Without a doubt my life has been blessed by Korean adoption. Six years ago we embarked on a journey that has led to our lives having little resemblance to what they were before. And every day I’m thankful for blessings Korean adoption has brought into my life.

But this campaign bothers me. The fact is international adoption is complicated. Our daily life is complicated because of adoption: fear, anxiety, sadness, racial awareness, language learning, and cultural awareness.

Then you add in the things I know now about Korean adoption. The lack of women’s rights. The discrimination against single mothers and their children. The coercion that is part of the placing process. The fact that placing a child for adoption often isn’t a “choice,” because the word choice implies that there really is another option. For many of these women, there isn’t another option.

It’s just not as simple as advocating for a child. Do I wish every child had a loving family who cherished them? Of course. Does that mean that international adoption is always the right answer? No.

I’m not naive enough to think that the need for adoption would go away if cultural attitudes changed and job equality was better and there was better support for single mothers and that there was less poverty. Even if all of the previous were true there would still be women who would choose to not to parent. But likely there would be less who chose the path of adoption.

If you’ve heard of this campaign, I invite you to read a couple of posts from ThirdMom. Over the last few days, she’s posted about this campaign a couple of times. Here are the direct links to those posts in the order that they were written.

http://thirdmom.blogspot.com/2012/01/voice-of-love-or-love-misled.html

http://thirdmom.blogspot.com/2012/01/jane-jeong-trenka-responds-to-voice-of.html

I especially love the nine things in the second link that Jane Jeong Trenka recommends prospective adoptive parents demand of Korea before they adopt from there.

The fact is the system is broken. Yes, there are children who need homes and families. And they should have them. But if at all possible those homes and families should be the ones they are born into. It’s not always possible. I get that. But until what is broken is fixed, I doubt keeping families intact is even at the top of the list for many in the industry.

For example, I just saw this on Facebook:

 There are 7 billion people in our world. Of these people, about 210 million are orphans. To put this into perspective, the population of the US is around 300 million. The 2011 US average price for a car is $30,000. The average cost of an international/domestic adoption is $30,000. November is National Adoption Month. Don’t just “think” about it. BE a part of the solution. Ask me about building or adding to your family through adoption.

Statements like this bother me because it’s my understanding that so many of those 210 million orphans (if that’s even a true statistic) don’t have to be classified as such. It’s not that many of these children don’t have parents; what they have are parents who for one reason or another can’t care for them. And since adopting I’ve learned that Americans often contribute to the circumstances that prevent these families from staying intact. Our consumerism spreads across the globe and changes lifestyles of those in other countries. (Note: The last chapter in Cheri Register’s book Are Those Kids Yours? talks about this fact, giving examples of how we help create these situations. The book maybe to 20 years old, but it’s still very relevant to the adoptive community.)

It’s not that I don’t think children deserve families–they definitely do. But I think first and foremost, children deserve to be with the families they were born into. Of course, not every birth family is equipped to parent children. I’m not saying that every child, regardless of circumstances, should be left with birth families.

What I’m saying is that I believe we, as Americans, should look first at what we can do to support keeping families together. That may sound like an American thinking they can dictate things to other countries, but that’s not how I feel either.

I believe that most parents want to keep their kids. And if there is something I can do to help that become a reality that is where I’ll put my time and money. Now I choose to ”BE part of the solution” by supporting organizations that work to help these families who face hardships that might tear the family apart.

I’m not against adoption–there are definitely kids who need homes and those children should definitely have loving families. But a loving family doesn’t solve the problems. It doesn’t address the issues causing the break up of these families. Nor does it completely solve the issues for the child, since adoption is messy and comes with loss and trauma.

My prayer is that more families will become educated about the circumstances resulting in these “orphans.” And that instead of rushing in as savior, they instead begin looking to be part of the real solution–keeping families together.

It talks about a study done by the Evan B. Donaldson Institute on the importance of helping your transracially adopted child build a healthy racial identity. And how, in reality, doing so probably the most important thing you can do as a parent, even more important than cultural knowledge and language.

Anyone who has read this blog for long knows how much we love embracing J’s birth culture and learning the language. But I have to agree that the most important thing we’ve done in our five-year adoption journey is make connections with our local Korean American community. Our lives were racially diverse before making those connections, but weren’t rich with Korean Americans, or even Asian Americans. And that general diversity wasn’t enough.

Without those racial/ethnic connections our son felt alone, like he didn’t fit. He had friends, a loving family, a “good” life, but something was obviously missing. And even at 5 years old, J felt that missing part profoundly.

