Authenticity and Identity in Contemporary Adoptive Families
Joan Heifetz Hollinger1
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"Who are your real parents?" However well-intentioned, this question can unnerve adopted children and their adoptive parents. What prompts the suggestion that an adoptive parent-child relationship is not as "real" as one produced by sexual intercourse? Why do adoptive families struggle to overcome their own as well as others’ doubts about their authenticity? One answer lies in the widely shared belief that personal identity and family are inextricably associated with the capacity to reproduce ourselves biogenetically. The creation of a parent-child relationship between "strangers" seems to defy nature and thus be "unreal." We truly "belong," it seems, by blood. Adoptive families are the product of law, not blood. Through a judicial process, the state creates the status of parent and child “in all respects” between individuals who are not biogenetically related and severs the child's legal relationship to the biogenetic parents and their families. The adoptive family replaces and becomes the legal equivalent of the biogenetic family. 2 Adoption entails psychosocial as well as legal consequences. Often described as a "perfect solution" to an unwanted pregnancy, adoption enables birth parents who, for various reasons, cannot raise their children, to place them in a new stable family while getting a fresh start on their own lives. It provides children for adults who are infertile or who want to extend the boundaries of their otherwise biologically connected families. It allows states to shift the high public costs of caring for dependent children to the private realm. Most importantly, adoption is praised for giving children the security of a loving, permanent, and “forever” family. A substantial body of research testifies to the successful outcomes for children raised by adoptive parents, especially in contrast to the lives they would have had if they had not been adopted. On a variety of outcome measures, adopted children do as well as children living in "intact" families with their biological parents and significantly better than children living with parents who are ambivalent about them, or children left in foster care, group homes, or other institutional settings. Love and nurture do indeed temper nature and mitigate the effects of any pre-adoptive history of maltreatment.3 Yet, by legitimizing a parent-child relationship between "strangers," adoption strikes some raw personal and cultural nerves. For those skeptical of the "perfect solution" characterization, adoption is said to be a legal fiction that defies our understanding of family as defined by blood and genes. From this perspective, adoption is not a story of personal and societal gain, but a tale of loss: the "natural" parent's loss of the opportunity to raise biological offspring, the adoptive parent's loss of the opportunity to have "natural" children, the child's loss of biological kin, the state's loss of its ability to preserve "natural" families. Biogeneticism and the companion notion that adoption is at best a risky "last resort" are reinforced by advances in medically-assisted reproduction which offer infertile adults the possibility of having children who are at least partially "their own." Despite the high financial and emotional costs of techno-reproduction and the uncertain outcome, many childless adults would rather pursue this route toward parenthood than take on what they fear will be the onerous burdens of raising someone else's child. Biogeneticism is also reinforced by the venerable common law and constitutional doctrines of "parental rights" and “family autonomy” which protect the rights of individuals to rear their offspring with minimal interference from the state. The rights accorded biogenetic parents to the custody and control of their children are said to be counterparts to the duties the state expects parents to perform in caring for and nurturing children and educating them to become “good” citizens.4 A central tenet of these doctrines is the presumption “that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children.”5 Also sustaining these doctrines are the beliefs that state agencies are not competent to raise children and that delegating childrearing authority to parents encourages the cultural and political pluralism that strengthens our democratic society. The doctrine of parental rights and family autonomy thus provide a legal justification for the belief that children do best when raised by their “natural parents” and are at risk of grave psychosocial harm if raised by others. Nonetheless, these doctrines are ultimately not as grounded in empirical evidence that love and a capacity to nurture a child necessarily follow from the act of sexual reproduction as much as they are based on principles of equity and fairness. Unless biogenetic parents relinquish a child for adoption voluntarily, or fail to perform parental duties and are proven “unfit,” it seems fundamentally unfair for the state to remove a child from parental custody to make a “better” placement. By contrast to the protections accorded biogenetic parents, individuals who wish to parent through adoption find their personal values and most intimate behaviors