A Fresh Perspective on Adoption Disruption

The story of Anita Tedaldi's international adoption disruption was put forth in the New York Times and created a lot of commentary. Personally, I was not too sympathetic on her behalf, and I think the story reflected the fact that that international adoption has a huge potential for this kind of disruption because the levels of screening and training are, frankly, pathetic.

The harshest critic of international adoption I personally know is actually my husband. I have big issues with it, but I also try to keep a nuanced view, and I don't think responsible international adoption is completely impossible. Guy has a stronger viewpoint. Recently, a wife of a colleague of his, on hearing he was an adoptive father, said something off-hand like "oh international adoption is great" and he came right back with "Do you know why people adopt internationally? Because they don't want black babies!"

I know that's not always 100% true... in fact I've met white and black parents who have adopted children from Africa. But among a white, upper-middle-class demographic, it seems like the "default" for adoption is international: Chinese, Guatemalan, Russian. I can predict fairly easily what type of person will ask "what country?" with no clue that anyone they know socially would even consider adopting from U.S. foster care. And that really irritates me.

Anyway, I left a comment about my relative lack of sympathy for Tedaldi over at Harlow's Monkey. I actually believe adoption disruption is warranted in certain circumstances, for the good of the child, but the ex-parents need to take responsibility for what they did... Tedaldi abandoned her child under different circumstances than his first mother, but she still abandoned him.  She shouldn't use her adoptive parent status as an excuse.

I didn't post about it because I don't write that much about international adoption here anymore; I've said most of what I feel like saying already.  I noticed today that the story made it over to Metafilter, however, and I ran across a really fascinating comment from a perspective that isn't often covered.  It's not about international adoption per se, it's about the effects of disruption.  I think it's worth quoting:

Well, that hit home. I've never quite understood or come to grips with what happened to my brother. After adopting him as a young baby, my parents put him in a group home at the age of 8. He then bounced around various groups homes and foster care for the next 10 years. I mean there were some severe incidents, but it's your f*ckin' child. Like somehow if you still have the receipt, there's a return policy on 'broken' humans??

My brother is 5 years older than me, and as a child, I idolized him. The first incident occurred when I was two and a half. Apparently, he figured out that the coffee table in the living room was at the precise height of my mouth. He stood there with the table behind him and from the other side of the room asked me for a hug. As I quickly approached, he moved out of the way and my front teeth magically disappeared (and remained that way until I was 8). That same year, he put me up in our tree house and from the ground told me to jump and he'd catch me. Not so much - I ended up with a broken hip. The final straw (as my parents tell me) was when they came home and he was attempting to drown me in our pool from outside of it.

When my brother turned 18, my father (freshly divorced and neither of the two 'remaining' children speaking to him), went out and found my brother. He brought him to Toronto, and he's been back in my life for the past 20 years. These days, we both live & work together. The only time this part of his past come up, is in jest. I just have to wonder - if the situation were reversed and I, as the only biological child, had been the 'culprit', would they have given me up?

posted by gman at 5:31 AM on September 10

It's a disturbing story, and also inspiring. 

We're never going to achieve a really clear, honest understanding of the reasons behind certain childhood tragedies.  Some mysteries are going to keep eating at us forever... but that doesn't mean that the people involved are doomed to be broken apart forever.  That's what I got out of it.

ETA/P.S.: reading between the lines of the original piece, my educated guess is that Tedaldi figured out that her child had FAS, or some other severe neurological issue.  Even though she totally denies it was developmental and says it was purely attachment-related.  I think that would be the most likely reason to disrupt a 4-year-old child.