Anti-Adoption?

Im sorry I have not blogged lately. I have been pretty busy. I have found a new "hobby" or interest that has taken a lot of my time recently.

I accidently came across a "movement' I have never heard of, as you can see from my title, the Anti-Adoption movement.

I never fathomed such a movement or group ever existed! Why in the world would you want to put an end to adoption??

Sheer gross fascination drove me to continue investigating, and even replying back to the comments of some of these bloggers.

To my even more amazement, I found that many of these supporters are adoptees themselves!!!@!@!@!!@!!@

I was totally befuddled on how anyone adopted could support such a movement.

I am still trying to learn all of the premises to their arguments and I have broken them down to a couple key "issues":

1. Corruption/cost associated with adoptions could be better spent to help the masses of children in the world (ie feed a lot of kids a couple of meals.)
2. Child abuse/work by adopting parents
3. Emtional/psychological issues such as identity/cultural confusion and abandonment issues.

After thinking about these issues, the only one that carries any merit is #3. Here are my reasons I dismiss the other two options as purely an "adoption issue".

1. Corruption/cost: While I agree the cost to adopt an international child is absurd ($20-%50k), to assume that these big global relief funds are less corrupt and more efficient at using the money is probably a false premise. The bigger the corporation or group the more corrupt and more inefficient they tend to be. Secondly, While it may seem like a humanitarian idea to feed 10,000 kids a single meal with ($20,000, or the cost of an adoption), however, when a couple adopts a child, they are agreeing to take care of that child for the rest of its childhood. Something to keep in mind, from the age of 0 to 18, a child eats 19710 meals! So if a relief fund paid to feed those 10,000 children for 18 years, they would have to raise the funds for $20,000 (total cost per meal for each child) x 19710 (meals each child eats in a lifetime) = $395 million dollars. However, if those 10,000 children were adopted to couples around the world the total cost would only be $200 million dollars, because the cost of the feeding of these children would be carried by the parents and not by a relief fund (For those of you wondering, it doesn't matter w. So which one is more efficient use of money? If you really wanted to help out the masses then we should be making it easier/cheaper to adopt, not abolishing it.

However, there is a fine line. If you make adoption too easy and too cheap, then I believe this will increase the cases of child labor and abuse. So, While I hate that propective parents have to go through all this and costs, I think it is a valuable screening tool also.

2. Child abuse/work by adoptive parents. I have a two sided argument. My first concern with this argument is the fact that the Anti-Adoption movement seems to have forgotten that these same issues are faced in orphanages and foster care. I would even go out on a branch to say it probably occurs more often in orphanages and foster care because how likely are parents who are paying $20-$50k per child are going to abuse them?

Secondly; bad parents make bad parents. Meaning, if parents are going to abuse a child, they are going to do it whether or not the child was adopted or a biological child. So this is an "issue" that is greater than adoption. This is an issue that affects both adoptees and non-adoptees, and should be addressed separate of the adoption movement.

The last argument I can somewhat understand and is a little bit tougher to argue. My belief is that adoptions do not cause more harm than what has already been done. What many of the supporters of anti-adoption seem to overlook is where do these orphaned kids go if there is no adoption? Just because you abolish adoption does not resolve the orphan issue, babies will always be born, babies will always be abandoned, and babies will always need shelter somewhere. Do they get stuck in "the system" for the rest of their lives with no hope of ever being adopted?

3. The one area where I can see adoption adding emotional stress is in the cases where the parents try to "suppress" adoption or birth parents or origin queries of the adoptee. As if they want to forget that the adoption ever happened. I do disagree with this. I don't think that is healthy for an adoptee. However, I would like to think parents are doing this because they think it is what is best for the child to adapt to their new surroundings? So I hope parents are doing this because they believe it is what is best for their child? Based on what I have read and my personal experiences, I would say the best thing about adoption is to be very open about it. If the child wants to explore it, let them. If the child doesn't want to explore, don't force them. I think what many people forget is, just like a newborn child doesn't come with an instruction manual an adopted child does not either. I would also argue that in some aspects adopting a child is even more difficult because of the cultural issues and emotional issues that the parents have to face. I believe the learning curve is much steeper and the parents have to learn much faster with a child that is already starting to develop (say 2, 3, 4, or 5+ years) then an infant.

Besides the "supression" issues that some adoptees face, I do not see how they face any more or harder issues than an orphan child who has never been adopted. In fact, I think adoptees face less problems than and orphan does, just because more of the needs of an adoptee has been met than of an orphan.

Lastly, one of the final arguments in the Anti-Adoption movement is based on the custody battles between biological and adoptive parents. I'm not going to get into that one because it gets pretty messy. Plus I believe my next argument addresses this issue. While I agree it is painful to see a child who is torn between a custody battle between adoptive parents and birth parents, I don't think its right to try to abolish adoption because of these select few. I don't have the exact numbers, but I would venture to say that the vast majority of adoptions do not ever go into a custody battle between parents. In fact, I would also venture to say that there have been more orphans with no biological parent information (such as myself, being abadoned) that would benefit from adoptions, then the children who have been torn in a custody battle. Just because a few adoptions are "sloppy", why should the rest of the adoptions be halted? If this is how society felt than we out to just abolish marraige in the legal sense, because more than half of all marraiges fail and end in divorce. If we can accept those numbers, than we should be happy that these custody battles are in the absolute minority.


After my "research" so far I have come to this initial conclusion on why adoptees would support such a movement. I believe that many of these adoptees have been too long removed from their memories/experiences of being in an orphanage that they forget how much better their lives are now (after being adopted) then before (when they were in an orphanage). I don't think many adoptees could tell me that they know for a fact that their lives would have been better in an orphanage. I hate to say this, but even the ones that were abused; how can we be certain that they or some other child would not have been abused in an orphanage? Factors such as abuse is not mutually exclusive to adoption, so abolishing adoption does not prevent abuse from happening. These are the types of logic(and there are many) that I have seen throughout my research in the Anti-Adoption movement.

I did leave a comment on one post, asking if they had any supporters from children who are actively in an orphanage or adults who grew in an orphanage all of their lives. Until I see a strong support of the "Anti-Adoption" movement from these two groups of people, I don't think I will be able to support this movement. Actually, until I see a strong support from these people, I think I will argue against this movement as much as I possibly can.

If you have read all of this and am interested in this subject, or disagree and would like to rebuttal, add more information and more support for the "Anti-Adoption movement, or maybe tell me how right I am (I never get tired of hearing it!! LOL) please leave a comment and I will respond, or you can email me at: spaldirl@gmail.com