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Fictional Adoptees
While browsing on Wikipedia in the adoptees section of their website, I came across the category of fictional adoptees, which has almost as many entries as their list of adoptees of fame and infamy. Has anyone ever done resarch into ths matter. Why are there so many stories with adopted protagonists? Is it just to appeal to the sympathy of the reader/viewer or is there a grander scheme behind the useage of adoptees in stories?
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why fictional adoptees?
Why are there so many fictional, and in some cases (Moses, Oedipus) archetypical and mythological, adoption narratives? Sociologist Katarina Weger (an adoptee, BTW) asked the same question from another angle when she surveyed the subject matter of daytime TV shows like Oprah and found that adoption themes (reunions idyllic and horrific, adoptions sentimental or monstrous) were over-represented in contrast with the actual percentage of the US population that are adopters or adopted. Adoption is fascinating to the non-adopted. She hypothesized that the non-adopted find adoption narratives both a mirror in which their "normal" family relationships are mirrored and reinforced, and a scrim onto which to project their own anxieties about their relationships within their families.
Double-take
Sociologist Katarina Weger (an adoptee, BTW) asked the same question from another angle when she surveyed the subject matter of daytime TV shows like Oprah and found that adoption themes (reunions idyllic and horrific, adoptions sentimental or monstrous) were over-represented in contrast with the actual percentage of the US population that are adopters or adopted. Adoption is fascinating to the non-adopted. She hypothesized that the non-adopted find adoption narratives both a mirror in which their "normal" family relationships are mirrored and reinforced, and a scrim onto which to project their own anxieties about their relationships within their families.
Uhhh...
can I insert a " no-shit, Sherlock!" comment here, or does that make me look like a big fat nasty bitch to the likes of Oprah-Advocates? Before I sink my teeth into this juicy observation, I need to point out an obvious example that gives truth to my theory that Adoptees think in terms of Us and Them, because life is termed in "Either - Or" conditions. If there's one argument so-called know-it-all Mental case-workers use just to piss this gentle-gendered adoptee, it's the ol'... "life is not seen in terms of black or white... it's varying shades of gray... therefore, polar extreme thinking needs to be stopped before Healing can begin." Yea well, say that to a suicidal adoptee reaching-out for the last time for Understanding, Supportive HELP... and then go to a doctor or clergy man and discuss Adoption Issues. You know what my Theory got me from MY therapist (who then tried to convince me Her Time for me was "unconditional"? Two years of Paxil, Effexor, Seroquel, and Lamictal. All of which I weaned-off MYSELF because I woke-up and smelled the coffee brewed in Reality, not in offices where the Referal issued reads: We refuse to care for the needs of the wicked, wounded bitch who whines for Attention.
OK, enough childish banter... may I please continue?
I've got a confession: I wrote a letter to Oprah's web-site, offering a Show Suggestion back in October.
<insert flash-back waves and cue appropriate music>. Yes... Early Fall, October, 2006... Niels had just come to NYC to help me get published, thanks to Joe Soll's implied interest and written invitation to discuss "future plans". Based on email response, Joe liked my ideas that two adoptees of two different sexes, both educated in two areas of medicine, with two different Interest Groups could be merged in Practice and Principle, because the needs of the wounded adoptee are being ignored. I hafta admit, I thought my idea was bloody brilliant, but it wasn't until Joe asked to read a sample of my writing, did I allow myself to get excited. When he asked me to see him in person to discuss my Ideas in private, I could have wet my pants, but I'm too much of a Big Girl to do something like that!
I will NEVER forget that day when the slammed-door of Refusal to Listen sent yours truly and my partner-in-crime out to fend for Our Own Kind, because I voiced my concern about the meaning and nature of weekend-healing. For the life of me, spoken as a Natural Mom, an adoptee Owned and Used in abusive ways, and as an educated professional, I could not understand what Good can happen when you put two desperately needy sides of Loss together for a weekend and given the Honeymoon-Phase treatment. I asked two questions: "did you meet YOUR Birth Mom?" and "do you have children, of your own?" I saw two eyes grow red and angry, and an open door. We were told to "get the hell out" to the dark, rainy streets of NYC.
(I kid you not... it was raining
's and 
's!)
After the Door-Slamming and its surprise subsided, the twisted irony of the life of an adoptee hit me & Niels like a ton of bricks. We began laughing, then drinking, then talking about the Madonna-Whore Syndrome and how it has really screwed the minds of EVERYONE.
