Are Adoptees Grateful? Should they be? Should they be asked?

Adoption is a social, emotional, and legal process through which the custody an dcare of children is transferred. With 1.5 million adoptees in the United States — 25 percent of the population, or one in 50 people — most of us know someone who has been adopted, is longing to have a child, or is adopted. What most of us know, or think we know, about adoption is that it is a wonderful, almost idyllic “solution.” The media plays it two ways: glorified, romanticized, and promoted, or as fodder for bad-seed type horror movies and cruel jokes.

Within this framework of these extremes, America observes National Adoption Awareness Month every November to exalt the joys of adoption with a proliferation of happily-ever-stories intended to encourage more adoptions. The intent is to encourage adoption of children in state care who cannot be reunified with their families; but like the adoption tax credit, the intent does not restrict it and both infant and transnational adoptions all get the same hype and reap the same benefit as if all needed equal encouragement and assistance. In 2019 only 71,000 children in state care had their parents’ rights terminated by states for abuse or neglect, the majority or 66,000 of whom were adopted. If the goal of adoption is to help children in need find caring families, it is these children whose parents rights have been terminated and these children only — often older children, sibling groups, and children with physical or emotional challenges — that need encouraging, after having sought out any extended family who might be able and willing to provide safe care for them.

Many nations have closed their international adoption programs due to trafficking and widespread corruption and lack of follow-up once the children are adopted here in the states. With demand far outstripping availability to the tune of an estimated 46 couples competing for each newborn, we certainly do not need to encourage the adoption of white infants domestically. Yet, we cheer on and promote more adoptions causing increased pressure, coercion of expectant moms and exploiting people in need worldwide to provide children to meet the high demand. Is it in the best interest of the children we encourage to be taken from kin and placed with non-related strangers? Or is it only in the best interest of those who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to fulfill their dreams and create the family they long for — those who make up the majority of adopters?

As illogical as it is, we expect those having been taken from their kin, treated like merchandise exported and imported or fought for — to be grateful. Let’s look behind the joyful curtain, beyond the celebratory view of adoption, and look at the reality for many whose lives have been irrevocably altered by it. Are they grateful?

Quora is a popular Internet website which exists for anyone to ask anything and get answers from whomever. Recently, the question was posed (or repeated): Are adopted people grateful for being put up for adoption? Before we get into the answers, we need recognize that not all children who are adopted were voluntarily “put up” or “placed.”

The perception of adoptee gratitude emanates from the assumption that all who are adopted come from neglectful, abusive families, or are unwanted “orphans” languishing in foreign orphanages or floating from home to home in foster care. However, a look at adoption statistics belies those misperceptions. Approximately 140,000 children are adopted in the United States each year, yet according to the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Consular Affairs, approximately 20,000 children were transnationally adopted over the past 10 years. That leaves 54,000 adoptions a year from other than overseas or foster care and there are an estimated 46 couples vying for each infant relinquished.

Some believe adoptees should be grateful they are alive — that they were not aborted, which is a horrendous and untrue stigma to put upon millions of people. Adopted people are no more likely to have been aborted than anyone, since married couples often terminate a pregnancy as well as single moms. And conversely, many chose adoption who would never consider abortion for religious or other reasons, including finding out about their pregnancy after it is too late to terminate it. Yet we broad brush adoptees with the stigma of being grateful to have not been aborted.

Yet someone once even asked: “Do adopted children really appreciate all their family has done for them or do they just take it for granted?” Again, as if adopted children — more than those who are not — should “appreciate” everything their parents do for them when they are simply doling what those who chose to be parents do! And let’s be clear, those who adopt do not become parents accidentally. It is a very intentional choice, albeit one they get kudos for as if they single-handedly battled wild tigers and rescued a child from a fate worse than death. Their altruism is admired when all they did was fill their desire to have a family.

Many adoptees answered yes and waxed poetic about how happy they are. However, many adoptees have been subjected to a scenario painted for them by their adopters, which in turn was be based on background reports — true or not — presented to the adopters by an adoption agency or attorney. The majority of these alleged biographies are often more fiction than fact, depending a good deal on how long ago the adoption took place. Thus many are content or even grateful based on fiction or half-truths without knowing the truth about their original family and accepting instead generalized assumptions and cautionary tales. Additionally, many prefer not knowing to risking being rejected, again.

