For all the things that are written and told
about adoption, few are the truth. As a reunited adult adoptee
I hope to shed as much light on this issue as possible within
my lifetime.
If asked by anyone considering adoption "Is
adoption a good choice"? My answer unreservedly would be "NO".
Adoption is NOT a healthy or a good choice. If you ask
a baby if they want to be adopted they would say if they could
talk a thousand times over "NO". Each year hundreds of people
are lied to about adoption, it is time for those who are it's
experts to come forward and share it's reality.
Adoption is a permanent solution to a
temporary situation. It is important to stress that it is NOT
the baby that is a problem, it is the circumstances in one's
life that is or could be presently challenging.
Adoption is a negative, punitive exercise of
robbing babies and children from their mothers, their heritage,
their roots, their identities, and their rights as human beings.
Adoptees lose from the minute they are separated from their
mothers. This loss is cloaked in lies, and illusions.
For those promoting adoption, the idea is that
it is a gain for the baby or the child. Being surrendered for
adoption is not a gain in the least. No amount of money,
or a two parent family, nor anything can replace the real and
natural mother for adoptees. Nothing can replace the heritage
and connections with others in the natural family as well. They
won't tell you this but I will - from day one we grieve and
are sad to have lost our mothers and are not happy! Not
only are babies sad they are also afraid. We know our mothers,
we grow inside their wombs. We hear the music of their hearts,
we know their smell, we trust and love them by nature.
They are ours, our universe - all that we know, all that we
feel, love and are attached to. Adoption takes our universe
away. If someone took away all that you love and all that you
know how would you feel?
When we are born we only want one thing to be
held and loved by our own mothers. We know them, they belong
to us and us to them. To take that away is not good for babies
it is the worst most abusive act emotionally to inflict. When
adoptees lose their mothers they lose themselves as well.
They forever lose the person that they were born to be, and
they lose the joy and right of being that person.
Above all we lose trust from the very beginning
of the separation. The loss of trust is not a temporary feeling
that is lessened by being adopted. That is another famous lie
promoted by baby brokers. It is forever and permanent just like
adoption is.
When the first lesson in life is that the one
person you love and trust will go away it is hardly a good start
for anyone. Along with the broken trust is grief and sorrow.
This is not a lesson or anything that should be encouraged to
inflict on helpless infants. Being severed from your mother
and family is not anything that adoptees are happy about. The
loss in adoption for adoptees can rarely ever be expressed or
acknowledged. There is a horrible expectation and false
belief that the adopters and adoption will overcome any damage
done to adoptees. This is another lie - it cannot undo our pain
in losing our real families. In fact it makes the pain worse
as it is so often denied to begin with. The truth is that we
are traumatized from the separation and always will be.
The grief that we feel as infants is not ever acknowledged.
This lack of support also breaks our trust. It also makes us
untrusting of our own feelings when our first feelings are blatantly
ignored. It is normal for babies to be sad and in grief
when they lose their mothers - what is NOT NORMAL IS ADOPTION
to begin with.
Anyone considering adoption should know and
see themselves as having value and worth. Above all they should
know that they are NOT replaceable. Babies are not interchangeable
entities to be adopted without negative effects either. In truth,
the bonds of nature are not replaceable any more then the mother
or the baby is to begin with!
Along with the broken trust and the grief, the
second lesson in life for adoptees is to be fake and live in
worlds of illusions. From the minute of the adoption we are
conditioned to be someone else.
Adoptees are forced to take on the identity
of strangers. We are not born to adopters, social workers or
social agencies. We are born to two parents. Our birth certificates
are falsified, then locked away. Our grief is not locked away
though! Adoption changes our names it cannot change either a
babies or a mother's heart or the lifelong loss that both will
forever experience.
One of the arguments for adoption is that adoptees
will gain two parents. This is ridiculous as we all ready have
them. This is the first lie used to coerce people considering
adoption. If you are pregnant and reading this know reality
- you are the baby's mother not anyone else. The baby also has
a father. The father may be unsupportive, or supportive but
the reality is your baby has 2 parents to start with.
Our personalities and our lives are assumed
to be shaped to those of our adopters. The famous lie we will
be just like them. Babies are born with set personalities, genes,
behaviors, temperaments, likes and dislikes. This is not an
idea it is a FACT! The idea of shaping a baby that is all ready
a human being with a personality is again not healthy it is
negative. For adoptees fitting into another persons life at
the expense of not being themselves - does not foster self-esteem
or happiness. It breeds only one thing - insecurity, self-doubt
and fear. It is not natural to live with strangers and
pretend to be born to them. It is not fair, and it is not in
the best interests of anyone other then adopters.
It denies babies and children their rights to be only one thing
- exactly who they were born to be.
This continual lying that adoptees must live
with manifests itself in thousands of ways. Adoptees are sad
to be adopted, angry and insecure. The myth of the happy,
grateful adoptee is nothing more then a blatant fantasy spread
by baby brokers, and adopters. It is hardly the reality that
I live with and not a reality for most adoptees that I know
and have worked with.
It is a huge burden to deny who you are and
to try and be someone that you are not for someone else. It
is not child oriented it is adopter oriented. It is not fair
to expect an innocent child to be another person. This alone
makes the lack of trust worse. Not only have we lost our mothers
breaking our trust but we also lose ourselves further breaking
trust more as well. The message for us is to be someone else.
