OMg - hahaha, I hadn’t even thought of it that way!!! That’s pretty funny!

That type of thing is even worse and not uncommon. Christians adopting because it’s the Christian thing to do and not because they want to have more children. Then they expect the child to be grateful.

I’m also curious as to what percentage of adoptions are adoptions-by-strangers and what percentage are either within families or a step-parent formally adopting their step-children. My extended family has a handful of adoptees, but most of them were either children adopted by grandparents/ aunts and uncles (because I…

I went to grad school in a very faux-progressive, very white community, where interracial adoption seemed to be en vogue especially among university staff. After meeting a few white families with dark-skinned children I developed a secret desire to see interracial adoption all but banned.

A couple that I know adopted two kids from China who were around 11-12 years old. As soon as they got them to the US, they told them that they’d picked out new “biblical” names for them and that they didn’t need to use their Chinese ones anymore. The girl went along with it, but the boy insisted on keeping his. After…

I mean, the other woman in the photo didn’t look anything like me. She was a dark-skinned Nigerian woman. I am a dark-skinned Indian woman. Aside from the fact that neither of us would pass the paper bag test, we looked nothing alike.

It is very, very distressing to realize that your mom cannot pick you out of a photo with other dark-skinned people.

My sister’s in-laws frequently told my adopted niece that she’d be living in a hut with a dirt floor if she hadn’t been adopted. Unfuckingbelievable.

I’m less than 6 weeks pregnant and it’s already hugely disruptive. Every pregnancy is different, of course, and there are people who can go through some, much, most, or even all of their pregnancy without it affecting their life much, but if I didn’t really want this baby, this would be HELL. I already had to miss a…

This. Carrying a pregnancy is a 9 month physical trial. Heck, I’ve got a friend doing a 60 day high intensity interval training program, that involves exercise and meal modification, and she staggers in with various aching muscles and I’m like, 60 DAYS of this? B*tch, you cray.

The white savior vision is strong in transracial adoptions. I would be a millionaire if I got paid everyone told me how “lucky” I am to be adopted by an American family. I’ve also had people tell me that if I weren’t adopted, I probably would have been a prostitute in my home country. Gee, thanks.

Exactly. I read the book The Girls Who Went Away (highly recommend), and one of the stories that really stuck out for me was a woman who was forced into a home for unwed mothers as a young girl and had her baby taken away to be adopted. She said later in life she had an abortion, and she never once regretted it, but…

exactly! there is a woman there, a whole pregnancy, with its 9 months and all implications. it’s not that simple.

i’m hungarian and there is a wonderful blog about adoption here written by a journalist who is an adoptive parent herself.

Your sister’s experience is more common than people realize, from what I have seen (as an aparent). The stereotype of the joyous reunion is just that. Lots of adoptees get rejected as she did, as do many birthmoms who seek out their kids. 

Provide free or at least affordable access to birth control and abortions to all women to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and then provide a safety need like paid parental leave and affordable day care to help women who found themselves pregnant in less than ideal circumstances and want to keep the child.

Yes! As a transracial adoptee, I wasn’t able to effectively express and name these emotions until a few years ago, in therapy. It took several months of EMDR for me to reconcile these feelings I had that I felt guilty for having. I am a recovering alcoholic and also have anxiety disorder.

This is a really interesting article, and I’m glad to learn more about this. But I also want to know more about the babies that don’t get adopted and who grow up in foster care. To be frank, from the snippets I’ve heard, foster care seems to set kids and adolescents—especially non-white ones—up for total failure.…

Free birth control and more accommodating abortion processes.

No. Make the United States a place where a woman doesn’t have to choose between shelter and supporting her child. If we had stronger social safety nets and more pro-family policies, women would be less likely to choose adoption.