Adoption and Class: Personal Reflections

[map_of_the_world]

(this is a rewriten post, that I tidied up and made more coherent)

I read the first essay: A Question of Class in Dorothy Allisons Skin about five times and every single time I read it I cried. it bought home some sharp hard truths about the fact that my adoptive parents have no idea who their children are or where they come from.

I am not middle class, I have never been middle class but I was colonised by the middle class, I was taught that I was middle class, that my people were middle class, that I was exactly the same as all the other middle class kids around me. i have had advantages by being adopted into the middle class, but not as many as you would think, I still spent my early twenties crazy, broke and homeless i still don't really get the rules of middle class behaviour and sensibilities and I still fuck up royally all the time.

I grew up in a really affluent town in the south of England amongst good schools and university educated adults, but that's not who I am, that's not where I come from. I wasn't even born in to the working class, I come from the underclass, the chaotic poor who have given up, who have no where left to turn.

Nobody ever made connections or taught me to make connections between poverty, lack of education, mental heath issues and having all your children taken into care. I was taught that poverty was a personal failing. My adoptive mother would often scream at me or one of my brothers "Do you want to end up living in a council house?" as if that's the worse thing that could possibly happen, as if my people, my blood line for generations back hadn't lived in council houses.

And there were things we were expected to know, things good, well behaved, well bought up middle class kids knew, that we couldn't possibly have known, the three times table, the fact you don't talk about money, the words to silent night, as if I hadn't spent the first six years of my life in the east end of London not being fed or educated properly

Allison writes:

I understood that we were the bad poor: men who drank and couldn't keep a job; women, invariably pregnant before marriage, who quickly became worn, fat, and old from working too many hours and bearing too many children; and children with runny noses, watery eyes, and the wrong attitudes. My cousins quit school, stole cars, used drugs, and took dead-end jobs pumping gas or waiting tables. We were not noble, not grateful, not even hopeful. We knew ourselves despised. My family was ashamed of being poor, of feeling hopeless. What was there to work for, to save money for, to fight for or struggle against? We had generations before us to teach us that nothing ever changed, and that those who did try to escape failed.

And I understand that, my father was an alcoholic, him and and my brothers father ended up in prison, my other siblings fathers disappeared, half my sisters got pregnant as teenagers and all that goes back generation after generation, nobody was educated and if they worked they did mind numbing soul destroying jobs. And so many of them died young or disappeared

I grew up in a world where girls of the class I was born into are seen as slutty, promiscuous, are more likely to be teenage mothers, and boys of the class I was born into were expected to be vandals, layabouts, criminals. so we were policed heavily, I was screamed at for being cheap, provocative, obscene, flirtatious, and my brothers were regularly forced to watch a video that talked about how bad prison was, because despite all that babbling about nurture over nature my adoptive parents and their educated middle class friends still believed that the bad blood had a chance of winning through.


My mother, the woman who gave birth to me, got pregnant with my sister at 15 and in the environment I grew up in that was seen as a personal failure too, there was no understanding, no critique of the fact that there are clear understandable reasons why women of her social class who lived with intergenerational poverty, mental health issues and lack of education would get pregnant very young

and now I have this whole web of class issues that can't be untangled, there is so much dissonance in the way I relate to class. I am ashamed that I come from generations of poverty, embarrassed that my sister cant behave more middle class like in front of my adoptive parents, and angry that I got told for such a long time that where i come from was defective, wrong, and I should automatically be able to become middle class despite the experience of my formative years,

Comments

[fall-of-sophia.livejournal.com]

I am not middle class, I have never been middle class but I was colonised by the middle class, I was taught that I was middle class, that my people were middle class, that I was exactly the same as all the other middle class kids around me. i have had advantages by being adopted into the middle class, but not as many as you would think, I still spent my early twenties crazy, broke and homeless i still don't really get the rules of middle class behaviour and sensibilities and I still fuck up royally all the time.

i was not literally adopted but much of this resonates with me sooooooo much.

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

I would be really interested in you expanding on this if you feel comfortable doing so.

