Posted by 윤선 in Australia, adoption, family, identity, life, parenting | 9 Comments
Luck: Gratitude’s Sidekick?
One concept/idea that seems to go hand-in-hand with gratitude in adoption is the idea of luck. This seems to come up regularly when people mention that we adoptees should be thankful for our being adopted. These days, I see many adoptive parents online talking about the countless amount of times they’ve had random people come up to them and say: “your child is so lucky to have been adopted by you. You’re doing a wonderful thing” bla bla bla. This is often followed by the assumption and idea that we adoptees should be grateful because of that luck that we’ve received in having been “saved” from our birth cultures.
There are many issues that accompany this “accusation” of luck. In thinking about my upbringing, I think I was lucky (HAHA) because either:
1. I didn’t have a lot of people say this to my Mum and/or me
or:
2. My Mum did a damn good job at covering up these statements made to her.
I don’t recall hearing these sorts of statements a lot, as a child. Like I said, it could simply be because my Mum did wonderfully well at not allowing me to hear that crap. As an adult, though, my heart goes out to the young adoptees that do get exposed to these sorts of ignorant and uneducated statements.
Saying that we’re “lucky” to have been adopted out of our countries of birth implies many things. It implies that:
1. Our birth cultures/families were awful, uncaring places/people.
2. We were born illegitimately, so it’s “lucky” we don’t have to spend our lives living in poverty and shame.
3. Our adoptive parents are saviours to whom we should forever be indebted.
4. If we don’t feel “lucky” and “grateful”, we’re awful, selfish and uncaring.
5. We were a burden on our birth cultures/families, so we should just forget about them and live “happily” in our adoptive families, with total disregard for our heritage/s and background/s.
…and I could go on.
I won’t deny the fact that the first point has crossed my mind a lot. I don’t need to be told anything by stupid people to consider the situation my birth mother was in when I was born. But does that mean I’m to feel guilty about my birth because of that?
Furthermore, because I don’t know what her situation was, how can anyone make the judgment: that I’m “lucky” to have been “saved”? If I can’t make that judgment, what right does anyone else have? What right do they have to make the assumption and judgment that not only was my country of birth a disadvantaged land in comparison to Australia, but that my birth family, too, was “too poor” to take care of me? This brings in the topic of my recent post on gratitude: if it weren’t for stupid people making the assumption that my birth family/culture were poverty-stricken and half-dead, why would there be the need for us to feel gratitude and luck at all? In saying that we should be “lucky” and “grateful”, these ignorant, uneducated fools make huge judgments of places and people they have no knowledge of whatsoever. It’s an insult to the adoptee, their birth families and their cultures of birth. It’s also an insult to the adoptive parent, who, for many, adopt not to “save” a child, but to simply have a family.
In regards to the second point and the introduction into being an unplanned child, saying we should feel “lucky” brings into play the idea that we weren’t planned children. OK, this is obvious from the start. We’re all very aware of this from a young age (why would we have been adopted in the first place?), but that doesn’t mean we necessarily want to talk about it when we’re… what? Five years old? Especially when our adoptive parents are telling us how much we’re loved and adored… how are we meant to respond when a stranger inadvertently tells us we’re lucky we weren’t… what? Aborted? Thrown onto the street? Left to die? Is that what you want a young child thinking about?
I love my parents. Of course I won’t deny that. But I’ve never seen them as saviours who I should forever be indebted to. I see them as… just my parents. When couples have biological children, do they forever tell them that they’re “saved” from… not being born at all? That they should be thankful they’re even in the world? I doubt it. So why do it to an adopted child? Why put that burden on them? I love my parents. Not because they “saved” me from a life of poverty (which would only be a huge assumption on their part), but because… they wanted a family and I was the (first) result of that. Period. What more does there need to be?
I’ve mentioned this idea in this blog before, but thinking about the idea that I was a burden of shame on my family and on Korea is… hard to deal with. And I can’t help but feel that in being told I should be “lucky” to be adopted, it brings up that idea: that I was a burden and I only brought shame onto my biological household. Yes, although it’s difficult, I can think about that now and somehow try to reconcile it in my head… but I’ve also had 26 (almost 27) years of life to mull the world over. Would it have been different had I been forced to think about this as a child? Of course! I’ve written about particular “shames” I felt in simply being Korean when I was a child… how much more difficult would things have been if I’d been constantly reminded about how I was just a clump of shame? Who wants a child to feel that way?
