How NOT to Treat Adoptees

A few simple rules on the way adoptee's should NEVER be treated - 

Change the adoptee’s name

Change the birth date

Be sure their adoptee doesn’t know the first parents

But when information happens to get shared be sure to insinuate that there was something inherently WRONG with the first family and that they were *unable to care for them, ie. Drugs, abuse, criminal, neglect, etc.

Insure the adoptee doesn’t want to know the first family

*(Taken care of when something WAS shared about the family of origin)
Make things sound secretive and mysterious – whispers or stop talking when the adoptee comes in the room .

Seal records

Make sure the adoptee is never able to gain full access to their heritage/history – that would be damaging to the adoptee;  After all, these original parents were “deadbeats,” “incapable,” “unworthy,” “dangerous,” “couldn’t raise a child,” “financially unsound,” “mentally ill,” and otherwise not parent material.

Civil Rights

NONE – EVER…No ability to know their original family because they were told this was a competition (not necessarily by words by most definitively by actions). The original birth certificate denied them has the first mother at least and at best both first parents on the certificate; this is not a document they ever need, the adoptee HAD parents growing and it WASN’T the ones on the birth certificate. Better yet, falsify the original birth certificate and just put the adoptive parents’ names where the biological family names should go; neat, easy, no one need be the wiser, especially the adoptee.

What happens when adoptees are treated this way-

WHY? From the moment an adoptee learns they are a “gift” or “special” because they were “chosen,” they begin to wonder what was wrong with me.  Compounding the question of what is wrong with me, s/he begins to find out there was also something wrong with the first given name and it needed to be changed. The message of shame begins to emerge, loudly and clearly.

Next, “my birth date needed to be changed because I’m a different person then when I was born. There was something wrong with me and who I was needed to be changed.  So if there was something wrong with me that I needed a different name and a different birth date then I should never know who the people were that gave birth to me because they ARE the reason something is wrong with me.”
When an adoptee “accidentally” hears information about the first parents that includes some of the reasons the first mom or dad didn’t or couldn’t raise him/her, the recurring thought of shame invades thinking.  Since the information was “overheard” and not openly discussed, more thoughts of shame emerge because “there MUST be something wrong with me because my history can’t be discussed openly and something was wrong with the people who gave me birth. I’m from those people. Something is wrong with me.”

Beyond this, the message of shame and wrong become substantiated with sealed records and losing civil rights to knowing the heritage and personal information about themselves. Hiding information, falsifying documents, and creating an environment of secrecy are the standard in the adoption world today. Undeniably, the adoptee is the loser in this scenario. Grateful for the “home,” grateful for being “saved from the wretched environment,” grateful enough that many adoptees won’t “rock the boat” due to a created environment of “ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.” Many adoptees will justify not searching or not wanting to know about their original families by indicating that the adoptive parents are “my parents” and “I don’t need to know who my birth family is in order to be happy.” These statements exemplify how well the adoptive parents did the job they were told to do with inculcating the adoptee into a culture of a surreal life and family.