The foster care and adoption centers are really fucked up and a huge chunk of the kids in it should not have been removed from their parents in the first place, and this is absolutely a serious issue with roots in racism and classism and white supremacy.
But I also want to push back against this newer assumption that adoption is somehow always evil and violent and tragic and that we should get rid of it entirely.
My younger brother is adopted. His bio mom is my cousin, and she wasn’t ready at the time to raise a child. The adoption was completely voluntary and totally open. We are close to both bio parents and they like to check in every now and then to make sure my brother is doing all right. There was no shady child trafficking, no lies, no predatory practices. The only cultural difference is that he has Polish American ancestry on his bio dad’s side, and we have gotten geneological information in case he ever wants it (which he doesn’t yet).
Literally the only “trauma” (for lack of a better word) my brother has ever experienced from his adoption are the rude remarks of random kids who feel the need to opine on how weird adoption is and how the two of us aren’t “really family”. None of this can be blamed on the adoption itself; it’s prejudice, first and foremost. And by automatically assuming that every adoption scenario is violent or traumatic or abusive (not that we should automatically assume it’s the other way around either!), we actually tacitly accept this level of harassment and play into the amatonormative, heteronormative, etc. idea that “blood = family” which also demonizes stepfamilies and families of choice.
Also, I’m wary of any argument that adopting a kid is morally wrong because I’m pretty sure the only thing everyone refusing to adopt would accomplish is more kids aging out of the foster care system and ending up on the streets.
Adopted parents shouldn’t be put on pedestals, they shouldn’t be treated as uniquely good, and abuse shouldn’t be excused. Adoption agencies and foster care systems should be held accountable for misdeeds, and the violence they inflict on POC and other marginalized groups. But even once we get rid of the kyriarchy, we’re still going to have kids whose immediate (or even extended) family members are dead or unavailable. We’re still going to have people who don’t feel ready to have a child but who ended up giving birth to one anyway. We’re still going to have stepfathers and stepmothers who want to legitimize their relation to their spouse’s bio child. Family reconciliation is a good goal, but it’s never going to work 100% of the time and we need to stop insisting that it will.
