Adoption: Classic or Dud?

I don't know whether this is quite the right place for this, but I often wonder about people's motives for having their own children, let alone taking on adoption, which in this case seems to have led to a situation akin to getting rid of an unsatisfactory pet. Shades of Joan Crawford.

I think it's classic, but I always knew I was an adopted child from the earliest. I think that's key.

They didn't tell me I was adopted until I was 19.

How the fuck can you forcefeed a kid salt, claim you had no idea how his sodium levels were so high, then get a shitty 5 year sentence for manslaughter? The boy had 11 blunt trauma injuries to his head!
Educated adults feeding a kid salt by the spoonful and bashing him about the head know exactly what they are doing. The verdict and sentence are a fucking sham.

"Mrs Gay's father, Royston Swain, 61, said: "We're totally shocked. They know they have done nothing wrong. It's an injustice."
W T F ?!

(sorry for derail, needed to vent)

I don't think that adoption is out of the closet yet, especially in the US. It's still (for some incomprehensible reason) one of those Things One Doesn't Talk About, and since gutter press has a largely (albeit lurid) conservative bent, I'm not really at all surprised about the lack of following.

xpost, really Remy? That must be strange. Is it like, taboo, to talk about people not having been brought up by/with their blood relatives?

xpost!

x-posts

I was also interested in the child killed by the overdose of salt story. When I have spoken to social workers about my experience of adoption, they always assure me how much better adoption is these days then it was when I was adopted (this is Australian social workers I'm talking about, not the US where matters relating to adoption could not be worse). But I always think that my adoptive parents would have passed any assessment process, just like the people who took in the three children in the UK. The only thing that would have put them off and persuaded them that it was not something that they really wanted to go ahead with is if it was a truly open arrangement.

I'm not sober enough now to argue the point I realise that sometimes children cannot be raised by their parents or relatives but I think that their connections with the family that are to raise them should be additional to and not instead of their family of origin relationships. but I believe it fundamentally wrong: I have NO connection (save that ineluctable biologic tether - call it umbilical if you need) to my birth-parents and I don't want any. I am not - per Oprah-wisdom - 'denying my roots' or 'freezing out the remembrance of rejection by deliberate omission' but instead allowing all of my emotional attachment to reside with the people who've raised me since a tremendously young age; my adoptive parents.

I don't think this is true - don't all kinds of animals that organize in packs take care of the pack's young (wolves, lions, dolphins, apes, penguins) and even non-pack animals sometimes group together when they've just given birth, to take turns hunting and caring for young (housecats), not to mention even cross-species examples of giving a puppy to a mother sow and having her raise it as her own.

Yes, and there are even examples of cross-species raising of young that aren't influenced by humans (i.e. "giving a puppy to a mother sow"). Some large cats will care for other large cats of different species (like a mother Leopard taking care of a baby Panther) from what I understand. (Admittedlly, "what I understand" = "what I've seen on the Discovery channel and may or may not remember correctly.)

At what age was she adopted?

Yeah, that's pretty much the pool of knowledge that I'm drawing upon also.

adoptive parents will obviously and unavoidably have different motivations for raising children than non-adoptive ones.

I think they potentially do. But why is it obvious and unavoidable? Is it impossible for adoptive parents to have just as good intentions and do just as good a job of raising a child?

The woman told me that she had received a letter from the adoptive mother who proudly informed her that, when the visited a third world country, the children (they had adopted two) told their parents how lucky they were to have a family and not to be like the children they saw on the street. Of course, one of the children was growing up in ignorance of the fact that she had a mother, father and siblings living close to her who were longing for her to be part of their lives.

I think that's the kind of thinking that I had when I was growing up. Being adopted meant being a secret orphan. As an adult I discovered that it was quite wrong and that I'm not an orphan but I think that, growing up with this self-perception, has affected my sense of who I am very deeply.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12598896

honestly don't know how i feel about this?

actually, i do. but still, something seems...off.

well, it comes at a bad time. the uk govt has just been making a big deal about supposed politically correct rules imposed by social workers which prevent ethnic minority kids being adopted by white parents. even though their own evidence suggests that it's white parents who don't apply to adopt black kids. so i feel like this is just going to be used as another example of "good" parents being excluded by the social engineering of crazed lefties.

and if there's a one in ten chance (i guess) that a kid will grow up gay it's not a totally unreasonable thing to check that you're not throwing them to bigots?

yah i mean, good?

They look kind of mean anyway.

yah i mean i wouldnt want to have been fostered by these guys

p sure that would have been hella traumatic but i guess it sucks to be discriminated against for being a bigot oh shit

I don't feel bad for that couple for being called on their bigoted views. But it does seem like a waste of their good will and possible good works, assuming that they ARE good foster parents and have done some good for a lot of kids over the years. There's so much that needs doing...to just trash the chance that they could have given a home to another kid or two or four or...?? So now those kids will stay in a facility instead? Wonder how those (hypothetical) kids feel about it, tbh.

Otoh I am BLOWN AWAY by the ruling and can't imagine that ever in the next three generations happening in this country and it is impressive.

actually, i do. but still, something seems...off.

― ullr saves (gbx), Tuesday, 1 March 2011 01:19 (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

hope you'll explain what your concern is. but i think the story's reported kind of badly, or at least the idiot commentary by the bbc's religious affairs correspondent muddies the waters. i don't think it's really a case where the judges had to weigh up two types of discrimination, religious and sexual orientation: the welfare of the child trumps everything, so all that matters is the real risk that a minority of children (who can't necessarily be identified in advance) might be harmed by being placed with this couple.

unfortunately, because the judges had to deal with arguments from the christian legal centre, they ended up providing a lot of ammunition for a debate about how secular the uk is, which newspapers love, but isn't even relevant to the case. the CLC are kind of legal trolls who specialise in drumming up publicity. you can see lists of their cases dismissed "without merit" etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Legal_Centre

the likes of the guardian and bbc shouldn't pander to this by sending religious affairs correspondents when it really calls for a legal affairs expert imo.

ah, here's the full judgement from the court, worth reading because i don't think you get a fair summary from most of the reporting:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/375.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/09/09/346851939/in-korea-adoptees-fight-to-change-culture-that-sent-them-overseas