It's something that can sound like a fairytale ending, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Susan-Elizabeth Littlefield talks to a man born in Korea, raised in central Wisconsin, and grew up in a world where no one looked like him.
Not everyone gets placed in a loving family for starters. None of us got placed in a family we got placed with strangers. Even if you are Caucasian you don't look like those people. The so called love is conditional , and quite often the conditions for this so called love are not reasonable . It takes years and years to learn how to be loved and to love others for real after growing up as someone else's legal possession they paid for. If they have the right to remove themselves from our birth certificates at a whim and rehome us we should have the right to birth certificate restoration with no legal consequences or conditions free of charge at age 18.
Also, the adoptees who are speaking out are doing so because the common narrative throughout American society is that adoption's a win-win for everybody. That babies are completely interchangeable but the baby doesn't know the difference. T But, we know it's not true. And, in fact, couples whose newborns have been switched by the hospital return super-quickly to trade them back again, because they KNOW there's a difference, and they want their baby! The baby also knows the difference, too. The baby bonds in utero just as tightly with its mother as twins bond together in utero. The baby knows when it has been taken away from its mother, and it undergoes trauma.
While not every adoption is “so” traumatic, every adoption begins with trauma and involves trauma whether the adoptee has been made aware of it or not. Statistically, adoptees are four times more likely to commit suicide than non adoptees. And I can’t imagine being frustrated at someone sharing their lived experience and spreading awareness on trauma and calling it “bashing”. Cameron is talking about helping adoptees process grief and trauma and you’re feeling frustrated because it bashes your idea of what adoption is when in reality, all adoption starts with separation and as a professional in early childhood development, I will say that any separation between the ages of 0-8 years of age (yes, pre-birth included) between the child and the primary key caregiver will result in adverse impacts whether the adoptee remembers or is aware of it, their bodies will always remember. It manifests in trauma, illnesses, anxiety etc. I’ve met adoptees in their 60s who are finally coming to terms with their trauma of what adoption has done to them because society projects onto them that they should feel nothing but grateful. This is regardless of how much good adoption has done for an adoptee of course. It’s time to understand the lifelong affects it has on adoptees, not just the pretty fantasy ending you think plonking a child into a new family means to you.
@@bejoybenice I mean, we can all SEE how very stressful it is for a young baby to be left with a babysitter for the first time! But the baby calms down when Mom returns to get him/her. Imagine if Mom never returned to get him/her? This gripping terror, abandonment, confusion, and betrayal is what etches the impact of trauma upon our bodies and inside our brains/psyches. What mother could ever leave her baby with a stranger (even if the mother knew and trusted the stranger, but the baby had never met them before) and go away forever and not know inherently that the baby will undergo trauma from this "leaving" which feels like desertion, even potentially death. Some experts say the infant in fact believes the mother has died. It's not a walk in the park for that baby. Many of us manifest our separation trauma by having colic or digestive problems. I myself vomited regularly for 10 weeks after my relinquishment. My adoptive mother told me the doctors could not figure out why for the life of them. She said she figured it must have had to do with "the transition". Many of us adoptees have stories like this. While we can "mask" extremely well when older, a baby doesn't mask, and a baby lets you know they're not coping well.
