Question #4: Juli

This is sort of the question that has plagued my childhood life. People will ask all sorts of obnoxious questions and assume that they’re entitled to an answer just because you’re adopted, young, a person of color, etc. This is a complex issue, and while I encourage you to view it holistically, I am going to focus on the racial issues at work.

I really do believe that race is at work here. Not being a domestic, non-transracial adoptee, I can’t know for sure what it’s like, or what the specific difficulties they face are. But I will say, that when you look “foreign”, you’re already at an automatic disadvantage. There’s a lot less sensitivity. People will tell you how “backwards” your birth nation is, relate some details of infanticide they picked up from a Barbara Walters special and then start to interrogate you about everything from your abandonment to language ability to finding your birth mother to my personal favorite, “aren’t you lucky to be chosen like that?”

Moments like these have the potential as great “teaching moments”. However, I know that personally, I rarely have the stamina. And furthermore, it’s hard to start these conversations without some sort of ally. That’s where you come in.

You daughter needs to learn early on that this kind of questioning is not okay. Otherwise in ten years she’ll end up in tears while her fourth grade teacher publicly drills her about why she was abandoned, whether or not she wants to find her birth mother and if she feels any different from her siblings. And, she won’t tell you about it after the fact, because you’ve never given her any indication that it’s okay to be upset by questions like that. True story.

You need to learn to be an anti-racist parent. That means a lot of self-education, and not being afraid to tell people off the truth.

You have to be ready for the worst. When she hits her teen years, and you’re not around, people will ask her if she’s married to your husband. People will comment on her “chinky” eyes. They will stereotype, exoticize and fetishize her in every way possible. People will accuse her of things, people will assume things about her. And you have to stand up for her – even when it’s hard. Even when it’s a neighbor, a family member, a co-worker. You have to make people realize that racism is not acceptable, and that they can’t get away with talking about your daughter or people who look like her that way.

Of course, these things are insidious, and unavoidable. They leave wounds that only time will heal. Your love and support is important – but I know that for myself, it wasn’t until I was able to relate these experiences to people who had also lived them that I was able to properly see them as instances of racism, and realize that I was not to blame.

I’m trying to come up with some good resources for aparents related to anti-racism. There will be a link appearing soon, I have a lot of reading ahead of me.

Question 4:

Our next question comes to us from Susan:

My husband and I have a beautiful and intelligent 3 year old daughter from China. We brought her home at 13 months old. Even before we brought her home, the questions from strangers began and has only gotten more frequent, intrusive, and demanding. “Why China? Why not the US? Why do you want one of those babies, you know what they grow up to be like don’t you? What is her nationality? Where are her real parents? Why didn’t they want her? Don’t they kill girls in China? Do they not love their babies in China? Is she one of those foreign babies? Where is she from? Does she speak Chinese or English?” These are just some of the questions I hear on a daily basis. I know there are many people who mean well when they ask questions. I love it when a grandparent comes up to me and whispers “Is she from China?” When I say yes, they tell me their grand child is from China(or another country)also and we talk for a few minutes. I don’t mind when someone asks me what agency we used because they are interested in adoption as well. I will give them my email and our agencies name. I don’t like it when people ask me stupid questions especially in front of my daughter.

So my questions are, do you have any advice on how to handle this especially when my daughter is present? Did this happen to you as a child? How did your parents handle it and do you wish they had handled it differently? A total stranger has no right to any information about my child’s past. My daughter doesn’t even know her history yet so why should I inform a total stranger of anything? They feel like they are entitled to an answer just because they asked. I am committed to doing everything I can to help my daughter. I want to show her how to handle these type situations when she is older and being pressed for information she shouldn’t have been asked for in the first place. Thanks so much for taking my question.

Question 3: Heather

I think it’s admirable and brave of you to want your daughter to have an open relationship with her birth mother. Many aparents can’t fathom such a move. It takes a lot of guts. I like your idea of leaving a letter and perhaps keeping your information as updated as possible with various organizations over the years so that your daughter and her birth mother can search when they’re ready. I don’t think it’s your place to push anything here. It’s really not up to you. As difficult as it may seem, it really is your daughter’s choice even if she waits until she’s in her 30s – which does seem to be when a lot of adoptees begin to search if at all.