In my honest opinion, yes I feel lucky for my life. But in the same way that I feel gratitude, I feel lucky because I look at my life now and know I’ve been provided with many opportunities than what others have. Not because I’m adopted, though, but because I’ve had a loving family who have always been there to care for and support me: the way anyone would feel if they were in my position; the way anyone should feel when they can look at their lives and see a comfortable home, comfortable finances, food on the table every night, clothes to keep them warm etc. Luck, for me, isn’t and shouldn’t be about being adopted. It shouldn’t come into being adopted. I don’t need to be reminded of what I could have lost in being adopted by ignorant people.
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The ” you daughter is so lucky to be here and not in Ethiopia” or the “she is one lucky kid” comments truly make me want to barf. I am not a savior. I did not save my child from anything. She has a mother that loves her very much and for very personal reasons felt that she needed to place her child for adoption.
I find I often try to end the awkward and pointless conversation with ” I am the lucky one to have such a sweet little girl.” Probably not the best but I am not sure what to say to these people as most of them a)don’t care or b) I will never see again.
Sure I have had to have the tough conversations with family and even on facebook with friends. I view my adoption as a completely selfish act. I wanted to be a mom and have a family and I couldn’t do that the natural way and the domestic process caused me more heartache than I could bare so we went international. Not to save a child or recuse them or make ourselves better more wordly people. We did it simply to have a family.
Agreed! I feel lucky to have a good family, but I don’t think that I’m lucky to have been “saved” from Korea. People should really think before they blurt out things, though we all knew that one!
One thing that really stuck out for me in this post was the idea that adopted children know that they are unplanned. I’ve always had a really callous attitude towards this. I don’t mind saying out loud that I was a “mistake” because…I was. It doesn’t make me feel like less of a person, nor do I allow it to devalue my sense of self-worth as an adult. However, I mentioned this once to a family member who proceeded to burst into tears and implore me not to say such things, as if it were destiny and the plan of the universe that brought me and my adopted parents together. I guess people who aren’t adopted have a hard time acknowledging some of the facts, which is why they instead make up silly “justifications” of adoption, e.g., that we are so lucky to have been adopted in the first place.
Actually, I’d like to stand up and say that I must have been one in thousands of adoptees who was actually planned.
But as to the rest of your post? Absolutely fantastic.
Really?! Wow… I think if I found out I WAS planned, that would change things, significantly…
But thanks.
Wow, so much to agree with here. Great post.
“I love my parents. Of course I won’t deny that. But I’ve never seen them as saviours who I should forever be indebted to. I see them as… just my parents.” Second this, could have said it myself.
And Mica this is exactly how I feel, although I don’t feel it’s callous, just maybe pragmatic?
“I don’t mind saying out loud that I was a “mistake” because…I was. It doesn’t make me feel like less of a person, nor do I allow it to devalue my sense of self-worth as an adult.”
Amen amen amen – thank you. Why should an adopted child feel any differently toward his/her parents than a bio child? I hope my kids will be grateful someday that we loved them unconditionally and did OUR best to give them what they needed to be THEIR best (though we made & will continue to make mistakes along the way). But honestly, most kids don’t feel that gratitude until they are adults, or maybe not until they are parents themselves. Why would we use a double standard with adopted children and expect them to be different in this regard?
Thanks, as always, for offering your perspective.
“most kids don’t feel that gratitude until they are adults, or maybe not until they are parents themselves.”
Yeah, exactly. Would you say to a biological child: “you should be forever grateful to us because we brought you into this world… etc etc”? I don’t think so… why put an adopted child through that?
Thanks for your input.
Any child who is able to grow up in a loving supportive family is lucky. It has nothing to do with adoption. Period.
I think your comment is a slight over simplification of my post. I was never saying that children who aren’t raised in loving families aren’t lucky. It depends, however, on the approach that is taken in defining and reminding children of that luck.