Korean Adoption: Moms, mom and moms

With so much to write about … so much news, so little time … I’m popping over here from the Adoption News Blog to post about some Korean adoption-flavored stories.

Starting with this one on an unexpected reunion with birth family.

Nineteen-year-old Korean-born adoptee Robin Gellinger and her mom took a trip to South Korea to see her birthplace and get a taste of the culture. Their plans included meeting up with a friend who had stayed with them as a teen in a cultural exchange, and doing a bit of poking around to see if they could find anything that might tell them something about Robin’s roots.

Adopted through Holt at the age of four-months, Robin and her mother visted the Holt office in Seoul and learned that a hope to see the hospital where she’d been born wasn’t possible, as it was no longer standing. With a promise to attempt to reach birth family, but a warning that this was extremely unlikely under such short notice, Robin and her mom enjoyed their holiday.

Scheduled to return home on the Saturday, a phone call from Holt Thursday night informed them that father, mother and sister were all hoping to meet Robin the following day.

The account of the reunion is touching and informative, and worth a read.

An adoptive mom in the news, Rose Kent, author of “Kimchi and Calamari”.

Mom to two Korean-born adopted kids, her book is, according to the America Library Association’s review, a first novel that, “… humorously captures the feelings of a young teen who thoroughly enjoys his Italian-American family but still wonders about his birth parents and the circumstances that led to his abandonment.”

Referring to her family as an “ethnic sandwich” and her book title as “quirky food fusion”, food and the symbolism attached to food permeates the book.

And while we’re on moms, this is a story from Korea about Korean moms, or at least some of them.

Suggesting that mothers in their 40s and 50s are more narcissistic than maternal, the report focuses on women who are investing significantly more in themselves than in raising their kids of cleaning their houses.

Forever fishing for compliments, pampering themselves, a professor at Seoul National University says: “Although there may be individual differences, there are more narcissistic people when a generation that has been under pressure to make sacrifices comes to an end and a generation who grew up with excessive attention grows up. When these people in turn become grandparents, they are more likely to run away from their grandchildren saying they don’t want anything to do with them.”

The article poses some interesting speculations on the reasons this generation of Korean women is becoming imposing to the point of bulldozing their own daughters in the process.

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