Monday, March 03, 2008

Dear John Letter

This response in the courier news to a New Jersey bill to provide adult adoptees equal access is infuriating:

"Speaking as prospective adoptive parents, my wife and I are not willing to take on any adoption where the specter of the biological parent hovers over the adoptive parent-child relationship."

Dear John,
I am an adoptive mother. My daughter is absolutely my daughter. She is also absolutely the daughter of her first mother and father. Their "specter" doesn't hover over our relationship, some unseen threat. They are here in her flesh. They are here, with me every day, in my daughter's beautiful eyes and eyelashes, in her dimples, in the way she belly laughs and a million gestures and manners that I had never before seen until I met her but that I'm sure they would have seen reflected in one another.
You warn that if adoptees are granted equal access to their own information, more and more prospective adoptive parents will adopt from abroad to avoid . . . what, precisely, isn't clear -- to avoid a child who has a history? (but we ALL have histories -- genetic, prenatal, perinatal, all significant histories). I will warn you in turn: anyone who is unwilling to honor a child's inheritances from her natural family is not ready to nurture an adopted child, adopted domestically or abroad.

PS Are you a real person? You manage to hit on everything wrong with the opposition to equal access to OBCs AND everything wrong with adoption preparation . . .

9 comments:

susan said...

Sounds like John just isn't ready to adopt, period.

Mia said...

Ugh. John has a mentality I will never understand. It is so entirely damaging. It makes me wish he had a crystal ball to go along with his magic wand.

Unknown said...

Actually I think John hit the nail on the head, in a way... Records remain closed in large part (most part?) because the U.S. infant adoption industry is terrified open records will ruin their business. Transparency in adoption is an enemy of unethical agencies--and unethical adoptive parents and biological parents, too.

If records being opened chase a person like John AWAY from domestic adoption, well then, good riddance. But let's not stop there! Let's make sure he can't adopt internationally, either, with that attitude!

Okay I am not feeling very charitable today. But really. I'm so sick of entitlement. So, so sick of it.

Michelle said...

I think it's amazing how John believes that a human should relinquish her or his parents, identity, culture, relatives and ethnicity so he can become a parent.

Some people sure think they're special.

Michelle said...

I think it's amazing how John believes that a human should relinquish her or his parents, identity, culture, relatives and ethnicity so he can become a parent.

Some people sure think they're special.

abebech said...

Admittedly I didn't even scratch the surface of what is wrong with his thought process -- I was just hung up on the notion of a "specter."

John is clearly clueless the whole way around.

Thanksgivingmom said...

I don't often comment, but nore often just lurk and "hover" here, which I'm sure makes sense to John what with my firstparent status and all...but this is just too much!

Not willing to? Well la-ti-dah! Let me know when they find you a baby that never had first parents, culture, history, anything. Good luck and good riddance John!

Anonymous said...

I'm embarassed to admit this is a local paper for me. So this ridiculous and damaging mindset is in my very own backyard. (Of course, it likely is for everyone, isn't it?)

No matter how I try to wrap my head around that way of thinking, I just can't. It's absurd that one can cloud their vision of being a parent so completely as to denounce the child they claim to be able to love unconditionally.

abebech said...

Mammagigi, ugh but you're right -- the paper is local to you, but the attitude is local to us all.

Thanksgivingmom, thanks for coming out of lurkdom. Please know that you are always very welcome to be here, be seen here and speak here.