How Abandonment Explanations Fuel Unnecessary Self Hate and Perpetuate Lies about Worth

As soon to be adoptive parents, the adoption agency and third party therapists encouraged my parents and many many others to make Adoption an accessible topic for me. This means talking about adoption right away to make it normal for me and okay for me to talk about my feelings. While I have naturally been very open about my feelings, many of my adoptee friends have never been. And while I've been "honest" about my experience, there are some things which were so traumatic, my brain hid them from me until I could deal with it as an adult, which I had absolutely no choice over. (Read Coming out of the Fog) So this didn't really "nip it in the bud" so to speak because you can't avoid heartache and pain in adoption.

Because Chinese adoption doesn't make a whole lot of sense to a baby--because what monster can justify the mass forced sterilization of women and forced abortions of drugged and kidnapped women and threats of violence, fines, and literal seizures of newborns from their parents' arms in hospitals?--the fairytale version of adoption, which some people cling to way too much at the expense of actually parenting their child to be a fully capable adult, isn't going to suddenly be sunshine and roses.

If the story only contained: "Your birthmom abandoned you." That in itself is a major major blow to the adoptee. A bullet would be quicker and far less painful.

However, some books which are specifically written for children! contain more painful details. At the very least, there is some explanation for WHY you, the baby, were abandoned and this usually includes the top three:

1. You were born the WRONG gender: Girl
2. You have a physical "deformity" like a cleft lip
3. You have some other disability

These explanations are justified by throwing around the words "Chinese Culture" into the conversation. In Chinese culture...the boy grows up to take care of the parents. In Chinese culture...if they could only have one child, it makes sense it wasn't you!

But what does it do to an adoptee who feels that they were just born WRONG? So wrong, their parents didn't love them enough to be kept? So unwanted that their parents chose to keep the other sibling?

And now we are finding out through DNA testing and birthparents coming forward that these explanations are simply not true. (See trustworthy, recent article by NBC)

First of all, the one child policy only ever applied to about 40% of mainland China. To say "chinese culture" caused anything doesn't make sense when people are finding out through DNA connections that they in fact have three Chinese sisters living with their birthparents. If gender matters at all, it seems to be from the older generation and many times if this is the case, it is the grandparent who steals and abandons the baby by tricking or locking up the birthmom. Additionally, poverty seems to be an extremely important factor in whether the family could keep baby #3, but no one talks about that! Poverty and force, external and internal pressure, world problems and survival: this is the environment in which a baby can be separated from the birthparents. Not, "ew it's a girl" but, "the police surrounded our house and confiscated my baby."

For years, female Chinese adoptees have lamented "oh, if I were only born a boy!" just to find out that they are one of several girls in the family, and that they were a middle sibling, and that they were given up because money was tight at the time.

For years, an adoptee friend of mine felt that she was abandoned on sight after birth because of her physical deformity. She hated herself and she blamed her situation on her appearance. What kind of pain was unintentionally unleashed on her by her adoptive parents when they told her that she was abandoned because of her physical appearance? And now, after going through her paperwork at age twenty-two, she sees that she was actually "abandoned" one entire year after birth. To go from thinking that she was so hideous on sight that no one loved her, to finding out that she actually stayed with her family for a year, was held by her birthmom for a year, was loved and kept, played with and fed, for one year, is mind blowing. So why was so really abandoned? Most likely poverty or law enforcement got involved. It might not have been an abandonment at all.

Imagine going your entire life thinking there was something WRONG with YOU. Humans are already naturally inclined to internalize traumatic situations. Kids in a divorce are well known to blame themselves for the separation. Kids in adoption blame themselves for the abandonment, yet this is not as well known or talked about. The thing is, with the story society feeds us about "Chinese culture" and "cultural values," blaming the baby is literally written into the story. The statistics coming out of China about the skewed gender ratio aren't even that accurate because many of these so called "missing" girls are actually hidden in homes, unable to go to school or get a job because there were never formally registered.

Yes, there's sexism in many many cultures, and I'm sure there are some people who may have backwards beliefs about women and girls (find me a culture that doesn't). Yet, when the world demands to know why over 110,000 boys and girls were forcibly "abandoned" in China (not to mention trafficking, the occasional kidnapping, and also just making sure the baby was safe the entire way to the orphanage without an actual finding spot) and apparently it isn't enough that there's a One Child Policy to provide an explanation, I hope people realize it's COMPLICATED.

Further reading: http://research-china.blogspot.com/2012/07/time-to-change-usual-story.html

Further reading 2: https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2019/06/03/baby-abandoned-china-20-years-ago-one-child-policy-birth-parents-found-her/3765759002/