It just so happened that was the week Madonna herself, resurrected from the quiet side of retired entertainment, announced that her UK address was getting a new addition. Apparently money, fame, and a family of her own isn't enough, she had to book a stork-flight to Africa, to buy herself a baby. I suppose it being a poor black baby proves her intentions, because with her bank account, I imagine it has more money than some small nations could ever dream of seeing, I would think giving the child's village a generous donation would be the best option to consider as the Message Madonna wishes to send Mothers and their babies. After all, it's better to Give than Receive, right? Providing a poor villiage with better living conditions and health-care resources so no mother would have to lose a child to the cruel power poverty has on a life, or sacrifice her baby to the hands of a Stranger seems to ME a much better option to Adoption. But I suppose a third party showed another area of interest that appealed to the needs of one mother and another child.
I know... who am I to judge? I should be more understanding and appreciate what Madonna can can do for the unspoken issues Adoption Awareness fails to mention. After all Madonna is a celebrity with huge connections, I'm sure. It's not like she stole another woman's man AND baby and was on world-tour selling that as Love for a Child and Family Values. I'm sure the child brought to Madonna will have NO problem adjusting to HIS new environment in a house with stables.. (uh.... which house and which country will they put this new addition?)
Talk about a Mother of all Contradictions! My first reaction to the story was, "Wanna place bets on how THAT kid ends-up and where he does rehab?" News like that, to me, is criminal. So I thought... WHO in this world would see the danger done to this child if Madonna leaves Africa with another woman's baby, and takes away that child's identity, culture, and ability to Trust a person with money ever again? How much good does the money left for AIDS funding do for two lives torn by ignorance and publicity?
It was my 12 yr old daughter and fellow pound-pup suggestion I contact Oprah and let HER People know how offensive news and publicity given to this Life Altering Event is to the adult-adoptee robbed of all human rights -- like name, heritage, culture, and above all, Freedom. [For what it's worth... I was a much more gentle breed in written form to Harpo Productions, than I am Here... ]
Obviously my show suggestion got slammed. Disappointed? No. I know I TRIED to do something, but I was ignored, dismissed and rejected. Hell... that's the story of my life, you think the 15 minutes of fame I never had matters in the whole scheme of things? Pahleese!
The two-sides of Adoption/Abduction is no different NOW than it was in the Closed System of Errors we were forced to endure, but these stories are still not fully disclosed. At least not publically, because that would seem....<hmmm...> politically incorrect?????
Why are the warring-words written between two sides of Motherhood matters of importance? As far as Legal Rights are concerned, has anyone mentioned a need to read any and all published facts and conclusions made by the studied effects adoption has had on the adult-children of the Closed Era of Adoption? Surely the decades of medical research is done, and Follow-Up studies are completed, documented and avaliable by now, right? If so, based on these facts, the chosen members of the concerned group of Church, State, and Science advisors formed years ago can soon confrim once and for all, WHICH Legal Issues and Moral debates can be FINALLY put to rest so the rest of US bastards can get the help we need for the medical problems and mental scars a Poor Choice in Options has left a breed of humans.
the "triad" and the five-legged pup...
I bought the party line that adoption consists of the Triad because it's repeated so often and so reverentially that it takes on the quality of a sacred litany... however you want to call it out: adoptee/adoptive parent/birthmother, adoptee/adopter/natural mother, etc etc ad infinitum world without end. But then it dawned on me... probably after attending another moribund conference dedicated to truth in adoption (where 99% of the presenters and 60% of the attendees were therapists and social workers)... the Triad is a shell-game.
Adoption actually consists of five legs, the adoptee, the adopters, the first parents, the full gamut of adoption professionals, and the state. Adoption professionals, a category in which can be lumped social workers, facilitators, attorneys and therapists, may disagree within their class on what adoption is, but are adament in invoking their privilege to define what adoption is to those in the first three categories (those to whom adoption is an existential reality). The state ultimately holds the power; the state created adoption out of whole cloth, and reserves the ultimate right to decide not only what adoption is and will be, but also the right to enforce its will on all the other four legs, through statute and regulation.
The beauty of the Triad, at least to the fourth and fifth leg, is that it renders their agency invisible. The state and its quasi-agents, the professional adoption class, can float divinely over the pell mell and gore, offering definitive commentary and altering the rules of the game. It's a tidy racket.
