July, 2008
Interview By Livia Montana
Read Part one
Livia Montana: There’s a quote from your website that struck me: “Only a tiny minority of children and families are touched by adoption, but as a symbol of identity and belonging, adoption speaks to us all.” Why do you think that adoption is such a powerful symbol?
Ellen Herman: As a legal arrangement, adoption is something that affects very few people. So people often say, “Why does it matter what you do? It doesn’t apply to everybody.” But there are stories, the Moses story in the Bible or adoption stories in fairytales, which have long been of enormous interest to many people who aren’t adopted because adoption is a window onto questions that every human being, in every culture, at just about every moment in time has had reason to encounter. Everyone, whether they’re adopted or connected to adoption or not, has the questions, “Who am I? Where do I belong?”
LM: How did you come up with the title for your upcoming book Kinship by Design? (University Of Chicago Press; November 15, 2008)
EH: “Design” is the key term for the book. “Design” is meant to connect adoption to a much bigger history of deliberate planning, science, and systematic thinking about how we do a lot of things. With adoption history in the 20th century, I try to take a look at all the efforts to make adoption better, to perfect it, and to design families in a way that would be in the best interest of children. I’m not saying that this was necessarily successful and not everybody agreed that design was such a great idea, but it was a very dominant way of thinking about adoption.
LM:It’s a great title.
EH: Thank you. The other thing about the title is that a lot of people who are involved in adoption or just who observe it think of it as being a kind of family you can engineer and make choices about. “Choice” is the other key term that’s connected to design. Let’s just take the girl/boy example. If you’re planning to get pregnant and give birth, there are all sorts of techniques that you can use to increase your chances of getting the girl or getting the boy, but you can’t a hundred percent say, “I want a boy, so I’m going to conceive and give birth to a boy.” Whereas, if you’re working within an adoption agency, you can say definitively, “I want a boy. I’m only interested in adopting a boy,” and if you get a child, that agency is going to give you a boy.
LM: Let’s switch to adoption memoirs for a moment. On your website you state, “During the past three decades, more stories have described more adoptions more openly than in the past, but they have done so with more ambivalence.” I was wondering if you had any ideas about what that increased ambivalence is about or why it’s coming about in adoption memoirs.
EH: Some of what I think has gone on in recent memoirs is that there’s a lot of ambivalence expressed about the way adoption was structured; in particular, the policies of secrecy and anonymity that structured so many adoptions in the middle of the century. The people who are telling their stories now were adopted under that regime. Some of the ambivalence they’re expressing is just part of the larger movement to reform adoption, to ask questions about whether it’s a good thing to sever natal families from adoptive families forever and permanently.
LM: What other types of ambivalence are being expressed in recent memoirs?
EH: There are certain people who are ambivalent about adoption as an institution, who think there’s no arrangement no matter how well-designed or structured that can actually serve the interest of children. Some people oppose adoption as a way of forming family life, and they think there’s no set of circumstances under which severing a child from natal kin is a good thing or an acceptable thing. I also think that in an era that championed openness there’s been much more encouragement to writers to share openly whatever it is they think.
LM: Were there adoption memoirs written in the past?
EH: There were adoption narratives, but they were less common. The ones that were published were often written anonymously. The people who were brave enough to write them were often not brave enough to put their names on them. That tells you something, all by itself, about how difficult it was for people to just speak up and say, “This is my story.” There was a kind of stigma attached to it.
LM: How do you think future historians will regard this time period in adoption history?
EH: There is a sort of self-conscious rethinking of adoption policies, practices, and theories. It’s an era of enormous reform and ferment that is connected to a much larger era of ferment about the nature of family life in general. So I think adoption is just one part of a much larger revolution in thinking about what family is. I think it will be seen as a part of a movement towards a much more pluralistic understanding of family life; that there are many kinds of families and many arrangements that are deserving, both culturally and legally, of the label “family.” The other thing that’s really impressive to any historian of adoption in the 20th century is how fashions have come and gone. My prediction is that adoption, like all other dimensions of family life, will continue to change in the future. But the fundamental questions around identity and belonging—who am I, where do I belong—those questions, they’re with us forever, I think. People in the future will still have them. And they’ll have a whole different set of terms and circumstances through which to answer them.