[fall-of-sophia.livejournal.com]

comfortable expanding but i'm really scatterbrained today.

i guess i just feel like my life has always been some kind of class battleground. from 1-5 we were a single parent household and we only got by to the extent that we did because my mom worked 60-80 hours per week and could rely on free babysitting. at 4 i got sent to an upper class catholic preschool and already i didn't fit in. then from kindergarten through 2nd grade i went to public school in the rural area where i lived, and i only stuck out because of the other issues (neuroatypical+broken home drama). then in 3rd grade i went to the supposedly better suburban school 15 minutes away and on my first day i was being made fun of for my mannerisms and for shabby clothes and all. and of course that exacerbated everything else. i also had several step parents from different classes who tried to "civilize" me, to some success. i learned how to pass pretty well even among rich folks for a dinner event or whatever, but it never felt like more than passing. i grew up hating my class position and was basically taught the sick game of differentiating myself from the "white trash" others - you know, we ate whole wheat bread and had all that "white ethic" cultural capital. i had the resources to suppress the hell out of my southern accent and i did pretty successfully. now i still think in southern colloquialisms a lot but when i let myself use them i think it sounds contrived to a lot of people because i otherwise "talk correctly." i think colonized is an apt metaphor there.

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

The phrase "class battleground" is an awesome one I think, it encapsulates completely what I am talking about.

"at 4 i got sent to an upper class catholic preschool and already i didn't fit in."

I think this is really important, I was six when I went to live with my parents and it was such a culture shock, we pick these things up young and it doesn't wash of and we shouldn't be made to feel ashamed of that.

[burningmarl.livejournal.com]

I'm the same way.

[nosside.livejournal.com]

I may not understand what you're feeling because I didn't try it on my own skin, but I can tell you that the way you and your sibling have being treated i disgusting, horrible.
I can't even begin to imagine what you must have felt when people that where supposed to take care of you talked like that anìbout your parents, your family.
to have to hear people talk about your parent like second class human being it's...there are just no words...
Bad decision, i belive, aren't taken on impulse. the society, the environment is as much -if not more- responsible as the single individual.
Don't ever let anybody saying anything else pull you down.
they're just amoral hypocrites!

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

I can't get my head around all this. Like, I read it twice, and I still can't begin to understand what it must have been like.

One question, though, are you and your brothers biological siblings? Were you adopted out together?

ok, I have to say it, most of all I can't get my head around how you were treated by your adoptive parents. The presumption that your child knows "how to behave" and indeed, basic life skills, how to approach things in an effective way, etc etc, is so stupid, regardless whether your child has been with you since the day they were conceived or you became their parent when the kid was a bit older. Reading this, I can see the class confusion but it seems that is only one way the wider problem of your adoptive parents being freaking idiots where kids were concerned shows up. I think had you been born to them you would be as much at sea about as many things as you are now because they were so stupid when it came to kids.

Yes, it is hard, this class thing. Or more familiar to me is the race thing. This walking two worlds. But gees, you don't have to make it harder for the kid! There is a middle ground of grace that can - and in some ways, MUST be found for their own sake - for anyone that steps outside their own familiar patterns of culture. It isn't rocket science. And your parents would have caused the same dissonance in any area you didn't have a natural, ready-sprung, *fully-formed* talent.

If I am speaking outa line, say so, and I won't.
Sorry if I upset you. That wasn't what I meant to do at all!

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

me and two of my brothers have the same biological mother.

To be honest in my experience an awful lot of adoptive parents treat their children like this. On the one hand they have a concept of how they want the child to be and get really angry when that doesn't happen and on the other hand they believe the "bad blood" will "win through" so they police their children harshly and make them ashamed of where they come from

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise you were adopted at 6 (?) I thought that was called fostering and adoption was for younger kids. Not that I know a lot about it, just my cousins were adopted when babies, so that is where I got that idea from.

It certainly sounds like you got one hell of a lot of mixed messages growing up. Or maybe not mixed, just whatever way you were, you were in a no-win situation.
:-(

Do you like hugs? I wish I could give you one if you like them *shy smile*

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

The difference between adoption and fostering isn't an age thing its a legality thing. being fostered still means you are a ward of the state, being adopted means the people who adopt you are your legal guardians.

