Russian Adoption Side #1
Some of you may have been following the discussions surrounding the recent return of an adopted Russian child to Russia by its overwhelmed American mother.
There are at least two sides to this story as well, so I will make a second post in a moment to get to side #2, but I wanted to start out with the first side, which is the child's.
I will do so, somewhat inappropriately, by citing my favorite Richard Gere quote from the Julia Roberts vehicle Pretty Woman: "I never treated you like a whore". By which I mean that the one thing an adoptive parent has to get over is that this child was at one point not their child.
The argument for returning the child was that the child exhibited difficult and violent behaviours that the mother could no longer deal with. This could in theory happen to any biological child as well; there are behaviour modifying sicknesses and accidents that could give rise to such a change. I am by no means arguing that she should have coped; everyone is incapable of coping with some things, and behavioural issues are clearly on the difficult side of that stretch. Because so much of the way we parent is instinctive and based on the way we were parented, it takes a very rare person to parent a child with the behavioural difficulties that the mother claimed he exhibited. Some behaviours require institutional treatment.
But this is still all miles away from packing the child up and shipping it back to a state, as if it was some wrinkled book from Amazon. What would biological parents have done (or have been expected to do)? They would have looked for either other family members to support them, gotten family therapy or they would have found an institution at hand, where the child could be cared for and where they could remain in an appropriate level of contact. It would have been tough, no doubt, financially as well as emotionally--there is no arguing that away. It is tough on the biological parents who are in these situations.
In the case of the biological children, it is culturally obvious where the buck stops. Adoptive parents must fight tooth and nail not to get into the position where they can even contemplate that the buck could be pushed one step back; for the sake of their children if for no other reason.
There are at least two sides to this story as well, so I will make a second post in a moment to get to side #2, but I wanted to start out with the first side, which is the child's.
I will do so, somewhat inappropriately, by citing my favorite Richard Gere quote from the Julia Roberts vehicle Pretty Woman: "I never treated you like a whore". By which I mean that the one thing an adoptive parent has to get over is that this child was at one point not their child.
The argument for returning the child was that the child exhibited difficult and violent behaviours that the mother could no longer deal with. This could in theory happen to any biological child as well; there are behaviour modifying sicknesses and accidents that could give rise to such a change. I am by no means arguing that she should have coped; everyone is incapable of coping with some things, and behavioural issues are clearly on the difficult side of that stretch. Because so much of the way we parent is instinctive and based on the way we were parented, it takes a very rare person to parent a child with the behavioural difficulties that the mother claimed he exhibited. Some behaviours require institutional treatment.
But this is still all miles away from packing the child up and shipping it back to a state, as if it was some wrinkled book from Amazon. What would biological parents have done (or have been expected to do)? They would have looked for either other family members to support them, gotten family therapy or they would have found an institution at hand, where the child could be cared for and where they could remain in an appropriate level of contact. It would have been tough, no doubt, financially as well as emotionally--there is no arguing that away. It is tough on the biological parents who are in these situations.
In the case of the biological children, it is culturally obvious where the buck stops. Adoptive parents must fight tooth and nail not to get into the position where they can even contemplate that the buck could be pushed one step back; for the sake of their children if for no other reason.