My post last week on 3 Challenging Ideas For Adoptive Parents was well-received–thank you to those who read it, shared it, and connected with me about it.

My perspective is as an adoptive parent. Wherever we are in the constellation, talking together in community about complex ideas is vital.

Here are more Challenging Ideas.

Adoptees can have a wonderful childhood, love their adoptive families, and hate adoption.

It’s a both/and proposition. This Psychology Today article is a good introduction to both/and thinking, if you’re not familiar with it. Here is an excerpt, not specific to adoption:

 “,,,multiple things can be true at the same time and that everybody has a right to their experience, regardless of what somebody else is experiencing…Both/and says that you can and almost certainly will feel more than one thing at a time. You can feel both grateful and resentful of the pressures of parenthood. You can feel both exhilarated by a high-powered position and overwhelmed by the sacrifices that it demands. You can feel both appreciative to stay home with your kids and trapped by its routines. You can both love your career and wish you had more time with family. You can feel both ambitious and content. 

Both/and honors the full complicated reality that life presents.”

The notion that an adoptee can hate adoption is a complicated one for adoptive parents to consider, since we were the ones who instigated and paid for the adoption; further, we (most of us) deeply love our children, and know that, if not for adoption, we would not have these children in our lives.

Adoptive parents might wonder: “We thought we were doing a good thing when we adopted, giving a child a better life. Did we do the wrong thing, engage in an unethical act?” Or “How can anyone hate adoption?” Or “Does this mean my adopted children don’t really love me?”

Both/and thinking, rather than Either/Or thinking, can help work through some of this complexity.

Elena Hall, an adopted person, wrote a children’s book titled Adoption is Both.

 Cindy Zhu Huijgen, adopted from China to the Netherlands, writes on Inter Country Adoptee Voices, “Why I am relieved that China terminated its adoption program.”

|Adoption is trafficking.

The notion of adoption as equivalent to trafficking is a tough concept, I’d argue. Still, when we consider the role of money (the amount, who’s paying, who’s pocketing), the power imbalances and ethical murkiness (if not outright corruption and fraud) that are too often part of adoption, we can understand the argument.

Adoption and child welfare services are a multi-billion dollar industry, according to IBIS World: “…industry-wide revenue is expected to climb…to $30.5 billion (emphasis added) through 2025.” There’s so much that can go wrong as a result. Poor and vulnerable people can easily be horribly victimized, lied to, deceived. While international treaties like The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption are designed to prevent trafficking, they are certainly not without flaws, and have many critics.

It is tempting, I’d argue, as an adoptive parent to say, “Well, we went through an accredited, reputable agency. There could not have been trafficking.” And if one hews to a tight definition of trafficking, the comparison with adoption can get clouded. Even so, the large sums of money exchanged; the power structure of who is placing children (or being coerced or deceived or bribed into doing so) and who is receiving children; the oversight (or lack thereof) of all the people involved in locating babies, children, and expectant mothers; and the reports of abused adopted children treated as slaves–all of this is deeply disturbing.

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges stated in The Disturbing Connection Between Foster Care and Domestic Child Sex Trafficking that “It has been estimated that 60% of all child sex trafficking victims have histories in the child welfare system. Youth without stable families are particularly vulnerable to being exploited by traffickers. Traffickers are targeting and recruiting youth directly from foster care, group homes, and residential placements.”

The book Finding Fernanda is a sobering read about international adoption from Guatemala. In an article titled “International Adoption or Child Trafficking?,” E.J. Graff reviews the book from a journalistic perspective: “Finding Fernanda is a true-crime page-turner about two mothers-Betsy Emanuel, an American, and Mildred Alvarado, a Guatemalan-accidentally united by a horrible adoption kidnapping. First-time author Erin Siegal uses the moving story to deliver investigative reportage at its finest, examining in tremendous detail exactly what happened to Betsy, to Mildred, and to the daughter that both of them lost.”

Graff notes that “Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 30,000 Guatemalan-born children (mostly infants and toddlers) were adopted by U.S. parents. In some years, that meant that an astonishing 1 out of 100 children born in Guatemala was adopted by an American family. For most of that time, everyone but the prospective adoptive parents knew-or in some cases actively chose to “unknow“-that the country’s international adoption system was a cesspool of corruption and crime, and motivated by money. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and news organizations reported in detail, repeatedly, that the country’s babies were systematically being bought, coerced, or even kidnapped away from families that wanted to raise them. But because healthy babies and toddlers kept on coming at a regular pace that kept up with demand in America, and because powerful Guatemalans were getting enormously rich off the baby trade, the system did not shut down until January 1, 2008.”

Guatemala is one country cited for trafficking; there have been many others. Here’s an article about issues in China: “Exploring variations and influencing factors of illegal adoption: A comparison between child trafficking and informal adoption.”

Against Child Trafficking “works to prevent child trafficking in intercountry adoption and to align international policies with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.” From the ACT web page: “In 2008, (ACT) was registered as an NGO in the Netherlands. It was established at the behest of the European Commission by Roelie Post, a civil servant at the European Commission” who investigated Romanian adoptions in the 1990’s for trafficking, and faced harsh opposition from the international adoption lobby. Post “forged a valuable partnership with Arun Dohle”, an adopted person from India raised in Germany. Together, they established ACT.”

A Reddit discussion “Can y’all break down the idea that adoption is trafficking?” includes many adopted people asking and answering questions.

Final Thoughts for Today

Again, this is a superficial presentation of dramatically complicated subjects. They are, though, being frequently discussed in many social media sites. They should not be dismissed.

Estrangement is increasingly common in the adoption community, a somewhat well-kept secret, though increasingly emerging into the mainstream. Folks who shy away from the challenging ideas may be among those who are estranged. We adoptive parents need to be able to sit with these tough notions, because our children may be doing exactly that as well.

I welcome your thoughts on these issues, and will be offering more Challenging Ideas soon. Turns out there are quite a few. Take good care, everyone.