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Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you, personally, were shaming anyone; I was speaking in general terms.
I will say, though, that people often do arrange things to improve the odds of getting the kind of child they want. Want an intelligent child? Have a baby with someone intelligent. Want an athletic child? Have a baby with someone athletic. Want a white baby? Have a baby with a white person (assuming that you, yourself, are white too). And so on and so on and so on. To an extent, "you get what you get" is true of all parenting. But people have their preferences, and will do what they can to improve the odds of meeting them. I don't see why adoptive parents would or should be different from anyone else in this regard.
I agree. I am both a biological and adoptive parent. When women in their 20s are choosing mates, the appearance, and intellectual capacity of the husband, as well as the potential genes that may be passed on, are definitely part of the "mating process", especially among women.
While it is certainly not the only reason why people chose a potential marital partner, it certainly enters into it.
I don't know how aware men are of this, but among college students and young women beginning their careers, it is spoken about quite a bit.
This is among young women who do not "fall into bed" with everyone that they see, and who actually plan their lives. Marry before having children, good things like that.
Unless you adopted your child before s/he began the babbling stage, that child most definitely had a language and culture that did no come from you.
Would you deny that a ten year old adopted from Ethiopia had a language and culture? How about a 7 year old from Ukraine? A 3 year old from China? Why is all that to be erased because rich, white, foreign people showed up and took over?
Language and culture do not solely come from parents unless you raise your child locked in the house to only interact with you.
You can raise them as your own flesh and blood, but to deny their history is ignorant and cruel.
You seem to assume that all internationally adopted children beyond the "babbling stage" automatically lose their birth culture, and that all internationally adoptive parents are rich, white and prone to cruelty and ignorantly denying their children's history and preventing their children from retaining their native culture.
Not so. I know many, many families who have adopted children (many of whom have special needs) from other countries, and the great majority of them have included their children's national heritage and customs into their family's lives. In my own family, two young siblings who are adopted when they were elementary school age, were provided with traditional national dress, books about their native land, its geography, history, and folklore, English/other language dictionaries and Rosetta Stone.
Their family celebrates the winter holidays by (among other things) having a traditional feast from their children's birth country, with all wearing that land's traditional attire, enjoying dishes from that heritage, and using beautiful table linens of that origin. The children's rooms are decorated with flags and souvenirs from their birth country. They are proud of the land of their birth, and hope to return with their parents to visit someday, if that beautiful but now war-torn land once again becomes peaceful. No one is denying any of their history, and in fact, their adoptive family, both immediate and extended, has made an effort to retain the natural connections with their country of origin, which many of us love, too.
I myself, an extended family member, have learned far more about the plight of orphans in this part and other parts of the world, and actively support several non-profits which serve these children in various ways. There are four boxes sitting in my living room right now, filled with children's clothing heading to a small ministry (whose members are all of the same nationality as were my young relatives) which serves over 1,000 orphaned children in my relatives' birth country. Would it be there if my young relatives had never joined our family? Highly unlikely. I also advocate for international special needs adoptions, and do what I can to raise awareness of the conditions in the orphanages and institutions of the developing world.
Other members of our family also support the orphaned children of our young relatives' birth country in various ways, again because the scales fell from our eyes in regard to the orphan crisis when these two children joined our family and their story became known. There are many, many others like them, still in the orphanages and institutions around the world. All hunger for families of their own. Not just rich, white families - but loving, caring families.
Would it have been better for these children to have remained with their extremely negligent birth parents, or institutionalized in their country of origin (which has recently experiencing great conflict, violence, thousands of civilian casualties and instability), simply because it was their country of origin? No one of their nationality expressed any interest in adopting them during the three years they were institutionalized, and none of the members of their extended family of origin were able to care for them.
By now, the children would likely have out of the institutions and on their own, which usually occurs at ages 15-17 in their country. They had been separated in their homeland, and likely would never seen one another ever again.
Or is it better for them to be safe, healthy, greatly loved, cared for, and given many advantages, by the family they now call their own? They have a promising future now, as well as happy and productive lives. None of that would be likely, had they remained in their birth country.
Last edited by CraigCreek; 12-07-2015 at 03:15 PM..
I view adoption as a two way street. IMO it's NOT all about the child nor is it all about the parents desires. It's both. If it's not mutually beneficial it's pointless. Same for having kid of your own actually.
I also believe it is better for first time parents who adopt to start with an infant. That's how people learn to parent! Not just opening their homes to an 8 year old. Some people can do that, of course, but there is a natural progression when it comes to learning how to parent and if you haven't learned elsewhere then you learn on the job, by raising one up from scratch or close to it.
And culture isn't the end all. People are flexible about that stuff and shouldn't feel they have to be ambassadors for whatever culture they were born into. Adopted kids should assimilate into their family, as it should be. This is not the same thing exactly but my own family was discussing how we always had fun identifying with our Italian heritage because we carry an Italian name. It's just something all the aunt, uncles, cousins, and cousin kids have always done. But none of us is really that Italian though. I even had DNA testing done to prove it...less than 11%! But my family is weird and it's what we do and as long as the name is around so will future generations.
And my issue is indeed people who will spend tens of thousands of dollars to take children away from their culture, their language, their religion, their country, their continent, and all their living relatives, and somehow think that not only have they "blessed" the child with a better life, but that child should never have any issues with the circumstances of their adoption or their status as a minority member of their family and community.
My husband and I fit this description. We adopted from Asia 3 times. And we saved 3 children from abject poverty, isolation because 30 years ago in Korea an illegitimate child could not go to school and in many cases could only beg for a living. We saved them from ridicule and shame and bleak futures.
If their "living relatives" had wanted them then they wouldn't have been placed for adoption or left alone in a sack on the side of the road.
Yes we have blessed them with material possessions, top notch medical care, every educational opportunity possible, endless love from us and our family and community.
As far as having "issues with their adoption or their status as a minority member of their family and community", these are not always negative issues. When our family sits down for Christmas Dinner my husband and I and our biological son will join 3 Asian family members and 2 AA neighbors so we will actually be the white minority and that is just fine. We also have a Philippino grandson and his mother who could not make the trip this time.
We have in our family a wonderful son in law from Iran and two Iranian granddaughters, one of whom is adopted. So in our family the white folks are in the minority!
And we purposely moved to a more inclusive and diverse community so we could raise our two youngest daughters where nobody looks at us as unusual.
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