For me, looking back…sure, I would have loved a relationship with my birth mother, but that’s in hindsight only. But then again, I probably would chose not to have been adopted, either, but that is just one thing in life we have no control over. I think at the time, it would have been very confusing – but ultimately very rewarding. This is a question I get constantly – “Do you know your real mother? Do you ever want to find your real mother” etc. Well, sure, I’d love to know my birth family, but each day gets easier for me to accept that this is possibly an unsurmountable task and I guess I’d rather learn to accept that and be happy in the life that I have rather than set myself up for huge disappointment.

That said, this is how I feel today. Tomorrow may very well be a completely story, especially as my “birth day” nears I have a great sense of loss and many questions that I’d love to air with my birth mother. Of course, then again, I think it’s better just to let my imagination rule my reality with this.

And all that is precisely why this has to be a decision for your daughter.

Ouestion 3: JoLynn

In my opinion…I believe it should be up to your daughter to ultimately decide on what type of relationship she would like to have with her birth mother. I totally understand that you want to do everything possible in order to facilitate that at some point, but I would apply caution to the degree you go about trying to make any contact with her birth mother. I agree with Juli that leaving a letter in her file is fine, but to go above that I don’t know.

Looking back to when I was younger…if I would have had contact with my birth mother it would have been too confusing for me & personally I am glad I didn’t. I don’t really recall ever wanting to search for my birth mother when I was young. For example, I have a friend that had constant contact with her birth mother while she was growing up here in the U.S. To say it was stressful is a major understatement. She was constantly feeling bad about the comforts she had & her life here in the U.S., had feelings of not being loyal to her adopted family & when she would talk to two of her siblings living back in Korea she would always end up crying & stressed out. She had this sense of being pulled in two directions, but didn’t know what to do. I’m only relating one person’s experience and I have heard of others where it’s the total opposite, but I know for myself it would have been really confusing to have had contact with my birth mother until I was ready & even now I’m not sure I am.

However, I recently conducted a search for my birth mother & I’ve waited until I was in my 30’s to do it. It wasn’t so much to find her, but to see if I had any siblings. I still have mixed feelings about finding my birth mother. I totally agree with Juli that it should be a personal/natural progression for your child. I waited to make sure I can deal with all the possible outcomes & even at that it’s a constant up & down in terms of my feelings about this issue.

Question #3: Juli

This is a tricky question. There are a million factors that make everyone’s situation unique. I think it’s important to remember that the ultimate choice about contact is between your child and her birth mother. Respecting the birth mother’s desires and privacy are of the utmost importance. Small measures, like putting a letter in your daughter’s file are probably benign, but leaving something for her at the place she stayed feels uncomfortable to me. You don’t want her to feel pursued or haunted.

For me personally, I struggle with the decision about doing a search. On some level, I think I’m afraid of bringing pain back into her life, and I’m also afraid of being judged by her. I’ve heard stories on both ends of the spectrum about birth parent searches, so my anxiety is well founded. My parents are pretty indifferent – I think they figure that I am an adult, and once I make my decision there won’t be much they can do about it. I don’t really remember ever having a desire to find my birth mother in my childhood, so I can’t say whether or not they were supportive.

I do, however, think that I will eventually do a search because I am really desperate to know if I have half-siblings. I’m the youngest in my adoptive family, so I think it would be great to be the older, wiser sibling to someone. I almost wish that I could find my siblings without having to find my birth mother. There are some things there that I’m just not ready to unbury.

I think you have to let contact/birth mother searches generate naturally. I think there is something about the search process (which can be long and arduous) that prepares you for the emotional rollercoaster of actually finding your birth family. I almost want to say that it’s better that way. I mean, if the first time your daughter has an inkling of wanting to find her mother you whip out a letter from her, it might be too much too soon. I know it doesn’t intuitively make sense, but it’s just something I feel in my gut.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I’ve had some friends who had really great experiences finding their foster mothers, which I’m told is an easier process anyway. For me, I feel a stronger connection to my foster mother than i do to my birth mother and would be really interested in meeting her.

Question 3

Our next question comes to us from Elisabeth:

One question I have is what I/we should be doing a new adoptive parents when it comes to encouraging contact with our daughter’s first mom.  We’re adopting an eleven month old little girl from Seoul this month (we travel in a few weeks), and it’s very important to us that we do everything we can to encourage the possibility of having a relationship or contact with our daughter’s Korean mom and Korean family.  We want to be sensitive to her first mom’s wishes, but we also want her to know that we’re out here and that we’d love to have an open relationship if she’s interested.

