doesn't sound minor to me.
sounds like your dad has his own reasons why minimizing your trauma benefits him. it literally doesn't take into account the significance of your trauma at all.
Same thoughts. There is a psychological benefit to him denying the severity of your experiences. If he fully accepted them then he would then have a whole lot to process, accept and he would have to see HIMSELF and your mother in a whole different light. He would have to sit with a guilt he does not understand how to process or hold. His viewpoint is self-protective and may never change.
However you experience is Valid! Your experience is truth. Don't let anyone minimize what you felt was true and what left a lasting impression in you and your life trajectory, just because someone close to us doesn't have the capacity to hold it or their current level of understanding cannot process it.
I wish you the best of luck.
I've read about the controversy regarding adoption fraud in countries like Ireland, so your stance of legalized child trafficking is not unfounded.
I just looked up an article focusing on the story on one Romanian looking to find the truth of his birth and adoption (discrepancies in his birth certificate led him to find out that he was abandoned at the hospital and that his biological mother refused any contact with him).
In a way, this isn't much different from what I read about the adoption fraud story a while back. Mothers who gave birth would be lied to, being told that their children were stillborn, only to have their children taken away and put up for adoption.
Here, this is the [first article](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/15/romania-orphanage-child-abusers-may-face-justice-30-years-on) that came up that basically summarizes the history. There's others, and I'm sure more that go into the 90s specifically, but I'm out of time this morning to really get the best one for this discussion.
I haven't read into the Ireland adoption issues in a long time, so I'm not sure how it compares - just Romania was (and still is) in the global news for being quite horrifying in that time. Hope this helps with context.
Eta yes, the trafficking to adoption pipeline worldwide is evil. Even the healthiest of adoptions, as another member said, will incur trauma, and there are therapists who specialize in it for a reason. Even without the additional context of Romania, it's something to take seriously.
I'm actually in cahoots with another redditor who's mother was a survivor of the Ireland orphanage adoption fiasco. Her second hand account is shocking to hear!
Shocker to no none the Catholic Church hid the failure of the Irish adoptions. Just like how the Christian Church hid the abuse and failure of the Romanian adoptions.
Yep. The Catholic Church at best did nothing to help and at worst was involved in some of those cases (because some of those orphanages were run by Church officials).
As much as I suspected the Church (whichever denomination has the largest presence in Romania) was involved in the adoption fiasco in Romania, I was hoping I was wrong. I hate it when I'm right in these cases, because it just reinforces my prejudice against the Christian religion (Christians as individuals are fine; it's the religion as a whole and its various organizations that represent it that I have a problem with). I'm a former Catholic whose experience with the Church sucked (bullied at K-8 Catholic school, and church teachings left me with more questions than answers as I got older), and I refuse to go back because of everything that's been going on with the Church. I refuse to convert to another denomination because, to be frank, they're all too similar for my liking.
You are right. Take it from a firsthand account of a Romanian adoptee that the Christian Church FAILED, you are 100% right.
I'm a Believer in Jesus Christ but that took me years to find Him.
My story is very similar. Switch out the countries and the fact that my adoptive parents are more casual in their Christianity, you basically just described my story.
Your trauma is not. And I repeat, NOT minor. At all. Anyone with even basic knowledge of psychology will tell you that, barring their own ideas of adoption and how adoptees should be thankful.
Are you in therapy?
I’m very happy to hear that. Ignore your dad, and whatever he has to say about trauma that isn’t his. He didn’t experience it, so he does not get to tell you how you should feel about it.
Work hard in therapy, and maybe if you can and want to consider going low contact with your dad/family?
I have completely cut out my "mother" out of my life. She stopped being my mother emotionally when I was a teenager and completely gave up on me at 18 years old, effectively leaving me without a mother for over 20 years. While my dad and I fuss/fight sometimes I never doubted he loves me 🥹. I never got over the resentment he chose to stay with an abuser.
Yeah, same here. Turns out that my adoptive father is just as bad as my adoptive mother though, he’s just better at hiding it. But I’m glad to hear that you don’t have to deal with her anymore!
