What Adoption Dismisses: The Importance of Being Related
Being related to someone, having that natural connection of a mother giving birth to you and this event of creation and nurturance being your connection to the human race through millions of years of evolution, having the innate and emotional blood-bond and instinctive mother-child bond and biological/genetic connection to a family, to mother and father, is highly important in the rest of society. EVERYWHERE other than adoption.
In legal child adoption, invented only in 1851 as a social experiment, it is dismissed.
It shows how we in modern society put adoption upon a pedestal, one built on artificial and discredited notions such that infants are “blank slates” and that “environment is everything.”
In the rest of society, outside the adoption realm, being actually related to someone IS important. If it were not so, then women giving birth in hospitals would not care which baby they brought home with them. Push out a baby, then choose whichever one you want to take home with you. Or, be handed the “next one up in the rotation.” And why on earth should it matter? Why in heaven’s name would it matter? If we were to use the make-believe logic of adoption, it wouldn’t matter. But we all know it does.
I think that adoption as an institution is based on lies, fabrications, and the financial/social power and emotional “needs” of those who can afford to buy a baby. Reality has nothing to do with it. Instead, we are pressured believe that parents are replaceable and interchangeable, that children will “get over it,” that natural mothers are nothing more than heartless abandoners and willing incubators.
None of this is the truth, but it is a direct result of the legal principles underlying the first child adoption act, passed in 1851 and copied throughout the Western world. Terminate all parental rights AND all filiation. Permanently and without revoke. That is what differentiated this law from ALL others that preceded it. As long as adoption exists, it will be based on these lies, and will assume that biological connections, relatedness, are irrelevant.
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Adoption Critique 
September 29, 2010 at 4:52 pm
“… we are pressured believe that parents are replaceable and interchangeable, that children will ‘get over it,’ that natural mothers are nothing more than heartless abandoners and willing incubators”
I find the ultimate irony is that the pressure often comes from people who claim moral and religious high ground. That’s a real mind-bender for me, incredibly frustrating.
Well said, Cedar.
September 29, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Wow, not an hour ago I was discussing my step-granddaughter with my adopted out son and he made the comment about that some point it is the genes, with the caveat that nuture can trump nature.
That comment caught me off guard because that is what he was raised to believe – that his afamily is reason he is who he is. Sigh. He is just like my father!
I am fortunate we have a good relationship but my contribution to him is diminished in his afamily’s eyes and since he is the good adoptee he will defer to them.
BTW did you see the October 4 issue of Time magazine? The cover article is about how the intrauterine experience in the nine months of gestation set a person for the rest of their lives.
I will send this to my son with a note about nature trumping nurture!
September 30, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Well said, Cedar.
Adoption lovers want to avoid the obvious…but the natural family has been the cornerstone of all society across the globe for all time. Not only in human society is this true, but it is true for other species as, well.
Animal life, and vegetable life forms itself into family groups,herds, forests, fields, and colonies.There is strength in these groups.
The fact is, parents and children matter to each each other. These connections cannot simply be wiped out.
Destroy the family and risk destroying the species.
October 6, 2010 at 4:14 am
“BTW did you see the October 4 issue of Time magazine? The cover article is about how the intrauterine experience in the nine months of gestation set a person for the rest of their lives.”
@Angelle2: You bet your boots it does! Some people just don’t get it. You are born who you are going to be, the personality you are going to have forever is part of that. The nurture stuff, that is input and reference, but does not change a single iota of who you are!
I wish my daughter knew why she is the way she is – it is totally environmental, because the facts are that I still see my little girl in her every time we are together.
Sigh…Nature is who you are – nurture is only the spice.
October 13, 2010 at 8:40 pm
“Instead, we are pressured believe that parents are replaceable and interchangeable, that children will ‘get over it,’ that natural mothers are nothing more than heartless abandoners and willing incubators.”
Poignantly and candidly stated. Are you okay if I quote you on my blog at some point?
The article in Time magazine to which Liz refers is worth reading. Even more so, however, I want to read the book the article is based on (by the same author who wrote the article, Anne Murphy Paul): “Origins: How the nine months before birth shape the rest of our lives.”
Although this burgeoning area of study, “fetal origins,” is not based on or fueled by adoption-related issues, I believe it has implications applicable to adoption practices, and I hope with time the “science” of fetal origins will provide the “evidence” that folks seem to ignore but need to acknowledge about the bond between mother and child.
The nonchalant way in which folks dismiss the mother-child bond in the world of adoption infuriates me to no end…
October 13, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Please feel free to quote me on your blog at any time. 🙂
This is for all my readers: Please feel free to quote what I’ve written, or post links back to it. It’s all part of encouraging open and public discussion about adoption issues, something I feel strongly about. 🙂 My blog stats let me know who has linked back to me, so I can automatically read the posts.
October 13, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Fabulous. Thank you!
October 23, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Thanks for the invite to post a link, will do so!
February 17, 2011 at 5:45 am
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