It says to us that who we are to start with is not worthy, it
says that it is not good. It says that our mothers and our own
heritage is not good either. If it was of value then why should
it be denied? If it was of value then why falsify, lie and deny
it?
The denial of our real selves causes irreparable
harm and again breaks trust! This is not in our best interests
or any child's for that matter.
For adoptees being adopted does not feel like
love or happiness. It feels as though we are unloved. It feels
like we are unwanted, not good enough and not quite right. These
feelings are not just light feelings that adoptees experience
for a short time. They are life-long, deep and permanent. They
cause permanent scars that do not go away. Situations can change.
For adoptees though once adopted forever adopted. The permanency
is not changeable and the negative side effects not worth it
for any reason.
Other lies that adoption promotes are things
like the baby will be just like the adopters? As I have said
we are born to parents to start with, we have genetic influences
that are strong, and in fact stronger then nurture to start
with. Babies and children will NOT BE JUST LIKE ADOPTERS, they
will in fact favor and be like their real parents. Above
all why should we be just like strangers, we are not their children
we are the children of our real parents. All children should
have the right to love and be proud of themselves, and to love
and be proud of who they are. Adoption turns pride into shame,
love into fear, and robs children of their right to be happy
as they are.
For many promoting adoption the idea of income
and wealth for the child may sound appealing. Fancy houses,
cars and trips around the world is a shallow way to look at
life, Life is not about money. It is much deeper then that.
The poorest of children if loved will be rich in the ways that
count. Adoption for material gain is wrong. Material possessions
and financial opportunities do NOT replace a babies or a child's
desire to love and be parented by their own parents. NO AMOUNT
of money in a child's life is worth it to be separated from
their real parents. Better to be poorer and loved by your own
then to be richer and live with lies, secrets, illusions and
sorrow.
Another despicable myth is that the natural
mother will be sentenced to poverty forever. This is a condescending
and ridiculous lie. Having worked with hundreds of natural mothers
I can attest to the fact that the average first mother was not
the negative myth of the starving street person that baby brokers
have lied about for years! A person may well be having some
financial difficulty and may well be worried of providing for
a child at some point in their lives. Finances can change. Jobs
are available, training and education are both available, other
alternatives are available! While a persons finances can change
adoption can not. Again it is a permanent solution that will
not change! If you are considering adoption due to a temporary
financial situation then please think of this as being exactly
that "temporary". I believe humans are more then capable of
productive and healthy changes. Everyone can learn new things
and grow. One's situation now can always change - adoption can
NOT!
Yet another argument used to promote adoption
is the question of youth. Being young is not a bad thing, it
is not negative and it is not dangerous. Young people can be
excellent caregivers and parents. For those that wish to support
adoption and promote it - this is yet another thing that they
manipulate and lie about. It is as if the young person will
be young forever. They will always be 16, or 17 or the age at
the time of pregnancy. Just as babies grow so do teenagers,
so do adults. You will not be young forever. You will mature
and you will grow. It is more then possible to learn how to
parent at a young age. The baby brokers will convince you that
it is not - will you believe them or will you believe yourself?
Above all will you believe in the lives of strangers or the
lives of you and your baby as being more then possible to be
happy and healthy?
You can grow with your baby, learn new
things and parent a child at a young age. There is a myriad
of resources to help young people with parenting. Babies living
with older strangers is hardly in their best interests. Being
older is not and does not mean better then a young mother or
father period. Always remember you will not be young forever!
It will not matter to your baby if you are young as your baby
will love you regardless of age.
Adoption does permanent harm to children. It
effects them forever. It causes low self-esteem, identity problems,
fear, trust issues, grief, anger and a lifetime of not feeling
secure. That is the truth that is what baby brokers will NOT
tell you. That is what I will share as an adoptee and as someone
who has worked with adoptees for 11 years. Adoption is the only
thing that I know of that makes strangers family bound in secrets
and lies, and families strangers by the same secrets and lies.
I hope for anyone reading this that they hear the truth. Adoption
is not good for children!
For mothers as well I would like to again stress
that you are NOT replaceable. You are unique, your baby knows
and will love you. They are your child, your flesh and blood,
body and soul. You do not replace things that are sacred without
paying a heavy price. And the price is children haunted by their
own faces, that carry forever with them the coffins of infants
that only in being born ever wanted one thing - to be loved
by their own mothers. Babies want to grow into what they first
knew and loved at birth - their own mothers and themselves.
Adoption robs them of their right to nature, their mothers and
the essence of life.
Finally I would like to ask anyone considering
adoption one thing. If you were surrendered for adoption and
you lost your most beloved person - your real mother? If you
were forced to deny that the loss hurt you and pretend that
it did not? If you were forced to live with strangers. If you
were forced to be someone that you were not. If your life was
a lie and you were forced to be part of a family that you are
not a part of. If your identity was hidden from you. If
your identity was lied about by everyone in your life. If you
were forbidden to know your real name, see your real family,
know your real life - would you be happy or grateful? Likely
not. I hope this article says something to anyone considering
adoption.
By
Anne Patterson
Open Records Activist
Adoption Should End Activist
Early Childhood Educator
Licensed Searcher
Reunited Adoptee
Copyright © 2001 Anne Patterson
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