When People Violate an Adoptive Family’s Boundaries

This is the twelfth in a series of reflections about a book I’m reading: The Post Adoption Blues: Overcoming the Unforeseen Challenges of Adoption, by Karen J. Foli and John R. Thompson. Parts 1-11 were posted September 12, 14-16, 19; October 11-13, 18, 27, and November 4.

Adoptive families are minorities. They’ve intentionally chosen to create a family through non-traditional means. People stare at them and ask intrusive questions. They may look down on them, acting as if their differences somehow make them less of a family.

“Minority means the potential for more isolation and less support,” write the authors. “It means that people’s frames of reference don’t include the choices we made to become a family.” The reactions of others to an adoptive family may range from benign/malignant ignorance to innocent rudeness to irate accusations to apathetic dismissal.

Innocent questions violate the intimacy of their family:

• Do you know anything about her real mother and father?
• How much did she cost?
• What language does she speak?

The authors write that this familiarity from both strangers and acquaintances stems from the nation that once you have adopted, you are “fair game.” Because you have been given a child from society, you owe society an explanation. “The child is common property between society and you. By signing up for adoption, you relinquish privacy, intimacy, and the ability to remain silent.”

At the root of all the questions adoptive parents get asked is the notion that perhaps this isn’t a real union of parent and child. What society discounts, write the authors, “is the power of unconditional love and the ability of adoptive parents to live this love seamlessly on a daily basis.”