It's a good thing they don't link back to comments

Okay, so I commented on the NYT. It's the blog they have set up about adoption. The author of the current post is an adoptee. She writes about how happy she is that the child she is pregnant with will never be told how "lucky" they are. To tell an adoptee how "lucky" they are completely plays into the perception of adoptive parents as saviors. Needles to say, lots of people disagreed with me. Adoptee gratitude seems to be something lots of people buy into.

Many of the commenters say of course adoptees are lucky, look at the children who aren't adopted. Yeah, and look at all the people born in 1963 to neglectful or abusive parents. I wasn't. Do random strangers commonly tell me "you're so lucky your parents didn't beat you and chose to raise you in a nurturing environment." Nope, not once.

Yes, all of us who were raised in loving homes are lucky. However, this fact is only pointed out to adoptees. It begins to sound like they are less worthy than a child born into a loving home.

Most people don't adopt for altruistic reasons, most adopt to fulfill the maternal and paternal instincts. Most adoptive parents did not grudgingly take on the care of a child. They wanted a child. They longed for a child. We did.

I have not for one second ever felt my children who came into our family through adoption were for one second any luckier than the children I gave birth to. Yes, they needed someone to raise them. But frankly the fact that they needed adoptive parents had nothing to do with them. They should be no more kissing my ass than my other kids. They didn't ask to be adopted. I chose to parent them. I may be their savior at some point in their life, but it won't be solely because I am their adoptive mother. It will likely be because I bailed them out of jail, or paid for law school or taught them how to wax their eyebrows. Things everyone should express gratitude about.

Really think about everything adoptee gratitude implies. It implies that some people are less lovable than others. The little word "lucky" can pack a whole lot of meaning to a child that may already feel different to other children. Don't set them apart further by telling them what they "should" feel, unless you are going to say it to every kid you meet.

Comments

[Margie]

Bra-VO!!!! Thank you for speaking out!!!

[ppb]

Excellent.

[Nadine]

That's a very good point. Thanks for talking about it and giving me the chance to think about it!

[Gawdess]

Which leads very nicely into "real" children. Because adopted children aren't, doncha know?
Sigh.
WTF?
So I was born into a somewhat neglectful and abusive family.
I wasn't unlucky, it was just plain wrong.
When people are misguided enough to say that my two youngest children are sooooo lucky that we took them in --I try to set them straight but I'm also thinking that they (the dorks) are soooooo lucky I'm not barfing on them.

[Songbird]

Thank you, Lisa. As one of those "lucky," "chosen" eternal children, I thank you.

[Ansley]

Excellent!

[Susie]

Spot on, as usual.

[Her Grace]

Nearly everything I know about adoption, I learned from blogging. People like you are working hard to open the eyes of people like me. Bravo, and don't let the dissenters get you down.

[Shannon]

You are sooooo right about the eyebrows. I was tragically born into a family of bushy-eyebrowed people who knew nothing of waxing.

Luckily I was saved by Cole's hairdresser recently. Thank God!

[yankeetransferred]

Oh that adoptee gratitude is one of my pet peeves. I second what you say, completely. Thanks for this post.

[Round is Funny]

Yup.
When people tell me how lucky Roo is, I always tell them I'm the lucky one. Trust me when I say it wasn't his good luck that brought us together. It's almost like people say it when they learn that someone is adopted because they don't know what else to say to be nice.

[Denise]

The lucky comments always get me. I just had a positive conversation about this with a teacher that I just blogged about. Some times, people do 'get it'.