subject to intense scrutiny and bureaucratic regulation. A powerful and opinionated cast of “helping professionals” are enlisted to evaluate the “suitability” of prospective parents before they can legally adopt. Yet, the lack of any reliable tests of parental suitability contributes to the resentment many adoptive parents feel about having to undergo costly and intrusive home studies. Instead of having to prove to others their fitness to parent, they wish they had post-adoption assistance to alleviate the unanticipated, or insufficiently disclosed, physical and psychological needs of the children they adopt. The cultural convention of biogeneticism and the legal doctrine of parental rights thus combine to impede the formation of adoptive families and undermine their sense of authenticity. At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, biogeneticism and the parental rights doctrine embody an ideal to which many adoptive families aspire. This aspiration is most evident in the traditional assertion that adoptive families are a “complete substitute” for, and function “as if” they are, biogenetically-based families and are entitled to the same cultural acceptance and legal protection. For much of the 20th century, the asserted-equivalence model of adoption attempted to reinscribe the biogenetic family by creating a legal framework within which the personal and emotional ties of the “natural” family were to be replicated. The goal was -- and for many adoptive parents still is -- to look and feel as close as possible to what they can never really have. State laws that seal adoption records, substitute the names of adoptive parents for birth parents on “certificates of live birth,” and permit, even if they do not require, anonymity and strict separation between birth and adoptive families are fully consistent with the asserted- equivalence model. During the past twenty-five years, however, this model has been subject to mounting criticism for trivializing the psychological, social, and indeed, biogenetic, differences between “natural” and adoptive families. These differences are now said by many adoptees and birth parents, as well as by ever larger numbers of adoptive parents, to be of profound importance, and, if denied, continue to fester and threaten the well-being of all members of the adoption triad. An alternative response to the dual influence of biogeneticism and the parental rights doctrine has emerged. The denial of differences is no longer in vogue. “Openness” and the acknowledgment and acceptance of difference are rapidly becoming the mantras of contemporary adoption practice. Adoptive families continue to seek cultural acceptance and legal protection, but more of them are doing so by applauding their distinctive characteristics and not portraying themselves as mirror images of the biogenetic families they cannot be. A key element of the difference-mantra is the attack on secrecy in adoption which has spurred the high-decibel and recently successful demand by adoptees in a number of states for access to sealed adoption records and their original birth certificates.6 Another consequence is the call for more "openness" at some or all stages of an adoption. Whether limited to an exchange of information between birth and adoptive parents at the time of placement, or broad enough to include regular visitation by members of the birth family with the adopted child long after the adoption is final, open adoption is said to enable birth mothers to diminish their sense of loss, adopted children to possess the piece of themselves missing from their otherwise secure adoptive family relationships, and adoptive parents to have access to information vital to their capacity to respond to their children's developmental, medical, and emotional needs. The significance of the change from the asserted-equivalence model, with its attendant denials, to a model of "difference," with its attendant embrace of "openness," is complicated by a rarely noted shift in power from adoptive to birth parents. As the competition among would-be adoptive parents has intensified in response to the striking decline since the late 1960s in the number of healthy adoptable white infants, a more distinctive "seller's market" has emerged in domestic private adoptions. Birth parents, and especially, birth mothers, are not only choosing the individuals who will parent their children, but are often asking to remain a part of the new adoptive family's life. Those who harbor doubts about meeting, or maintaining contact with, birth parents are less likely to end up with a child to adopt, and many agencies report that if they do not accede to birth parents’ requests for open placements, they will go out of business.7 The Biblical tale of Pharaoh's daughter adopting the infant Moses after rescuing him from the bulrushes, but allowing his "real" mother to be his wetnurse, is in some respects emblematic of the ambiguities and realignments of power within contemporary adoptive families. Not all prospective adoptive parents are willing to pay what they believe is too high a price to acquire a child. They want to be parents with the same constitutionally protected autonomy and privacy as other legal parents enjoy, not long-term caregivers of a child whose destiny is ultimately determined by the