Another drive-by post from me
I’m honestly only checking in ‘cuz work stuff is a little crazy — didn’t mean to post a bunch! Soper said:
I wonder how much of this study is cultural. Was it just the experience of US birthmoms? I wonder if other cultures have such an incessant need for openness. I have a feeling that the social attitudes toward adoption in a specific culture strongly influence the birthparents’ reaction.I think we make broad assumptions about what works for the psychology of others based one what we ourselves experience. I agree, America needs a better support system for grief of all types. I agree that the individual needs to determine what is an appropriate level of interaction.
I think we also need to refrain from making broad assumptions that the experience of US birthparents is going to be the same for those in other cultures. There is a movement to close down international adoption in several countries, b/c US parents are trying to track down birthparents. In countries where unwed motherhood is taboo, this is seen as a threat. Openness may be a truly US phenom, and trying to impose it on other cultures is imperialistic (and typically American).
I think I must’ve missed if someone was trying to extrapolate to other cultures. I’m always talking about domestic infant adoption — even more specifically domestic infant adoption not through foster care — because that’s my reality. There are lots of ways to adopt and while there are a lot of similarities, I think there are way more differences when it comes to international adoption and domestic infant adoption.
Also, my final point of the post with the studies was to say that I don’t think we can separate our experiences of adoption from our social values and mores. Thus to say that “adoption should be structured like this and no other way” denies the realities of our individual experiences and circumstances as well as our cultural backgrounds even within the American adoption system, let alone outside it.
There is a definite change in the way that birth parents are represented in the adoption community and in the adoption literature within the US. More and more we are recognizing the legitimacy of birth parent experiences and this has fueled openness, too. Even if we can’t say make these same kinds of inferences about birth mothers in international adoptions, we do have to recognize that this discussion will impact the way international adoptees process their adoptions.
I had no idea that parents of internationally adopted children were pushing for openness in countries where this was unwelcome; I know very little about international adoption. One reason we went with a domestic adoption is that our hearts lay in the tangled ethics of a US adoption. I mean, every adoption holds ethical landmines and I felt more comfortable stepping through these. It’s one reason I like to talk to Amber about adoption. I think she and I have similar interests but hers are focused on Chinese adoption and mine are focused on domestic infant adoption. Not everything she has to say applies to my situation but it very often illuminates it.
Hey, I wasn’t doing a drive by! You know me better than that by now, I would hope. I was just adding my thoughts based on what I’ve encountered through international adoption — I didn’t realize the conversation was limited to domestic adoption.
Well, since international adoption was mentioned…
My daughter was born in the former Soviet Union. After reading about birthmothers, and reading some things in which birthmothers wrote about their feelings about their children, and having a few sleepless nights in which I thought, “We have an address for her that is two years old; what if my daughter thinks that we should have contacted her birthmother,” and also had some worries about Hannah’s birthmother, I thought I should try to contact L, Hannah’s birthmother. I had no idea how to go about doing it, and asked for help from a woman whose organization does relief work in my daughter’s country. She put me in touch with people in that country, who told me most emphastically that I should not try to contact L. I’m still not sure if it was the right decision, but this is one of those instances where L was in a taboo situation in her culture, and I worried about putting her in a bad position. There is still part of me that still really wants to do something, but I don’t want to make things worse. It is a comfort to me, though, that she also does have our names, as well as us having hers, and hope that she finds some comfort in that as well, having at least some knowledge of where her baby is.