Was It Meant to Be?

I stumbled on a Korean adoptee blog today that bothered me more than others. The author also adopted from Korea, and has a bio daughter. She did not make her motivation to adopt clear on her blog. I do not find the author malicious in anyway. I do not believe her blog has an agenda or a cause. I think she writes about what she feels when she feels the need to write about it. I am almost certain that she is a pretty nice person, someone I would know from church etc. I felt the urge to respond to her opinions and observations, but I just don't have the heart to comment negatively on someone else's personal blog. She is not writing to me or for me. I read many of her recent entries to try to gain a more complete picture and to understand her writing style. The problem with reading blogs is that posts can be easily taken out of context. I think I read enough to know that while she appears happy with her life, she is not happy being a trans-racial adoptee.

What troubles me the most is her post that portrays adoptive parents as selfish insensitive people who thoughtlessly build their happiness upon the pain of the "birth parents". Specifically, she found adoptive parents' sentiment that the adopted children were "meant to be" their children distasteful and insulting to the children's birth parents. The fact that she over romanticizes the birth parents is obvious, or should be to anyone old enough to reproduce. Her reproach of parents who are just trying to express their love for their adopted children is not particularly charitable or helpful to those adopted. When I describe my relationship with my daughter as "meant to be", it does not imply that the events which lead to her adoption were also meant to be. Nothing bad that happens in our world is "meant to be". We chose with our free will to disobey God, and had to leave the Garden of Eden...after that, EVERYTHING was not meant to be. That is what is meant by the original sin. When I talk or think that my daughter is meant to be my daughter, I am talking about the grace of God that saves, protects, and blesses me, my daughter, her bio parents, infertile couples, China, USA, all of us, etc, despite all the things that are not meant to be. It's a miracle, and should be appreciated as such. Referring to my previous post, me, the child, her bio parents all knocked, and we were all answered, given the constraint of our inperfect word that is of our own doing. Please feel free to improve the world so the future is a better place. The past is what it is. I do understand and agree with her that there are adoptive parents with an attitude of entitlement that's hard to stomach. I complained quite loquaciously about them myself. But they are that way about everything in their life, they are not that way because they are adoptive parents. It dawn on me though, that her perspective is very much that of a sheltered American based on her somewhat romantic view of poverty, and child abandonment. while her views simply refect who she is and how she feels, they do lack insight and scope. ( If any one finds the term "sheltered American" insulting, realize at least that many in the world envy that dubious privilege.) In answer to her question, if I had to give up a child due to war, famine, extreme poverty,etc. I would be so thankful not to mention relieved that my child was loved and well cared for and did not die, I would have no problem over looking his or her adoptive parent's lack of talent for creative prose, or even their sense of undeserved entitlement. But that's just me. (By the way, bio parents with insight, do not feel entitled to their bio children either.)

Human love is by nature possessive. I claim my child, my child claims me, that's called attachment. Children need to attach, it's part of normal development. How would an adopted child feel growing up if she thinks that her parents would willingly, with gladness reunite her with her bio parents should they happen to show up on the front door? Only God is capable of the true unconditional love that is perfectly pure. The rest of us can only love in a way that God approves, allow God to guide us in our choices and trust in his timing. To think otherwise is hubris.

Her perspective about female Asian stereotypes is also very much that of an American woman (of whatever ethnicity) rather than that of an Asian. Ironically, it's the fact that she is so very American (and nothing wrong with that, by the way) that she sees it as a racial issue. I have no doubt that everything she described happened. However, if I were to be in those situations, it's the perversity that would offend me, not the fact that these people view me as Asian. Chinese is what I am, whoever that chooses to look at me. As an Asian women who grew up with a world filled with other Asian women of all ages, shape and sizes, ugly and beautiful but mostly just plain, the concept of all Asian woman as sexual beings is just too preposterous to be entertained even under duress. Bad men sexualize women, their hatred is universal. They would not treat white women or even their own wives or daughters any better. It puzzles me that anyone should find sexual perverts' opinion on women of any significance. I don't seek opinion on children from pedophiles. Of course these people are also racist. They are the same group that robs the poor and beats the elderly. They exist in all countries. Unfortunately certain percentage of the human population suffers from this particular form of "congenital defect", and are truly "learning disabled". One simply stay away from places where these people are likely to hang out (in the real world and on the internet) because these places are bad places for many other reasons. No energy left to comment on the sisterly comments she received. Maybe they view her as a threat because she is attractive, again it's not that she is Asian. I am starting to feel a little bad about myself. I don't seem to have her problem...I guess I am that ugly.

A lot of her complaints are also complaints of second or third generation Asians, they are only relevant to her adoption in the sense that had she not been adopted, she would have grown up in Korea. These are not issues caused by adoption. These are issues of immigration, and she is an immigrant though she is not likely to view herself as such. Other children don't get to choose if their family immigrate or not either, their parents make that decision for them, just like hers.

It's getting late, so I'll cut it short. If you get nothing else from this blog, please just remember that Google search is not a research tool (if one needs an example of something that is not meant to be... )It's the definition of selection bias by design. Besides, pornography is the number one use (or at least one of the top uses) of the Internet. Try to Google white women in an Asian country and see what happens. This is just a pet peeve about one of the failures of our liberal arts education.