(From the Adoptee Side)

I’ve been thinking deep thoughts again. It started out innocent enough, but then the more I thought…the more things began to take shape in my mind. On the Korean Forum on adoption.com there is thread about why all problems are automatically blamed on adoption. If a child who is adopted throws a fit in the grocery store or at church, it’s automatically assumed that the child is behaving badly because they haven’t adjusted yet. The same behavior in a biological child of toddler age sparks conversations about the terrible twos.

That is an annoyance, but it’s one of the easier annoyances to ignore so my initial thought was to write a witty little post about the stupidity of the bystander. Then, I started thinking about how much adoptees and the parents of adoptees use adoption as an excuse for things that go wrong. I also started wondering how often we use it without even thinking about it. When does it become automatic?

From the adoptee point of view, I can see how it would be very easy for me to use. For example, I am not a very tactile person – hugging, kissing, casual touches make me nervous. Can I blame this on being adopted? Probably. Would it be valid? Probably not. I worried about this a lot prior to adopting my son because I was quite aware that children need a lot of tactile attention. I had told myself that I was going to have to do it often even if I wasn’t comfortable with it, but when my son came it wasn’t an issue. Sometimes, I have to force myself to let go of my son and let him run. So, it isn’t an adoption issue (because my son is adopted too), it’s just my personality. I like a lot of personal space. A lot of people like a lot of personal space. In this case two points for personality and zero points for the adoption blame game.

My sister spent a lot of time blaming adoption. She never came right out and said that adoption was the blame for all of her troubles, but she hinted. From the beginning, she made it very clear that she would never adopt and she was embarrassed to be seen with my parents at school functions because they didn’t look like her. Her middle name (a part of her Korean name) was a constant reminder that she was adopted. All of the things that she didn’t have could have been solved if she had been adopted by someone else that was richer, more cultured… Life wasn’t fair.

I hear it in the voices of other adoptees (though definitely not all adoptees). They would have dated more if they hadn’t adopted. They would have done better in school. They wouldn’t fear intimacy. They wouldn’t feel lost. Do we over use the adoption card or worse yet do we hide behind it so that we don’t have to face the larger picture?

Part 2 (From The Parent Side) will post tomorrow 5/8/06.

If you would like to comment, but not on this site, you can send me an e-mail at adoptkoreablogs@adoptionmail.com.