How adoption narratives encourage eternal separation of mother and child

Lorraine

Why do some reunions fail? Or never get started? So much has to do with how the adoptive parents have cleared the cobwebs away from the warm fuzzy feelings about adoption, and dealt with the idea of reunion as a positive that might occur someday. Others in the last two decades have participated in open adoptions, which began to be popularized slowly in the 1980s. My own daughter gave up a child in 1986, but even I could not convince her to have an open adoption. I believe it was because she was not strong enough to deal with the idea that by knowing who the parents were, she would still feel obligated to be involved. My daughter had a lot of physical and psychological issues due to her epilepsy, and I know she thought about suicide a great deal, so when she talked about her reasons later, I could understand. I'm getting off the track here because I wanted to dissect a piece about adoption that was forwarded to me today.


It was in the winter 2011-2012 edition of Lilith, an ezine that is "independent, Jewish and frankly feminist."

In truth, I felt myself go en garde! because for most publications the norm is syrupy pieces that extol the virtues of adoption and the blessed state of the adoptive parents. Okay, maybe I exaggerate, but only a little. I skim the piece:  "Miriam's Cup: A Ritual for Adoptive Mothers of Chinese Daughters." The ritual involves parsley, the symbol of rebirth, salty water, symbol of tears, and a reading.

Moses and Jochebed by Pedro Américo,
in public domain in the US

I internally read: Chinese daughter, no possibility of reunion. 

In the reading, Rabbi Susan Schnur relates the story of Moses: The pharaoh had decreed all Jewish male children be killed, and so his natural mother, Yocheved (or Jocheved) sent out her baby son in a basket of bulrushes on the Nile, hoping that he would be found by someone who would raise him. She sends his sister Miriam to watch over the package "at a distance, the way Chinese birth mothers do when they place their babies inside lotus roots or celery leaves, or in a crowded market or on a doorstep, weeping until a stranger finds the package and exclaims, “Whose beautiful child?”

The pharaoh's daughter finds the baby, takes him in, names him Moses and raises him as her son, giving him "privilege and a bicultural mission." Then I read:

"My daughter’s other mother, I thank you. I do not know your name. I do not know you. You do not know me. We will never know each other. But we needed each other to create and love and nurture this child. I pray that you have found comfort and blessing."

That's when I knew this ritual would be a comfort to adoptive mothers--but I also saw that it was based on the idea of acknowledging another mother, it also is signaling that this other mother will never be found. That reunion is impossible. That the bond is severed forever. I also noted that this reading made no mention of the fact that Moses's natural mother became his nursemaid, so that she sees him grow and prosper. 

An essay by a Chinese adoptee follows. Anchee Min writes a much tougher piece, about what it means to be female in China: "Girls were presents, companions, kitchen-hands, bed-mates, baby-making machines...." She writes about reading about a couple who killed five daughters in the hope of gaining son. She writes that the mothers who left their daughters out to be found, they must have thought if the daughter were strong enough to endure, she might escape her fate. 

"For her you will forever be a 'broken arm hidden in her sleeve,'" the piece continues. "Oh, how I wish your Chinese birth mothers could read this. They would be comforted, relieved and released from the nightmares that haunt them." --Excerpted from the introduction of The Lost Daughters of China: Adopted Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search fora Missing Past.

"Broken arm hidden in her sleeve." What a beautiful and true metaphor.

I can accept and understand the desire for a ritual that symbolizes the union of the adoptive mother with a child; but I wish I could read a prayer that spoke someday of reunion of the original mother and child. We know from the few adoptive parents who comment here, that some do their best to keep the lines of communication open; but we also too often hear of nightmare open adoptions that close for all extent and purposes as soon as the ink on the legal papers is dry. And we hear of birth mothers who drift away, who themselves cannot be found by anxious adoptive parents who want the best for the children.

Adoptees grow up wondering who they are, where they came from, how they ended up where they ended up through no doing of their own. In the case of the babies from Russia and China and Guatemala and Nepal and god-knows-what poor country is next to be sending out their babies, reunion is usually impossible. As long as society pushes this narrative--that the split of mother and child is sad but necessary, or sad but inevitable--western adoptive parents by and large will continue to fail to see that adoption is the unhappy option that renders asunder what should not be.

Of course, adoption happens. There is always some impoverished country willing to send their children out to bring income in. Unethical scammers find a way to operate seemingly humanitarian operations that hide their sordid business of trafficking children.

Today we have a choice to make adoptions be not sealed, not closed. The ethical choice for both birth mothers and adoptive parents is to choose only open adoption, where the natural family, or mother, stays in touch throughout the process. That is the responsibility of both mothers, natural and adoptive. This is not easy for anyone, I suspect, including the child at the heart of every adoption; but if adoption, or legal guardianship, must happen, let it be open from the very first breath. And while I'm imaging a sea-change in attitude, let this all happen without changing the child's birth certificate, but let it reflect the truth of one's birth. Another piece of paper that shows the legal guardianship of a child is not so hard to imagine. It too can come to symbolize love and a lifetime.--lorraine 
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Source

Miriam’s Cup: A Ritual for Adoptive Mothers of Chinese Daughters

Also from First Mother Forum

Kidnapping and Corruption in Chinese Adoptions

Why is adoption reform ignored by The New York Times?

Encouraging intercountry adoptions with hard cash

Adoptionland: Brutal essays by adult adoptees expose the truth of intercountry adoption

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