My last blog spoke of research on adoptees’ adjustment. I mentioned David Kirschner’s book of worst-case case studies. It is a pain-filled and painful book of adoptees who became criminals. But adoptive parents need not panic.
Kirschner makes no claim that most adoptees will be violent or that adoption is bad, or even that all adoptees will be maladjusted. He believes that looking for a pattern in the court cases he has worked on might illuminate things that don’t work to help adoptees. He believes that his experiences can not only help adoptees, parents and therapists to avoid horrible outcomes, but that these experiences can help other adoptees deal with pain which they may be masking or dealing with in a much less extreme way.
Kirschner claims that being rejected by one’s birthmother is a wounding experience. (My question: do all adoptees believe themselves rejected? Can’t they, with help, come to an understanding of the social, emotional and financial complexities that may have gone into a loving mother’s decision to relinquish? Some adoptees may indeed have been rejected, but others surely were not. Adoptive parents need to learn what their child assumes happened, and share with them, in an age-appropriate way, what actually happened.)
Kirschner believes less extreme ways of showing the pain of this rejection include depression, self-destructive behavior, mild acting out, pushing but not actually breaking acceptable social limits, becoming people-pleasers, or showing avoidance or rejection to others to prevent being rejected again.
One main lesson from Kirschner’s experiences is that all of the violent adoptees he worked with had two things in common: they had been lied to about the circumstances of their adoption, and they had had pain or discomfort about their adoption denied or made light of by parents or professionals. (Assuming Kirschner’s clients were adults or young adults, this happened at an earlier time where it was assumed that adoptees should feel lucky and have no reason to be unhappy, and even that it showed ingratitude to the adoptive parents if one did express pain.)
Please see these related blogs:
What Really Happens When Adopted Kids Grow Up?
Talking About Tough Issues: Abandonment