A Korean-born adoptee addresses this issue:

“Am I grateful? I fucking hate that question. Here’s why: It assumes many things about my birth family that may or may not be true. It assumes my birth country is worse than the US. And, finally, it’s often used as a way to ignore any grief I have over losing an entire family, an entire culture, an entire country. Because we’re expected to feel grateful, any negative answer an adopted person gives gets them labeled as angry. It’s a silencing question. It also makes it easier to ignore the problems that exist in the adoption process, and there are many. For example, this specific question, as it’s worded, assumes I was placed for adoption by my parents. . . . I did not ask to be adopted. Is it good that I have a family? Well, because my family is loving and I truly am a FULL member of the family, yes. But I might have had that had I not been separated from my first family. So, I am grateful that I have an awesome family, and I love them very much. But I am not grateful I was adopted. I can’t be — I don’t know what my life would’ve been like in Korea. NO ONE knows. . . “

Robert Hafetz, CEO Adoption Education & Family Counseling replied to the question of adoptee gratitude, saying:

“Not if they are honest. Adoption is the only trauma society expects adoptees to be grateful for. Being abandoned by one’s primal family traumatizes infants and children. Adoption can be a solution although sometimes it makes things worse. There is nothing to be grateful about.”

Some adoptees understandably equivocal:

“Adoption was absolutely the best option for me. I love both my mothers dearly, but my birth mother wasn’t able to keep & care for me. Yeah, it sucks and was sad, but she did what she needed to so that I would have a better life. I have wonderful parents who raised me, loved me and gave me opportunities. I am also grateful to be in reunion, and that my birth mother is mentally healthy and happy. I love her and glad we are in each other’s life.”

Before we explore more responses, let’s ask — as many adoptees have — why it would be asked. Would we ask people if they are “grateful” to be married; grateful someone married them? One might ask if people are generally happy or content being married, but grateful? Even then, we’d expect a vast variety of answers to that question. So why do we ask this of adoptees?

A sampling of Honest Replies

“I hated being adopted. I felt nothing but rejected and abandoned. Yet so many people and society as a whole expect us to feel gratitude for being adopted. Why? I did not have a better life or even a decent childhood. It was horrible. My adopters were abusive and my male adopter was a pedophile. There was nothing about my adopters to be grateful for. I longed for my real parents and I fantasized that they would come back for me.”

“A person who experiences adoption has suffered tremendous loss and trauma. I can’t think of any other circumstance where a child loses their family and is expected to perform gratitude to the adult caretakers. How do you all rationalize this? How does the loss of mother and family in this circumstance differ from someone whose parents have died. Would you have that same expectation? . . . Fuck your expectations for people who suffered living adoption. What’s wrong with you?”

“Be grateful for being beaten unconscious three times before age 7, grateful for psychological abuse throughout the teen years. No keep your grateful, and your gas lighting to yourself.”

“Hmmm, do they need to be grateful? Should they be grateful that when they were babies and they cried they could not find their mother? Where is she? Where is her smell, her voice? It is all different. Do they need to be grateful that someone loved them? Being placed for adoption, no matter the age is a trauma. If you are looking to adopt, please do some research into this and decide how you will help your child navigate through these emotions. Adoptive parents have no right to expect a child to be grateful for being loved! Mom of 2 boys who were adopted at birth.”

“As an adopted infant from China, I have grappled with a range of conflicting emotions regarding this topic, especially during my younger years . . . There have been times when I craved a different life in China, surrounded by people who look like myself. I was desperate to belong.”

“I’m not adopted nor have I ever put a child up for adoption. I can’t imagine why a child would be grateful for being adopted any more than a person should be grateful to their parents for being born. It wasn’t a choice the child made.”

“Children are generally available for adoption because of tragic loss. Why should they be grateful for that? When I adopted my daughter, the last thing that I wanted was for her to be grateful to me.”

“I was adopted at 4 years of age because my biological father was a drunk wife-beater who constantly abused my mother, to the point of attempted murder . . .twice. Although I don’t blame my biological mother for her choice to have me adopted, given the circumstance, it tears me apart that she doesn’t know to this day the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse I suffered for 13 years while in the care of my adoptive parents. Am I grateful for the adoption? No. However, I can’t blame my mother because she was in an impossible situation and was forced to make an impossible decision. I am in contact with my biological mother. I just can’t tell her the awful truth of what happened after the judge signed off on the adoption.”