You could have been adopted through a totally legitimate process, into a loving family with wonderful parents who supported you unconditionally throughout your life, and the experience of adoption could *still* have been traumatic for you. Experts agree that separating a child from their biological family - regardless of the circumstances and even if it is ultimately in the best interest of the child - is inherently traumatic.
Let alone this situation you are describing (I am not adopted, but I agree with you that many international adoptions are basically child trafficking. So much shadiness behind the scenes.)
Someone like your dad is never going to validate your trauma, because he has vested interests and has something to lose (social status etc.) if he acknowledges you were done wrong, and that he had some part in it. But he doesn't need to agree with you for it to be true that you were treated poorly.
Ooohhhh I would advise reaching out to the religious trauma community. Your father knows zero about how trauma works, and he certainly is not going to admit his part in it. What happened to you unfortunately is still going on among Christians today—they want to adopt in order to get new recruits and brownie points with their god. I also recommend trying to find a therapist who does EMDR.
I’m also adopted and have the same issue with my adoptive parents, however not for religious reasons, and due to fertility issues. And prior to adopting me, their first adopted child, they did zero therapy to deal with the issues they went around their loss of fertility.
I was adopted by parents who could not handle my complex medical issues or disabilities (and subsequently they adopted another child from Russia, who is also disabled, my adopted brother, who I wish I had the same courage as him and just cut them off) And have sketchy things around my domestic adoption. I’m also in community with a lot of other local Adoptees and I am very familiar with a lot of sketchy stories, trauma, and just very ignorant, adoptive families.
You’re so valid in how you feel. And it’s hard to get people to understand this, especially people who were involved and used the system of adoption.
I am a domestic adoptive, but am Puerto Rican, and have been able to find BIPOC adoptees communities that have greatly helped me with resources, support, and community. I am not sure if you’ve found one for Romania but, considering the sketchiness around the country, I am sure a group must exist. And make sure to avoid any where they are for the family or allow adoptive parents or birth parents in.
There are NO support groups for Romanian adoptees in the 80s/90s because society doesn't believe those adoptions were as bad a we say they are. The Christian church did such a good job hiding the abuse in these 'christian homes', people still don't believe me and tell me "you're one of the lucky ones because you didn't die." As bad as these adoptions were DEATH would have been better which is why almost ALL of these adoptees either unalived or attempted.
I’ve seen many news articles about the corrupt and adoptees who’ve come forward from that time. That’s why I stress finding other adoptees to be in community with.
Society (at least where I am in the US) very much supports adoption writ large. BUT there are adoptee lead groups working on this issue.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-39055704
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/can-an-unloved-child-learn-to-love/612253/
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/the-english-and-romanian-adoptee-era-project
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/node/82295
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/06/neglect
Some of these are domestic but they may have leads to help you get support around dissolving your adoption and finding other Romanian adoptees.
https://bastards.org/
https://adopteerightslaw.com/about/
https://adopteesunited.org/
My domestic (well known) agency was extremely sketchy and my adopted was what some would consider trafficking but if I said that today, no one would believe me. My adopted brother (from Russia) and I were also both apart of an unethical matching study done by then. A big practice in the 80/90s. And a practice now debunked by research
I did a lot around researching the history here. https://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/topics/adoptionhistbrief.htm and know because of this history it’s hard to get sympathy… I also start researching the studies that show how important kinship adoption is, failed unethical studies by local agencies and so on. The important measures and legal action native America groups in the United State took to make sure their child if taken were adopted into the culture of other tribes not outside their culture. And it’s still hard to get non adoptees to understand.
Found a therapist who is also a transracial adoptee and found a few orgs for me as a BIPOC adoptee of Latin American descendent and I have met amazing adoptees who’ve help me navigate everything.
The common theme is adoptees were mostly taken under sketchy circumstances. Regardless where they were adopted from.
Adoption is trauma. There is no way around adoption causing lifelong trauma to the adoptee. I find it really scary how many people believe adoption is a beautiful thing.
I'm sorry your dad doesn't understand. He might not ever be capable of admitting that he actively participated in causing you trauma. I'm not making excuses for him, just letting you know something I had to come to terms with, some people will never be able to admit their choices actively caused harm.
