Our adoption practices may be the one thing more barbaric than our
divorce ones, and for much the same reasons.
I didn't say adoption is bad. I said our adoption practices
are needlessly cruel and inhumane, unjustifiably doing permanent
damage to two-thirds of those involved.
If you drop political correctness and listen to those who've
been adopted, however happy with their adoptive family, each and
every one is seeking their natural parents from somewhere deep
within. They want to know where they come from and who they are,
biologically.
This is the very thing our adoption practices explicitly
brutalize, much like our divorce ones. They try to destroy the
indestructible: impose that biological ties do not exist when they do,
as though we were not biological beings with biological histories but
machines. Blood must be as thin as water.
Our adoption practices reflect a machine concept of family:
made of interchangeable parts. They are therefore an inhumanity we
systematically commit against ourselves. Our divorce laws equally
impose elimination of parental ties with the mechanical consideration
that a child needs a care giver and money, not its family.
Yes, adopted children will speak in glowing terms and
appreciation of their adoptive parents. They are usually as close to
them as any child to any parent. This hardly means they carry no
permanent wound and will never feel as complete as you or I. They
will never feel the satisfaction of knowing what, exactly, they pass
to their own children, that they transfer a history that goes back
over continents and centuries. Their pre-life, which exists as much
as yours or mine, is hidden and untraceable. Where is the connection
to all mankind? Not just who am I, but who are my children?
Yet under the term "open adoption" lies an infinite range of
choices from annual letters to weekly visits to full co-parenting.
Each is more common to most other societies than the cruelty we
impose. But most jurisdictions still ignore them and restrict any
couple -- on either side -- to the smallest set of choices, as
though society should decide what choices parents can make for their
children. And there's no going back from that choice, even though
the ties are real and forever. The child is rarely accorded a
future choice.
Consider the parents. Do you think they ever "get over" the
loss, like a child from your body is something you just remove like
a wart? The only reason parents give up their children for adoption
is that they know they lack the resource to raise it, and are
responsible about that. But neither could they bring themselves to
kill it, caring enough to give it some chance.
What does this say about us? Despite previously un-imaginable
wealth, we cannot do what much poorer societies have always done and
support those with less than ourselves. It says we are too greedy for
what we can get for ourselves to afford the simplest compassion for
others and their children. We would rather blame people for what fate
and youthful miscalculation provide than simply deal with how the
universe randomly unfolds.
For parents, what is the difference between adoption and
abortion? Both eliminate the child forever, and leave the same
eternal wound. What new set of choices do we think we provide?
If those who campaign against abortion really wanted to
reduce their numbers instead of simply impose their values on others,
you would expect them to campaign at least as hard for more maternity
homes and a far wider range of options for adoption.
Copyright © 2004 K.C.Wilson.
K.C. Wilson is the author of
Male Nurturing, The Multiple Scandals of Child Support, and other e-books
on family and men's issues.
