The Angry Adoptee

by Carol Komissaroff

Adoptive parents can be found in increasing numbers attending adoptee support

group meetings hoping thereby to learn more about the adoption experience. They

walk in, eager to learn, and leave, shell-shocked, trying to convince themselves

that what they heard doesn't apply to them or their children. Only the hardiest,

most secure adoptive parents come back for more.

Admittedly, it's hard to hear the anger. It was hard for me, a birthparent,

because it's "my fault" that adopted people feel so bad. If people like me had

never let go of our children, people like them would never have had to feel this

way. It's similarly difficult for adoptive parents because it is also "their

fault" that these people are treated like property, live in an environment in

which the "A" world is discouraged, have adoption-ignorant or unresponsive

parents, and exist in a society in which their needs and desires are

subordinated to the needs and desires of others.

There's also a "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" component to adoptee

anger. Many adoptive parents go away believing that they just can't win. There's

no way that you can get it right, and good intentions count for nothing. Feeling

doomed to failure anyway, some simply throw up their hands in despair, and

forget the whole thing.

Well, that's a bit of an over-reaction. The only difference between adoptee

anger and any other kind of anger is that adoptees rarely talk openly about

their adoption-related anger at home. Why? For two reasons, mostly. First, it is

bad practice to bite the hand that feeds you. Second, it makes their parents

uncomfortable. So, they store it up and let it out in other ways, some of them

anti-social.

What are adoptees angry about? Lots of things. They're angry with people like me

because we gave them away. They need an explanation and an apology. Of course

they can't get one, because we're nowhere to be found, which frustrates them and

makes them mad as hell. Some are also angry because we sent them away from their

"kind," abandoning them to an environment in which they suffer a chronic,

cumulative, vast feeling of unacceptability. The pain, helplessness and

frustration caused by that sort of thing can make a person very mad.

They're angry with people like you because they can't explore the subject of

adoption openly. Why? Because it makes you cringe. They're also angry because

you don't understand how they feel, or worse, denigrate their feelings because

you can't relate to them. Some are angry because they are not your "real"

children. If they had been, the things that make them feel bad would not exist.

Others are angry because your don't always tell them the truth about adoption

related matters, or won't answer basic questions about who they are and where

they came from.

They are also angry because people in general treat adopted people differently:

school teachers type-cast them; health-care professionals treat them as medical

risks; outsiders consider them inferior, assuming that they are the spawn of

people who came from the "other side of the tracks;" relatives don't treat them

like "blood" kin; and many, many people talk of their adoption as freakish, and

implicitly shameful thing. That can inspire quite a lot of anger. After all,

being adopted isn't their fault, and yet they are taking the rap for the

birthparents who acted irresponsibly, adoptive parents operating in ignorance,

and society which isn't evolved enough to treat them the same as everyone else.

As if that were not enough, when adoptees finally reach adulthood and begin to

search for their own answers, society slams a big door in their faces,

emblazoned with the words "sealed records" keeping them away from the

information that they need to complete a personal biography and enjoy a fully

integrated personality. Society obviously does not wish them to be able to

settle down in life with the same opportunity to know who they are and who they

can be, that "normal" people enjoy.

Now that you think about it, don't they have very right to be angry?

"Well," you exhort, "my son/daughter isn't angry. He/she is better adjusted than

that."

Right.

Leaving entirely aside whether denial or suppression of anger is a sign of good

adjustment, let's just assume for a moment that your son or daughter might be,

or might become, a little angry about something having to do with adoption. In

such a case, what should you do?

First, it's useful to find out what they're angry about. Now, it doesn't take a

rocket scientist to know that you don't line up the kids in the living room and

say, "Okay, kids, what is it about your adoption that makes you mad." They're

going to be looking for a hidden agenda, particularly if the "A" word has not

been spoken in your home of late. Or, if the "A" word is in common use in your

home, they will interpret the question as reflecting your problem. Instead, your

task is to pay attention when they are expressing anger or frustration,

listening for the adoption component.

Don't expect to "get it" every time. A fifteen-year-old, mad about a curfew is

likely to be mad about a curfew, not about being adopted - unless it happens to

be your adoptive-parent over-protectiveness which is at the core of the curfew

issue. The same goes for issues revolving around sex. If you've hand-cuffed your

teen daughter to her bed so she won't turn out like her birthmother, or you've

turned her out on the sex issue because you carry infertility baggage, well,

then, there might be an adoption-related component to these issues.

You should know that adoption issues turn up in the most mundane places, often

wearing a cloak of fear or frustration. The anger comes from not being able to

lay that lurking fear or frustration to rest. For example, a teen-age girl in

tears because her complexion won't clear up is partly afraid that it will never

clear up, because she can't look at anyone "like" her to see that there's hope.

Now, if her birthmother were around, and she once had bad skin, well, that's a

different matter entirely. But her birthmother is not around to serve as an

example that everything will turn out all right, or that she'd best take care

because it's only going to become worse.

Similarly, the six-year-old boy who's unduly tall (or short) has nowhere to look

to see whether or not he can expect to "normalize" later in life. And, all you

exhortations that things will work out are just speculations. They don't carry

the authority of a living example, a living example which is infuriatingly out

of reach.

Taking these relatively trivial (to you) things as examples of places in which

adoption anger lurks, what do you do to work it out?

The first thing you do is validate the anger, or frustration, or hurt, or

whatever cloak it happens to be wearing at the time. Brushing it aside makes a

child fell like you don't "care" about things "important" to him/her.

The second thing you can do is to join the party. You, too, can feel angry or

frustrated along with your child. This falls in the "misery loves company"

category of bonding. It may well be true that you don't know the answer, either,

so you are frustrated, too. (Don't overdo this: if a child is deep into

self-pity at the moment, he/she probably wants to wallow in it awhile all by

himself/herself.)

If the child empresses anger or frustration because s/he is unable to "get to"

the answers s/he needs, you've hit "adoption" pay dirt. If, on the other hand,

the child simply shrugs and goes away, fine. You've demonstrated that his/her

feelings are important to you, and opened the door for future discussions.

Of course, if you are in a position to "fix" the problem, you should do it. For

a child worried about an acne problem, if you've got a picture of the

birthparents tucked away somewhere, now is the time to bring it out. If you know

that your child's birthmother never stood taller than 4'10", now is not the time

to suggest that "tall" is in your child's future, even if it is possible that an

unknown birthfather might have been taller.

If fact, that's pretty much how all childhood anger is worked out. Validate the

feeling, empathize, and try to find a way to help work it out. Small successes

in childhood might stave off the "you don't understand me" angst of adolescence.

This file: http://www.oara.org/info_angry_adoptee.html

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*Taken from Quest: The Newsletter of KinQuest Inc. Vol. IV, No 2 (#14)- Autumn

1992