Maybe said (referring to how Madison thinks Pennie is prettier than I am):
Another thought I had – it’s positive that Madison sees a woman of color as being petty – this will help her identify with with other woman of color as she matures and not try to trick herself into thinking she is “white.” I’ve read so many stories about TRAs believing themselves to be white and rejecting all aspects of their natural heritage while they are young, only to be forced to face it upon adulthood (or when trying to forge bonds with a community of similar heritage, ie. a Korean student group at college, etc.)
That is nice, true but the very next part of the conversation was this:
Me: You look a lot like Pennie.
Madison: Yes, I’m pretty like Pennie, too.
Me: Pennie has a gorgeous smile and you have a gorgeous smile, too.
Madison: Yes, but I still wish I was white!
Me: Why?
Madison: Because … because … it’s just easier. You don’t know how it feels to be adopted!
Madison’s racial identity is very tied up in her adoption, which makes perfect sense. I’m not sure how that will impact her adult racial identity because I haven’t read any memoirs, research, etc. that are about transracial OPEN adoptions. I think most of the issues in closed adoptions are there but I think they ring differently. I used to naively think that openness would make up for a lot of the problems in transracial adoption but five years into it, I think it’s just a different way of experiencing them.
Madison’s interest in IFIF (the support group for all multiracial families that actually caters most to black adopted kids with white parents) is that most of the children there also have birth mothers. She is very intrigued that there are other people who don’t match their families AND who have birth mothers.
I don’t know how it would be if our adoption weren’t open. I’m not sure how her racial identity would be forming differently (if it would be forming differently). Sometimes she says she wishes we were black and sometimes she says she wishes she were white. I think this is another way of saying she wishes she weren’t adopted. (She doesn’t know any children who were adopted who DO match their parents — she knows adults but not kids. So to her, adoption is not matching.)
If there was less or no openness, she might be less forthcoming with her feelings (I’m not sure about that but I think her experiences give her something to hang her processing on so I think much of her discussion would be happening more internally if she didn’t have the language around her experiences in openess to make sense of her feelings.) If she were not trancially adopted, I also think her adoption processing might be less because it would be easier for her not to think about it and she would also be able to keep her adoption closeted if she chose. I think that both the openness and the transracialness of her adoption are part of what makes her so cognizant of her experience and so articulate about it.
Here’s another thing she said recently that I thought was interesting.
Brett and I were driving and she was in the backseat and I was teasing Brett. I said, “If you knew that the road led to HERE [we were having a glamorous day of cleaning out the basement and we were running errands beforehand], would you have had second thoughts about getting down on one knee to ask me to marry you?”
And Madison pipes up, “But Mommy! If you didn’t say yes, I wouldn’t exist!” then she corrected herself. “If you didn’t say yes, who would Pennie have found to give her baby to?”
You see, it’s very concrete for her.
Dawn, I really appreciate reading about your conversations with Madison. Our son just turned two, and I wonder what kind of conversations we’ll be having when he is Madison’s age.
We speak very openly about race and adoption in our family. Ours is also a transracial adoption, but we sadly do not have nearly the level of openness that you do and I wonder how that impacts our son’s awareness and understanding.
Recently, my son asked, “Where’s the other mama?”
“You mean your other mama, X?” I asked.
“Yeah, where’s the other mama? I want her.”
It was the first time that my son, without prompting, has said something that made me think he actually understood that when we talk about his first mom there is a real person out there, not just a story. I wished so badly that I could say to him, “You want X? OK, let’s stop by and visit her!”
Hey Sharon! I think it’s great he’s talking about it now and has you to hear him. See and that’s proof that openness isn’t just visits — it’s OPENNESS and that’s what you’re creating. It’s wonderful.
Thanks Dawn. The “open adoption” part is beyond our control, but I’m trying hard to BE open. You are a great example of being open and I’ve learned a lot from you!
Wow, that’s just so cute! That for a split second she felt just as if she were your biological child!
