Why are upset adoptees so prevailant in this section of the boards?

So you genuinely want to know why adoption pisses me off? Why I am personally against it? Ok, I'll bite.

I am against the legalized fraud that adoption allows. I am against the legal record of my birth being falsified to show an infertile woman as my mother. I am against the sealing of my original birth documents and the fact that the majority of adoptees are unable to access their own records, records that show who we were born as, legally, before state sanctioned fraud came along to take away our identities.

I am against the coercion and force often used to rip children away from capable and loving parents. Parents who, with only the smallest amount of support, could be amazing parents. I am against a society that sees one person as more deserving of another's child. I am against a society that preaches tolerance but refuses to support parents and natural families.

I am against an industry that treats children like paychecks, to be bought and sold so some dick in a gilded office can drive his beamer to work. I am against an industry that has become so money hungry that children are kidnapped in far away lands to fuel the baby lust of desperate, childless people here. I am against an industry that dehumanizes mothers and refuses to listen to adoptees. Who else knows the pain of an adoptee but an adoptee? But hey, shut out my views since I can't be the loving, happy, grateful b@st@rd everyone wants me to be.

Have you ever had a subject that you were passionate about because if affected your life greatly. For some people, they ahve been finding their way through being adopted for many many years, and some have varying life and world views. The basics that cross varying experience seem to be that;

1. adoption is a business in which women are exploited and give their babies up, sometimes through coersion sometimes not knowing their other options. This bothers people (rightfully so) that their personal plight is due, at times, to business where people are making money off of people.

2. PAP, AP, etc. Many come from different walks of life, and adoptees and First mom's perhaps get a bit peeved when people say "i want to adopt, how do I do it", or "how can i get a baby fast and cheap" etc. etc. etc. I think it is the ENTITLEMENT they feel the worst about, the fact that some of them feel entitled to a child.

3. Some people are yahoo's on YA

I could go on, but really should be in bed anyway, so I will end with this: Put yourself in their shoes and you can start to see why they get irsed off. If everyone spent their time asking me questions that challenged my identity and told me I have no right to feel the way I do, then I might get pissed too.

Why? Because we were abandoned by the one person who should love us - our own mothers, and it doesn't matter to the child who was abandoned why our moms thought us having more money and better homes would be better for us, what matters to us is that we weren't lovable enough so that even our own moms abandoned us.

That's just the start of it, of course, after that there's the whole part about growing up looking nothing like, and acting nothing like anyone else we see or know, as well as the fact that we have forgeries for birth certificates, and all the other legal ramifications that adoption entails.

As has already been said, you should go read http://www.adoptioncrossroads.org/SmilingAdoptees.... as well as the books listed.

Here're some quotes to get you started: Taken from Nancy Verrier's book, Coming Home to Self.

For the adoptee every day is a challenge of trying to figure out how to be, although he probably doesn't understand the difficulty this presents for him. It has been true his whole life and, therefore, feels normal. However, it takes a great deal of energy and concentration. And it never feels quite right. He never quite fits. Therefore he feels as if /he/ is never quite right.

(pg 50)

Abandonment and neglect are reported to be the two most devastating experiences that children endure - even more devastating then sexual or physical abuse. That's why some neglected children do naughty things to get attention. Even though the attention is hurtful - being yelled at, hit, or otherwise harmed - it is better than neglect. /Anything/ is better than abandonment. Abandonment is a child's greatest fear. For adoptees, it is also reality, embedded in their implicit and unintegrated memory.

(pg 102)

It is sometimes difficult to spot grief in children. After all, it isn't as if the child sits in a puddle of tears his entire childhood. As one adoptee said, "Of course I played, laughed, sang. Do people think that if you're not sitting in a corner with your head on your knees, you are not sad? I had happy times, but the sadness was always there, even when I was having fun."

(pg 117)

It saddens me that you walked into an adoption without understanding the emotional and spiritual ramifications of adoption on the child. This is a major fault of the adoption system that it does not present a balanced picture to either the birth parents or the adoptive parents.

To sever the bond that forms emotionally, spiritually and physically between the child and the mother in the womb is a horrendously traumatic experience. There are a lot of ways that an adoptee can become bitter. The adoptee can be treated differently than biological children in the adoptive family, or may just feel they don't fit in. They may ask why their mothers abandoned them. They may come to realize that their mothers were pressured into relinquishing or they were adopted under unethical circumstances (happens more often than you'd think; it's a $14 billion/year industry). They may struggle trying to figure out who they really are, especially if the adoption is closed and the records are sealed. One woman I know of actually questions if her birthday is really the date of her birth. Though the adoptive parents love and care for them, they may still feel an inexplicable emptiness.

Try to put yourself in the adoptee's place; look through the child's eyes and realize that the child experiences things from an entirely emotional perspective.

You should read blogs. They allow for much better discussion of adoption issues.

http://sisterheping.wordpress.com/

http://chinaadoptiontalk.blogspot.com/

http://ungratefullittlebastard.blogspot.com/

http://thirdmom.blogspot.com/ (adoptive parent to two kids from Korea, BUT an adoptive parent ALLY)

I really could not have said it better than "Abandoned Abandoner".

The assumption that our "hostility" comes from a bad adoption experience is just that...an assumption. Most of us had very loving adoptive parents. Having great parents does not take away the pain from being separated from our first Mothers, nor does it take away the fact that we are not like anyone in our adoptive families. We are NOT genetically related to our adoptive families. DNA is very powerful.

Most adoptees NEVER verbalize their pain until they are much older, some never do. Mainly, because we do not want to hurt our parents, but also, because if we dare to say we are in pain, we are labeled as "hostile", "bitter", "ungrateful", or worse.

Your children will appreciate it if you educate yourself as to how adoption affects them. There are countless studies about it.

http://www.nancyverrier.com/pos.php

http://www.amfor.net/acs

http://www.youtube.com/adoptedthemovie

http://www.keepyourbaby.com/the_primal_w...

Books:

The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier

Lost and Found: the Adoption Experience AND

Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness both by Betty Jean Lifton

The Adopted break Silence by Jean Paton

Adoption: Uncharted Waters,by David Kirschner

Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self by David Brodzinsky

Do a search for Julie Rist's wonderful article called "Happy Adoptee's". It is excellent.

I am an adult adoptee who has been in "reunion" with my first family for almost 20 years. My blog is at

www.PeachNeitherHereNorThere.blogspot.com

Hey don't forget all of us pissed off natural moms. It comes from being victimized by a corrupt industry. If you were sold and lost as much as adoptees do you would be pretty mad too. I have never seen any of the so called bitter adoptees be as cueal as the others on this forum

Society places such roses around the act of adopting. It is not always in the best interest of the children or the natural mothers.

It is obvious that more should be done to prevent the need for adoption. Not glorify it as if it is the answer. Because it just leads us down another broken trail.

Why should a child be placed in this position in the first place? Your adopting your children may have filled your void, but, what makes you think it will fill there's?

I am an adopted child, and I rarely, if ever, get upset about being adopted. My godmother knows who my birth mother was, and she said that there was no way that she could have taken care of me financially and I'm fine with that. I love my adopted mother and my adopted brother so, so much. I don't really think that I want to have children when I grow up, but if I do I definitely want to adopt them.