The Adoption Option Response Letter

I have a new appreciation for blogging today. I adore you all. Thank you for the thoughtful discussion (as well as for pretending to think my stories are funny and my kids are adorable). You really helped me move to the rational side of my brain for this one.

My response letter is below. It's way too long. In case you haven't noticed, that's a constant problem of mine. I feel better at any rate. I won't be hurt if you don't have time for my novel length blog posts.

Dear Ms. Lee,

I write in reaction to your Editor's Letter, "The Adoption Option," in the August 2008 Parents magazine. I understand that you wanted to share with your readers the joy and fulfillment that your family has found through adoption. I really identify with that sentiment. I am also a mother through adoption and through birthing children. Adoption is an incredible and fulfilling way to create a family.

However, your rosy description and casual call for everyone to adopt was thoughtless and poorly worded. You ignore or treat flippantly so many issues. The grief of infertility. The pain and sacrifice of birth mothers. Issues that cause people lifelong pain. Some would argue that the very world injustices you so blithely seek to address with adoption would be far better solved with programs that keep children with their families in their native cultures or that support single mothers in this country, so that they have more options to raise their own children. I know adoption would still be a wonderful and necessary option for some children. It's the perspectives of others that you ignore.

In the same way, you brashly admonish people not to worry about potential emotional issues in the children they are considering as members of their families. Faith, you proclaim. Love. I can speak to this one personally and you are just plain wrong. Our daughter, home at fourteen months from an orphanage in Haiti, has bonded beautifully and integrated seamlessly into our family, but not without significant effort on our part. We overcame mild attachment issues and post-institutionalized behaviors in her first year home. The adoption of our five year old son disrupted because we simply were not equipped to handle his negative behaviors, trauma and attachment issues with young children in our home.

It is difficult to describe to you the heartbreak involved in those meager sentences. If you are interested in more background, I write about our family's experience at http://www.anymommyoutthere.com/. I can direct you to several essays about the difficulties that can arise in adoption, how we overcame some of them and how we failed to overcome others. Maybe you won't believe me, but I can promise you that our family did not lack for faith or love.

With that background, here are my stringent objections to your editorial commentary.

A desire to make the world a better place or to save a child are the worst possible reasons to adopt. The very first thing our social worker explored when we began the adoption process was our motivations for adopting. She explained why guilt and social consciousness are poor reasons to bring a child into your home and often lead to misconceptions and problems later on the adoption road. The first and foremost reason for adopting should always be that a family wants a child, not a perfect doll, not a social statement, a child.

Guilt and altruism do not sustain families through tough times with children. They do not bond parents to children with serious trauma in their histories, anger behaviors, post-institutionalized behaviors and attachment difficulties. Outside of private, newborn adoptions (which are a very, very small proportion of children available for adoption), these are real possibilities for adopted children. Not usually, but often enough. Concern about the injustices of the world and saving children who need homes are reasons to support UNICEF, Save the Children, an orphanage abroad, or possibly explore ways to support the foster care system. They are not reasons to bring a child into a family.

You raise a list of serious concerns and challenges involved with adoption and then dismiss them with a flick of your pen. Do you truly believe it's that easy? Parents that look seriously at adoption and then decide that they can not handle the potential problems should be lauded for their self-evaluation and honesty, not berated for their selfishness. Adoption is by no means right for everyone. Bonding past infancy can be unbelievably hard work. Bringing a child into a family changes the life of every single person involved forever. Adoption's impacts are overwhelmingly positive in my experience (and mine is a varied experience), but I shudder at your callous, casual treatment of such a huge decision.

Your car comparison baffles me. Do you mean that we, as spoiled, rich Americans should feel guilty about our material possessions unless we have done the selfless thing and taken in a child? Do waiting children a favor, don't wish the hell of a family that expects their gratitude on them. A car is metal. It can be resold if the family can't afford it. It can be traded in if there are unforeseen problems. It's a car. Comparing that in any way to adoption is just wrong. Adoption. Wherein a real child with emotions and issues, enters a family, enters a home, has access to any other children, affects a parent's relationship with those children and with his or her partner. These impacts can be extraordinarily positive, but they are impacts nonetheless. Lifelong ones at that.

Perhaps you mean that if a family feels confident in taking on the financial burden of a new car, the cost of adoption ought not to hold them back. I disagree. The unforeseen medical or emotional issues that you gloss over so quickly can have a crushing effect on a family's finances. Guilting families into bringing a child into their lives by chiding them about the new car in their driveway is irresponsible at best. A car is a one time finite cost. A child's needs are forever.

You close with the bold promise that love will be enough. Really? Because leading experts in psychology, social work and attachment therapy agree that love is not enough for many, many children in the foster care system or in orphanages over seas. Sometimes, these children are traumatized, rage-filled and emotionally fragile. Children who have experienced trauma can display behaviors that are shocking to parents who have parented only normally attached, emotionally stable children.

There are books, articles and dissertations written on the fact that love is not enough to heal these children. There are entire institutes devoted to helping families cope with attachment and bonding issues and trauma behaviors in adopted children based on the premise that these children need more than just the love their struggling parents long to give them.

In spite of all of this, you personally promise that love will be enough. What, I wonder, would you say to parents with children home already struggling with these difficult issues. That they don't love enough? That they lack faith? I have been that parent and lived the guilt and misery that this attitude creates. I loved with all my heart and it was not enough. This counterproductive myth is rampant as it is. Why, why, why would you choose to reinforce and perpetuate it?

I truly do understand that you wrote that letter as a mother sharing the joy adoption brought to your life. But, as Editor-in-Chief of a major parenting magazine, you are held to a higher standard. You have a far-reaching voice and with that comes responsibility. I am almost positive that the glib tone of your letter was not your intent, nor did you intend to dismiss the heavy issues that can come with adoption and the birth and adoptive families struggling with those issues. In that case, you certainly have the perfect forum to make it right.

Sincerely, Stacey