Robert Allan Hafetz There
Robert Allan Hafetz
There are many ways to look at adoption and each has their respective value. Triad is a family based model that focuses on the people most directly involved. We could create another model based on 5 as you say but why stop with 5? There are grandparents influencing the process as well so lets go to a 6 legged model ad absurdum ad infinitum. Various models are fine as long as we have a purpose for using it and we dont replace one with the other or declare one invalid just because its different. Or even more important use arguments about one issue to demonize a group of people we dont agree with. Adoption is a multivrariat process involving many different cultures of adoption. Each has its own language that reflects their focus on what they find important to them. There is value in each perspective of adoption be it from social workers, adoptees, bonded first mothers, or adoping couples. Well the NCFA has no value but thats another subject.
Adoption and power dynamics
"Various models are fine as long as we have a purpose for using it and we dont replace one with the other or declare one invalid just because its different."
Whatever therapeutic value the Triad model may possess, as a map of the social reality of adoption it is an incomplete failure. My purpose for proposing an expansion of the Triad model to include the state and the professional adoption class (or classes, if you prefer) is to create a map that better reflects the social dynamics and power flow in adoption.
The state's role should be obvious, you spent some time in Augusta earlier this year, hat in hand, petitioning the state to release information that everyone else takes for granted. The state defends a life-long right of parens patriae over adoptees, and by extension first parents and adoptive parents.
The adoption professional class asserts a right to mediate and act as interlocutor between the state and the "citizens" of adoption, whether it's social workers conducting a home study, interviewing pre-relinquishing mothers, and determining which records, if any, their agency will release to petitioning adult adoptees. Again, life-long partners. I feel that therapists must be included in this class because much of their work has become mediating between the culture at large and those who live in adoption.
Why critique the Triad? Because I see a lot of confusion out there about who is zooming who. I see a lot of Triad "citizens" of adoption misdirecting their anger against one another when their lives are actually, and in many cases directly, being manipulated by the state and its quasi-agents. I see the Triad model masking the real power dynamics of adoption, and I think it's time we look behind the curtain.
"triad" model
Whatever therapeutic value the Triad model may possess, as a map of the social reality of adoption it is an incomplete failure. My purpose for proposing an expansion of the Triad model to include the state and the professional adoption class (or classes, if you prefer) is to create a map that better reflects the social dynamics and power flow in adoption.
Why critique the Triad? Because I see a lot of confusion out there about who is zooming who. I see a lot of Triad "citizens" of adoption misdirecting their anger against one another when their lives are actually, and in many cases directly, being manipulated by the state and its quasi-agents. I see the Triad model masking the real power dynamics of adoption, and I think it's time we look behind the curtain.
I could not agree more. The state and its social agencies and institutions - public and private - have been behind the scenes wreaking havoc for so long-- engineering the social manipulation of families and irrevocably changing lives, while hiding behind a closed system, sealed records and scapegoats; escaping accountability for their deeds, laws and policies.
With the "triad" idea its easier for the government's part, private industry's part, and that of many religious institutions in all this to remain unseen (in all this I'll also add grandparent's part...), as it puts forward only the destroyed family (birth) and created (social or adoptive) family members-- (adoptees as part of both) personalizing it all as the individual's problem, maladaption, fault, or doing; or in the adoptive family's position -- their "saving" or "rescuring" roles.
Instead, those behind it all-- the manipulators-- get to watch from behind the scenes out of the crossfire-- the mayhem (merry for them, straight out of hell for us)-- of the divide and conquer game-- in which we pawns get caught up in. The state machinations and the socioeconomic dynamics that played into it all lay ignored, while instead everything is personalized to the individuals directly affected-- causing the whole burden to fall upon (some) of us.
Robert Allan Hafetz Not
Robert Allan Hafetz Not Remembered Never Forgotten www.neaspa.com/id14.htm
I agree with your comments and I want to add that if we let ourselves be lead by our anger we will only end up going in circles and being angry forever
angry NOT :)
I wasn't even angry when I wrote that... but... point well taken anyway.
I'm mellow... usually...
Neutered experience?
if we let ourselves be lead by our anger we will only end up going in circles and being angry forever
I'm sorry, but are you so numb that the Circle of Life has NOOOOOOOO meaning to you? What's wrong with anger? It's shows passion, desire, furtive drive with an unwillingness to give-up on something critical, like LIVING.
If not for internal fire and desire, what would have happened to the Jews under Hitler's reign of terror? Accept the immoral acts, because anger gets you nowhere?
Ever been raped?
Ever see a mother go frantic because a stranger took her baby away? Are you telling me, being lead by anger in that situation must be stopped?
Ever been so moved by the single act of a genuine, kind smile, it brought you to gut wrenching tears?
Ever felt love SO deeply, and desperately, it made you vomit?
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