings, if it was done in the name of adoption. (Twins and twin studies used adoption)
Not knowing our medical data, or being totally uncertain because of epigenetics.
The uncertainty eats at us.
Lost time with our birth family, even if we are in an open adoption.
Not being certain of our past because the information keeps changing on us. In movies, they make this "cute" but in reality, it causes spiraling depression.
*Sometimes* it is added with foster care and orphanages.
Finding out the systemic wrongs that formed the adoption industrial complex: Name your systemic wrong, adoption absorbed it all. Always causes us a spiral. We call it getting out of the fog.
Often not having defenses against Kept being invasive by asking questions that are boundary pushers. (I call this process grooming. My boundaries are still shaky.)
Being denied a voice in media and being told we don't understand adoption.
Being told that adoption fixed everything and is made up of cute babies.
Being told we are perpetual children. We could be older than the person talking to us and they will still talk down to us.
Being told the way to fix our adoption trauma is to adopt.
Often adoption trauma comes with created NDs and disabilities. C-PTSD, bipolar, depression, anxiety. But ALSO, ADHD (even if they were in a "loving" foster home), Sensory Processing disorder, etc.
The lack of papers and proof of the adoption, as well as keeping those papers from us. (anonymously added)
Late discovery adoption brings another layer of trauma. (Anonymously added)
Things that compound Adoption trauma often in our environment (beyond the usual):
People asking where our "real" parents are.
People asking us to choose parents by title, rather than by how they treated us when they find out we're adopted.
People auto-assuming the narrative of birth and adoptive parents for us in front of us rather than getting to know who they were as individuals.
People making jump assumptions about how adoption is—often as a magical cure.
People asking invasive medical or history questions because we said the word adopted, and super focusing on that without caring about our feelings and how we feel about our adoption and the adoption industrial complex.
People trying to comfort our adoptive parents that we look like them.
People threatening our safety by saying crap like, "We'll take you to the orphanage"
People calling our adoptive parents saviors.
Parents expecting us to be "teachable moments" for fucking adults. Child safety comes first, you assholes.
People saying, "But I know someone who adopted and those children don't have trauma." Yeah, because people go around talking about their trauma freely when you get the above behavior?
People calling us angry for asking for better child welfare laws.
Rehoming and the whole situation that allows that to happen. STOP REHOMING.
Death— Adoptees and Foster Youth are notoriously bad at handling death.
But you're not really _fill in heritage_ because you're adopted.
Seeing Adoptive Parents get PAID for talking about adoption while we get DENIED unless we write a memoir, which then is marketed to only adoptees. (Our pictures always get plastered onto those articles written by adoptive parents, in which case we get harassed even more.)
For interracial adoptees, often we get paraded out as proof that our parents are "not racist", which the system is built on racism.
Every time we talk we have to talk about our birth parents and adoptive parents and how "good" or "bad" they are in polarizing terms.
BTW, for Adoptive Parents: Teach boundaries first. CHILD SAFETY COMES FIRST. Invasive questions: The child has a right to refuse. Any questions about cost, not in front of your kid.
The thing is that people often think adoption is this magical place that heals all hurts in a way that they don't imagine in other scenarios.
If your parent died, and the other parent remarried and you got a step-parent, no one would say to you, "Oh, well you got a new parent, so you can FORGET about your dead parent." Absolutely they do this with adoption. People don't treat losing parents as a trauma. But adoption does that. And we don't know if they are alive or dead.
If you met a stranger on the street, would you ask them, "Hey how much do you weigh and how much do you make in a year?" NO, right? But with adoption, for some reason, people think it is.
On the street you meet someone that looks sad. They tell you their mother died, but they just realized they don't know their family history. And would you seriously tell them, well, it's not that bad, trauma affects us all differently? Fuck no. You'd be called a cold heartless jerk. And rightfully so. But with adoption 100% this is called acceptable. Look, you're adopted, so it's not that baddd... is it?
Which parent do you want to shoot more? Your mommy or your daddy? YOU MUST CHOOSE. No reasonable person says this, but people ask us which set of parents we love more as if we are experiments. You do get the twin experiments were amoral, right? RIGHT? We got the answer through genetics and epigenetics. A mix of both. So shut up with this question. We get to choose by the quality of the relationship as us as individuals. Just like when someone has two sisters, they don't go, welp, I can't have a second sister. You go by how the person treats you. BTW, this question is totally anti-queer too. And queer people don't have to buy into this het normativity at all and say there are only two.
Why does the word "adoption" make it like it's unicorns shitting glittering rainbow poop. Adoption agencies got to dominate the narrative, and it acts like an advertisement to say you get to save your child, thus own them. But as I said before, saving a person doesn't give you the right to own them, and saviorism and parenting don't mix.
Altruism isn't "What's in it for me?" Is that what the Christians are teaching about adoption? Look, you get to "save" this child and then discount price to own them for life. Certainly not what Jesus taught. There's stories of Jesus making sure that only true orphans ended up with new parents, and preferably in their own families. (Because I bothered to read the Bible as a Jew.)
That said some things Adoptees would like as alternatives:
Permanent Guardianship. It's worked in Australia and New Zealand.
Queer communal families instead of adoption. Like Andrew Solomon and a lot of queer families are finding ways around adoption and IVF. They partner up with other queer people, so that children know their genetic past. (Also remember that adoption preys on queer people)
Communal families? Doesn't have to be queer. Do you need to raise your own blood?
Intrafamily adoption with support.
Foster Care people are trained in mental health support and required to do so. (This was a proposal under Obama)
Adoptive Parents (if there has to be some) are trained in trauma and for the harder cases, the children go to them.
That we fix all systemic wrongs feeding the system. i.e. get rid of the 99% bloat.
Adoption agencies are abolished. Instead it goes through courts (which is possible if you cut down the influx).
In cases of abuse, the children can put put into protective custody, but get an option of a free name change upon becoming an adult.
If it occurs to you at this point this sounds a lot like victims of abuse objecting to their existence, for many adoptees it is exactly that. FFY and Adoptees don't want to live in a world where we have to exist. And if there is adoption, it's created not by systemic injustice, but because there is truly no alternative. That it is reserved for experts that can deal with that level of trauma. We stop the "healthy" baby routine with adoption and concentrate it on the individuals that truly need it and that those individuals get the support they need to grown and thrive into healthy adults. Because children shouldn't exist for adults to be parents. Adults should be there to give children parents.