I cannot imagine how hard it is/will be to deal with all the issues involved in a transracial adoption. It must be tough to hear her say she thinks being white/not adopted is hard (in addition fascinating correlation — how adoption problems and problems due to race/racism can have an affinity like that).
As always, thanks for sharing.
I think you’re right that both the openness and the transracialness effect her being so open and articulate about her adoption. Our son “matches” his siblings (our bio kids), so his being adopted is not visually obvious. He rarely asks about his adoption or mentions it, and I’d say 9 out of 10 times we’ve talked about his adoption, it’s been me bringing it up, and it often feels like I’m reminding him, and sometimes that doesn’t feel great to me because I can imagine it feeling distancing to him. If he’d ask about it then I could at least feel like he wanted to hear about it at that moment…
I was thinking that my placed son matches his aparents, but then realized he wasn’t born matching; I’m Catholic, and he was converted as an infant, so that he now matches his Jewish parents. That said, he looks rather like one of his aparents (and spookily like me), so he doesn’t have the obvious adoptedness of TRAs.
Susie- I am Jewish by blood, and my sons Afamily is Catholic! I just find that a bit funny
I’m hoping I can do passover with them this next year (they’ve never done it).
Dawn- Thanks for sharing! My son is bi-racial (white and AA). His Amom is white, and his Adad is black. So while he doesn’t really look like them, he will at least grow up with both cultures, for which I am very grateful. I love reading the comments Madison makes, I wonder if Phillip will be that vocal about his adoption!
That last comment of Madison’s really lingers, doesn’t it — not the content, but just the fact that her brain took her from one place to the next. That she can switch from one mode of thinking to another — that’s one smart and thoughtful little girl. (But also, no wonder it’s tough for her emotionally sometimes. She isn’t going to the place where she pushes those “on second thought” ideas away.)
Wow, Madison is really smart about this stuff.
Interesting thing about Energy Boy — he doesn’t wish he was white. In fact, when he draws himself, he often colors himself darker than he actually is, and when he wanted a small nativity and had the choice between Caucasian and African American, he chose the African American one because he thought they looked more like him.
Even if the coloring isn’t quite right and there are other differences, I liked that.
Madison does that, too (draws herself brown, chooses representations for herself in her toys, etc.). Whenever she’s talking about wanting to be white, she’s talking specifically about matching us or not being adopted. I was trying to write some about it but deleted most of it ‘cuz I need to think on it some more. Outside of the context of her adoption, she’s very loud/proud about being black. She’ll say, *I* am African American!!! And stomp around. But within the context of her adoption, she wants us to match and sometimes that means changing herself and sometimes that means changing me.
Very complex issues here, I’m so glad Madison feels free to talk openly with you about this!
Ah, her last line there…
How will I handle these questions when asked by my sons or the Munchkin? I don’t quite know the answer(s).
Hmm hmm hmm.
I love you for blogging these things.
I often felt like a visitor in my dad’s extended family because I was the only one not to live with my parents, and even though I had the same last name, I didn’t feel like I had full membership. One way this manifested was by being hyper aware of my physical differences. Most of the older folks, being Italian, had darker complexions and skin than I and so for many years I fixated on blond hair and blue eyes as being boring and average and dark hair and dark eye as interesting and special. But that difference was only in my own eyes, to the rest not only did I match my family but I represented the ideal standard of beauty (I’d like to say of that time but alas, I fear I’d be wrong). I never told anyone about this, partially because I knew very few people who actually wanted to talk about my situation (my 2 wonderful aunts were the big exception).
Appropos of nothing, just musing on the fact that Madison has actual differences to frame her adoption experiences and that frame her overall life experiences and agreeing with you in general.
[...] — susiebook @ 8:06 am Tags: adoption, blogland, boundaries, culture gap Reading Dawn’s post about her transracially adopted daughter’s conversations on race made me think about Cricket’s [...]