Interview By Livia Montana
Read Part two
Livia Montana: How did you become interested in the history of adoption?
Ellen Herman: There’s a professional reason and there’s a personal reason. I was a historian for quite a while before I started doing work on adoption history. My area of interest is the history of the human sciences, and I wrote a book on psychology a while ago. One issue that had always interested me was the history of the nature/nurture debate. The personal reason has to do with my own family situation. My partner and I were among the first people in the state of Massachusetts who went through a legal procedure now called second parent adoption, where two people of the same sex (they don’t have to be a same sex couple—they could be two sisters or two brothers, for instance) can legally and jointly adopt a child. This was back in the early 1990s. It gave me a personal experience of living on the legal frontier in terms of family life. That was very compelling.
LM: Is the interest in the history of adoption recent?
EH: There are historians who have always been interested in subjects that are very closely connected to adoption history—the history of working children, the history of orphanages, or the history of infertility, for instance. But the people who are interested in the history of adoption as an institution in its own right, especially in the 20th century, that’s pretty recent. In some ways it’s been harder to create a history of modern adoption than it was to, let’s say, write the history of children moving between households and families in the 18th century or the 19th century. This difficulty has been due to the records issue. Historians depend on the documentary record. If we can’t access records, we can’t write history.
LM: Who was the pioneer in this field?
EH: The pioneering scholar who wrote the first book-length history is Wayne Carp who teaches at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. He published a book called Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption. That was back in 1998. Now, all over the country, there are many more scholars and students writing books, research projects, articles, and dissertations that have to do with adoption history.
LM: You’ve created an online site called The Adoption History Project. What inspired that website?
EH: The internet has become such a presence in the adoption world for so many reasons and in so many ways. It seemed like a great idea to reach out, to translate the research that I had done into this format that was very democratic, accessible, and approachable.
LM: What would you say is the value of becoming familiar with the history of adoption?
EH: History puts our own thinking and our own practices into a larger perspective. For example, I think it’s very helpful to people that are alive now and thinking about adoption to understand that the regime of closed, secretive, and anonymous adoption that so many reformers are trying to change is a relatively recent historical creation. It’s not a primordial dimension of adoption. Before “the adoption closet” came into being, there were long periods of historical time where openness—the kinds of openness that reformers are interested in now—was more the norm.
LM: You’ve spoken about the idea of history building empathy. I found that very compelling. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
EH: By empathy I don’t mean agreement; it’s actually connected to making things a little more complicated. Knowing the larger perspective makes it harder to characterize the adoption world as one where you’ve got heroes and you’ve got villains. It’s a little more complicated when you don’t see the people you disagree with as villains. Then you have to try to figure out why the people who created the “adoption closet” believed very deeply that it was absolutely the best thing for adoption and for adopted children. And to really absorb why they thought that was a good thing, you have to put yourself in their time and in their heads. That’s what I mean by empathy. It doesn’t mean you should change your vote on the ballot measure that it’s in your state about opening records now or in the future.
Read Part two
Lilly and Meg met each other for the first time during this dialogue
About Lilly and Meg:
Lilly: is a bi-racial adoptee who was adopted by Caucasian parents. She re-united with her African American mother in 1991. She is a culturally sensitive licensed clinical social worker who will be reaching out to the adoption community. Lilly has participated in adoptee support groups in the past and looks forward to continuing her work with adoption issues.
Meg: Is a joyful mama to an 18 month old daughter, Quincy. Meg and her partner Kelly adopted Q at birth through an open adoption. We are grateful for the presence of Quincy’s first mother in our lives and actively encourage the relationship between Quincy and her first mother. Meg is also a graduate student in counseling psychology, working towards her license as a professional counselor.