How come your cousins were adopted? I thought Australia didn't do infant adoption

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

My cousins are American, born in Korea. My Auntie married an American man, who had had cancer, and was ok due to some at the time experimental treatment that left him sterile.
Because of the treatment there was no guarantee of an ordinary length of life, so he wasn't allowed to adopt American babies, but it was ok for him to adopt Korean babies. Now go figure that one out huh?
This would have been about 33 yrs ago, the younger of my cousins is my age, 34, the older is a year older. My uncle died of another bout of cancer about 3 yrs ago :-( But he and my auntie had 36 yrs of marriage that was quite a fairytale love. And their children obviously loved him very much too. *sad* (I never met him but he sounded awesome)

I did understand the legal difference between adoption and fostering but I honestly thought adoption of older children was really rare.
A close friend of mine has discovered to all intents and purposes she is infertile, and really wants a child. They have been looking into adoption, and apart from the incredible length of time it takes (3 yrs) and the amount it costs, they can only adopt from countries like Korea or China and only then children who are (unspecified) 'special needs'. The special needs thing doesn't worry them, it is just the entire system, and the stress etc. Especially when so many women around her fall pregnant easily and don't even necessarily want their kids much when they do have them.
I think they are not interested in fostering and from there possibly adopting simply from the emotional factor of fostered kids aren't always able to be adopted. It seems crazy, the entire system. And hard watching my friend face it all.
:-(

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

I'm not overly sympathetic to people who want to adopt, adoption is pretty much inherently racists classist and misogynistic.

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I would do if I really badly wanted a child and was infertile. She is getting counselling and that has helped her grasp the concept of a life without children if that is how it all turns out in the end.

Can you explain why you feel it is racist, classist and misogenistic?

I tend to think of adoption and just one of those things that happens when that is the way the cookie crumbles so to speak. A lot of aboriginal people have aunties and uncles and so forth and a number of parents, not just their biological parents. Maoris too, if I understand correctly, have a more fluid idea of what family is than the western nuclear family. And adoption (usually not legal though it can be) is a part of that fluidity.
And in both my mother and father's family people have been adopted instead of being "step" or whatever. Like formally adopted, and treated the same by the 'step-parent' as their biological family. And a few kids adopted who had no other home and ended up being taken in by our extended family.
And that is how it is with my fiance's little girl, I am her mummy, even though I am not her bio-mum. But I am all the mother she has, and I simply hold that role in her life and she is my daughter.

But all these tend to be different approaches than just straight out adoption, and from what it works out, completely different to what happened with you and your brothers.

With my American/Korean cousins, the older one was 18 months old when he was adopted, and couldn't even walk, he had been in an orphanage all his life, and hadn't had the opportunity to even learn that. And he didn't talk as well as most 18 month old children either. My younger cousin was 6 months old, and left at the orphanage. I would argue they have had a better life than the children in the orphanage who never got adopted.

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

before I answer this I'd really appreciate it if you read my posts tagged "adoption" because a lot of these questions are answered by them. If you still have queries I'll answer them then

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

I'm only halfway through, but I just want to say a few things:
The adoption process in the US seems totally different to what happens in Australia, according to what my friend has found out. Here, you have to, as part of the conditions, bring the child up with a knowledge and understanding of their birth-country and its culture (part of why they were mostly considering a chinese child, as her husband is chinese-Australian) and also, there is a very small quota of adoptees available, only from a few countries, it is all through govt agencies, not private ones, and the children are ALL special-needs and already abandoned by their birth parents.

This is also how my cousins were adopted- they came from an orphanage where they had been in for quite a few months, and they were brought up with as much understanding of their original culture as my auntie and uncle could give them. When my older cousin went back to find his family, he discovered his grandmother had given him up for adoption because his mother was alcoholic and not looking after him properly. She was unable to and thought/hoped he would have a better life by being adopted. I don't think she can have known he would be adopted by western parents.

