It looks cute.
It involves cornrows.
And I did it myself.
I know it won’t win any awards. But if you only knew how often during the last four years I have felt like a horrible mama for not being able to do my own daughter’s hair, you would celebrate this occasion with me as well.
I visited social welfare again today, for the first time in over a year.
Ah, the memories. That long drive, parking down the street, walking down the sidewalks of downtown Dar, past the shoeshiners, the beggers, the deep-fried bananas, the guy with the bathroom scale that you can step on for 25 cents to check your weight. Riding the elevator to the fourth floor. Usually returning disappointed, impatient, sometimes in tears, sometimes elated.
Today, I had a letter.
Dear Commissioner of Social Welfare,
….we would like to apply to foster a third child so that Grace and Josiah can have a younger brother or sister….
You get the idea.
Here we go again!
I read this articleyesterday. It was written by a Christian woman who struggled with whether or not to conceive because she has a genetic bone disorder. She addresses the question that herself and other infertile women have been asked, “Why don’t you just adopt?” The tagline states: “The frequent question assumes adoption is both easy and morally superior.”
In general, I don’t oppose the idea of discussing this issue. Asking an infertile woman, “Why don’t you just adopt?” is about as insensitive as asking an adoptive mom, “Don’t you want ‘your own’ kids?” Duh. Not on the list of friendly questions.
I definitely agree with her when she states that we shouldn’t assume adoption is for everyone, because it is not easy. Absolutely. Not everyone has the time, energy, or resources necessary to go through the arduous process (though infertility treatments are not a walk in the park either).
I agree that wanting biological children is a God-given desire. And I am not opposed to most forms of infertility treatment. If we were living in the States and our insurance covered it, chances are good that we would be going down that path as well. Not that it would have ever stopped us from adopting. As I’ve written previously, adoption was never a “Plan B” for us.
But what I do bristle against is her insinuation that adoption is often full of ethical problems since many adopted children are not actually orphans. She gives the example of Haitian mothers who are handing their children to foreigners to help them escape poverty.
Hmmm. Is this really a reason that someone should consider not adopting? Should families refuse to adopt from Haiti or any other developing country because poverty has forced these mothers to give up their children?
First of all, speaking as someone who has gone through two international adoptions, let me assure you that if you do it the right way, there are multiple safeguards in place to ensure that children being adopted have not ever been forcibly taken from crying birth mothers. If you think about it, most adoptees, even in the United States, are not true orphans. Almost every adopted child has a biological parent out there somewhere. Does that mean that they shouldn’t be adopted?
Of course our goal should be to help reduce the poverty that leads to fractured families. Of course it is a tragedy when a birth mother feels she cannot raise her child, for whatever reason. Of course it is a good thing for a child to know and love the culture which he or she came from.
But if we doubt that it could ever be in the best interest of a child to be removed from their biological family and put into a new one, then how could we ever become a part of the family of God? If we doubt our ability to love an adopted child, how can we know with assurance that God loved us as His adopted children? If we doubt the wisdom of mixing the races in our family, how can we say we believe that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ?
Please know that with all of my advocacy for adoption, I am fully aware that is is a calling. I do not consider adoption to be “morally superior” to biological reproduction. For example, my husband and I, at this point in our lives, do not feel called to intentionally adopt a child with major disabilities. Mainly because if we did, our entire ministry would change and we would probably need to return to the States. Of course, if God led us to adopt such a child, or gifted us with a child with disabilities, we would love and cherish that child. But I understand that just as
God hasn’t led us down that path (yet!), so He does not lead every family to adopt.
But please, please, don’t use the wrong reasons to make a decision not to adopt. Don’t tell me that poverty alleviation is the only answer to children in poverty. Don’t use the excuse that adoption shouldn’t be necessary. Don’t tell me that it’s better to let a child languish in an orphanage with the hope that “someday” his parents will be able to take him home, instead of putting him in a loving home right now.
Yes, let’s work on poverty alleviation. Yes, let’s work on helping well-off Haitians (or Tanzanians, or Romanians, or whatever) to consider adoption for their own families. Yes, let’s remember that we Americans are not the “savior” for these countries or their children. But as followers of Christ, let’s also do everything we can to rescue these children from a life of desperation.
The author of this article states that she is not against adoption. But if she questions the morality of adoption, then how can she be for it? Indeed, we must be on our guard against any kind of insidious child-trafficking. But let us not take our eyes off the knowledge that adoption was created by God and is one of His passions.
Note added in 2016: My views on this issue have changed. Please start here to read what I have discovered.
If you are considering adoption or have adopted or are adopted, read this book.
If you have a family member or friend who is adopting and you want to know how to help them, read this book.
If you are a believer who wants to better understand your identity in Christ, read this book.
I’ve read numerous books on adoption over the years, and this is by far the best. Author Russell Moore starts with our adoption as believers into the family of God. His descriptions are beautiful and powerful and life-changing. Though I don’t agree with every single statement he makes, I still highly recommend this book.
