this woman’s work

Family trees and personal roots

Dec 7, 2005 Adoption

When I was a freshman in college I decided to take Russian to meet the language requirements of my major. Now if you knew how badly I mangled French in high school, my choice might have surprised you. (However you probably would not have been as surprised as I was when I got to the first class and realized that Russians use a whole different alphabet! Oops!) But the reason I took it was because I was 17 and I was trying to Find Myself.

I didn’t know at the time that I was a walking cliché; I just yearned to feel some connection to something bigger that was still a part of me. Thus the Russian. (It’s also when I first started toying with the idea of becoming truly Jewish.)

Karen recently posted a Blogging Baby entry on “teaching cultural awareness” to her daughter, who is adopted. She writes, in part (click the link in her name to read the whole thing):

When I talk to other families who’ve been built through transracial adoption, invariably the issue arises of how we’re going to raise our children to learn and value their culture. I’ll hear parents talk about making Chinese classes available to their children, or celebrating a particular holiday of their children’s birthcountries. Usually, I smile and nod politely, but truthfully? I don’t feel compelled to do the same for my daughter.
…
Perhaps my ambivalence about the whole thing is due to the fact that Alex doesn’t look different from Marcus and me — at a glance, she could conceivably be biologically related to us. Perhaps if the fact that we adopted was obvious on its face, I’d feel differently. Or perhaps if we didn’t have such strong ties to her home country — we visit friends and family in the United States at least once a year, and probably will continue to do so — I’d feel more compelled to teach her about American culture. Or maybe, since Alex’s adoption is an open adoption and we remain in touch with her birthmother, I make a presumption that she’ll learn about Mexican-American culture as a matter of course.

I was thinking about this anyway because I just wrote J’s mom earlier this week to ask her if she could gather some family info for Madison. J’s family — both sides and from way, way back — are Creole. It’s a rich, multi-hued heritage and part of why I want to understand more about it — specifically more about the way it plays out in J’s family — is because it would be a little like turning our backs on an overflowing treasure chest not to grab this chance. But the bigger reason is that I remember signing up for Russian and I remember hoping that somehow in studying it, I would have an easier time of figuring out who I was meant to be.

Every child goes through this search for identity but it is generally much more powerful for the child who was adopted.

Establishing one’s identity is the major task of adolescence. Teenagers, whether adopted or not, must deal with such questions as, “Who am I? Where do I fit?” and “What do I want to do with my life?” For those who were adopted, the search for personal identity is complicated every step of the way by the mystery of their genetic background.

From Issues Facing Adult Adoptees

While Karen says perhaps their invisibility as a family created by adoption may play into her ambivalence, I don’t think I would feel differently if Madison were as pale as we are (and my gosh, we are a sun-burned and pasty people — Noah, Brett and I). If we had adopted a white child from Russia — a child who could “pass” as our own — or a white child from Minnesota, whose birth family were Lutherans from Lake Woebegone we would still have been adopting transculturally. It has very little to do with Madison’s ability to blend in with us. Transracial adoption may make it more obvious to outsiders but every child who comes to a new family is bringing with her a whole new branch of history.

We are very, very lucky to have 1/2 of Madison’s birth family involved in her life (her birth father is unlikely to ever be there and that’s a loss we recognize). However, until Madison is old enough to manage those relationships herself, it’s up to us to create opportunities. I asked J’s mom for this info in part to let them all know that we honor and value Madison’s birth right to that aspect of her culture. I feel like we are lucky to have the opportunity to pave a way for Madison to seek them out on her own should she choose and I don’t want to lose that. I want them to know that we welcome whatever it is they can give her and that we aren’t trying to erase her birth history.

Madison may find she feels more connected to my mom’s Dar-worthy legacy when she grows up or she may decided to move to the bayou and learn to cook gumbo (we’re rooting for the gumbo because I hear J’s grandma holds the ultimate recipe for it); it’s up to her. Exploring every possibility is her birth right and it’s our obligation to give her those possibilities.

Two thoughts pulled from the Transracially Adopted Children’s Bill of Rights, (which really should read “transculturally adopted,” which likely would include most if not every adopted child):

Every child is entitled to have his or her heritage and culture embraced and valued.

Every child is entitled to grow up with items in their home environment created for and by people of their own race or ethnicity.

(In the cut, I’m placing some definitions pulled from From Mirriam-Webster.com. I’m grabbing what I feel is the best definition for this discussion.)

We celebrate our various family cultures here and that, of course, was true long before Madison arrived. The books on our shelves, some of the pictures on our walls, and the tchotchkes that find their way to us are part of that. They permeate our lives effortlessly and then, too, because we care about our roots, they show up in obvious, studied ways, too. (For some time Brett’s father had a sprawling family tree crawling across one big wall in their family room. And whenever all three brothers are in town, he hangs a family flag with historic design in the window.) Given the way we pay tribute to our own cultural backgrounds, to ignore hers would send a message that her birth history is somehow less real (or less important) than our own. So in short (too late! it’s already awfully long!) I do feel compelled — and blessed — to teach Madison about her birth culture and her adopted culture.

Definitions:

Heritage — something possessed as a result of one’s natural situation or birth

Culture — a : the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a company or corporation

Ethnicity — ethnic quality or affiliation

Ethnic — of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background

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