BastardGrannyAnnie
President George W. Bush has once again declared November as National Adoption Month. He calls upon all Americans to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities to honor adoptive families and to participate in efforts to find permanent homes for waiting children.
I think that finding homes for children who need them is the very essence of adoption. It’s a process that goes on all year long. It doesn’t need a special month.
I’m sick and tired of National Adoption Month because every year since it’s been in existence it’s focuses on little homeless baby adoptees going to wonderful forever famines, which is good. What is not good is that not once has anyone expressed an interest in following these children of adoptees into adulthood. Not once has anyone bothered to inquire about the rights of adopted adults. I’m naive and each year I would wrote lots of letters and articles trying to use National Adoption Month as a segue to the rights of adopted adults. It didn’t happen.
Next year the president should set aside a month to focus on the needs and rights of adopted adults. Then I’ll celebrate.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Friday, November 10, 2006
Madonna Adopts a Child
BastardGrannyAnnie
All sorts of do-gooders are rallying the media into a frenzy about Madonna’s adopting a little boy from an orphanage in Africa. They are outraged because poor unfortunate David is being torn from his own culture. His ethnicity and ancestry are being stolen from him.
That’s true all right. Little David will grow up in a family that is totally different from that of his biological parents. So what else is new? This is exactly the same thing that happens to every child of adoption right here in the good old USA. I was adopted in Chicago many years ago. Once the judge signed my adoption decree, I became a new person, just like David. As soon as the ink was dry, all of my adoption records and my original birth certificate were impounded by the state of Illinois and sealed in perpetuity.
But little David’s ancestry will not be sealed away from him forever. Madonna has announced that she intends to take David back to his country on a regular basis so that he can learn about his ancestry. Even if Madonna never keeps this promise, when David reaches the age of maturity, his biological heritage will be there for him for the taking. That’s because in the UK, where Madonna currently resides, adult adoptees have been able to access their original birth records since the mid 1970’s. The Brits understand that adults who were once children of adoption should have the same rights as all other citizens to access the records of their birth.
And Madonna? She’s adopting a child who needs a home. Isn’t that what adoption is all about?!
All sorts of do-gooders are rallying the media into a frenzy about Madonna’s adopting a little boy from an orphanage in Africa. They are outraged because poor unfortunate David is being torn from his own culture. His ethnicity and ancestry are being stolen from him.
That’s true all right. Little David will grow up in a family that is totally different from that of his biological parents. So what else is new? This is exactly the same thing that happens to every child of adoption right here in the good old USA. I was adopted in Chicago many years ago. Once the judge signed my adoption decree, I became a new person, just like David. As soon as the ink was dry, all of my adoption records and my original birth certificate were impounded by the state of Illinois and sealed in perpetuity.
But little David’s ancestry will not be sealed away from him forever. Madonna has announced that she intends to take David back to his country on a regular basis so that he can learn about his ancestry. Even if Madonna never keeps this promise, when David reaches the age of maturity, his biological heritage will be there for him for the taking. That’s because in the UK, where Madonna currently resides, adult adoptees have been able to access their original birth records since the mid 1970’s. The Brits understand that adults who were once children of adoption should have the same rights as all other citizens to access the records of their birth.
And Madonna? She’s adopting a child who needs a home. Isn’t that what adoption is all about?!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