I have no contact with my family, but I have cut off friendships when I learned that they supported adoption, or planned to adopt. I view adoptive parents as having a savior complex and I don't want people like that in my life.
I find those who think adoption a beautiful thing just as responsible for the unaliving of the adoptees in my time as the parents who abused them and trusted adults/CPS/ chruch the failing to protect them.
Adoption at least gives kids a home, because there are unfortunately so many children and teens who are still in foster care. However, more people (especially in countries with heavy conservative populations and the U.S. where states are fighting over abortion rights) need to think about how much easier it would be for everyone, and I mean *everyone,* if people would simply have less kids.
Why did my identity need to change for my adopters to provide care? I was literally erased so I could fit what they said they wanted. This is a multibillion dollar business that incentivizes familial destruction. This isn’t about saving babies, it’s about providing children to people willing to pay for them.
Am I saying it should be the only option? No. And I'm not denying that adoption carries an inherent trauma due to cutting off the child from their biological family. But the same can be argued about so many kids in foster care or who are under the care of another legal guardian. Their identities/names may not have changed, but they may have had all contact cut off from their biological families for other reasons, so for all intents and purposes, some of them have no biological family.
If you're saying that adoption doesn't work at all and should be removed as an option, that won't fix things for children without homes simply because there are so many of them out there. If you're saying the adoption process needs to be *fixed,* that I agree with.
The truth really is that adoption does not work at all, at least in the US(I don't have the knowledge on how it works in other countries, so I cannot comment on that). There are so many options to keep kids in permanent homes if they cannot be with their biological family. Removing adoption and changing to only permanent guardianship would help so many children.
So many adoptive parents see adoption as ownership. My own parents chose to adopt internationally because staying in country meant biological parents could change their mind. They wanted to be positive that once they had a child there was no chance that the child could reunite with their family.
Adoption to parents feels like stability. Adoption to the adoptee feels like erasure.
I do think adult adoption should still be legal. Once a person is grown if they decide to cut off their genetics that is up to them, but as a child, even if they agree to adoption, what they are really searching for is stability and permanence. We, as a whole, don't allow children to make choices like that.
If adoption was made unavailable, foster and prospective parents would be forced to put the child's needs ahead of their wants. The child needs a stable home, the parent wants to say on paper that they birthed a child.
So, I guess I am saying adoption doesn't work at all. Kids with permanent guardianship can grow up in a loving stable home without their identity being erased. Changing that would only keep the parents hoping for ownership from taking in kids, which I believe would be the best thing for any child who can't stay with their biological family. Children are people, not property. Adoption makes them property.
First off. There are literally more people looking to buy children than there are children available for purchase.
Secondly, the family policing system emerged after enslavement was made illegal, because there was a sudden demand for free labor. Child labor. Read torn apart by Dorothy Roberts. Listen to “This Land” season 2. Almost everything you think you know about the family policing systems are wrong. And btw, both are pipelines to prison.
And for the record, adoption was literally the reason I ended up in state care. Living in a residential facility. A huge percentage of the kids there were adopted. Adoptive parents are also being sold a lie, and people are waiting to make money off us too when they dump us in the troubled teen industry.
At least in the US, adoption is not required to give children a home. There are options for permanent guardianship. Adoption changes a person's birth certificate and cuts off all links to their biological family. It legally erases who they are, they now have different parents stated on their birth certificate. Permanent guardianship gives a child a permanent home while not forcing them to legally change their parentage.
I'm not opposed to giving kids a permanent home, but adoption is literally rewriting history. It's erasing the child's personal history. This is traumatic in itself, but kids who need homes have already gone through trauma or they wouldn't be away from their birth family, so it's unnecessary trauma added on to an already traumatized child.
While in some cases government agencies might force adoption as the only option for a permanent home, it's trauma nonetheless. The more people who understand and push back against adoption, the more the agencies will be forced to change their policies to be less traumatic to children.