Oh! And the story about the little boy whose adopted parents broke the jade charm and through it in the pond. How COULD they? How incredibly cruel. To him and to his original family. That whole blog made me feel sick. Poor little boy.

And your comments about growing up without people who mirror you is very close to my understanding. I grew up isolated from any aunties and cousins (too far geographically and not enough money to travel to visit.) and only met them all as adults. But it has always been a revelation, meeting any of them, or my aunties. Like "Omigod I am like them in this way and this way and this way and ...." Imagine how it must be like for someone whose nuclear family wasn't genetically similar, like my Korean cousins. My half and step adopted family all had someone around genetically like them. Except for the ones who were abandoned and taken in by my family.

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

I think I am beginning to understand why your views on adoption make me kinda uncomfortable, even though I can see you are actually very um... like you understand the layers and complexities of the issues.

My own bio-father was the one that abused me. The best thing in my childhood was my mother leaving him. The terrible tragedy was the judge who gave custody to my mother failed to take into account the indicators my father was abusing me and gave dad unsupervised access, which is when the really violent abuse started.

But I feel the same way when you talk about women's rights to parent their child as I do with fathers who go on about a man's right to father their child. I don't believe anyone, male or female, has any right, and I mean ANY right to parent any child, whether it is their bio-child or not. Not when they are abusing the child.
My own little girl was given to custody of my fiance, Alex because her mother was hitting her when she was a baby. I know this is going to affect her, that she is not with her bio-mum. But what would you suggest? leave her with her bio-mother who was abusing drugs, abusing her husband and abusing her child? No of course you wouldn't.
But... what seems so lost in all of these debates is it is the child's right to grow up properly loved and nurtured. And I certainly understand the racial inequalities of the social welfare system (NT is over 1/4 indigenous population, and the injustices are ... yeah, don't know where to start. My previous husband was part aboriginal, have plenty of friends who are, and I LISTEN to them.)
But... the seemingly unspoken presumption, though I am sure you would say this isn't so, is that it is better for the child to be in its bio-family than taken from it. This presumes the family isn't abusing the child, and if so, the presumption is that they are due to lack of support, and to poverty.
This is soooooooo not right. I am not exactly white middle-class, but I know enough people of that ilk who have been terribly badly abused to know abuse crosses all barriers. And the presumption white middle-class abuse doesn't happen has its own poison.

Also, you don't seem to have addressed (I could be wrong) the deep deep conflict of being from your bio-family abusing you. That same man that gave me and my siblings half my genetics sadistically abused me and my siblings, and my mother either didn't notice or did and didn't do anything.

You don't seem to have a sense of that level of incredible betrayal of your bio-family. You say your natural father passively abused you, that is totally different to what your adopted father did in raping you. My own bio-father raped me. I just want you to understand I cannot, and will not ever agree with your underlying assumption that comes through whether you intellectually believe it or not, that the grass is greener on this side of the fence. It should be. It so often isn't.

Also, I would just like you to understand I am using bio- as the term as common amongst multiples to refer to their natural/genetic family as their bio-family, so for me/us that is where the word-usage comes from

All of that said, I really deeply appreciate your sharing with me what you have been through and how you feel about all this. I really do appreciate it. I don't know were else I would ever have gotten such an understanding of the issues.
I think it is just one of those things there aren't any real answers too. Like, you know, pouring money into the 'indigenous problem' (talk about a racist term!) hasn't fixed anything, just changed the problems. I am refering to that as that is the most common form of the poverty and social injustice you are talking about, occurs round here.
But at least people talking about it ups the likelihood of people being better aware of the issues.

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

I just got to the last post of that tag, and the comment of the post-adoption social service worker "we are just checking you aren't a mass murderer" Like OMGWTF???

I know it must have been really fucking angrifying (wot is the right word there???) but it reminded me of the silliest thing that I heard when I was changing my name legally. I thought I would share it in case it gave you a laugh. There was a question on the form "Why are you changing your name?"
I said to the dudes at the registry of births, deaths and marriages in NSW (where I was born) "Why the hell are you guys asking this question, it is ridiculous and QLD or NT don't ask it."
"Oh no, EVERY state asks it."
"No." I said patiently, "I know for a FACT the NT and Queensland don't"
"Oh no, every state does."
I gave up on that. "Well why are you guys asking it?"
"So we will know you aren't changing it for any criminal reasons."

