this woman’s work

The day after

Oct 20, 2009 Adoption, Blogging

I am relieved that I don’t have to click buttons anymore or ask you all to click buttons. When I get the results, I’ll let you know. I am totally hung over on the vestiges of this cold and not thinking all that clearly right now (working on my third cup of coffee in order to WAKE UP because work work work is waiting waiting waiting).

Well, we don’t know what the results will be but this has been a heady past few days and I appreciate the support.

I was witness to a conversation that happened between two black & white adoption thinkers the other day, tangentially related to the contest and it illustrated how hard these discussions really are. I think that both sides kind of understood where the other was coming from but they weren’t stepping outside of their own boxes enough to really get it and so it was a conversation that didn’t go anywhere and no one was heard and no minds were changed. Frustrating.

When I was watching this documentary, I got very discouraged. Basically there’s a strong French lobbying group that is party to kickbacks from adoption agencies. (I didn’t totally get the points system they were talking about because I watched this when my fever was at its worst and was pretty out of it.) The group is called SERA Romania and they create some really powerful propaganda. Those horrific black and white pictures of children crumpled and abandoned in institutional iron cribs? Those were SERA’s. There is no way you can look at those photos and not want to do something. And for many of us, that something is to adopt.

Infertility does a number on your heart and on your self-esteem. I never felt as petty as I did when I was mourning a miscarriage. I was jealous of pregnant women, trapped in a cramped box of self-pity and full of grief and rage. I didn’t like myself very much. And I was tired of not liking myself very much. To me, that was one of the worst parts of infertility is how cut off I felt from everyone because my tragedy engulfed me and defined me. It was all I was for a little while.

When I decided to adopt, the lid came off my box. Where before I’d been a small, petty person now I was a large-hearted, hopeful person. People celebrated my decision for the most part. Not just people I knew, but people out there in the world with their pro-adoption sentiments. It would have been very very very very easy to be lured into that mindset. Groups like SERA encourage this kind of entitlement. Our natural pride of place and self-centeredness encourages it, too. We have clean water here and sturdy houses. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to share all this with a child from a less fortunate home? You flip on the tv and find a man exhorting you to look into this child’s deep brown eyes and send the price of a cup of coffee to feed her. And you think, “Wouldn’t it be better if I just came to adopt her?” We have stories (some of them true, some of them not) of women who beg foreigners to take their children away to a better place. We hear about poor people who sell their children into slavery so they can feed their other babies. We could adopt! We will adopt! We are called! And our infertility then has meaning! Our losses have meaning! We were meant to save THIS child who was meant to be OUR child!

It’s heady stuff. How can we not fall for it?

And when someone questions us, it shakes the foundation of our sense of self. What if those children aren’t orphans? What if there is another way to save the ones who are? (Look at this woman — she moved to India instead of asking her children to move here!)

When I watch Linda Robak cry in the documentary for the abandoned Romanian children, I believe her. I believe that she feels that the best way to save those children is to get them the hell out of Romania. I don’t know (the documentary doesn’t tell me) what she thinks of the woman in the countryside whose daughter was stolen. I don’t know if she and whistleblower Roelie Post agree on anything. It’s so complicated. I’m not sure of the answers. But I do believe that we have to get the money out of it to make sense of it.

Some of us stand by the absolute belief that our adoptions are clean and so we’re not part of this. But if there is suspicion anywhere in adoption, we adoptive parents are all suspect; we are all responsible. This does not mean that we are all bad. I think most of us are trying very hard to be good. It’s just that in this black & white discussion I was privy to, I kept hearing excuses about why these issues didn’t matter in this case and in that case. I didn’t hear anyone unpacking privilege. I didn’t hear anyone admitting that even if it’s all clean and it’s all good as far as we can control, there is still bad stuff outside of our control and we are benefiting from it.

I’ll repeat — we need to get the money out of it to make sense of it. If people are profiting by moving children from one country or family to another, then we need to watch those people closely. Not all of them are looking to exploit kids (I believe this) but they need to be watched by disinterested parties. (Look at this salary chart over at Pound Pup Legacy. This should concern us.)

Sometimes I watch a documentary like Search a Child, Pay Cash and I feel so discouraged. I think the lobby is too strong. The lure of orphans too much to contend with. There are too many of us whose good intentions override our sense of justice. I think about how the kids are caught in limbo and how stopping adoptions means some of those kids drop off cliffs. I don’t know what the answers are but I know that we start to unravel it by asking questions and examining our own complicity.

It’s not enough just to say, “I am not like those parents!” We have to actively fight the policies that make unethical adoptions possible especially when we promote adoption. If we want adoption to remain a viable option for children and/or parents in need, we need to do our part to be sure that’s just what it is. If we want to truly save orphans, we need to do what we can to be sure that they’re orphans. If we want to truly allow women the opportunity to consider adoption, we need to do what we can to be sure that their consideration is free of coercion. Otherwise we can’t complain when we fall under the cloak of suspicion. The suspicion is justified if we’re not using our privilege for good.

I know this is more of the same really. I was just so sad when I was watching that conversation and seeing the same tired old good intentions get played for sympathy without any real work for change. It’s just not enough. We’re not doing enough.