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.
no subject
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.
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.)
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.
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.