I told Eddy that evening, he said "Put down "I am trying to get out of paying my parking fines by changing my name."
*grins*

btw, NSW is like the white, middle-class state of Australia. If they do it there, the whole of Australia obviously does it the same way, right? and "out west" is parramata (one of the more western suburbs of Sydney) let alone west of the state, let alone the rest of Australia beyond NSW *rolls eyes*

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

its going to take me a while to get around to answering this fully, But i never said anywhere nor do I believe that children should stay with people who abuse them in fact in one of my posts I wrote:

However, I also know that with the best will in the world sometimes it just wont work, sometimes children do need to be separated from their families and I don't think that they shouldn't be. Children need to be safe and secure and nurtured and away from abuse. But there are many many ways of dealing with that situation without bringing adoption in to it.

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

I know you never ever said it. I think I am trying to say the lack of other options than adoption in what you write about leads to the impression you think children should be left with the birth parents under all circumstances.

I know this isn't true, because you did on occasion talk about other options. But the amount of anti-adoption talk on your blog just leads to that impression. So it is hard, as a reader who doesn't really understand the wider issues of adoption and who has had a relatively positive experience of adoption within our family, to keep that in mind.

Hey look at it this way, you are teaching someone who had NO idea about a lot of this, certainly not how it works in the UK, and it definitely is different in approach in Australia (like I haven't heard of anyone who was fostered ending up adopted.)

[interfaceleader.livejournal.com]

That children should not be left in unsafe situations is not something anybody will argue about. Children need to be safe from abuse, whether it is outright violent abuse, or neglect. However there is an entire spectrum of solutions between 'leaving child unprotected with dangerous parent(s)' and 'taking child away and giving them to another set of parents who pretend to be Mum and Dad and may or may not be safer, but at least appear to be safer'

Many of the assumptions about adoption are inherently damaging, such as the assumption that an adoptive parent is 'mum', that a child will be able to go from one class background to another without it damaging their identity in some way - after all, we accept that even moving around a lot as a child can be damaging! - and probably the most important, that an adoptee should be happy and grateful that their adoptive parents 'saved' them from an abusive background, when in fact a child is more likely to believe that they were taken from the most important adults in their life as a child.

Your confusion of adoption and fostering is probably a key issue here, as adoption is the legal framework in which the annihilation of a child's previous family and life takes place. Fostering, on the other hand, while problematic in itself, at least says 'we recognise you come from somewhere else, but we are taking care of you in this new part of your life'.

When you look at the statistics of which children are taken away for neglect or abuse, it becomes very obvious that poverty and race is a massive cause. Teenage mothers, drug-abuse, alcoholism, etc etc. are the types of neglect most often picked up on, whereas an apparently happy middle-class family can have all kinds of sexual abuse going on without anyone noticing.

Transnational adoption, meanwhile, is almost always a poverty stricken or colonised countries children being adopted to a rich, white country - e.g. korean children going to Australia, or Chinese children going to America. If these countries are such terrible places to live in, that we are justified in taking away their children to give them 'a better life' then we seriously need to address the problems that country suffers. If we are adopting some chinese children, but then causing others to work in sweatshop factories in order to buy our clothes at Primark, are we not being hypocritical to the extreme?

Women who are infertile are not automatically excluded from taking part in children's upbringing. Lots of parents struggle with raising kids by themselves, and taking on some of that burden is healthy and useful. But taking kids away from one parent in order to make-up for another woman's grief is just horrible. Why does your grief enable you to cause trauma to another mother, and to her child? It is sad and unfair, yes, but you don't take legs from one person to help another person to walk.

