What Adoptive Parents Need to Understand About Forcing Friendships

The short answer: Don't.

As an adoptee, I've lived under a toxic umbrella of expectations from the greater adoption community. It has never been said out loud directly to me, but it floats in the air and clings around adoption chat rooms, facebook groups, and news articles. What is it exactly? The expectation that the orphanage has bonded us for life.

We are adoptees. We are humans. People. Individuals.

Time and time again, I have seen our individuality squashed by pushy adoptive parents who want nothing more for their adoptee than to have them make a life-long friendship with another adoptee, especially if they are from the same orphanage. It sounds like a nice idea, right? Reminding your adoptee that they came from an orphanage for the rest of their life. Tethering them to another human being they just have to pretend to like because it makes the adoptive parents go "ooh" and "ahh."

I have spoken to many adoptees over the years. I know first hand that the best friendships are those made authentically, without adoptive parents with their ears pressed to the door or adoptive parents with that slight smile whenever they see their adoptee doing the proper adoptee thing. I also know that there is an overwhelming pressure for adoptees to like the other adoptee and for them to tell the adoptive parents that they like the other adoptee. Very often, I have seen situations where the adoptees all dislike each other but their adoptive parents are absolutely convinced that they are best friends chained for life.

My own orphanage group has fallen apart. For some reason, everyone wanted to have an orphanage group, but then they never met very often and slowly drifted away. Sometimes I have heard adoptees vow never to see them again. In my case, I don't think anyone ever liked each other. People were mean and bullied each other. Yet, our adoptive parents forced us to be together, because something about the magical bond of the orphanage made their hearts swell with pride. We would meet multiple times a year for twenty-odd years. We were, I believe, an anomaly because others did not meet that often and didn't last as long. I think now, they realize that this isn't working. They'd smile and tell the parents, "Oh yes, I love my China Sisters!" and then turn around and bully them and exclude them from games, complaining all the while that they hated to be there.

Even though it seems obvious now that you can't force people to be friends, that things must happen naturally, that there needs to be the freedom and space for the adoptee to say, "Hey, I actually don't think they treat me very well. I don't want to see them again," I see over and over and over again adoptive parents online trying to wrangle other adoptees into being friends with their...almost twenty-year old daughter. As if their own adoptee has no voice or say in who they are friends with. And as if there is some magical goal all adoptees are marching towards: not heaven, but a mythical friendship where all adoptees sing Peace on Earth into the sunset.

My best adoptee friends are the ones whose parents couldn't care less about the fact we are both adopted. We are just people. Me and them. There isn't a coy smile as the adoptive parent pats themselves on the back for orchestrating a friendship. The best friendships are those that the adoptee has the volition to decide whether or not to participate in it. I shake my head and wonder why adoptive parents feel this urge to shove us all together. "My child just NEEDS to have an adoptee pen pal," is something I've seen often online. "My child just HAS TO HAVE an adoptee meet up with someone from their orphanage." Meanwhile, the adoptee is a legal adult...she doesn't "need" to do anything. If she wants to initiate a relationship, that's on her. Why don't adoptive parents understand that?

Reunions have their own symbolism. Just take the expectation that people will be blood sisters bonded for life out of the equation. At some point in my orphanage group years, I realized that I liked the idea or concept of the reunion more than the reunion itself. I enjoyed being able to tell other relatives and friends that "Yes, I still know those kids from my orphanage" to a predictable avalanche of approval and applause. As if I had just cured cancer! But I have to be honest with myself. If the friendship isn't working, then it isn't working. Pressuring adoptees into being friends just doesn't work.

Adoptees are individuals. We make our own decisions in life.