Savior Complex

Savior Complex

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Today I finished this latest piece in the Silent Voices series. Only a handful of people have seen it as I was working on it. I was told it was - creepy but effective and potentially offensive. I guess they're both right. I don't think I could've painted an image like this years ago. We all go through stages of development and healing when dealing with issues about adoption. At the beginning of the series I was painting as a catharsis. It was my own personal therapy. As the series progressed it became more about a statement on infant adoption in general.

When I started sketching for this piece I think I had Kathryn Joyce's book The Child Catchers in the back of my head. If you haven't read it, it's an important read. I highly recommend it.

Infant adoption is seen as such an idyllic institution. People love the idea of saving babies. Who wouldn't? And it gets better.... not only do they see adoption as saving little babies, they see it as saving the baby's mother from a life of shame and drudgery, limited opportunities and poverty. Of course religious folk are gonna jump all over that. They're encouraged by their pastors and consider it a mission. Some focus their mission here in the United States and some go overseas to bring babies back to what they consider to be a much superior country.

What does that say to the international adoptees when they grow up? Do they consider their lost culture to be inferior? And what are they saving the domestic adoptees from? In days past children of single mothers were considered bastards. People truly thought they were saving a child from the stigma of being illegitimate. That's not the case anymore so what is it? Some claim it's from a life of abuse or neglect. And they would know that how? Maybe if she had some support and the opportunity to raise her child she could be an excellent mother. 

Being young does not equal bad. Unmarried does not equal bad. Young and unmarried does not automatically equal abusive and neglectful.

The comments I see from people are the typical..... "well it's better than the baby ending up in a dumpster". If they take the baby away from his mother right away, they can save the child from certain death. Why is this the view? Is this a hold over from the old days of unwed pregnant girls being considered mentally unstable and neurotic? Exactly how does putting a ring on a finger suddenly make a woman mentally stable and capable of mothering?

So, in the process of saving the baby, the baby is traumatized. The baby grows up with a feeling of abandonment and no knowledge of her beginnings - in the case of closed adoption. And in the case of open adoption (we know that 80% of those close in the first couple of years) she has knowledge of her history but is still left with the feeling of abandonment. In both cases, in the majority of states, her birth records are sealed, hidden from her and she's treated as a second class citizen.

Now what happens to the mother who is saved from this burdened life of motherhood? She is left with a lifetime of grieving that can in some cases become debilitating. It can lead to a life of depression, anxiety and sometimes even suicide. 

The two people who are supposedly saved don't seem to be faring all that well. But... the infant adoption industry seems to do just fine when all this saving is going on. They're making some good money. The adoptive parents seem to be doing just fine. They're growing their family and scoring some religious points in the process. The industry loves to encourage this, it's good for their bottom line and the churches love to encourage this because it brings more followers which is good for their collection plate.

In the meantime, the babies and mothers are the ones sacrificed at the altar of greed.

The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption - A Must Read!

It's about coercion, deception and adoption culture.
I'm not done reading this book but I have to share it anyway. I do believe it's a must read for anyone who is thinking of adopting, thinking of relinquishing, has been adopted, knows someone who adopted, knows an adoptee, knows a mother who lost a child to adoption, interested in the history of adoption, basically anyone and everyone in the United States should read this book. It should be required reading.... period.

Kathryn Joyce brings us the history and the very current state of the adoption industry in The Child Catchers.  As a mother of adoption loss it's a difficult book to read but a fascinating one. Not all of the information contained in the book is new information to me, I've read and learned about some of this before but when put together in the context of adoption's history with what is going on right this minute, and viewing the timeline of a business, it is astounding! And it makes my blood boil.

Here are just a few of the sections I highlighted in my Kindle version. I'm finding so much I want to highlight I might have to buy the actual book so I can really use a highlighter and make notes.

Despite the varied but largely altruistic motivations of evangelical adoption advocates, as a movement it is directing hundreds of millions of dollars into a system that already responds acutely to Western demand- demand that can't be filled, at least not ethically or under current law. What that can mean for tens of thousands of loving but impoverished parents in the developing world is that they become the supply side of a multi-billion-dollar global industry driven not just by infertility but now also by pulpit commands.

"If you want to look at what's wrong with international adoption, state adoption, and Christian adoption," one agency director told me, "it all has to do with how they treat birthmothers. The common denominator in all of these is that the birthmother is invisible." When you get that, one adoptive parent wrote, it changes everything. Or, as another told me, "It's like the Wizard of Oz. You open the door and either you have to accept it's a house of cards or you stay in denial. There's absolutely no middle ground."

At the local level churches report a "contagious" spread of "adoption culture" that inspires fellow congregants to adopt, with even smaller congregations witnessing as many as one hundred adoptions in just a few years. Often parents adopt multiple children, and many adoptive families swell to eight or ten kids or more. The growth of adoption in churches is so rapid that it's led some Christian leaders to muse that church planters - Christians who help establish new, franchise-like branches of a church community- could build congregations this way.
The viral effect is intentional. Addressing an audience at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2010, the ABBA Fund's director of ministry development, Jason Kovacs, had counseled the crowd that the key to building a church-wide "adoption culture" is to "Get as many people in the church to adopt, and adopt as many kids as you can." He added that they should also "Pray that your pastor will adopt," noting the precedent a pastor can set.
One result has been the creation of "rainbow congregations" across the country, such as Louisville's Highview Baptist, where movement leader Russell Moore, author of the 2009 book Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches and a leading Southern Baptist theologian, is a preaching pastor. There, with the help of an active adoption ministry, members of the church have adopted some 140 children into the congregation. At a ceremony to celebrate them, Moore recalled, Highview's many adoptees toddled onto the stage with flags from their home countries. What brought Moore to tears was realizing that "most of the kids didn't recognize the flags they were holding but they all knew 'Jesus Loves Me'".

There is so much more to this book. I will post more as I get deeper into it but for now, if you want to read about the history of adoption and the current state of adoption in this country, then this is the book to read.