Jiaozi

Miscellaneous adoption-y stuff

Adoption assumptions

When Steve Jobs died, the press and public went into overdrive spinning mythical origin stories for him, and some of those stories concerned his status as an adoptive child. One graphic making the rounds had a picture of Jobs with the legend "Born out of wedlock. Put up for adoption at birth. Dropped out of college. Then changed the world. What's your excuse?" I saw other people referring to him as having been "rejected" or having a "rough start in life."

I take exception to this. While being adopted can certainly have far-reaching effects on an individual's life and identity, the fact that Jobs was adopted (or born out of wedlock, for that matter) does not itself mean that he had a rough start, and a look at his biography shows that there wasn't much exceptional about his early life. I won't repeat the details; you can Google it yourself. But suffice it to say that his birthparents made a well-thought-out adoption plan; they agreed to the Jobs family adopting him, albeit with reservations, when the first adoptive family backed out; he was raised in what sounds like a pretty normal home; and later he made contact with his birth relatives and established a relationship with his birth sister, also a talented and creative individual. Pretty typical stuff. We're not talking about Oliver Twist or Little Orphan Annie here. (As for dropping out of college, that was his choice, and it was probably because of that choice, not in spite of it, that he became such a success.)

The "What's your excuse?" line is an example of pathologizing adoption -- that is, assuming that it is "abnormal," that it's necessarily an obstacle to overcome, and that adopted people are always damaged. The flip side of it is that if you, too, were born out of wedlock and "put up for adoption at birth," you'd have an excuse for not changing the world. That's a pretty crummy message. There's a difference between holding someone up as an inspiration and using him as a case study.

In my experience, institutionalization, a poor home environment, and frequent moves to different homes are the aspects of adoption to be concerned about, and even then the effects depend on the individual. Two of my children were affected by those aspects of adoption, and one really wasn't. Not coincidentally, she is also the one who spent the least time in an orphanage. She would give you the evil eye if you said to her, "Wow, you really had a rough start in life! You would have a good excuse if you turned out to be a mess!" I have seen her evil eye, and you do not want to be on the receiving end of it.

Happily ever after

We are sci-fi/fantasy geeks, so of course we watched the premiere of "Once Upon a Time" the other night. It was fast-moving and entertaining, and I think the whole family is hooked. But they sure hit the adoption theme hard, didn't they? I mean, it's bad enough when the Wicked Queen is depicted as an evil stepmother (I say that as a stepmother), but when she is also an evil adoptive mother, that's a bit much to handle. Or it was for me. I kept asking the kids, "Are you okay with this? Don't you think it's sort of negative about adoption?" They shrugged. There was one line in the show that had to do with "that basic question [adopted children] all inevitably face: 'Why would anyone give me away?'" I asked the kids if that's a question every adopted kid faces. More shrugs. When I was still sputtering a bit at the end of the show, May said, "Mom. You take this stuff too seriously." So, yeah. They're not exactly bubbling over with feelings about adoption at this point in their lives. Sometimes I'm the one with the problem.

Welcome to the blackboard jungle

Last month a friend who is an adoptive parent posted on her Facebook wall that she was worried about her child on his first day of first grade. Another parent commented, "I feel the same way...I want to give all his classmates and teachers the back story so they will accept him." And I understood exactly what she meant.

I always want to give the back story. I want to say, "This child is not like other children in your elementary school class. This child did not have Mozart played for her in the womb. She didn't come home to a nursery decorated out of the Pottery Barn Kids catalog. Nobody sang her to sleep and laid her gently in a cozy bassinet. She wasn't fed or held on demand or given love or intellectual stimulation until much later. So maybe she doesn't stay on task very well, but be gentle with her. She has come so far."

Or I want to say, "I know you see this child as just one of the mass of Asian kids in junior high who get straight As, but you don't know the effort it costs her. She has only been speaking English for five years, and she is still catching up. She works very hard for those As. Acknowledge that effort."

I want to give the back story. But I can't. They're too old for that now, and those details are nobody's business, least of all their classmates'. I can only advocate for them behind the scenes.

When they were younger, I could write notes on the school admission forms, talk about institutionalization and developmental delays, and the officials would nod as if they understood. But I don't think they really did. All kids have challenges, they probably thought. And maybe they do, but this is my child, and I want them to know there's more to her than what they see through the filter of performance goals and required curriculum.

And beyond the challenges, I want them to know that this child, my child, is amazing. This child may never do well on standardized testing -- may, in fact, never even pass the standardized testing. (Will they hold her diploma over that? Not while I'm around.) Certainly I want my child to be able to, at minimum, read a newspaper and write a letter and balance a checkbook (or whatever electronic forms those basic skills will take in the future). But standardized tests don't measure creativity, or humor, or kindness. They do a very poor job of gauging the worth of a square peg.

So when a teacher asks my child, as one did today, "What's the setting for Because of Winn-Dixie? When does it take place?" and my child answers straight-faced, "In alien space-time" and pauses a beat before saying, "Just kidding," my heart swells with pride. Boom! It's the wrong answer -- or is it? Because for a kid who watches Doctor Who, it's a perfectly reasonable answer. And that's just the way she rolls.

Everyone has a back story. But some are more complicated than others.