Another Rambling Rant: Adoption Coverage in the News and Tabloids, Hypothetical Adoption Scenarios, and Desire for Blood Relatives

Just my two cents.

Whenever a celebrity adopts, there's always a big deal made about it because well, they're celebrities and the public is hungry to know about their lives--and then judge them for it. We saw just how devastating this insatiable thirst for celebrity life could be when Princess Diana was killed for it.

Growing up, I saw how even the parents of my friends would have strong opinions about Taylor Swift's dating life, despite not even knowing her. I saw nasty headlines on the tabloids stuffed in racks at the convenience store check-out: who was cheating on whom, pregnant, had plastic surgery, all those lascivious details that make miserable people "happy" about their own lives somehow.

It's easy to hate because it's easy to be jealous of someone so much richer or beautiful than you are. There's a very predictable desire to see them brought down a peg or two from the pedestal that you put them on in the first place. That's why magazines print these stories.

But let's face it: celebrity tabloids are not where you should go for reliable coverage on separation trauma or attachment theory in adoption and especially not the comment section on those posts online.

I don't really care who adopts. I don't care what color they are. What gender or sex or sexuality they are. I don't give a shit what color the child is. How old. From where. Because ultimately, I do not know these people nor do I know the adoptees, nor do I know all the complicated ins-and-outs of each country's international adoption system, and it seems petty to be throwing stones in a glass house.

Chinese adoption is complicated enough and I would not have the gall to try to explain even an ounce of how another country's adoption system worked. Ultimately, people's opinions about what should or should not have happened stem from very infantile ideas of adoption as an instance of kidnapping and stealing, or racism because people cannot stand to see a happy multiracial family.

I've seen white people attacked for adopting black kids because people meanly think that black kids are accessories or that it stems from white saviorism. I've seen white people attacked for not adopting black kids because people think that this is due to white people hating black people. But ultimately, every family is different and another hint: you do not know these people. Adoptees are not pawns and we deserve to live without the world's judgement knocking on our doors. We have enough on our plates.

People in the comment sections drive everyone nuts, even the commenters themselves. A lot of orphan tropes get thrown around like fact in any stories about adoption: the idea of orphans as charity cases, the idea that adoptees are lucky, that someone needs to be saved, that adoptees are teaching tools... I find it funny how these tropes are without a doubt regurgitated under celebrity adoption stories. We never had a class that taught about orphans in school, but everyone thinks they are an expert.

Though many people are not consciously influenced by tabloids, they do influence us and are reflections of our culture. The proportion of adoptive parents who are celebrities to non-celebrities is a very small number, yet because of the news coverage and glamorous images and red carpet interviews, many ignorant people believe that adoption is for the rich.

Ignorant people quickly associate money and glamorous living with adopting a human being, and this leads to several unpleasant assumptions about adoption: that adoptees are accessories or fetishes, that adoptees are bought by rich people like slaves, that depending on the race/ethnicity of the adoptee that this is analogous to a handbag brand where some are more desirable than others. Ignorant people who think this do not know a lot about the adoption industry, nor have they likely taken the time to realize the inconsistencies across different nations.

For instance, while Sia was able to adopt a son she saw in a documentary, my parents were given a vague questionnaire that asked if they were open to adopting twins or not. My parents did not select me from a picture book, nor did they have a choice in who they got, nor did they have a choice in gender of the baby, nor the age. They did not submit a shopping list of traits and could not examine the babies in person--which is how I think adoption is portrayed in the movies, as some magical connection when people go browsing for human lives. Of course, this varies by country and by circumstance. In Vietnam, in the instance of Lana Condor, her adoptive father did get to visit the orphanage and did select her in person. In America, there are picture books for some domestic adoptions. I am told that in domestic adoptions in China, adoptive families can tour the available babies. Imagine having the gall to think you understand everything about adoption to launch social justice attacks on people you know nothing about, and further, to believe that attacking adoptive parents does not hurt the adoptee. They are our family and your intolerance of it is disgusting. You are not a hero for thinking you're a lone crusader off to fight in a war only you know about in the name of social justice--no, you're just an asshole who thinks their opinion matters in how I live my life.

I am extremely insulted when people assume I was bought by my parents because Asian flesh is fashionable, and I am extremely insulted when people assume that I was selected by default because my parents are racist--not true. In fact, my parents did look into domestic adoption in America, but at the time, black babies adopted by white parents could be taken away by the state and given to black parents instead and this happened to their friends. It was also a hot topic from Black rights advocates (who have since reversed their opinion) that white people should not be allowed to adoptive Black babies. Going down that route and having a baby forcibly removed from the adoptive parents would be emotionally devastating on all parties involved, especially for the infant adoptee who doesn't understand these adult human constructs of intolerance. So, to play it safe, my parents decided not to do domestic adoption. 

(Point: you can argue that race matters and you need to play a matching game with race. You can find adoptees who say it matters and those who say it doesn't, because ultimately, to the adoptee, family is family, and adoptees are not a monolith--and while race needs to be considered, it can be fulfilled by living in a diverse environment and not a white bubble but that doesn't mean the problem is "solved." Additionally, these rules are being flip-flopped every day and so should be taken as more of a reflection of how adults and non-adoptees interpret who "owns" who, as a political move in a certain bubble of time, rather than a guideline steeped in love and understanding.)

