Why Adopters? It's Logical

Why, asked one, did I, in my previous post, nominate all adopters as potential recipients of the "Demons in Adoption" award? Was I not damning them all (painting them all with the same brush) and refusing to note those whose hearts were "in the right place?" Was I not doing to them what they do to us when they characterize us mothers as sluts and promiscuous tramps?

No, not really. We first look at the engine that runs the industry. Adopters are the fuel, the gas and oil that keeps the pistons pumping and the camshaft rotating. Without adopters, without people wanting to take the children of others and make them "as if their own," the engine would falter and cease running. You have to have both supply AND DEMAND in order to keep any Industry alive.

I know quite a few people who have adopted. Some, I have known for years. Without exception, I have watched these people, good and kind folk for the most part, change in a way that was fascinating and appalling. I watched the sense of entitlement, the lack of compassion for the mother of the child they coveted and the denial of any problems associated with adoption separation for the child emerge in people who were, formerly, very caring to any and all.

It has nothing, really, to do with their outward character and more to do with the inability to see the pain and suffering. While the adopter celebrates the acquisition of the child, someone, somewhere, is usually suffering a singular kind of grief. It is also difficult for them to get past that tabula rasa depiction of the human infant so they do not want to acknowledge the pre-verbal mourning of the child they have acquired.

Some do, eventually, get it and they and the Industry scurry like roaches when the lights come on, trying to formulate an answer that does anything but lead back to their role in the separation of mother and child. There are learned papers on how to help the child overcome their trauma. This has led to such barbaric practices as "re-birthing," which has led to the death of a child, and various "diagnoses" of RAD and even ADD.

The Industry has gone to such extremes to condition the public in order to serve the needs of adopters and make their profit, that there is now the new, improved, brainwashed beemommie who writes posts of sugary joy about her loss on the Internet to make these child-covetors feel better about their role in the separation. I wonder what would happen if just one set of PAPs were to tell the wide-eyed mother-to be that she didn't HAVE to surrender her child? What if (and this is a stretch, I know) they were to offer, instead, their help in keeping the mother and child together and on their feet? I have an outrageous picture in my mind of Industry minions roaring up in a black van with side doors open, sweeping the offending PAPs inside and taking them back to headquarters for more "conditioning." Well, I do have an imagination.

Some people argue that there would be abused, neglected children and overflowing orphanages if there were not adopters. The fact of the matter is that there would be abused, neglected children whether there were adopters or not. In fact, if anyone has watched the news or read the newspapers or online news services  within the past couple of decades, then they know that even adopters have been known to abuse and neglect. And orphanages get a bad rap. I have been in one where there were happy, clean, well-fed children and conscientious, loving guardians. We've been brainwashed by Annie and Oliver in our view of group care for children.

And poverty as a reason to "rescue a child" is as illogical as the two-parent family argument. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, but we always had something to eat and the knowledge of who we were and the love of our mother. I know many people of my parents' generation who grew up in the Great Depression and ate a lot of beans but they were loved and became responsible citizens when they grew to adulthood. Adopters are just as vulnerable to the recession as any of the rest of us and they are also just as prone to divorce, affairs and other pitfalls of life. And one has to wonder how many adopted children are turned over to Nannies to be raised while the adopters pursue success in their careers.

In any event, the people who adopt and have adopted are, for the most part, not idiots. I KNOW that the adopters from the closed, secret era were totally aware of the attitudes towards and the treatment of the unwed mother. You cannot convince me that adopters are ignorant of the pain that is being caused to the mother and to the child by this unnatural separation. But we humans are great at self-justification. The smarter we are, the more easily we justify. The waters of the river of Denial are wide and deep. That brings me back to the issue of stereotyping. We observe and see what adopting does to people. Adopters and others stereotype us as a means of justifying the taking of our children.

So I stand fast in my nomination of adopters as a group as possible recipients of the DIA award. I doubt that they will win it because there are too many people wanting to be "fair." But they will always be at the top of my list. The Industry is soulless. It is a venture of the Capitalistic variety. And adopters use this Industry to fill an emotional desire. It's not even a personal put-down of those who adopt. It's just pure, bottom-line logic.

The Adoption Industry and Adopters ~You can't have one without the other.