Since starting taekwondo in April with a wonderful Korean American master and many Korean American students, J has found he does fit. Several times a week he’s with others who look like him. Deepening friendships with other Korean adoptive families have shown in him that our family fits. And Korean school allows us to make more connections within our local community while learning culture nuisances that will help J in the future.

The cutlural stuff is fun. Holidays are a blast to celebrate. The food is yummy. And we love the challenge of a new language. And while all of those things have a place of importance in J’s life, ultimately they weren’t enough. The relationships; the mentors; seeing Mom and Dad being the ethnic minority–those are what’s had the most positive impact in J’s sense of self.

But I do wonder, what if we hadn’t nurtured it? Would our son at some point feel that a part of him was or had been suppressed?

He’s always recognized those who look like him. As a baby his eyes would follow Asians, and when he started talking he decided everyone of Asian descent was from Korea like him. We didn’t have to introduce the fact that he looked Asian; we just gave it context and explained about other Asian countries and some of the characteristics Asian people share.

So I tend to believe that even if we hadn’t introduced Korean things to him, he would have felt something was missing especially as he got older and was able to explore the culture on his own.

I hear so many adoptive families say their kids (of similar age) have no interest in Korean things and I wonder why mine does. Is it simply that he’s been exposed to it in positive ways that include our whole family? And that maybe these other kids if similarly exposed would have developed a similar interest? Or is it just part of who he is, and God in his infinite wisdom knew this child would need to be with a family that would allow and encourage and help him embrace that part of him?

I don’t know. And I guess I never well. We’ve chosen to embrace the culture and learn the language. We didn’t have to, but that’s how we thought best to parent this child. And I still believe in my heart that it is best. Even when others criticize me for it.

I’ve started to see parenting our son like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. When our son came home, we began putting together the edge pieces of the puzzle starting with the corners: language, culture/customs, food, and adoption/race/birth family. We knew a few words and phrases in Korean and used them with our son from the day he came home, plus we listened to CDs and watched Korean kids’ shows. We celebrated our first Korean holiday together when our son had been home three weeks and observed certain customs and had Korean food as part of our celebration. And talking about J’s birth family started in the first days home too. As we’ve learned more Korean, tried new recipes, and explored the culture, we’ve added more edge pieces to our puzzle.

I feel like now the edge of the puzzle is pretty much in place; the foundation is there and now it’s time to build on it. At 5-and-a-half years old, J is helping us put more pieces of the puzzle into place. Based on the foundation provided by those edge pieces, he’s let us know that he needs more, which led us to taekwondo and Korean school.

Parenting an adopted child is an ongoing journey in experimentation, but I truly believe it all should start with those four corners of the puzzle: language, culture/customs, food, and birth family. Having the family participate in and embrace these “corners” is a way of embracing and accepting all of who the adoptee is. It acknowledges the child’s roots without separating the child from the rest of the family, provided that the whole family participates.

But not every child needs the same thing, some adoptive parents insist. That’s true, but that’s what makes these corners of the puzzle are even more important. Not every child will need the same thing, but I think every child needs to have exposure to these things so they can make informed decisions about what they do need. If you begin your puzzle with these corners (and whole family participation), you might find that what you’re doing is just right for your child. Or you might find that your child doesn’t even need as much as you’re doing. Or you might have a child like ours who has let us know that even with all we’ve been doing, it’s not enough for him. But no matter what message your child sends you, if you started early putting down these pieces of the puzzle, you’ll know that he is speaking with some knowledge about his needs.

I think a lot of parents don’t feel that their involvement in culture or language is very important. But I feel it’s vitally important, because I believe that parenting is 75 percent what you do and 25 percent what you say. There are so many facets to this for me. I believe that parents make things “normal” by talking about it and/or participating in it. In my life, leadership by example has always gotten the most results. I’ve never felt that I should ask more of my child than I ask of myself. If learning Korean is important for him, then it should be important for me too.

Sometimes I wonder where J would be if we’d parented him differently. If we’d waited for his to “be interested” in Korea, would he be where he is today–proud of his Koreanness and filled with love for his birth family? Would he be so open with us about his thoughts on adoption, his Korean family, or fitting in? We’ll never now the answers to that but I’m pretty happy with where he is right now so I guess I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Those four foundational corners of our parenting have brought our family together in wonderful ways. Now I’m looking forward to seeing how we, with J’s guidance, fill in the rest of the puzzle pieces to reveal the picture of who J was created to be.

