Uh, Just In Case You Didn't Know....

I received a comment, obviously from someone who has adopted, probably an Asian child, that said she was "taken aback" by my post "There Goes The Neighborhood." Well, golly gee. What about the term "anti-adoption blog" don't we understand? Said commenter then accused me of stereotyping adopters.

Oh my. Did I do that? It's not like mothers of adoption loss have not been stereotyped, denigrated, dismissed and judged unimportant for decades. I've been in the arena of activism long enough to know if it has webbed feet, feathers and quacks, it's probably a duck. It is the act of adoption that I abhor, especially that of infants and toddlers.

I am appalled by the adoption of children from other nations due to the eventual and unique damage that is done to the child. Every adopted child experiences a loss but the international adoptees grow up having been denied their cultural and racial heritage, not just their  family heritage. The unfortunate reason that they are adopted by American Caucasians is so the adopters won't have to deal with the ugly truth of a natural mother. She would be, of course, too far away to interfere in their "as if born to" fantasy. I really wish some of these international PAPs would talk to the adult adoptees, especially from Asian nations, about how that has affected them. Of course, they would just KNOW that their case would be different. People only see what they want to see and the fuzzy, pink cloud mythology of adoption is a perfect dream for too many.

The desire for a child does not entitle one to a child. And adoption, while I do not believe it will go away in my lifetime, is a social experiment that has caused a lot of pain for a lot of people and, if mothers and adult adopted people keep making the noises they are making, it might be in for a deep sea change. It is hard for those who adopt with the best possible intentions (although there is no such thing as a completely altruistic adoption) to understand that for them to have a child, someone has to lose a child and a child has to lose their most important connection in life. You can attach, but bonds are forged in the womb.

So, commenter, go ahead and be taken aback and know that, if I weren't very tired, very irritated and very worried about my little dog's cancer treatments, I probably wouldn't have even been moved to address your comment. *Usually, I just reject comments like that and ignore them because my blog is not here for "lively debate" or arguments in favor of adoption. My house, my rules.

But, having been stereotyped in the worst kind of way for decades because I am a mother who was backed up to the wall and surrendered two children as a teen, the comment about stereotyping adopters really annoyed me. To the mother of adoption loss, that is like a fat man putting down people who eat ice cream. Let she who is without snarkiness and bigotry throw the first stereotype.

And it is not just my loss that makes me biased against adoption. It is what the children lose, what I have learned from adult adoptees and the damage I have seen done to my own children by adoption that makes me recoil at the thought of seeing this in my face every day.

Taken aback? Stereotyped? Lady, you don't know the half of it.

(And to the commenter who complained about my not posting the comment to which I was responding..see above.* I posted this to explain why I don't post those comments. Capiche?)