It starts with Thanksgiving and it is all about family. The ultimate “Throwback Thursday,” Thanksgiving is a time when old family folklore is rehashed, new memories are made, clashes can explode and legacies are embedded into a family’s cultural DNA. This energy hangs over the ultimate reunion like the familiar yet unpredictable November sky.
The centerpiece is the turkey dinner but the connections and conversations around the table are what sustain us. Inevitably, the moments of relative comparison come, gosh Mackenzie, Kyle and Cooper look so much Dawn and Dawn looks so much like Grandma and Grandma looks so much like Great Grandma Ellie. These very basic, often unconscious moments are standard fare for biological families. For families created by adoption, specifically for some adopted people who were separated from their biological families and don’t look like anyone around the table, these moments can be subtle and at the same time otherworldly.
Born of one family, known within another, the adopted person straddles two worlds. Part of this family’s history, but not its origins, and also part of a mythic union, known or unknown; the adoptees’ ancestors hold back at the edges of the room, powerful in their anonymity.
So it’s already heavy, and then there are the 30 days leading up to the Christmas holiday. For many, these are the days of hustle, bustle and preparing to spend more time with those we love. As we approach December 25th, regardless of religious affiliation or belief, out come the images of a baby. Passing by a creche on church steps catapults an idea into the mind that is indelible from our culture’s reverence of a baby, swaddled, laying on straw, alone, fragile, in a cold world.
From Thanksgiving through Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanza, when family time is precious and plenty, the adoption experience can take on a particular level of poignancy when the world unfolds these images of a newborn infant.
Kings and shepherds traveled toward a birth. Nations quiet at midnight. Worldwide, people enter churches, kneel and worship the child King. No matter what your religion, the idea of the innocent baby entering the world is primal and powerful for many, and especially for parents (birth and adoptive) and adopted people.
According to the 2010 US Census, the number of adopted children under 18 was 1.5 million. With no single source for the total number of children adopted in the United States, and no straightforward way of determining the total number of adoptions it is hard to know exactly how many adopted people there are, but some estimates range at approximately 5 to 6 million in the U.S alone. This number does not take into account birth parents and their extended families, adoptive parents and their extended families, foster families and informal adoptions. Adoption has long expanded beyond a niche in society for predominately white, middle class, heterosexual married couples. Today, members of the adoption community represent a broad spectrum of diverse individuals numbering into the hundreds of millions.
Even less accurate, is the documentation around the number of birth parents, because the crisis of being separated from their baby is historically covered in secrecy and shame. But for the women and men who willingly or unwillingly, no longer have legal claim over their babies, the image of the nativity can prompt the silent grief.
The opposite could be true for some adoptive parents, who often experience magic and mysticism around receiving a baby. For most, there is a deep fusion of adoptive and biological children together, where many become one. With the understanding of the importance of openness in adoption gaining traction, the adults involved are required to interact with each other and their child in a way that challenges traditional ideas of parenting.
But it is the adopted child, passed from one to another, who has to knit together the known and the unknown, and manage the idea that possibly, somebody, somewhere, turned away from him or her; the opposite of family. It is such a large idea, it can take years, decades, to fully understand. Like all human beings, adopted people have a desire to know the story of their nativity. How we are given that story, and permission to love our birth parents, is a significant determining factor in understanding and loving all parts of who we are.
Today, fewer than half of U.S. states provide varying degrees of access to original birth certificates. These documents hold vital information, legally allowing birth families and adopted people to find each other. Many families now have the tools and access to be able to claim each other if they wish. DNA testing kits and their sophisticated technology offer an opportunity to understand who, if not why, am I.
The journey from transaction to transformation is slow, and requires that we keep moving in dialogue and action towards openness, diminishing secrecy and honoring the need to know and connect to original families. In 2012, the Donaldson Adoption Institute released a study stating that openness is now the norm, with “closed” infant adoptions shrinking to a tiny minority of about 5 percent, with 40 percent “mediated,” and 55 percent “open.” In addition, 95 percent of agencies now offer open adoptions.
Adoptive parents, birth parents and adopted persons in open adoptions, report these changes as positive experiences: more openness is also associated with greater satisfaction with the adoption process. Women who have made an adoption plan/placed their baby for adoption – and then have ongoing contact with their children – report less grief, regret and worry, as well as more peace of mind. The primary beneficiaries of openness are the adopted persons – as children, and later in life – because of access to birth relatives, as well as to their own family and medical histories, reports DAI.
Today, part of the adoption experience is that many expectant parents considering adoption pick the new family for their baby, meeting prospective adoptive parents as part of that selection process.
As the prevailing wisdom to keep relationships open and channels clear among adoptees, birth families and adoptive parents grows, the idea can be utilized to extend past adoption, and be applied to all kinds of family structures where there is lack of knowledge or access: families formed via assisted reproductive technology, families experiencing divorce and remarriage and blended families.
Today’s adoption landscape includes a mix of venerable and new voices of the community, more research and efforts by professionals to update old models, in sum offering an opportunity to explore poignant themes related to the adoption experience. From our position as two adoption professionals, we hope that the conversation around such complicated realities can continue to evolve into new awakenings and understandings to inspire all of us to be bold, brave and continue to honor the adoption experience for all.
The post A Child is Born: An Adoption Journey Through the Holidays appeared first on The Donaldson Adoption Institute.