"Those People"

by Diane I. Hillmann

Reprinted with permission
From the Adoptive Families Association of Tompkins County Newsletter

As those of you who read this column are aware, in my "spare time" I am co-listowner of the Internet Adoption List, an active discussion forum of about 750 people, with international subscribers. The group itself is extremely diverse by most criteria (except basic computer literacy!), including all members of the triad, people at all points of the political spectrum, of varying ages and with different experiences of life. Television programs that have episodes pertaining to adoption are often topics of discussion, whether "news" type or situation dramas. The advent of the program Second Noah, with its family of eight adopted kids was greeted with some excitement, though that seems to have died down somewhat (despite the premise, not many of the episodes actually have much to do with adoption).

One program that created quite a wave of discussion was a recent episode of ER, where apparently a very young teen (about 13 I think--I didn't see the program myself) gave birth and reconsidered a plan to place the child with a childless couple. Postings to the list tended towards the emotional, particularly from those prospective adoptive parents who saw themselves in the place of that disappointed couple.

Responders to the original posts took the discussion into some familiar paths: Should 13-year-olds be allowed to make decisions to parent, when clearly they have so few resources and are still children themselves? Must society give them the chance to fail before intervening, when an innocent child is the subject of that experiment? There was some question of drug involvement (though I'm not clear whether it was the 13-year-old or another new mother) and various posters expressed outrage at the irresponsibility of "those people"--meaning the alcoholic, the drug-involved and others perceived to do great damage to their children, in utero or afterwards.

Not too surprisingly, this thread lead into another, exploring the question of whether those with addictions to drugs and/or alcohol were really victims themselves, or chiefly victimizers of their children. Discussion ranged the gamut of societal points of view, from addiction as a disease, to addiction as choice. I read the postings with interest, as usual, nodding my head as articulate arguments were made on one side or the other.

Finally, someone hit a nerve. I posted a message to the list: "Wait a minute," I said, "all this talk of `those people' begs the issue for adoptive parents. We are the people who adopt the children of alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill and the criminally irresponsible." I made the point that it was critical that we look beyond the comfortable distance that discussion of "those people" gives us, and think about a stance on the issues in question that can help us give our children, who may also be the children of "those people," a way to understand the poor choices that their birthparents may have made, without denying them membership in the same human race to which we belong.

Okay, so we get angry sometimes, as we watch our kids struggle with the aftermath of those poor choices. Parents of kids with FAS/FAE or with other permanent damage due to parental drug use or those whose experiences have scarred them for life struggle with these issues of responsibility over and over, even as the kids do. But ultimately, for our children's sake, we need to put our own anger aside, in order to ensure that we do not curse our children for their undeniable connection to "those people," their birthparents.

In order to make better choices for themselves, our kids need to know the facts about alcoholism and drug addiction, in ways that help them understand the genetic predispositions they may have inherited, without denying the choices that they must make in order to have a different outcome for themselves and their children. They must know that they do not carry "bad genes," but that they may have challenges to face that may make some patterns of behavior more dangerous for them than for others. They, more than most, need to understand that biology is not destiny.

We cannot teach them any of that if we cannot bring ourselves to empathize with and humanize the families from which they came. Even if we do not know the facts, we often know the cultural realities the birthparents faced, and we can imagine the situations that may have led to parents not being able to raise their children.

In this context, it behooves us to remember, too, that we cannot separate the birthparents of our children from those who share their situations. What's the message to our children if we rant at the dinner table over newspaper accounts of teenagers on welfare, drug addicts taking over the streets, or other staples of the current rage against "those people?"

Let's face facts: "those people" may be our children's relatives, and by extension, our relatives. Not very distant, after all.

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NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children, Inc.
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08/04/04