The Angry Adoptee by Carol Komissaroff
Adoptive parents can be found in increasing numbers attending adoptee support group meetings hoping thereby to learn more about the adoption experience. They walk in, eager to learn, and leave, shell-shocked, trying to convince themselves that what they heard doesn't apply to them or their children. Only the hardiest, most secure adoptive parents come back for more.Admittedly, it's hard to hear the anger. It was hard for me, a birthparent, because it's "my fault" that adopted people feel so bad. If people like me had never let go of our children, people like them would never have had to feel this way. It's similarly difficult for adoptive parents because it is also "their fault" that these people are treated like property, live in an environment in which the "A" world is discouraged, have adoption-ignorant or unresponsive parents, and exist in a society in which their needs and desires are subordinated to the needs and desires of others.
There's also a "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" component to adoptee anger. Many adoptive parents go away believing that they just can't win. There's no way that you can get it right, and good intentions count for nothing. Feeling doomed to failure anyway, some simply throw up their hands in despair, and forget the whole thing.
Well, that's a bit of an over-reaction. The only difference between adoptee anger and any other kind of anger is that adoptees rarely talk openly about their adoption-related anger at home. Why? For two reasons, mostly. First, it is bad practice to bite the hand that feeds you. Second, it makes their parents uncomfortable. So, they store it up and let it out in other ways, some of them anti-social.
What are adoptees angry about? Lots of things. They're angry with people like me because we gave them away. They need an explanation and an apology. Of course they can't get one, because we're nowhere to be found, which frustrates them and makes them mad as hell. Some are also angry because we sent them away from their "kind," abandoning them to an environment in which they suffer a chronic, cumulative, vast feeling of unacceptability. The pain, helplessness and frustration caused by that sort of thing can make a person very mad.
They're angry with people like you because they can't explore the subject of adoption openly. Why? Because it makes you cringe. They're also angry because you don't understand how they feel, or worse, denigrate their feelings because you can't relate to them. Some are angry because they are not your "real" children. If they had been, the things that make them feel bad would not exist. Others are angry because your don't always tell them the truth about adoption related matters, or won't answer basic questions about who they are and where they came from.
They are also angry because people in general treat adopted people differently: school teachers type-cast them; health-care professionals treat them as medical risks; outsiders consider them inferior, assuming that they are the spawn of people who came from the "other side of the tracks;" relatives don't treat them like "blood" kin; and many, many people talk of their adoption as freakish, and implicitly shameful thing. That can inspire quite a lot of anger. After all, being adopted isn't their fault, and yet they are taking the rap for the birthparents who acted irresponsibly, adoptive parents operating in ignorance, and society which isn't evolved enough to treat them the same as everyone else.
As if that were not enough, when adoptees finally reach adulthood and begin to search for their own answers, society slams a big door in their faces, emblazoned with the words "sealed records" keeping them away from the information that they need to complete a personal biography and enjoy a fully integrated personality. Society obviously does not wish them to be able to settle down in life with the same opportunity to know who they are and who they can be, that "normal" people enjoy.
Now that you think about it, don't they have very right to be angry?
"Well," you exhort, "my son/daughter isn't angry. He/she is better adjusted than that."
Right.
Leaving entirely aside whether denial or suppression of anger is a sign of good adjustment, let's just assume for a moment that your son or daughter might be, or might become, a little angry about something having to do with adoption. In such a case, what should you do?
First, it's useful to find out what they're angry about. Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that you don't line up the kids in the living room and say, "Okay, kids, what is it about your adoption that makes you mad." They're going to be looking for a hidden agenda, particularly if the "A" word has not been spoken in your home of late. Or, if the "A" word is in common use in your home, they will interpret the question as reflecting your problem. Instead, your task is to pay attention when they are expressing anger or frustration, listening for the adoption component.
Don't expect to "get it" every time. A fifteen-year-old, mad about a curfew is likely to be mad about a curfew, not about being adopted - unless it happens to be your adoptive-parent over-protectiveness which is at the core of the curfew issue. The same goes for issues revolving around sex. If you've hand-cuffed your teen daughter to her bed so she won't turn out like her birthmother, or you've turned her out on the sex issue because you carry infertility baggage, well, then, there might be an adoption-related component to these issues.
You should know that adoption issues turn up in the most mundane places, often wearing a cloak of fear or frustration. The anger comes from not being able to lay that lurking fear or frustration to rest. For example, a teen-age girl in tears because her complexion won't clear up is partly afraid that it will never clear up, because she can't look at anyone "like" her to see that there's hope. Now, if her birthmother were around, and she once had bad skin, well, that's a different matter entirely. But her birthmother is not around to serve as an example that everything will turn out all right, or that she'd best take care because it's only going to become worse.
Similarly, the six-year-old boy who's unduly tall (or short) has nowhere to look to see whether or not he can expect to "normalize" later in life. And, all you exhortations that things will work out are just speculations. They don't carry the authority of a living example, a living example which is infuriatingly out of reach.
Taking these relatively trivial (to you) things as examples of places in which adoption anger lurks, what do you do to work it out?
The first thing you do is validate the anger, or frustration, or hurt, or whatever cloak it happens to be wearing at the time. Brushing it aside makes a child fell like you don't "care" about things "important" to him/her.
The second thing you can do is to join the party. You, too, can feel angry or frustrated along with your child. This falls in the "misery loves company" category of bonding. It may well be true that you don't know the answer, either, so you are frustrated, too. (Don't overdo this: if a child is deep into self-pity at the moment, he/she probably wants to wallow in it awhile all by himself/herself.)
If the child empresses anger or frustration because s/he is unable to "get to" the answers s/he needs, you've hit "adoption" pay dirt. If, on the other hand, the child simply shrugs and goes away, fine. You've demonstrated that his/her feelings are important to you, and opened the door for future discussions.
Of course, if you are in a position to "fix" the problem, you should do it. For a child worried about an acne problem, if you've got a picture of the birthparents tucked away somewhere, now is the time to bring it out. If you know that your child's birthmother never stood taller than 4'10", now is not the time to suggest that "tall" is in your child's future, even if it is possible that an unknown birthfather might have been taller.
If fact, that's pretty much how all childhood anger is worked out. Validate the feeling, empathize, and try to find a way to help work it out. Small successes in childhood might stave off the "you don't understand me" angst of adolescence.
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