C. Adamec – The Encyclopedia of Adoption

Автор: C. Adamec
Название книги: Encyclopedia of Adoption
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Социология
Страницы: 433
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

Adoption is a life-changing experience for the
key participants, including the adopted child,
the birthparents, and the adoptive parents. There
are also many others who are affected less directly,
such as siblings, grandparents, and other relatives,
as well as professionals, including teachers and
physicians. Nearly everyone knows someone who
was adopted, who adopted a child, or who placed a
child for adoption, or “all of the above”—although
sometimes this information is withheld from others.
There is both pain and joy with adoption. The
birthparent suffers the pain of the loss of the biological
child, while infertile individuals must cope
with the pain of the unrealized dream of a biological
child. Adopted children must face their loss,
which is that the families who are raising them are
not the families of their birth. Even in the case
when the adoptive parents are clearly wonderful
parents and the birthparents would equally clearly
have provided very poor parenting to the child,
there is still often a feeling of loss and “what if”
among adopted children. If all children could be
reared by their biological parents, adoption would
be unnecessary, but it is unlikely that day will
come. If it did, I personally would rejoice, since the
main purpose of adoption is to provide good families
for children who need them.
There is also joy in adoption, which continues to
bring hope and love to many thousands of children
and their families worldwide. Rather than condemning
children to a life with birthparents who
are unable or unwilling to care for them, children
can instead be raised by individuals who are ready
and eager to be parents. The birthparents can feel
assured that their children are with parents who
love and care for them, and for the adoptive parents,
the child is a precious joy.
Sometimes birthparents willingly choose adoption
for their children, and in other cases, the
choice is made for them by others, whether the
dysfunction that led them to be abusive or neglectful
parents is due to alcoholism, drug addiction,
mental illness or other problems, or a combination
of problems. New families are then formed when
former foster children join their families as legally
adopted children. Some children travel thousands
of miles to live with their “forever families,”
adopted from orphanages and foster care in other
countries. International adoption has become an
increasingly important part of adoption as a whole.
Yet there is still often a great deal of confusion
about whether adoptive families are “as good as”
biological families, which was probably a key impetus
behind the past policy of returning foster children
to abusive homes, again and again. (The
Adoption and Safe Families Act has improved that
situation considerably.)
In addition, most research studies concentrate
on pathology, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, psychiatric
problems, and so forth. Few studies seek to
identify what is healthy about adoptive children
and their families, and some researchers seem
amazed that so many adoptive families and
adopted children function even moderately well.
This should not be a surprising finding, however,
given that most adoptive parents intensely
desired to adopt their children, were usually thoroughly
screened before they were allowed to adopt them, and actively seek to be good parents. Sometimes
they try too hard and worry too much, and
some adoptive parents take their children to a therapist
for minor emotional problems. Of course, a
good therapist will advise parents when the problem
is a normal childhood issue.
At the same time, sometimes adopted children
do have serious emotional problems, and denying
that they exist, and hoping that they will magically
go away, is a harmful strategy for the child. It can
be difficult, although it is possible, to find a therapist
who acknowledges that the fact of adoption
may cause pain to adopted children, while at the
same time the therapist realizes adoption itself is
not the sole explanation for every emotional disorder
of a person who happens to be adopted. We
explore these issues in the entries of The Encyclopedia
of Adoption, Third Edition.
It is also important to consider how adopted
children might have developed had they not been
adopted: if the sexually abused six-year-old girl
remained with her abusive family, what would
have been her likely outcome? Or what of the single
mother who desires to make an adoption plan
and she is talked out of it—or the single mother
who wishes to parent her child and is talked into an
unwanted adoption? What would be the outcomes
in these alternative cases? Such events profoundly
affect and shape the lives of the birthmother and
the child and, when the child is adopted, the adopting
parents, as well.
To a certain extent, there are some answers. It is
known that children who remain with abusive parents
have a worse outcome than children who are
adopted. It is known that children who remain in
foster care for years and who “age out” of the system
as adults usually have worse outcomes than
children adopted as infants or small children.