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

Many of the assumptions about adoption are inherently damaging,

I think this is what I have not really ... encountered before. My Auntie and uncle didn't behave like that, didn't enter into the adoption with these attitudes, my granny and grandpa and mum and other Auntie never once presumed my cousins should be ... well, anything. In fact when my younger cousin started developing a mental illness my aunt did a huge amount more research into the effects of adoption on children to see if there was anything there that might help her.
So please understand, although I have seen attitudes like this in the media - usually about US adoptions - I haven't ever met people who experienced this directly. I take pretty much everything I read or see in the media with a grain of salt.

Your confusion of adoption and fostering is probably a key issue here,
When you look at the statistics of which children are taken away for neglect or abuse, it becomes very obvious that poverty and race is a massive cause...whereas an apparently happy middle-class family can have all kinds of sexual abuse going on without anyone noticing

Hell yeah, it is an exercise in cynicism whether you are of a poor, non-white background or a white middle-class background. I have witnessed 3 yrs of "Intervention" into indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory, where they were essentially invaded all over again and taken into state care - the whole lot of them! because of the little children apparently all being sexually abused and it was a national crisis. Apparently.
And people like me (a LOT of people) were going "Well if the sexual abuse of aboriginal kids is a national crisis, it is also EVERY part of Australian community.
When lo and behold it is now revealed their rates of sexual abuse are no higher than the rest of the community.
Yeah, an exercise in cynisism. (it was a last-ditch attempt by the then Howard govt to retain office at the election a few months after the Intervention began.)

If we are adopting some chinese children, but then causing others to work in sweatshop factories in order to buy our clothes at Primark, are we not being hypocritical to the extreme?

I do get this. I just never realised the level of hypocrasy. I could have told you Madonna was a little hypocritical shit for adopting that african child, but ... it is like an industry in the US, but upon investigation by my friend, it certainly doesn't seem that way in Australia.

Why does your grief enable you to cause trauma to another mother, and to her child? It is sad and unfair, yes, but you don't take legs from one person to help another person to walk.

And here, again, if for a moment my friend - or my auntie for that matter, ever had a hint that was what they would be doing, they simply wouldn't have done/consider doing it. No. Just no way. I don't think in my cousin's case that is what happened. I don't know if that is what would happen were my friend to adopt.

I am reading about a part of the world and humanity I just didn't know about before. And I am having trouble coming to terms with this. I dare say if I can come to terms (such as it is) my own father could do the things he did to me, I can come to terms with this new understanding. But it is taking some time and thought. And learning.

[interfaceleader.livejournal.com]

What I would say is, if it is something you are interested in learning more about, is to go and read adoptee blogs such as those on the blogroll: http://loveisnotafeeling.wordpress.com/

I was on the fence regarding adoption at first, it is difficult to reconcile pro-adoption attitudes that are taken at face-value, especially when biological parent abuse obviously does happen (I would hate for you to feel that your experience was being trivilised somehow) and it may well be that Australian adoption is a lot different and more positive - although I still think transnational adoption is a hugely problematic area, no matter how positive the adoption process.

But I'm not the person to speak for adoptees, and I think Jake is the starting point but once you start to read more accounts and analysis you realise this does go far beyond one person's experience, and is a massive class/race colonisation - even when individual adoptive parents are honestly feeling like they are doing the right thing, and love their adopted children unconditionally.

[syvilan.livejournal.com]

Speaking of family and class, my stepfathers side of the family is part of the "extreme high class". They are so extreme about it they would rather he not have basic medical care than accept he is disabled, just because they have to be all "high and mighty" and see their children as social status symbols.

They're not middle class though they have this very extreme view about wealth. They have this whole "You don't want to be one of those poor people" attitudes. Your stepfather situation makes it a lot easier for me to understand why you dislike adoption.

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

Your stepfather situation makes it a lot easier for me to understand why you dislike adoption.

I don't know what that means? I don't have a stepfather

[syvilan.livejournal.com]

Sorry I misread, that said your foster mother closely reminds me of my great grandmother in law. Your foster mother strongly reminds me of my stepfathers family, full of all the "we have to be all super high class and super presentable and rich" attitude.

[lost-letters.livejournal.com]

oh yeah that makes sense. there really was a "what will the neighbours think?" thing going on