Thanks for the articles. I wonder about this a lot; one of my cousins was adopted from South Korea. I wonder why his mother gave him up, or if she had a choice in the matter.
I wish international adoption wasn't such a clusterfuck. You'd hope that it would be a vehicle for good, but it turns into an exploitative business.
Pretty much. Babies are seen as objects in a business instead of people. And unfortunately adoption is a business and why adopting outside borders is so big is simply because it is cheaper to afford and the process is easier :/
Thank you for sharing this article! It's really mind-boggling to me that there are adoptees who are fighting against adoption. I am adopted from Seoul, but I suppose my story is very different. I was adopted in the late 80's, much after the great influx to the Midwest, and I was six months old. I also wasn't abandoned, and my birth mother chose to go through an adoption agency for the entire duration of her pregnancy. I've heard that many babies given up in Korea, at least around the time of my birth, were left on street corners by police kiosks. In this respect, I was extremely fortunate
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Thanks for sharing your story! I thought it was interesting. Although there are a lot of adoptees here, I've only met 1 or 2 of them. And even in that case, it seems rude to ask about their experiences, you know?
The one thing I've realized in this country is that there isn't room for adoptees to speak about their experiences, and that's why I try to talk about it so much. Since I was adopted as an infant, I don't have many of the difficulties other children have had being orphaned, but being a person of color, I've discovered that there isn't necessarily space for an Asian-American with no real 'cultural' background. I'm more Polish and Norwegian if anything, but Caucasians expect one thing of me (ie: One person asked me why I was named Alicia because that's an American name, and I have had many people ask me if I've enjoyed my visit to this country), and Asians expect another (like when I was shunned by a Korean man in college because I couldn't speak any Korean. He could speak English, but the minute he found out I couldn't speak both, he refused to say another word to me for the duration of the semester
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Thanks for sharing your experience; it's always good to hear from the perspective of someone who was actually adopted internationally.
I can't speak to the difficulty of adopting stateside vs. internationally, but I do know that there are many children of color in the United States who need homes, too. So I wouldn't completely despair that you won't be able to adopt a child, unless you really wanted one from South Korea.
I cannot imagine literally forcing a mother who wants to place her child for adoption to nurse for 7 days. That just seems emotionally and physically barbaric to the mom -- let her milk come all the way in so it's harder on her pysically when she places the child, as well as trying to force the mother to bond, all on the say-so of someone else? There is tons wrong with international adoption, don't get me wrong, but that seems dreadful to first mothers. :(
I can see the intention. Many adoption agencies aim to get the babies away from their first/birth mothers as quickly as possible because they don't want the women to reconsider at all - the book The Girls Who Went Away has a lot of stories of women whose babies were taken from them within hours of giving birth, even when they wanted to spend more time. A lot of adoption agencies also hassle women to sign papers right away rather than taking time to think about it - the social worker from the agency often views it as her job to get the woman to just sign the papers as quickly as possible rather than be a support. So I think the law was moreso passed to try to give women more time to decide whether or not they want to keep their children, and try to lessen the pressure from agencies to sign within a few hours of giving birth
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Under the law, birth mothers must nurse babies for seven days before the child can be considered for adoption.
What the fuck? This is horribly cruel to the birth mothers, along the lines of forcing women who want an abortion to view ultrasounds and listen to the heartbeat. I understand that there are health benefits to early nursing, but something tells me that's not why this law exists.
"The best option is always for a child to be parented by his or her birth parent"
Uh, pretty sure it isn't, actually. What if one parent is dead and the other molests the child? What if both parents are severely abusive? What if they just don't want to parent a child? Should they be forced to raise the child because it's best for him or her?
It seems like some of these activists are trying to stigmatize and hurt women who choose adoption. Obviously, the government should do more to support single parents and unwed motherhood should be more accepted in society but women who choose not to have abortions and who do not want to be parents should not be punished either.
My husband and I always knew we would adopt. We never thought much about the ethnicity of the child. My husband and his siblings are all adopted, as is my uncle. In America, it just wasn't an issue. Living here in SK I've met a number of Korean adoptees and they tend to skew towards the angry and bitter. I know this is not the norm, but we have just started our own adoption process (Restarted actually, but that's another story.) and I admit it's influenced my decision to request a child that matches the ethnic makeup of myself and my hubby whereas before I just didn't care
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I wish international adoption wasn't such a clusterfuck. You'd hope that it would be a vehicle for good, but it turns into an exploitative business.
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It looks like you had a nice family.
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I can't speak to the difficulty of adopting stateside vs. internationally, but I do know that there are many children of color in the United States who need homes, too. So I wouldn't completely despair that you won't be able to adopt a child, unless you really wanted one from South Korea.
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What the fuck? This is horribly cruel to the birth mothers, along the lines of forcing women who want an abortion to view ultrasounds and listen to the heartbeat. I understand that there are health benefits to early nursing, but something tells me that's not why this law exists.
"The best option is always for a child to be parented by his or her birth parent"
Uh, pretty sure it isn't, actually. What if one parent is dead and the other molests the child? What if both parents are severely abusive? What if they just don't want to parent a child? Should they be forced to raise the child because it's best for him or her?
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