At adoption conferences and web forums, one hears a lot from adopted persons and from parents wondering how to raise their newly-adopted children. Rarely, however, do you hear from adoptive parents whose children are now grown. (Presumably they no longer feel a burning need to attend conferences.)
Cheri Register, author of the classic adoption book Are Those Kids Yours? supplies some of that perspective in her newest book, Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children.
It is quite a different book than Register’s last book on adoption. Are Those Kids Yours? Was more personal, sharing some of Register’s own adoption story and experiences as well as comments from a wide range of adoptees and adoptive parents she interviewed. Register’s two Korean-born daughters are grown now, and she wants to let their story be theirs to tell or not to tell. Her musings here are more general.
Beyond Good Intentions is a book of essays. Register has organized them around ten potential “pitfalls” that she believes well-meaning adoptive parents like herself can unwittingly fall into.
Some of these pitfalls are the unbalanced far ends of a spectrum, such as “Believing Race Doesn’t Matter” (denial of differences, attempts to be color-blind), and “Keeping Our Children Exotic” and “Appropriating Our Children’s Heritage”. These last two are ones I can see myself and others like me falling into. We always remind our children how special their heritage is, dress them up in ethnic clothes, play ethnic music and celebrate ethnic holidays. We are sharing only the surface of the actual culture. As Register says, “if discomfort with the unfamiliar prevents us from making extended visits to [our child’s country] or genuine connections with ethnic communities, the little mock [name your child’s country here] we create at home, or among other adoptive families, has to suffice as our children’s ethnic identity. But it’s a fantasy, a selective assortment of features that suit our values.”
Other pitfalls Register lists are: “Wiping Away our Children’s Past” (keeping the focus solely on our child’s life since joining our family) and “Hovering Over Our ‘Troubled’ Children” (believing they are wounded and sure to have some difficulties, and tending to ascribe any difficulty to an adoption issue).
Remaining essays describe the pitfalls of “Holding the Lid on Sorrow and Anger”, “Parenting on the Defensive”, “Raising Our Children in Isolation”, “Judging our Country Superior”, and “Believing Adoption Saves Souls”.
Not everyone will agree with Register on every issue she considers a pitfall, but thoughtful readers will find a new way of thinking about many of the things they do.
An element of style Register chose has alienated a couple of reviewers, causing them to call her overly negative, anti-adoption, and a hopeless exaggerator. She opens every chapter with a clearly indicated, with different typestyle, “quote” from a fictional adoptive parent’s thoughts. Register herself has said that these are deliberate caricatures, exaggerated to show the dangers of going to extremes on either side of an issue. In her introduction, Register admits to wondering whether adoption has become a safety valve delaying social reform in other countries. I would not call her anti-adoption, however. As she said in her last book (paraphrased here), parents of international children live with many paradoxes. We can live with the paradox of working to promote international adoption while also working to make it unnecessary.
Please see these related blogs:
Book Review: Are Those Kids Yours? By Cheri Register
What Will They Think I’m Doing to One of Their Kids?
Developing Relationships with Cultural Communities, Part Two