Yet most studies do not compare the outcome of
adopted children to the likely outcome had they
not been adopted, largely because such studies are
difficult to perform because of confidentiality.
Instead, researchers often compare adopted children
directly to nonadopted children, who have
not been exposed prenatally to toxic substances,
have not lived in deprived circumstances, have not
been beaten or starved, and instead who came
directly home from the hospital with Mom and
Dad. As a result, it is not surprising that sometimes
adopted children do not fare as well as children
born to the family, in many different measures.
Instead, what is surprising is that so often, adopted
and nonadopted children are very close in terms of
positive outcomes.
When adopted children have serious problems,
it is often the events that preceded the adoption
which are the primary contributors to the child’s
problems, whether they are prenatal exposures to
alcohol and illegal drugs, genetic predispositions to
psychiatric problems, the experience of abuse
and/or neglect, and other factors that may have
profound effects on children. Yet, despite even the
most severe neglect or abuse, some children are
resilient, and being adopted is one means to allow
them to transcend these problems.
This does not mean that adoptive parents themselves
are without flaws. Sometimes adoptive parents
know far too little about adoption in general
or about the particular child they wish to adopt,
even when information is readily available. They
may assume that love will conquer all problems,
which is not a good working premise. They may
change the name of an older child and urge her to
forget everything that happened to her before
today, assuming that she can or should.
There are many mistakes that adoptive parents
can and do make; however, from my observations
based on studying adoption for nearly 20 years and
speaking to hundreds of adoptive parents, most do
their best, and when they have problems, they seek
help from others who are more experienced,
including other adoptive parents, physicians, and
therapists.
However, it should also be mentioned that perhaps
once a year, the media report on an adoptive
parent who has abused or even killed a child. These
rare and shocking circumstances happen and they
are real, but the overwhelming majority of adoptive
parents are loving and caring people.
A major problem is that more adoptive parents
are needed. Hundreds of thousands of children in
foster care and in orphanages worldwide need
adoptive families now. They do not know or care
about rules and regulations or why they must stay
in an orphanage or in a series of foster homes. They
only know they want a family to love them. Yet in some cases, they do not know they need a family to
care for them, in the same way that a child who is
nearsighted does not know she needs glasses until
glasses are placed in front of her, and suddenly
everything is acutely clear.
Similarly, some older children have never
known the love of a family, and it is an alien concept.
When they experience it, however, the transformation
to the life of the child can be truly
amazing. No one attains a perfect life with adoption,
but the changes in opportunities and emotional
fulfillment can be staggering.
In this book, Dr. Miller and I have attempted
to seek out as much of the current research we
could identify that might be salient and interesting
to readers who want to know more about
adoption, whether they seek information on one
specific topic or are intrigued by many different
topics related to adoption. We have included
many new medical topics, such as new entries on
attachment disorders, hepatitis, prenatal exposures,
rickets, and many other topics that readers
may find useful.
We could not hope to include every study and
every possible aspect of adoption within one volume,
but we have provided an extensive breadth of
subjects as well as a detailed bibliography for those
who wish to learn even more. The Encyclopedia of
Adoption also provides appendixes with listings of
organizations related to adoption, including private
and governmental organizations.
This book is meant for the general reader, and
we hope that it will also interest the adoption
expert. As a result, jargon has been kept to a minimum,
or, when the use of jargon has been necessary,
clear explanations on what these terms mean
and what they imply are provided.
We hope this new edition of The Encyclopedia of
Adoption will not only enlighten readers but may
also inspire them to look further into this subject,
even to launch a study or investigation on some
aspect of adoption that needs further exploration.
In my view, adoption is a very complicated, imperfect,
and yet wonderful institution. Learning about
adoption further advances the knowledge and
understanding among those who are directly
affected by adoption—adopted individuals, birthparents,
and adoptive parents—as well as those
within our society who set the standards for adoption
and the federal and state lawmakers who
make the rules that we live by. The children are
worth every effort that we all can make. They are
our future.
—Christine Adamec