I write about adoption because, having lived the first half of my life without the language to describe it, I now seek adequate words for it. That is my project. But the project is by its nature incompletable, because being adopted is the first fact, the primal fact, about who I am, and self-understanding is never final. And because adoption is, by its nature, absurd.
I like the emphasis on context. I think that is why adoptees often struggle with identity. First, you form your identity without a complete context. Then, if you are lucky, you eventually get more context, and you have to adapt your identity to the new context. And the general public has no clue as to how unmoored this can make you feel, and that even after finding your biological context, it can take years, decades, and maybe a lifetime to readjust. And that is not to mention all of the challenges that this situation poses to existing relationships with adoptive family and new relationships with bio family. Because they don't understand either. So I do appreciate your educational efforts, to raise awareness.
I know your intention when you write ‘pregnant people’ but this serves to invisibilise the clear misogyny underpinning historic adoption policy and practice in the UK and many other countries.
It was precisely because a mother was not married that she, and her child, had to be punished. She had shown herself to be the wrong kind of woman in the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, and so didn’t deserve to keep her child, who had to be saved from their mother’s shame via adoption by a married couple (that is, by an approved-of woman).
If she was young or poor, that made the enacting of the punishment easier because she was less able to fight against it. Just by being married, the clamour for her to relinquish her child to ‘better’ women was quieted.
This abhorrent, decades-long, international social policy was aimed specifically at women and enacted against them. It’s so important that this is acknowledged.
“The only way to make this case is to write experientially.” Yes! I agree … and am also thinking of other ways of writing (composing in multimedia perhaps, podcast, videos, etc) to make this case.
I like the emphasis on context. I think that is why adoptees often struggle with identity. First, you form your identity without a complete context. Then, if you are lucky, you eventually get more context, and you have to adapt your identity to the new context. And the general public has no clue as to how unmoored this can make you feel, and that even after finding your biological context, it can take years, decades, and maybe a lifetime to readjust. And that is not to mention all of the challenges that this situation poses to existing relationships with adoptive family and new relationships with bio family. Because they don't understand either. So I do appreciate your educational efforts, to raise awareness.
I know your intention when you write ‘pregnant people’ but this serves to invisibilise the clear misogyny underpinning historic adoption policy and practice in the UK and many other countries.
It was precisely because a mother was not married that she, and her child, had to be punished. She had shown herself to be the wrong kind of woman in the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, and so didn’t deserve to keep her child, who had to be saved from their mother’s shame via adoption by a married couple (that is, by an approved-of woman).
If she was young or poor, that made the enacting of the punishment easier because she was less able to fight against it. Just by being married, the clamour for her to relinquish her child to ‘better’ women was quieted.
This abhorrent, decades-long, international social policy was aimed specifically at women and enacted against them. It’s so important that this is acknowledged.
“The only way to make this case is to write experientially.” Yes! I agree … and am also thinking of other ways of writing (composing in multimedia perhaps, podcast, videos, etc) to make this case.