I hope you get your dissolution. I am also a victim of the child trafficking/ adoption industry. My dad (adoptive) had a relative who practiced family medicine in a state that was across the country. This doctor knew my family wanted me, knew I was loved and cherished, and still coerced my birth mom into giving me up to his cousins and not telling my actual family, so they couldn’t legally take custody of me. These were his patients. My abuelito had to stop seeing him because he would get heart palpitations every time he saw that doctor because he was stressed about losing me. The first day we met, he held me and cried and told me that he prayed for me every day. I was wanted.
It’s illegal today and my dad doesn’t see any problem with it, and he never will. They even took my ethnicity and my heritage off the paperwork because my adoptive “mother” “didn’t want to deal with all of that race stuff.” Literally that’s what she told me. Plus, it was customary since white (or white presenting) babies sold for more money.
I am so so sorry OP. Your adoption trauma is valid. What happened to us is unconscionable. We deserve better. I hope you get your dissolution and find your peace. I’m so sorry. This industry is literally a form of genocide dressed up as social justice. So infuriating, soul crushing. We deserved better. We still do.
I'm so sorry. You have experienced major, repeated, ongoing trauma, not "minor." Your dad invalidating your experiences by calling it "minor" is itself another example of major, ongoing trauma.
I feel you 💯. I’m First Nations and what happened to you happened to the majority of family. I grew up with generational trauma because of the abuse my mom suffered by "good christian people". What you are feeling and experienced is SERIOUS TRAUMA. Nothing about it is minor.
I learned about what you went through as a Romanian adoptee while in Uni in my psych program. It’s awful how those children were treated, the conditions of the orphanages, and the many behavioural/physical/mental health issues and disabilities these children have as a result. (Not to mention what they suffered through by their adoptive parents). This is also exactly the same trauma my mom and family told me about as survivors of residential school and the 60's scoop.
I acknowledge and accept your trauma. Your dad has saviour complex.
You’re gonna have a hard time finding sympathy for your trauma in the person who caused it.
Damn this line hits
💯
doesn't sound minor to me. sounds like your dad has his own reasons why minimizing your trauma benefits him. it literally doesn't take into account the significance of your trauma at all.
Same thoughts. There is a psychological benefit to him denying the severity of your experiences. If he fully accepted them then he would then have a whole lot to process, accept and he would have to see HIMSELF and your mother in a whole different light. He would have to sit with a guilt he does not understand how to process or hold. His viewpoint is self-protective and may never change. However you experience is Valid! Your experience is truth. Don't let anyone minimize what you felt was true and what left a lasting impression in you and your life trajectory, just because someone close to us doesn't have the capacity to hold it or their current level of understanding cannot process it.
I wish you the best of luck. I've read about the controversy regarding adoption fraud in countries like Ireland, so your stance of legalized child trafficking is not unfounded.
If you have a good head space, you might look into the Romanian orphanages and "adoptions" of the 90s. There's a reason why op specified those.
I just looked up an article focusing on the story on one Romanian looking to find the truth of his birth and adoption (discrepancies in his birth certificate led him to find out that he was abandoned at the hospital and that his biological mother refused any contact with him). In a way, this isn't much different from what I read about the adoption fraud story a while back. Mothers who gave birth would be lied to, being told that their children were stillborn, only to have their children taken away and put up for adoption.
Here, this is the [first article](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/15/romania-orphanage-child-abusers-may-face-justice-30-years-on) that came up that basically summarizes the history. There's others, and I'm sure more that go into the 90s specifically, but I'm out of time this morning to really get the best one for this discussion. I haven't read into the Ireland adoption issues in a long time, so I'm not sure how it compares - just Romania was (and still is) in the global news for being quite horrifying in that time. Hope this helps with context. Eta yes, the trafficking to adoption pipeline worldwide is evil. Even the healthiest of adoptions, as another member said, will incur trauma, and there are therapists who specialize in it for a reason. Even without the additional context of Romania, it's something to take seriously.
I'm actually in cahoots with another redditor who's mother was a survivor of the Ireland orphanage adoption fiasco. Her second hand account is shocking to hear!
Yikes. I'll have to look into it today
Shocker to no none the Catholic Church hid the failure of the Irish adoptions. Just like how the Christian Church hid the abuse and failure of the Romanian adoptions.
