Yesterday was National Adoption Day. November is National Adoption Awareness Month.
I ignored yesterday and I’m ignoring the month, too.
Why? Because it has nothing to do with me or with my daughter. Not one thing. It’s all about foster adoption, not domestic infant adoption. (And not international adoption, either.) The point is to raise awareness of the 129,000 children in foster care who are legally free for adoption. The point is to raise awareness about their need for new homes.
My daughter wasn’t in foster care and didn’t need a new home.
And I wish all the other bloggers who want to write about it would also stop conflating domestic infant adoption and international adoption with foster adoption.
…And while they’re at it, maybe they could stop conflating domestic infant adoption with abortion, and stop conflating the Christian concept of spiritual “adoption” with all types of human adoption.
Edited to add: Dawn wrote about this too and said it much better, so go read her.
7 responses so far ↓
dawn // November 16, 2008 at 2:40 pm |
Ha! Great minds!!!
paragraphein // November 16, 2008 at 2:47 pm |
Not so sure it was a matter of a “great mind” in my case, more like a general pissyness (spelling?) that people keep using my loss to perpetuate myths and stereotypes about me, and do it while coopting a month designed to help children who have themselves suffered loss and trauma.
erinthebeekeeper // November 16, 2008 at 2:49 pm |
yah that
Mirah Riben // November 17, 2008 at 3:58 am |
AMEN!
Foster kids are used as a wedge to promote and encourage adoption that is often about fattening the pockets of baby brokers.
Our gvt gives tax benefits to encourage adoption – on the premise that it encourages foster adoptions – yet makes no distinctions and gives the same benefits to those who buy kids and leave the ones in foster care right where they are. All it winds up doing is having adoption practitioners increase their prices accordingly.
Further, Adoption Day, “Gothca Days” and National Adoption Month ignore the pain and loss of adoption.
Kippa // November 17, 2008 at 12:01 pm |
Thanks, Nic.
Margie // November 17, 2008 at 12:19 pm |
Absolutely.
Jenna Howard // November 17, 2008 at 1:49 pm |
First I want to say thank you for speaking and writing about this issue! I am adopted- I also have three other adopted siblings. All but 1 (international adoption) were all domestic infant adoptions and were not in foster care so naturally we did not fall into the category of “available adoption”. I was a domestic adoption right out of the state of Texas. I find that any opportunities to speak or create awareness for the Orphan (international or locally) does and can stimulates debate as well as groupings. who is available to adopt? is she sick? is he the right color? who should be adopted first? Who’s paperwork goes faster? since its faster we should adopt from there. I for one say STOP IT! any child who needs a mother and father should be made available to be adopted. People individualize and categorize children like farms do with animals. People’s “good” intentions fall to the wayside and become corrupt when it suddenly seems to be a race to see which baby comes first and fastest and looks the best- how a baby will suite there immediate needs and not the other way around as it should be. I firmly believe that if my parents had taken the easy road (foster adoption), or even looked to their own timing and comfort in regards to adoption I and my siblings would not have been adopted.
I think the “National Adoption Awareness Month” should be just that
NATIONAL- self explanatory
ADOPTION- child of EVERY shape, color, age and size who needs a mother or father
AWARENESS- making people aware of every child that needs help not just a specific range or available child, and how, if some are not available, do we make them available?
MONTH-
I’ve written a whole book but your words are right on! Good for you!