“Why would I be grateful to two terrible bio grandparents who bullied my bio mother for getting pregnant? . . . Why would I be grateful for a 13 year search? Why would I be grateful for not having my real birth certificate? Why would I be grateful for not having my bio family medical info? Why would I be grateful for not knowing my original name? Why would I be grateful for growing up not knowing who I look like? Adoption is cruel. Adoption is abuse.”

“I was adopted. It didn’t work out well. No, I actually endured far worse poverty in my working class adoptive “family” than I would have if I had been left with my middle class young, but widowed natural mother. Because of the circumstances of my natural father’s death it actually would have been easier for me to get my bachelor’s degree if I had been left with her. So I absolutely, I am not grateful for being put up for adoption.”

“Am I glad I was adopted, certainly. However, I wish I wasn’t adopted by the people who adopted me. They didn’t tell me I was adopted. They were abusive and unaffectionate people. They wanted children for the love those children could provide for them and for their lives,”

“Why should we be?”

The Quora question was shared on Facebook and received these replies:

“No”

“Hell no”

“Too many of us are expected to be, and that’s a huge part of the problem.”

“Ummm, yes thanks for the lifelong abandonment issues.”

“Not grateful. I love my adoptive parents. But my relinquishment devastates me.”

“Definitely not!!!!”

“It’s worked out great for some people, a much better life with a lovely family. However, in my case I was sent unwanted to a sick sadistic monster.”

“Grateful to whom? Someone that’s a decent human being.”

“How can I be grateful for something I wouldn’t have asked for? My adoption wasn’t a good one.”

“Uh, no. No I am not grateful for being cut off from my family for decades. I am not grateful for the state of Texas forcing me to keep a false identity I did not consent to.”

“No [because] they put me with a family where the adoptive dad was a rapist and I suffered his abuse for 11 years.”

“What a question to ask. Would any human feel ok being separated from their family?”

“This is just silly . . . and extremely devoid of empathy. Why would anyone ask this? It is crazy how people think we’re like soulless creatures they can just say or ask anything [of us] . . .”

“The question in itself implies we need to be grateful. Don’t people know….we have no choice in the matter. If we aren’t grateful then are we ingrates? Insulting beyond words. A question that should never be asked in my honest opinion.”

“No, I was never grateful, and it is none of our jobs as adoptees to be grateful to be adopted either. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

It’s unheard of to ask someone who survived a car or plane crash or any tragedy that took the lives of all of their family, if they were grateful. To do so would be in very poor taste, unconscionably tacky, cruel and rude. Yes, sole survivors are grateful to be alive but not happy about the losses. Recognized in such people the likelihood of survivors’ guilt that would overshadow any gratitude or relief.

Yet we expect gratitude for being adopted because society whitewashes adoption, seeing only the give and not the take, ignoring the losses of familial connectedness, heritage and medical history adoptees suffered by adoptees. We create hypothetical myths of good and evil that paint adopters as hero saviors. We do so because of a societal need to justify the taking of children, often from temporary and resolvable crisis — such as a mother’s youth, unmarried status or financial difficulties. We thus paint a picture of dire need for which there was a need to be rescued.

Young adopted children are often painted a fairy tale about having been “chosen.” For a while it works. They feel special. But at some point, in their development, the reality seeps in with feelings of rejection and abandonment. Nothing to rejoice about.

Think about the story of the boy scout who sees an elderly lady at an intersection and grabs her arm to assist her across the street to accomplish his good deed of the day. As he is leaving, however, he is surprised to see her walk back to where she came from because she had never asked for his “help” and had no desire or need to cross the street. “Thank you” but no thank you. She was fine where she was. Help is only help when it is asked for or when there is a real, not exaggerated, crisis.

Help for children in need would, in most cases be much more appreciate if it helped their entire family in need, not preying on their moment of need by extracting one child and leaving the rest behind in the same condition. As many pointed out, adoptees didn’t ask to be taken. It is thus very unfair to treat them with disdain, ingrates, for not expressing and showing their appreciation and gratitude for their dislocation, and for having their truth taken from them, their truth annihilated.

You don’t have to have survived a major tragedy to understand the ambivalence. Anyone who has survived a possibly fatal disease or is being treated for a chronic condition imahy be grateful for the treatment, but wishes they didn’t need it.

The lady unwittingly dragged across the intersection by the do-gooder boy scout, deserved an apology. Adoptees deserve compassion and recognition of the losses they grieve, not expectations of appreciation or gratitude.