Pound Pup Legacy

Are we the by-products of our environment?  Nowhere is the debate of Nature v. Nurture argued more than it is between the mothers of both sides of adoption.  "Better parenting" is the moral-stance and justification many use to explain why one woman's baby is taken and sent to live with another woman, naming that new-woman, Mommy.  All one has to do is look at Madonna's newest family-addition to see how adoption advocates are using money against mothers, and making everything "better".  Nature v. nurture has become a matter of real estate provision and ploy, proving the cost of quality care given by one mother is better than what can be offered through God's natural design.  Do I begrudge efforts made by women-in-wealth or moms with a mission of mercy?  Not at all.  God Bless the adults who can make a child's life better, not bitter!  However, let there be rules and standards before relinquishment.  If money talks, let it show itself in programs and practices that encourage women to keep what is theirs, and not fear the almighty dollar as being the life-giving force a child must honor in lieu of his parents.  In other words, let Mothers come first, not money.

Why does hidden family dynamics and environment not concern people, given the unknown numbers of private adoptions that take place in each state, each year, the absence of standardized adoption practices AND the profound number of dysfunctional family members each family has?  The family-structure is where common symptoms and behavior patterns result from common experiences within the family structure.   Throw-in a closet pedophile, a prescription pill-popper, or an alcohol/drug addict-in-denial and what does the foster child or adoptee get as Parental Replacements?  Legalized Legacy of Family Dysfunction.  Pathological Parents, by proxy. 

What I find most disturbing is the sense of normalcy dysfunctional family members seem to accept for themselves, and how role-play and positioning solidifies the pattern of dramatic dysfunction that gets seen through the eyes of an innocent, developing child.  Generation after generation pathological parenting is being taught to family-members.  It's bad enough this gets perpetuated in natural families, but to know this has been designed for decades as a means of profit-making for baby-brokers... that is downright immoral and criminal.

To think adoption is not flawed and demands reformation is to ignore and deny the truth of an era of humans traded to a system littered with problem-ed parents.  Care to argue the virtues of adoption?  Ask yourself the following questions:  How many adult-adoptees are there living today,  and how many have been "chosen" by private agents, sold to people unfit to parent properly?  Anyone care to guess-timate?  Do we dare? 

Other voices

Let's follow a few voices with  professional reasoning:

In families where child abuse and neglect occur, certain traits may be present.  http://webdev.extension.umn.edu/parents_forever.html

• Parents grew up with abusive or neglectful parents
• Parents have low self esteem
• Parents lack inner resources
• Parents lack knowledge
• Parents lack confidence
• Parents are disorganized
• Parents are lonely or isolated
• Parents are overwhelmed by the demands of parenting
• Parents are hot tempered
• Parents are impulsive
• Parents have difficulty dealing with crises

Alice Miller

Alice Miller, PhD in philosophy, psychology and sociology, as well as a researcher on childhood and author of twelve books, translated into thirty languages, discusses Child Mistreatment, Child Abuse:  What is it?

Humiliations, spankings and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc. are all forms of mistreatment, because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away. However, as adults, most abused children will suffer, and let others suffer, from these injuries. This dynamic of violence can deform some victims into hangmen who take revenge even on whole nations and become willing executors to dictators as unutterably appalling as Hitler and other cruel leaders. Beaten children very early on assimilate the violence they endured, which they may glorify and apply later as parents, in believing that they deserved the punishment and were beaten out of love. They don't know that the only reason for the punishments they have ( or in retrospect, had) to endure is the fact that their parents themselves endured and learned violence without being able to question it. Later, the adults, once abused children, beat their own children – without conscious intent – and often feel grateful to their parents who mistreated them when they were small and defenseless.

This is why society's ignorance remains so immovable and parents continue to produce severe pain and destructivity - in all "good will", in every generation. Most people tolerate this blindly because the origins of human violence in childhood have been and are still being ignored worldwide. Almost all small children are smacked during the first three years of life when they begin to walk and to touch objects which may not be touched. This happens at exactly the time when the human brain builds up its structure and should thus learn kindness, truthfulness, and love but never, never cruelty and lies.

Alice Miller's stories portray abused and silenced children who later become destructive to themselves and to others. "Adolf Hitler", says Miller, "was such a child. Constantly mistreated by his father, emotionally abandoned by his mother, he learned only cruelty; he learned to be obedient and to accept daily punishments with unquestioning compliance. After years, he took revenge. As an adult he once said, "It gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware people are of what is really happening to them."

Early in his work Freud believed that the root of neurosis was actual trauma, often violent and sexual in nature, that had been repressed in childhood. Later he altered his view, deciding that the child is by no means innocent but is born with drives that are sexual and destructive in nature. Why has Freud's Oedipus complex lasted so long? Miller asks. "Because in the Freudian view the parents, not the child, are innocent. The Freudian view fits society; it overlooks in Oedipus the abused child and sees him with incestuous wishes that lead to his killing his father, marrying his mother, and ultimately blinding himself."

Traditional analysis, says Miller, duplicates the parent-child relationship. with the conventional analyst in the position of power. But there is hope in therapy if the therapist is a true advocate of the patient. Respect for the child within the patient and his discovery of his real history must play a role in the treatment process. The child undergoes a long inner struggle "between the fear of losing the person he loves if he remains true to himself, and panic at the prospect of losing himself if he has to deny who he is. A child cannot resolve a conflict of this nature and is forced to conform because he cannot survive by himself. Therapy should not repeat this condition."