First, those comments pushed us to make more contact with the local Korean American community, which is something we’ve known we needed to do but it’s hard and we hadn’t put in the effort we should have. So now J is taking taekwondo from a Korean American master and is getting to see other Korean Americans on a daily basis. J also attended the last four weeks of our local Korean American school’s spring semester as a trial to see if he’d like to attend full-time in the fall. We’ve had friends whose adopted children have had less-than-positive experiences at the school, but our son loved it and is excited to go full-time in the fall. The school is a mixture of full Korean American families, biracial families, and adoptive families. It’s great that J is getting to see the variety of Korean American families that are out there.

And since making these new connections, we haven’t had any more comments about wishing he’d never left Korea, although J’s continued to say he wants to visit Korea. The month before those comments had been a stressful one with the death of my father-in-law and an unplanned visit to Arkansas for the funeral. While the circumstances of that trip were stressful, I think being round the extended family also just emphasized to J how he’s different, which lead to comments that he needed to be where he “fit.”

Even if I “get” where the comments were coming from, I’m thankful that I believe now he’s feeling more like he belongs here–both in America and in our family. But I’ve also started to look at the comments he made from a different perspective. As I reflected on them one day, I realized that most transracially-adopted kids make similar comments at this age, only they often come from a little different perspective. Most, it seems, say things like, “I wish I looked like  you” or “I wish I had hair like you, Mom” or “I wish I’d grown in your tummy.” They aren’t saying they wished they’d never left their birth countries, but they are still commenting on the desire to fit in.

Our son’s comments about desiring to fit in just took a different direction. And I’ve decided I prefer his direction.  Not because I want him to think he doesn’t belong, but because I believe his take on it says that he’s comfortable being of Korean descent. He didn’t desire to look like my husband or I to fit in; no, he desired to go where he knew he’d look like everyone else as his solution to fitting in. And I think in some ways that has to be healthy. To me it says that he’s got a healthy self-esteem in being Korean, which if you read here much you know he’s really into.

Once he leaves the nest society at-large will see him first as Korean (Asian) American so we’ve always thought it’s important that he knows what that means and is comfortable with it. I’ve never wanted him to think he’s white or wish he were. And as I thought on it more, I think his comments said that thus far we’ve helped him build that foundation of positive self-esteem in his Koreaness, as much as they said that he felt he didn’t really fit in.

That’s not to say that we could just sit back and not address his feelings in some way. I think it said to us that we’ve done OK so far, but that now it’s time to take it to the next step. That we’ve laid a foundation but now we NEED others–those who are Korean American–to help us as Jcontinues to build his view of self.

Which is why I’m so, so thankful for the opportunities God has brought into our lives in the last few weeks at just the time we needed them. I know this job of parenting a transracial adoptee isn’t something my husband and I can do alone. And I’m so thankful to be making connections that will allow us, as a family, to become a part of our son’s ethnic community, and ultimately help him on his journey.

The discussion centers around the blog post found here: www.declassifiedadoptee.com/2011/05/guest-post-being-adopted-when-your.html. I recommend reading it but the gist of the post is that the adoptee never felt that she fit in with her family, which included biological children of her adoptive parents. After her experience, and the experience of other adoptees that she knows, this adult adoptee has concluded that it’s not in the adopted child’s best interest to mix adopted children with biological children in a family. Many adult adoptees left comments on this post expressing similar experiences and concerns.

But many of the comments on the adoptive parents’ discussion board went the way of “she should just get over it” or “I know an adoptee who doesn’t feel this way at all” or “everybody gets picked on for something so why should she whine about it.”

Honestly, these comments are why the adult adoptee community often doesn’t want to interact with APs. Instead of listening and keeping our mouths shut, and preparing for what our future might hold, we have to defend ourselves and the decisions we’ve made. We have to make it about us, which was one of the things that this blogger notes in the first few paragraphs and ironically was one of the comments that  most riled the adoptive parents. Here’s the statement the blogger makes to adoptive parents:

Be calm, this isn’t about what is in your best interest, this post is about what is in the best interests of the child and while I understand that is on the very bottom of the list of what adoptive parents care about, I’m going to take a stab at it anyway. Too often I hear about what is supposed to be in the best interest of the child but if you look deep, it is almost always about the adoptive parents pursuing their dreams. There seems to be much more concern about if the child will fit into the family than if that family is the best one for a particular child but that is its own post.