And then, 'lo and behold, China opened with a seemingly endless supply of abandoned baby girls who by law were abandoned by their parents. It was lauded as the cleanest adoption system, free from corruption and human trafficking, and it seemed so perfect to choose China. The fact that it wasn't as clean as they promised should be a reason to give me some fucking sympathy, but instead, what I get is a bunch of ignorant people deciding twenty years later that I should be accosted in public and in the classroom because instead of them understanding that "relinquishment" rather than "abandonment" is a blessing, I get attacked for being a possible human trafficking victim--you know, because that makes sense.

I'm saying each and every situation is complicated and when my friends all see the shiny magazine covers talking of yet another celebrity adopting, they equate this with a status symbol and though they claim to be against objectifying adoptees, they quickly objectify me. Ironic!

So after you've no doubt skipped reading most of this page, you might wonder if I have a point. What should be done? Should we not cover celebrity families? Shouldn't adoptions be promoted because there must be some sort of correlation between adoption in the news and the amount of adoptions people perform? Shouldn't birthmothers be supported as the first course of action, rather than just taking their babies to safety and giving the birthmother the middle finger?

China, my mom says, used to be like North Korea: cut off from the world, under communist rule, and so when it opened up to the world again (in 1979), there was a lot of intrigue and a lot of mystique--as can be seen in many titles of documentaries that talk of the Mysteries of China!

I sometimes wonder about whether North Korea will follow in China's footsteps, if in a couple years or decades there will be a mad rush to adopt orphans from North Korea and if that could ever be ethical and whether despite everything I know I would participate. 

You see, because for some of my peers, they would agree only on the simplistic basis that I am Asian and this somehow for them circumvents the whole issue with white saviordom. I'm Asian, they're Asian--bing bam boom, should be fine.

If I were to posit an alternative future for N. Korea, I wonder if abandonments would happen because of starvation or medical needs, if parents might think that the babies would be better off elsewhere--I'm sure that's the story the world news would peddle, and undoubtedly the truth would be much more complicated than that.

Again, in this purely hypothetical circumstance, I wonder how the idea of finality, the "no-turning-back" factor might come into play. In China, babies would literally not allowed to be reunited with the birthparents, once you hit the orphanage, it was kind of a one-way valve: to grow up in the orphanage or be adopted. What's disturbing is that as more people adopted internationally from China, the One Child Policy seemed to be enforced more often (funny to think of a law having that kind of responsiveness/flexibility) and so it had a, pardon my objectification I just swore I would not do, but a kind of supply and demand effect. So, more babies get adopted, more babies enter the orphanage (more coercion, more trickery, more lies, and more confiscations of babies), and then once in the orphanage, it's really a no-brainer what option would be best: adoption. You could argue from the cash and coercion side of things that lowering the adoptions from China would have resulted in more babies not separated from their birthparents and not separated by blatant trickery, but then you're going to have some population of kids stuck in the orphanage, at the no-turning-back point that get screwed, but how many more families get to stay together?

Another point to consider would be the potential for the adoptee to have a connection with the birthcountry. Would it be possible for them to visit? Would it be safe? Do you owe it to them to have some avenue for birthparent searching--in other words, do you stay away from countries that would make it impossible for a birthparent reunion, knowing that they deserve to have the opportunity to search as so much has been out of their control? With the Hong Kong protests, there was a lot of real fear that China could go in reverse and lock down (unlikely given international business prospects), but China is big and powerful and can do whatever it wants, like genocide and ethnic cleansing apparently with very little international outcry, I must say.

And while I have always wanted to adopt, thinking that babies came from the orphanage rather than the womb, I now find myself unable to even consider China which is still performing adoptions but at a much smaller scale under different circumstances. I find myself wondering more and more if the only blood family I'll ever have will have to be made by me, and though I joke that my family tree will be Asian from the waist-down, I find it ironic that my and so many other adoptees' desire to see someone who looks like us is often demonized in the adoption community, after all--adoption is about loving people not blood-related to you. You see posters all over with nonsense like "blood doesn't make a family, love does!" as if the two are mutually exclusive--and again highlights the fact that most adoption culture revolves around the adoptive parents. 

You see, because for the adoptive parents, it is "commendable" that they, unlike the primitive warring factions in King Arthur's time don't need a blood heir, that they can see that love is deeper than the skin. But for adoptees, this can almost seem like a law--that in fact, we must choose either the adoptive parents or the birthparents, as apparently some ignorant people do not believe it is possible to love more than one family (despite the fact that people marry and make families bigger all the time.) It can suppress the adoptee's ability to express their desire to see and know who their birthfamily is and it can even feel selfish to express the desire to give birth to a baby who looks like us, because we are supposed to be the very products of "looks don't matter." 

But in my entire life, I have never seen a single soul that looks like me, and believe me, I've looked, at my Chinese friends and my Chinese adoptee friends and all those Chinese adoptees I've seen on Facebook--and none of them look like me, and that's depressing. It's a real hurt and it shouldn't be diminished as petty or vain--and even though my parents couldn't give birth, they still have blood relatives who look like them--who drive them nuts and maybe there's not even a whole lot of resemblance either--but it's more than what I've got and possibly will ever get.