Lilly: You know…we are talking about this movie but I just keep wondering about your open adoption. I think it is fascinating.
Meg: The same is happening to me too. I keep going back to your bio to read it again and I’m wondering things and want to ask you questions.
Lilly: I am all for that
Meg: Same, it is fine with me to go that direction.
Lilly: Okay, so, how did you decide on open adoption? Why that choice and how did you know that the family or mother you were working with would be a good match for open adoption?
Meg: We decided on open adoption because we believe wholeheartedly in open, honest communication and couldn’t imagine doing an adoption that didn’t also strive toward those beliefs. When we were matched with our daughter’s first mother, after our daughter was born, we had no idea how well it would actually play out in terms of openness.
Lilly: So what characteristics did you seek in the family you have the open adoption with?
Meg: We mostly wanted a first family who wanted to become a part of our family in a way that worked for everyone. We wanted our child to know her first family, to be able to ask questions as she gets older, to know who she looks like and things like that, and for there to be no secrets.
Lilly: Ahhh, that was what I was wondering, because I have heard too many “unhappy” stories about open adoption and at the same time, what I struggle with is that it is so unfair to adoptees to not have the ability to know their bio parents. I applaud you and am happy to hear that yours is working out well. I am appreciative of your situation, especially because I so strongly believe that having to search for information about where you come from is not right!
Meg: I agree that having to search isn’t fair at all. I think keeping that information away from adoptees is cruel. When our daughter was placed with us, her first mom wanted no visits at all, and very limited contact. For the first 11 months of her life, we never heard from her, even though we were sending photos and letters per our agreement. And then she opened the door right before our daughter’s birthday. (Just to clarify, when I say “our daughter” I mean all three of us, my partner, myself and Q’s first mother. And I would include her first father in that too, but we don’t know him at all and possibly never will.)
Lilly: Oh…that is wonderful. I am so glad the birth mom responded. I still struggle with not knowing my bio dad
Meg: We worry about that for Q a lot.
Lilly: Yes. But I will say that at least knowing her natural mother will make a big difference.
Meg: We really hope it will make a big difference. How old were you when you reunited with your bio mom? And was your adoptive family supportive of your search?
Lilly: Yes, I was in college (20 I think), I came home for break and my stepmom brought me to the agency and then I returned to college. Eight months later, I got a call and the rest is history. I think it was harder on my adoptive mother than my adoptive father. My parents divorced when I was three and I was raised by my dad and stepmother.
Meg: That often is the case, that adoptive mothers have a hard time with the search and reunion part. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around that, because I have such a strong desire for my child to know her first family. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your sense of your bio mom’s experience of placing you for adoption?
Lilly: Truth is she was 14 when she had me. In those days, (early 70’s) young mothers were often pushed to give their kids up for adoption. I was in a foster home for 8 months, during which time she became pregnant again. At that point, the adoption worker pushed her to give me up. She did not give up my half sister.
Meg: Yes, I understand there was enormous pressure for young mothers to “choose” adoption – I’m using quotes because I don’t think it often felt like a choice at the time, more like coercion or complete lack of support for any other decision.
Lilly: Yes. Absolutely.
Meg: What do you think made her circumstances different with your half sister?
Lilly: My bio mom was frustrated and angry at the worker. I think because she was so hurt having to give me up that she was determined to not let my sis go. It was hard for her and was not her first choice. She had little support at home. She also ended up raising my Auntie who is only one year older than I am! It was a fairly messed up family situation!
Meg: Wow, she had a lot on her plate, for sure. And to think she had people telling her she couldn’t or shouldn’t do it, and she went ahead and did it.
I also didn’t write in my bio that our daughter is biracial, and we are white. Her first mom is African American, her first dad is Greek.
Lilly: Definitely. Now all I can think about is meeting you some day and your little one. I am so supportive and intrigued by bi-racial-ness! I often have dreams of starting a movement. I remember various celebrities over the years who basically denied one or the other “side of themselves”. I wanted them to stand up for being bi-racial!