“What?” APs said. “Us not have our child’s best interest at heart? Well, of course, we do; having a family is what’s in the child’s best interest.” I summarized that quote, but essentially that’s what many of the parents said.

If you’ve read this blog for long, you know that’s not what I believe. While, yes, having a family is in a child’s best interest, I don’t believe that adoption is always in the child’s best interest and I believe that at heart adopting often comes from selfish motives on the part of the parents. I struggle with the part adoptive parents play in creating a “demand” for children to be placed and with the less-than-ethically dealings that this “demand” can lead to (everything from manipulation to human trafficking).

My reaction to blog posts such as the one linked to is to pretend  it is my son saying these things. What would I say to him? Would I tell him to ”just get over it?” Would I tell him that “Johnny” is adopted and doesn’t feel this way so why should he? Would I go into all of the injustices I’ve experienced in my life to show him that he’s not hurting any more than anyone else has?

No, that’s not what I would do, and I don’t believe it’s what most parents would do in dealing with their own children. But they so quick to say those very things to other people’s children because it’s easier to discount these feelings that adult adoptees have than it is to listen, take note, file it away, and be prepared if their child says something similar someday. It’s easier to ignore the feelings of other people’s children, put blinders on, and believe in the mantra “not my child/not my family.”

Given that attitude, it’s hard for me to believe that some APs do have their child’s interests at heart. Parenting is hard; parenting an adopted child adds another layer of hard to the parenting equation. But for me it’s better to prepared for those issues, if they come up, than it is to be blindsided. In today’s adoption community, there’s not excuse for being blindsided; there simply too much information out there in every form imaginable. If in five or 10 years some of these parents are blindsided by adoption issues, it will be because they chose to stick their heads in the sand and ignore all of the information that could have left them prepared.

And how sad it is that more adoptees will have to struggle with parents who are defensive, uneducated about adoption issues, and who generally are not allies for their children on this journey that is life as an adoptee. If not us, maybe the next generation of adoptive parents. Or better yet, maybe in the future there will be so little need for adoption, including international adoption, that none of this will be an issue.

But the first year or two there wasn’t any programming for J. He would have been in daycare while we attended seminars so we decided to wait until he could actually participate in camp-related activities. Then financing became a problem and unemployment meant that camp wasn’t an option. Which brings us to this year, and ironically I have to say that the couple who was thrilled with the idea of heritage camp a few years ago will again not be attending heritage camp. Why this time, you ask? Well, after running the numbers it just doesn’t make financial sense to us.

Here’s a little background. This month J started taekwondo at a dojang with a Korean American instructor that is attended by several Korean American families, and we were given the opportunity to try out our local Korean American school for the remainder of the semester at no cost. So far J is loving both of these opportunities that put him in contact with other Korean Americans on a daily and weekly basis. If we continue Korean school in the fall when the new semester starts, we’d like the whole family to attend given that the school is willing to have an adult beginner’s language course. And, while taekwondo isn’t the cheapest sport out there, we love that it provides a the connection to Korean culture, allows J to learn Korean words, and we believe it’s making a huge difference for J to be around other Korean Americans on a regular basis. He’s figuring out that he’s not alone here as the sole Korean American in our community, which is how I think he felt prior to these opportunities coming along. Eventually my husband and I would like to start taekwondo too.

But both of these opportunities cost money, as does camp. So I priced everything out for our family. What I found was that this year camp would cost approximately $970 for our family of three, including the camp fees, lodging, and meals. (If we tent camped during camp, instead of staying at the lodge, it would be around $460, which is better but still… .) Those figures do not include gas to get to camp, any purchases made at the Korean market they have each year, or any other incidental expenses.

So those “four” days of culture camp (staying at the lodge) would cost the equivalent of eight months of taekwondo (at full price without discounts they offer) or one-and-a-half years of attending Korean school for our whole family. (Even if we tented camped the cost of culture camp would equal almost four months of taekwondo at the full price or one semester of Korean school for our whole family plus an additional semester for one family member.)

If money were no object–if, for instance, our family won the lottery–I’d say we do it all. But given that money is an object, I think we have to get the most bang for our buck. And that just doesn’t seem to be culture camp, at least not the one closest to us. “Four” days of camp is really more like one-and-a-half to two days of actual programming, when you factor in registration day and free time you’re allotted to do recreational things as a family. The camp is run by adoptive parents, which isn’t bad, but I’d personally like it better if the local Korean American community had a leadership role in the camp (local Korean Americans are invited as guests and participate, but to my knowledge don’t help plan the programming). A couple of great things about camp include the camp counselors, who are all adult adpotees, and meeting many other families just like ours. But the likelihood that those families live in our community isn’t great from the stats that I’ve heard, and we have a local program through which we can interact and get to know adult adoptees.