Miller uses the phrase "poisonous pedagogy" to describe what we inflict on children "for their own good" out of our hypocrisy and ignorance. She perceives that we instill humiliation, shame, fear, and guilt as we are "training" children. By encouraging conformity, suppressing curiosity and emotions, a parent reduces a child's ability to make crucial perceptions in later life. "Children are tolerant. They learn intolerance from us."

Dan Neuharth

According to family therapist, Dr Dan Neuharth's book and website, Controlling Parents,

• Estimated Number of Adults in the USA Raised with Unhealthy Control: 15 Million
• Estimated Percentage of Controlling Parents Who Were Themselves Raised with Unhealthy Control:  50 Percent

In a survey of adults raised with unhealthy control, percentages who said:

As children they felt...

• Forbidden to question or disagree with their parents: 90 percent
• Pleasing their parents was more important than being themselves: 86 percent
• Tense or on guard when their parents were around: 96 percent
• That it was not okay to express anger, fear or sadness: 96 percent

As adults they...

• Feel perfectionistic, driven, or rarely satisfied: 82 percent
• Worry or ruminate over confrontations: 96 percent
• Are easily angered around controlling people: 91 percent
• Feel extra-sensitive to criticism: 91 percent
• Feel tense when they think about visiting their parents: 78 percent
• Feel that their parents don't really know them as they really are: 91 percent
• Feel that it has taken a long time to separate from their parents: 82 percent

In retrospect, their parents...

• Seemed unwilling to admit it when they were wrong: 100 percent
• Seemed unaware of the pain they caused others: 100 percent
• Viewed the world in right-or-wrong, black-and-white terms: 96 percent
• Encouraged connections with others outside the family: 14 percent
• Encouraged their children to express feelings: 5 percent

Estimates from If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World, HarperCollins Publishers,1999

Survey results from a questionnaire of 40 adults age 23-58 who grew up with unhealthy control

you may be among 15 million adults in the United States who were raised with unhealthy parental control. Too much or the wrong kinds of control in childhood can cause lasting problems in adulthood, and these connections are often subtle and hard to spot. If you have problems or habits that stubbornly resist change, they may be symptoms of unresolved issues with a controlling parent or upbringing.

He mentions and describes:

The Eight Styles of Controlling Parents

Smothering
Depriving
Perfectionistic
Cultlike
Chaotic
Using
Abusing
Childlike

Nearly all controlling parents embody one or more of the eight "styles" of controlling parenting. These styles provide a "You Are Here" point on the map of unhealthy control. Identifying your parents’ styles can help you make sense of what didn’t jibe in your family. Remember the series of lenses an eye doctor alternates before your eyes until you find ones that enable you to see most clearly? Recognizing your parents’ styles offers the right lens that brings into focus the underlying values and themes with which you were raised. The more clearly you view your family’s themes, the more readily you can become your own person. You may find elements of one or more of these styles present in either or both of your parents:

Smothering: Terrified of feeling alone, Smothering parents emotionally engulf their children. Their overbearing presence discourages independence and cultivates a tyranny of repetition in their children’s identities, thoughts and feelings.

Depriving: Convinced they will never get enough of what they need, Depriving parents withhold attention and encouragement from their children. They love conditionally, giving affection when a child pleases them, withdrawing it when displeased.

Perfectionistic: Paranoid about flaws, Perfectionistic parents drive their children to be the best and the brightest. These parents fixate on order, prestige, power and/or perfect appearances.

Cultlike: Distressed by uncertainty, Cultlike parents have to be "in the know," and often gravitate to military, religious, social or corporate institutions or philosophies where they can feel special and certain. They raise their children according to rigid rules and roles.

Chaotic: Caught up in an internal cyclone of instability and confusion, Chaotic parents tend toward mercurial moods, radically inconsistent discipline, and bewildering communication.

Using: Determined never to lose or feel one-down, Using parents emotionally feed off their children. Hypersensitive and self-centered, Using parents see others’ gains as their loss, and consequently belittle their children.

Abusing: Perched atop a volcano of resentment, Abusing parents verbally or emotionally bully — or physically or sexually abuse — their children. When they’re enraged, Abusing parents view their children as threats and treat them accordingly.

Childlike:Feeling incapable or needy, Childlike parents offer their children little protection. Childlike parents, woefully uncomfortable with themselves, encourage their children to take care of them, thereby controlling through role-reversal.

From If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace With Your Past and Take Your Place in the World, published by HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright ©1999 Dan Neuharth, Ph.D.

Wikipedia

Even wikipedia, the unauthorized authority on anything and everything has something to say about Dysfunctional Families:

Children growing up in a dysfunctional family have been known to adopt one or more of five basic roles:

• "The Good Child" – often the family hero who assumes the parental role.
• "The Problem Child" – the family scapegoat, who is blamed for most problems in spite of being the only emotionally honest one in the family.
• "The Caretaker" – the one who takes responsibility for the emotional well-being of the family.
• "The Lost Child" – the inconspicuous, quiet one, whose needs are often ignored or hidden.
• "The Mascot" – uses comedy to divert attention away from the increasingly dysfunctional family system.

They may also:

• think only of themselves to make up the difference of their childhoods. They're still learning the balance of self-love
• distrust others
• have difficulty expressing emotions
• have low self-esteem or have a poor self image
• have difficulty forming healthy relationships with others
• feel angry, anxious, depressed, isolated from others, or unlovable
• perpetuate dysfunctional behaviors in their other relationships (especially their children)
• lack the ability to be playful

How does this separate the Adopted Child from the natural born child of loser-parents?  Ask the lawyers, law makers and agencies that tell a mother, "you're not fit to parent your own child."