Meg: Yay for being biracial and honoring all parts of your heritage and race I think that is really important. I want to meet you someday too!
How do you feel your parents did raising you, as white parents of a biracial daughter?
Lilly: Oh, my lovely parents… missed the boat in so many ways. They are well-educated, loving people who did the best they could. They are very accepting of people and taught me great core values… Eventually, I decided to go to Africa to find myself. I found my husband in the process, and we have two beautiful children, 14 and 8, boys, I am still waiting for my girl and after yrs of saying I would never adopt, am now considering adopting.
Meg: Wow. What was it like going to Africa to find yourself?
Lilly: Going to Africa was amazing…although I was clearly seen as an American, I also fit right in. I was treated with such respect. I couldnt explain it all in this dialogue
Meg: Right, it must have been huge, too big for this space.
Why did you say you would never adopt?
Lilly: I never wanted to adopt because I wanted to create my own legacy. I never wanted my child to wonder where he or she came from, and to have to go through all I went through for years.
Meg: Makes sense to me. I never want my kids to have to wonder either. Reading what you wrote about your parents makes me wonder what Quincy will think of us as she grows older.
Lilly: Quincy will appreciate what you have done for her. You are being thoughtful and conscientious. You are exposing her to important cultural issues and I believe strongly that is important. I think where my parents failed was exposure. There simply were no African Americans around!
Meg: We are doing our best to be thoughtful and conscientious. We worry because most of our community is white. But we are making connections and reaching out. School feels so far off. But we think about it already. We are moving soon to NE Portland, which is much more racially diverse than SE where we live now.
Lilly: Well, if nothing else, seeing her first mother is important. I think that if we did not attend the church we attend (which is mainly Africans) then I would push my husband to move as well.
Meg: And we have a community of other families who have adopted transracially, so Q will have peers who are kids of color being raised by white adoptive parents too.
Lilly: That is the way to do it. Can you imagine being one of three “brown” people in the first eighteen years of your life?
Meg: No, I can’t imagine that experience of being one of three brown people. One of three queers maybe, but that’s different because it isn’t always visible, whereas skin color is.
We think about the church aspect a lot. We were both raised Catholic, but neither of us have those beliefs anymore. And as a queer couple we question how welcome we would be in some churches.
Lilly: Yes, that is tough too. There are some churches that are open, but the community programs and support programs out there are likely better for your family.
Meg: That has been what we have found so far too.
Lilly: Yes, that is a whole other two hour conversation! So, why choose adoption? Was it you or your partner who was interested? You adopted in the US I assume? Why did you choose the US?
Meg: My partner always wanted to adopt from the time she was little. I really liked the idea of adoption, but also had a strong urge to be pregnant and give birth. I actually had to convince her to try this first. But I wasn’t able to get pregnant, and she has some health issues so wasn’t ready to try at the time. Adoption was our next choice, but never really a second choice.
Lilly: Frankly I think it takes a lot of courage to adopt and to give birth!
Meg: And yes, we chose domestic open adoption, mostly because of the rules in other countries barring queer families from adopting. We weren’t willing to lie and say we were single. I think parenting of any kind takes a lot of courage. And giving birth takes something a lot stronger than courage that I can’t think of the word for.
Plus as white adoptive parents, we hoped we would build a relationship with our child’s first family. If adopting transracially, it would help us with the cultural piece. And more important than helping us, it would help our child to be connected.
Lilly: Ahhh….I learn something new every day. I really appreciate the choice of domestic adoption. Knowing that there are so many parentless children in America, I sometimes get upset about all these parents or singles adopting from other countries. We have so many to take care of here!
Meg: I haven’t gotten to the point of being upset about it, but I do worry that the needs of kids adopted internationally aren’t being met when it comes to being taught about the culture of their homeland. I mean I’m not upset that people adopt internationally, just that I don’t think it’s always handled responsibly.
Lilly: Absolutely. I know there are some organizations that provide a fair amount of support, meetings through out the year etc. However, when the child wants to search, that’s when my heart breaks.