While I’m sure we’d all have a good time at camp, and I don’t dispute it has merit, it just seems like taekwondo and Korean school can provide more for our family right now. Five-day-a-week taekwondo classes and weekly classes at our local Korean school give us regular opportunities to meet and interact with Korean American families in our area, which is one thing we think is really missing for our family. In addition to learning a sport, language, and culture, we’re hoping to make lasting connections and friendships through these opportunities.

Only time will tell at this point. Maybe this time next year, I’ll be back on this blog touting what a wonderful and irreplaceable opportunity heritage camp is. But for now we’re going to stick with the local opportunities that have presented themselves and see where they lead. I’ll keep you updated.

I’m far from an expert on this subject but I am trying to gather more information. If you’re interested in more information about dual citizenship for Korean adoptees, here’s a couple of places you can go to learn more.

G’OAL (Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link), one of the groups who held get the legislation passed, has an online forum where you can get more information. The address is www.goal.or.kr/forum/. You’ll have to register for this site.

And G’OAL has also published a booklet on the subject that can be purchased from Amazon. Right now it’s only in Kindle edition, but I’ve been assured they are working on releasing the booklet in other formats. You can check find the Kindle edition here: http://www.amazon.com/Dual-Citizenship-ebook/dp/B004R9Q5MC/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1303492601&sr=1-3-fkmr0.

As I learn more, I’ll pass along what I learn and where I’m finding the information. I excited that this is now possible for our kids!

We were about three weeks into our process when we had our PIP class and began learning about the importance of embracing our son’s birth culture. And we took those lessons to heart; within a month we’d eaten Korean food and found someone to begin teaching us the language.

But looking back I have to admit that even then I didn’t completely comprehend what “culture” was. Like many parents, I think I fixated on culture from a historical context. Yes, food was important, as was etiquette and understanding common courtesies, but at that point I didn’t think at all in terms of pop culture.

In the last year, my thoughts on J learning Korean culture have shifted. It started with last year’s World Cup and Big Bang’s Shouts of Reds victory song. We already knew that the whole country of South Korea gets behind its World Cup teams because we’ve been soccer fans for several years. But as we watched the games and read stories from South Korea, we better understood that the World Cup experience (including the various victory songs and dances, the red shirts, bandanas, and scarfs) was part of the country’s national consciousness.

That message has been reiterated twice more since then. First at a Chuseok celebration we attended at a local Korean church last September. The teens did a dance that had been made popular by a Korean pop group, and almost everyone in the audience knew the dance. The second instance happened recently while we were at a culture day camp put on by a local Korean American Student Association. J was drawing pictures of Big Bang while we wanted for the other kids to arrive. And when the college students saw what he was doing they began playing Big Bang music on the computer and later one played part of a Big Bang song on the piano. Big Bang is big in South Korea right now and, like them or not, if you live there or are of Korean descent you probably know who they are.

Not really so different from living in the U.S. While I don’t listen to Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, or Katy Perry (we’re listening to Big Bang), I know who they are. TV shows, movies, actors/actresses, music, and books are part of our national consciousness.

So now I feel that these pop culture experiences are of equal importance to the historical culture, etiquette, and common courtesies when it comes to teaching J about the South Korean culture. If J only learns about Korean drumming, wearing hanboks, and traditional games, there will be a hole in his understanding of Korean culture. Thanks to his Big Bang obsession, hopefully when he’s older he’ll be able to talk to others of Korean descent about the Korean music scene. (He’s saying he’s ready to branch out and listen to more than Big Bang, but no girl groups, please. Yuck! –Remember he’s 5.) And we’re already lining up Korean dramas that will be age-appropriate for him once he starts to read (or understand more of the Korean language).

I realize that not all adoption sending countries have a thriving pop culture, though I suspect most countries have some forms of pop culture. But South Korea does, and it’s easily accessible in the U.S. And now I think we’d be missing an important part of embracing the Korean culture if we ignored the pop culture aspect. Fortunately we love it. But love it or not, when we adopted J, I believe we adopted his heritage and his culture too.

Will knowing about music, movies, shows, and actors automatically allow J to fit in if/when he returns to Korea someday? Of course not, but it’s another piece of the puzzle that is parenting a transracial international adoptee.