We’re writing a letter to personally place in our daughter’s file when we visit the orphanage, but what can we do or say in that letter, and in future letters, that will offer the best chance of contact?  What do you wish your adoptive parents might have done, and when?  I don’t want to push too far or too hard, but I also don’t want to wait until our daugher is grown and leave the choice of having an open relationship to her–by then the possibility of contact with her Korean mom may not be there.  If you wish your parents had made an effort to contact your first family, how far do you think they should have pushed?  Would it be too much to write to the maternity/single mothers home where we know she stayed and leave a letter for her there?  I’ve known some parents adopting from Eastern Europe who have used private investigators to make contact…I don’t know if that’s an option for us, and I’m not sure if I feel it would be appropriate.

From the adoptee perspective, how would you have wanted your adoptive parents to act/write/pursue when it came to makign contact or encouraging contact with your first family?

Question 2: Juli

First, let me apologize for the tardiness of this response. In the past month I have moved, started a new job and had my computer break. But…I just got my computer back today, so we’re hopefully back on track (although I still haven’t unpacked all of my stuff!). Anyway, I promise that in the coming weeks things will continue to move forward.

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From people I’ve known it seems that adoptees who have had adopted siblings (or close adopted friends in childhood) have a much different experience growing up. I think being from the same country (or perhaps continent) is definitely beneficial. Not only do you have someone to share feelings of not fitting in with, but there is a common racialization and life history.

I think it’s important to recognize that adoptive parents can only say and do so much. Some things have to come from other adoptees because, face it, there are some things that you can’t claim to understand because you haven’t experienced them personally. And having a person who lives in that same world, who you can bounce thoughts off of early on in life…I don’t have first hand experience with what that’s like, but I imagine that having that sort of ally can only help one development.

That said, each pair of adopted siblings that I know has turned out differently. For one, adopted with a twin sister, adoptee-related things are important, but not a priority. For another, entering into the adoptee community is a priority but his sister has little interest in it. And for a third, both are dedicated members of the adoptee community. So there’s no simple formula, no easy science. But from what I can tell, there are a lot of positives.

Question #2: Heather

This is an excellent question. I was also the only adopted child in my immediate family although I had two cousins who were also adopted (1 transracially, but both were domestic adoptions and whose family lived far away in a large multicultural city). I have an older brother and sister (10 and 6 years my senior respectively). I often felt they were my like my second set of parents rather than siblings, which wasn’t always an easy emotional road for any of us. Luckily, however, I still grew up feeling close to my siblings, rather than distanced.

That said, I think it would have been absolutely wonderful to have had another brother or sister closer to my age who was adopted. I don’t think it would have mattered if he / she was from the same culture or not. The mere fact of having someone else who was also different, not just in my own family, but also my own community would have been a tremendous comfort. It would helped me feel less alone, less of a freak. Not to mention that it would have helped to divert some of that dreaded attention I had (as all transracially adopted children have) onto someone else for better or worse.

So, yes, if you can manage, emotionally and financially, to adopt again,  I would definitely suggest it but I don’t think adopting from the same cultural and / or ethnic background is essential.

Question #2: JoLynn

Thanks for reading the Parents’ Corner.  I do believe it might have been easier if I did have a sibling from the same cultural background for obvious reasons, but it also would have been nice to have a sibling closer in age.  I think for myself…I would have loved to have a sibling just a few years older or younger.  Good luck in whatever you decide.

Question 2:

Our second question comes to us from Kim:

I just came across your site and I think the Parents Corner idea is brilliant. I want to thank you for creating this and putting yourself out there for the benefit of our adopted children.

I noticed that two of you stated that you were the only adopted child in your family and that you had older siblings. I have two biological children (13 and 11) and a son adopted from Kazakhstan (2). My question for you is if it would have made your life growing up a bit easier if you’d had another adopted sibling in the home. If so, I would assume that it would have been best for that child to share your racial/cultural background. Please correct me if I am wrong in my assumption. I hate to presume anything.

We are considering adopting again and one of the major reasons for that is that I feel it may be best for my son to have a sibling closer to his age, that is also adopted, and from the same country/culture as he. So, in your opinions, would it have made it easier/better for you growing up with another adopted sibling with similar circumstances as your own?