Meg: Yeah, that piece breaks my heart too. Again, this is why, for us, open adoption was the only thing we could choose to do. And even with that, we still hardly have any information about Q’s father. Not having contact with her first mom would be so hard for us. We were really afraid it would never happen.
Lilly: Does the first mother know who the bio father is?
Meg: Yes. But they aren’t in contact at all as far as we know. He doesn’t know Q exists.
Lilly: Oh, sad, I wonder if he would want to know.
Meg: I hope he would want to know. I want that for Q. Someday we will broach the subject with her first mom, when we are feeling very brave.
Lilly: My bio mom was fairly non-helpful in the beginning when I kept pressing her for information about my natural father. And even in later years, she had a hard time with my perspective that I had a right to know who he is or was. Now, she has tried to help. I have been working off and on to get this man to take a DNA test. But it is not easy. Some days I cry and other days it is the last thing on my mind.
Meg: So she knows who she thinks your bio dad is, but isn’t sure? I can imagine that it isn’t always at the forefront of your mind. But it never really goes away either, the wondering… Do you look like your bio mom or your bio dad? Q’s first mom says Q looks just like her. And I’ve never seen a photo of her father, so I don’t have any other point of reference. She does look a lot like her first mom.
Lilly: Well, she thinks it is one of two people and she really wants it to be one who she claims she was in love with. Anyway, someday I truly hope I find and meet my natural dad. It is important to me. There are some things that I just can’t explain, mainly medical. And I know all my maternal side’s medical history now so I can only conclude that it comes from him. But more than that, like most children, I want the “approval,” the “pride” from him. For him to see all I’ve accomplished and who I turned out to be.
Lilly and Meg met each other for the first time during this dialogue
About Lilly and Meg:
Lilly: is a bi-racial adoptee who was adopted by Caucasian parents. She re-united with her African American mother in 1991. She is a culturally sensitive licensed clinical social worker who will be reaching out to the adoption community. Lilly has participated in adoptee support groups in the past and looks forward to continuing her work with adoption issues.
Meg: Is a joyful mama to an 18 month old daughter, Quincy. Meg and her partner Kelly adopted Q at birth through an open adoption. We are grateful for the presence of Quincy’s first mother in our lives and actively encourage the relationship between Quincy and her first mother. Meg is also a graduate student in counseling psychology, working towards her license as a professional counselor.
There were five adoption-themed movies released in U.S. theaters in 2007: The Italian, Meet the Robinsons, August Rush, Martian Child, and Juno. What do you make of this many adoption themed movies being released in one year? Why do you think movie executives believed people would pay to see adoption-themed films?
Meg: From what I know, Juno is the only one that seemed to get people outside the adoption triad/constellation interested in adoption. It had the most mainstream appeal, and got the most attention. I think people like stories about families and adoption is a type of non-traditional family that isn’t such a hot button topic as queer families, etc.
Lilly: Juno is a clear message about adoption. I think execs believe people will pay to see well acted movies with intriguing themes. Adoption is an intriguing theme not just because of media hype but also because people in general are always trying to figure out their identity.
Meg: That is true. And they definitely nailed the casting for Juno. The whole thing had a hip, indie feel to it, and movies about coming of age and identity are always popular.
Lilly: Anything that truly challenges people to burn some brain cells thinking about human existence and how we “make it in this world” are catching I think.
Meg: I agree, those existential angst movies are usually big at the box office. I think this movie made the whole adoptive experience look easy from Juno’s point of view. Not exactly a joyride, but I didn’t think it went into much depth about her experience of choosing adoption for this baby. And what she might feel like after placement, especially since she wanted to do it as a closed adoption. But it wasn’t really a closed adoption anyway.
Lilly: I think the movie did a good job at challenging viewers to consider all three members of the adoption triad, AND the often forgotten “father” or male aspect of adoption!
Meg: It didn’t go into what the child’s experience will be. I wish it would have looked ahead at that a little bit.