Good stuff:
“In this book I want to call us all to consider how encouraging adoption–whether we adopt or whether we help others adopt–can help us peer into the ancient mystery of our faith in Christ and can help us restore the fracturing unity and the atrophied mission of our congregations.”
“Sometimes people will speak of children who’ve been adopted as prone to having an ‘identity crisis’ at some point in their lives….this kind of crisis of identity isn’t limited to children who’ve been adopted. All of us are looking to discover who we really are, whether we were born into loving homes or abandoned at orphanage doors, whether we were born into stable families or born, like our Lord, in a stable.”
“Imagine for a moment that you’re adopting a child. As you meet with the social worker in the last stage of the process, you’re told that this twelve-year-old has been in and out of psychotherapy since he was three. He persists in burning things and attempting repeatedly to skin kittens alive. He ‘acts out sexually,’ the social worker says, although she doesn’t really fill you in on what that means. She continues with a little family history. This boy’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather all had histories of violence, ranging from spousal abuse to serial murder….Think for a minute. Would you want this child?
Well, he’s you. And he’s me. That’s what the gospel is telling us. Our birth father has fangs. And left to ourselves, we’ll show ourselves to be as serpentine as he is.”
“Adoption would become a priority in our churches if our churches themselves saw our brotherhood and sisterhood in the church itself rather than in our fleshly identities.”
“The whole universe is now an orphanage.”
“We don’t believe that our new Father will feed us, so we hang on to our scraps and long for the regimented schedules of the orphanage from which we’ve come.”
“The real struggle for me shouldn’t be the occasional rude question about my son’s identity; it should be the ongoing question about my own.”
“Imagine if Christian churches were known as the places where unwanted babies become beloved children.”
“The contemporary Planned Parenthood movement was started by a woman named Margaret Sanger, who defended abortion rights on the basis of eugenics, the search for ‘good genes’ based on the racist and evolutionary notions of ‘social Darwinism’ prevalent in her day. Sanger’s grandson, Alexander, continues her viewpoint, updated with contemporary notions of sociobiology, in virulent opposition to the viability of an adoption culture–on Darwinist grounds. ‘Adoption is counter-intuitive from an evolutionary vantage point of both the biological mother and the adoptive parents,’ Sanger argues. ‘Adoption requires a person to devote time and resources to raising a child that is not genetically related. Adoption puts the future of a child in the control of a stranger.’ It’s easier for a woman to have an abortion, Sanger argues, or for a family to refuse to think about adopting because evolution and biology ‘conspire to thwart adoption. Evolution has programmed women to be nurturers of the children they bear.’ That why, the abortion industry heir contends, adoption ‘as the solution to the abortion problem is a cruel hoax.'”
“What better opportunity for you to model the God who adopts from every tongue, tribe, nation, and language and sets all the children together at the same table with the same inheritance and and the same love?”
ABC’s new reality show, “Find My Family,” helps adopted kids (who are now adults) find their birth parents, and birth parents find the kids they put up for adoption. When I heard the premise, first I didn’t want to watch it. Then I decided that I wouldn’t be allowed to really have an opinion about it unless I watched it at least once. So I did.
On one hand, the show made me glad. Without meaning to be (just like Juno and Bella), it is very pro-life. One of the people featured on Monday’s episode said, “I want to thank my birth mother for giving me life.” When she finally got to meet her birth mother, those were some of her first words. She knew her birth mother had a choice. She was a teen mother and could have very easily taken the easy way out. But she didn’t.
On the other hand, it made me sad. I’ve read the books–so many of them. I know how hard it is on adopted kids to not know where they came from, to not look like anyone in their families, to not know anything of their genetic or genealogical history. I can understand why adopted kids feel the profound need to search for their birth families. But that’s why it makes me sad–my kids won’t be able to. Of course, I would always be happy to support my child in a search. But short of giving DNA tests to every person in Tanzania, my kids are not going to find their birth families. We know nothing. Not a shred. So it makes me sad to see these adopted people in this show talk about how important it is to them, and know that won’t ever happen for my kids. Only their Heavenly Father will be able to heal that hurt.
The rest of my feelings were just conflicted. Is the show pro-adoption? I can’t really tell. One person featured seemed pretty unhappy in his adoptive family. The other said to her adoptive mom, “You’re the only person I will ever call Mom.” That was cool. But I worry that by only focusing the show on the birth families, prospective adoptive families could get scared off. Why adopt a child if they never really will feel part of your family? Even the name of the show, “Find My Family,” bothers me. Don’t my children already have a family? Are we only second best? That’s not how I view adoption, and that’s hopefully not how my kids will see it.
I also wonder what it’s like for adopted kids to watch this show. I’ve read that most adopted kids fantasize about their birth parents, and usually they believe that their parents never wanted to give them up, are living a happy life somewhere, and desperately hope to find their children someday. Of course, this show only focuses on stories like that that really are true. They are not going to feature the stories where the birth parent is living a screwed-up life, or has no desire to meet his or her child. They’re not going to tell the stories of the multitude of international adoptions where there’s no way to ever find the birth family.
You know what would make a great show? Adoption stories. Where children with no family finally find one. That’s a show I would watch.
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