biogenetic family. Although most adoptive parents now prefer, and even demand, greater “openness” when it means access to the medical and psychosocial histories of the children they adopt, many are uneasy about continued contact with birth parents if it goes beyond annual exchanges of photographs or letters and encompasses visitation and other entanglements that raise the spectre of shared parenting.8 The doubling in the past decade of adoptions by U.S. citizens of foreign born children -- from fewer than 8,000 in 1989 to nearly 17,000 in 2000 -- may be partially attributable to the desire of many prospective parents, including those who are highly respectful of their children’s ethnoracial and cultural heritage, to avoid any direct contact with birth families. The challenges posed by the dismantling of the asserted-equivalence model are further complicated by changes in the demography and ideology of the American family itself. While the idealized nuclear family of the 1950s often remains the goal for adoptive placements, the nuclear family has enjoyed a longer run in the prescriptions of those who assist in the formation of adoptive families than in our society as a whole. In fact, the faces within adoptive families have changed as much in the past half century as have those within other households. Fewer and fewer are infertile couples seeking to reinscribe the "natural" families they cannot have by adopting an infant matching their own appearance. Of the 130,000-150,000 adoptive families formed each year, many are prompted by the needs of children whose lives are disrupted by divorce or the involuntary termination of a parent's rights. Perhaps half or more of all adoptions are by stepparents; many others are by grandparents or other relatives, who like stepparents, have long been the de-facto parents of the children they adopt. In addition, recent federal child welfare initiatives, including the Adoption & Safe Families Act (ASFA-1997), are facilitating substantially more adoptions of older dependent children who might otherwise languish in foster care. A small but increasing number of adoptions are by adults who want to create non-traditional families that reach across racial, ethnic, and cultural boundaries, not just biological ones. With the U.S. implementation of the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption now underway,9 intercountry adoptions will continue to rise, even as concerns intensify about the long term effects of the maltreatment experienced by some of these children in their countries of origin. Still other adoptive families are being formed by gays and lesbians who seek to legitimate their status as de facto “stepparents” or “second parents” of their partners' child or who are recruited by public agencies in some states to adopt children with special needs. As the legal edifice that once so completely separated birth and adoptive families crumbles, and as the diverse faces within adoptive families belie the possibility of ethnoracial or psychosocial equivalence, where are the guideposts to assist birth and adoptive parents to determine whether anonymity or ongoing contact is preferable for them or their children? Who is to say whether difference can be acknowledged without inviting the different members of birth and adoptive families to the same dinner table? Can our laws be reshaped to ensure that adoptive parents continue to have full legal status as parents, including the right to decide how, and with whose advice, to raise their children, while at the same time accommodating the various kinds of personal, and even legal, connections that so many adoptees and their adoptive and birth families apparently want to recognize? Can child welfare policies and practices acknowledge the role of biogenetic ties in a child’s development without undermining an adoptive family’s sense of its own capacity to shape the child’s life and personality? Do adopted children have a genuine or merely a speculative need to remain in touch with their biogenetic roots?10 Do the needs of children placed as infants differ significantly from the needs of older children or children who have been in and out of foster care? Our inability to provide research-based answers to these questions suggests that for all the problems with the asserted-equivalence model, the alternative model of openness may also not be appropriate for every adoptive family. While privately negotiated “open adoption” agreements based on mutual trust between adoptive and birth parents should not be prohibited, there may be good reasons to question the soundness of the statutes enacted in at least twenty states since the mid-1990s that allow courts to approve, and potentially to enforce over parental objection, post-adoption contact between adoptive and birth families.11 Instead of ongoing judicial oversight of newly formed adoptive families, it might be better to encourage the gradual development of a “customary law of adoptions,” to be crafted over time by all members of the adoption triad who may learn to rely more on each other, and on their own negotiated arrangements, than on the purported wisdom of that large cast of advisers and experts whose earlier dominion over the “meaning” of adoption is now being challenged.
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