Lilly: I think that it challenged viewers to consider that sometimes, those that give their child up for adoption actually do so with a clear conscience and with good intent. We often think that the birth mother is filled with angst so I appreciated that aspect.
Meg: Interesting point, Lilly. I think it did show a side to first mothers that is different. My fear was that it shrank away from the possible angst that Juno was feeling. But then again, that might be projection of some sort. I think it showed the dedication that adoptive parents have to becoming parents, and the ways in which we are sometimes simultaneously wearing our hearts on our sleeves as we wait, and also are very guarded.
Lilly: What touched me the most was the little note that Juno left on the door. “I’m still in it if you are”. That speaks to me because we have so many different ideas in this world about what family is. Juno had this vision of two cool parents, perfectly situated to care for this child, then she was willing to let that vision go to allow this desperate mom to fulfill her dream.
Meg: That was powerful, that note, and Juno being willing to let go of her perfect image of what family would be. That was something she had been forced to acknowledge in her own life with her own parents too. That message is important; that ultimately there is no perfect family. Every family has flaws and struggles. These are the things that make it wholly unique, good and bad.
Lilly: I think Juno was a hit because it has several powerful messages and layers. For instance, the movie challenged viewers to think about the father. Fathers, both the “birth father” and adoptive father, are so often left out of the conversation. They are vital to the conversation and I wish the movie would have expanded on this. We talk about the first mother or adoptive mother consistently but what about the first father, or adoptive father? The baby would not be in existence without a man. I appreciated Juno showing the interesting relationship between Juno and the potential adoptive dad as well as the scenes with Bleeker.
Meg: I agree. The scenes with Bleeker were really interesting to me. When Juno told him, his first comment was what should we do? He wasn’t delegating the entire situation to Juno. But then again, he also didn’t want to tell his parents that he was the father of Juno’s baby, a luxury Juno didn’t have. The character of the would-be adoptive father was interesting too. Often, although both partners want to become parents, one is more excited than the other. In straight relationships this is often the woman, but not always. And in queer relationships there is often one partner more ready, more committed to the process than the other. Of course, we are led to think that he is a jerk in the movie, and he mostly was. But I appreciated his honesty about not being ready, and deciding to bail before the baby came, instead of after.
Lilly: Interesting. I never thought of the character as a jerk in any way! I thought he was grounded and interesting. I guess I appreciated the character being honest and real.
Meg: Hmm. I found him a little condescending to Vanessa, which I didn’t like. But I did find him honest and also genuine in terms of being true to what mattered to him and not committing to something he wouldn’t follow through on (except his marriage of course). It was my impression that he was hitting on Juno which was what mainly made me think he was a jerk.
Lilly: Wow interesting. I did not get that either. I thought that the writers were trying to show Juno as hitting on him but ultimately, they maintained a sincere relationship!
Meg: I would feel mixed about recommending this movie to other triad members. From my experience, adoptive parents seem to love this movie. I haven’t spoken to any first parents about it, but I would feel a little apprehensive because of the way I think it shies away from, and simplifies some of the challenges of choosing adoption for your child. I wish that more first parents had experiences that went as smoothly as Juno’s seemed to in the movie. This movie touches on some universal themes that are useful and interesting to everyone, not just people touched by adoption in their lives. Things like finding yourself, how we make intensely personal decisions that intersect with moral choices (like abortion), what family means and who constitutes family, etc.
Lilly: While I agree that it was somewhat simplistic regarding Juno’s character and her choice, I really appreciated it. I think that is because my bio mom was only 14 when she had me and ultimately chose adoption for me. Again, I think it shows a side, one that is often not talked about. But I would recommend it to anyone really. I think it is a movie that can speak to anyone!
Lilly: You know…we are talking about this movie but I just keep wondering about your open adoption. I think it is fascinating.
Meg: The same is happening to me too. I keep going back to your bio to read it again and I’m wondering things and want to ask you questions.
Lilly: I am all for that.
Meg: Same, it is fine with me to go that direction.
