That's a very interesting exploration of ChatGPT's "understanding" of adoption. One of the weaknesses of its on-the-surface-pretty-thorough response is that it doesn't really understand the difference between "adoption" (as in plenary adoption) and "giving a child a home." In adoption as we think of it, the child is transferred from membership in one extended family to another, legally. This (as you know) is very different from guardianship, or situations where an uncle steps in to raise a sibling's orphaned kids, stepchild adoption or simple adoption. ChatGPT's training via pro-adoption materials led it to have the same blinkers that our society as a whole has -- to think that a child must be fully moved from membership in one family to another, rather than having the new parents/ caregivers be, in effect, added to the child's family -- as in simple adoption. But, why can't children who are raised or adopted by other people preserve all their kinship ties when the new ties are added, the way that stepchildren do? One of the fundamental problems of adoption in the West is that society and adoptive parents think that the legal transfer of a child at the time of the formalization of an adoption, also extinguishes the parent-child relationship that previously existed. But it can't, and shouldn't, and not recognizing that contributes to significant trauma.
Brilliant analysis! Love the way you gently walked C into trying to justify the unjustfiable — children are being traded as commodities. C said some very incompatible things. While C opened with the typically positive bromide about adoption giving a child a good, loving home, C also listed an almost UN/WHO-style set of cautions with regards to some important “ethical considerations and challenges” inherent in adoption. None of which were even considered in my own adoption, nor in any plenary adoption.
Looking forward to more of your convo with C, not that it bodes well for the massive Lil Bot.
This is invaluable -- a clear explanation of how C works together with its limitations together with a outstandingly subtle analysis of how those limitations shape the ‘answers’ C provides to complex ethical questions and issues. Thank you!
That's a very interesting exploration of ChatGPT's "understanding" of adoption. One of the weaknesses of its on-the-surface-pretty-thorough response is that it doesn't really understand the difference between "adoption" (as in plenary adoption) and "giving a child a home." In adoption as we think of it, the child is transferred from membership in one extended family to another, legally. This (as you know) is very different from guardianship, or situations where an uncle steps in to raise a sibling's orphaned kids, stepchild adoption or simple adoption. ChatGPT's training via pro-adoption materials led it to have the same blinkers that our society as a whole has -- to think that a child must be fully moved from membership in one family to another, rather than having the new parents/ caregivers be, in effect, added to the child's family -- as in simple adoption. But, why can't children who are raised or adopted by other people preserve all their kinship ties when the new ties are added, the way that stepchildren do? One of the fundamental problems of adoption in the West is that society and adoptive parents think that the legal transfer of a child at the time of the formalization of an adoption, also extinguishes the parent-child relationship that previously existed. But it can't, and shouldn't, and not recognizing that contributes to significant trauma.
Brilliant analysis! Love the way you gently walked C into trying to justify the unjustfiable — children are being traded as commodities. C said some very incompatible things. While C opened with the typically positive bromide about adoption giving a child a good, loving home, C also listed an almost UN/WHO-style set of cautions with regards to some important “ethical considerations and challenges” inherent in adoption. None of which were even considered in my own adoption, nor in any plenary adoption.
Looking forward to more of your convo with C, not that it bodes well for the massive Lil Bot.
This is invaluable -- a clear explanation of how C works together with its limitations together with a outstandingly subtle analysis of how those limitations shape the ‘answers’ C provides to complex ethical questions and issues. Thank you!