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November is National Adoption Month in the United States, and although the main purpose of the month is to encourage adoption of children in foster care, all things adoption seem to make the Internet rounds each November. This seems as good a time as any to clear up some of the most common misconceptions people outside of adoption tend to have about it. Here are the ten that came instantly to mind, based on my own experience of talking to people about adoption
1. Birth mothers are all teenagers.
Birth mothers (sometimes called “natural” or “first” mothers) — international and domestic — come in all ages and from all walks of life. Some are teens, but the mythical “unwed teen mother” that many people think of when they imagine adoption is a hold-over from the 1950s and 1960s when single and teen motherhood were less acceptable in certain areas of society than they are now. These days, the reasons for placing children in adoptive families tend to be more diverse than mere age or marital status.
2. Open adoption is confusing to kids.
Most international adoptions are “closed” by default, because the first parents are unknown and perhaps untraceable. But there is a growing trend in domestic adoption to open the process and maintain some connection between birth and adoptive families. While this idea is often hard to grasp at first thought, the fact is that closing adoption records is a fairly recent phenomenon and fairly limited to industrialized societies. Even in the United States where formal, legal adoptions have been closed for the past few decades, there are subcultures in which informal and open “adoptions” have always been the norm. These might include extended families, neighbors or close friends raising each other’s children in times of need, temporarily or permanently. Such practices have been common throughout human history. Research is starting to show that adopted people who at least know a little bit about their first families have a better chance of adjusting healthily throughout their adolescent years of identity formation and on into later life.
3. They hate girls in China.
The circumstances that lead to so many girls being available for adoption in China are complex. But, in short, it is more the tradition of wives being absorbed by their husbands’ families that is the root of the problem in China. When you combine this with an economy that relies on adult children’s care of aged parents and a law restricting most families to either one son or two children (when the first is a daughter), the problem is seriously exacerbated. Some families — by far the small minority — with a first-born daughter feel pressured enough to have a boy on their second try, that a second daughter is sometimes abandoned so they can try again for a boy.
4. Black babies are the latest trend among celebrities.
If a celebrity does something, we hear much more about it than when Bill Smith from Peoria does it, right? When two celebrities do the same thing, we hear enough about it to make it feel like a “trend” simply by virtue of the percentage of space it takes up in the media. The fact is, African American babies are still the last to be placed in adoption in the United States. African American boy babies are at the very bottom of the demand pyramid for healthy newborns. Perhaps the reasons more than one white celebrity has a Black adopted son is because celebrities live such cosmopolitan lives that when the social worker doing their home study asks “are you open to adopting a Black boy?” they say yes more often than other people. And if you say yes to a Black baby boy, you will probably get one — and fast — because not many people say yes.
5. Adoptive parents are saintly for adopting.
Adoptive parents are always hearing how great they are for having adopted. People always mean well when they say this, but the fact is, most adoptive parents adopted because they wanted to be parents. Period. Not because they are special saints. This also sometimes sounds to adoptive parents
