The Adoption Myth

I have a precocious nine-year-old sister, who I'll call Lollipop. She's very expressive. Life is either absolutely wonderful or completely awful. Lately she's been into writing stories. As one who has some experience evaluating student essays, I think she's got great voice even if it is a bit wacky at times. Just so you get the idea, here's an excerpt from her recent "autobiography." (I've left everything the same, except for the names, which I changed to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent.)

Well, holy cow. I peered into my room. The place was in shambles, except my
bed and my stuff. My brother is REALLY messy and don’t think he’s like Sherlock
Holmes either because he’s not smart like me. Roger [she used her brother's real
name, but that's about as close as this thing gets to the truth] also ruins
furniture. I crawled out the window, hopped on my four-wheeler and rode to the
Alley. It looked like a ton of Indian wigwams. I have a shop that sells ice cream. “Uh-oh, Tom’s here,” I whispered to Sharon. Tom is a Kid who bullies others. “Lollipop, you will be dead TOMORROW,” he growled. “Right,um, Well, tomorrow is Labor Day,” I pointed out. “ROAR!” I shouted. The silly thing about Tom Slater is that he looks brave, but he’s scared of everything loud. That did it. Two seconds later he was running screaming, “Mama!” over and over while I was laughing triumphantly And scooping ice cream.

As you can see, she has quite the imagination. Sunday night, she offered to read me her most recent story. Again she used her own name and that of her brother, but this time he was three years old (he's actually seven years older than her), and in this story, he swallowed her lizard (another figment of her imagination). But before "Roger" swallows the lizard, Lollipop gets yelled at by her mother. Her fictional mother basically tears her head off.

At this point, I interrupted and said, "Is that really how Mom talks to you?"

"It's just a story! Sheesh!" So Lollipop continued on with her story, reading "My mom hates me. I'm probably adopted and my real mother is a princess who left me on the doorstep in a basket."

At this point, I had to interrupt her again. You see, since it has become clear that Dan and I aren't able to take part in replenishing the Earth, we've been looking into adoption. So, I said, "Whoa, there. What makes you think that people who adopt don't love their kids?"

With growing impatience, Lollipop said, "It's just part of the story. I don't really mean it."

In that moment, it occurred to me that I'd never mentioned our thoughts about adoption to Lollipop, perhaps because I didn't think she'd care. Or maybe it was the fact that, usually when I call home to talk to the family, she often refuses to talk to me. "Well, did you know that Dan and I might adopt?" There was silence on the phone, which either means that she was already tired of talking to me or she was thinking about this idea. "What do you think about that?" I asked her.

"Well, then maybe I'd finally get that niece or nephew everyone keeps telling me about." I liked that response. And I realized that I should probably do a better job of telling her about what’s going on in my life, even if I do spare her the nitty-gritty details.

I admit that once when I was a kid, I tried to tell my sister that she was adopted as a way to get her back for something she did to me. I had picked the idea up from TV. Of course she didn't buy it for a second, and even as I said it, I sort of wondered why that would be such an awful thing. I knew kids that were adopted and figured their lives were probably better because of adoption. As for Lollipop, I'm not too worried that she'll shun my kids because I adopted them or even use it as some sort of way to manipulate them. But the concept itself does bug me. For some reason, this idea that adoption is second-rate seems to persist in some aspects of our culture and I wish it didn't. For the record, I know that adoption is a painful sacrifice for the birth parents, but it's the greatest act of generosity they'll ever do for their baby and the adoptive parents.