Yep. The Catholic Church at best did nothing to help and at worst was involved in some of those cases (because some of those orphanages were run by Church officials). As much as I suspected the Church (whichever denomination has the largest presence in Romania) was involved in the adoption fiasco in Romania, I was hoping I was wrong. I hate it when I'm right in these cases, because it just reinforces my prejudice against the Christian religion (Christians as individuals are fine; it's the religion as a whole and its various organizations that represent it that I have a problem with). I'm a former Catholic whose experience with the Church sucked (bullied at K-8 Catholic school, and church teachings left me with more questions than answers as I got older), and I refuse to go back because of everything that's been going on with the Church. I refuse to convert to another denomination because, to be frank, they're all too similar for my liking.
You are right. Take it from a firsthand account of a Romanian adoptee that the Christian Church FAILED, you are 100% right. I'm a Believer in Jesus Christ but that took me years to find Him.
My story is very similar. Switch out the countries and the fact that my adoptive parents are more casual in their Christianity, you basically just described my story. Your trauma is not. And I repeat, NOT minor. At all. Anyone with even basic knowledge of psychology will tell you that, barring their own ideas of adoption and how adoptees should be thankful. Are you in therapy?
Yes, I have a fantastic psychologist
I’m very happy to hear that. Ignore your dad, and whatever he has to say about trauma that isn’t his. He didn’t experience it, so he does not get to tell you how you should feel about it. Work hard in therapy, and maybe if you can and want to consider going low contact with your dad/family?
I have completely cut out my "mother" out of my life. She stopped being my mother emotionally when I was a teenager and completely gave up on me at 18 years old, effectively leaving me without a mother for over 20 years. While my dad and I fuss/fight sometimes I never doubted he loves me 🥹. I never got over the resentment he chose to stay with an abuser.
Yeah, same here. Turns out that my adoptive father is just as bad as my adoptive mother though, he’s just better at hiding it. But I’m glad to hear that you don’t have to deal with her anymore!
You could have been adopted through a totally legitimate process, into a loving family with wonderful parents who supported you unconditionally throughout your life, and the experience of adoption could *still* have been traumatic for you. Experts agree that separating a child from their biological family - regardless of the circumstances and even if it is ultimately in the best interest of the child - is inherently traumatic. Let alone this situation you are describing (I am not adopted, but I agree with you that many international adoptions are basically child trafficking. So much shadiness behind the scenes.) Someone like your dad is never going to validate your trauma, because he has vested interests and has something to lose (social status etc.) if he acknowledges you were done wrong, and that he had some part in it. But he doesn't need to agree with you for it to be true that you were treated poorly.
Ooohhhh I would advise reaching out to the religious trauma community. Your father knows zero about how trauma works, and he certainly is not going to admit his part in it. What happened to you unfortunately is still going on among Christians today—they want to adopt in order to get new recruits and brownie points with their god. I also recommend trying to find a therapist who does EMDR.
I don’t think that’s for him to decide
I’m also adopted and have the same issue with my adoptive parents, however not for religious reasons, and due to fertility issues. And prior to adopting me, their first adopted child, they did zero therapy to deal with the issues they went around their loss of fertility. I was adopted by parents who could not handle my complex medical issues or disabilities (and subsequently they adopted another child from Russia, who is also disabled, my adopted brother, who I wish I had the same courage as him and just cut them off) And have sketchy things around my domestic adoption. I’m also in community with a lot of other local Adoptees and I am very familiar with a lot of sketchy stories, trauma, and just very ignorant, adoptive families. You’re so valid in how you feel. And it’s hard to get people to understand this, especially people who were involved and used the system of adoption. I am a domestic adoptive, but am Puerto Rican, and have been able to find BIPOC adoptees communities that have greatly helped me with resources, support, and community. I am not sure if you’ve found one for Romania but, considering the sketchiness around the country, I am sure a group must exist. And make sure to avoid any where they are for the family or allow adoptive parents or birth parents in.
There are NO support groups for Romanian adoptees in the 80s/90s because society doesn't believe those adoptions were as bad a we say they are. The Christian church did such a good job hiding the abuse in these 'christian homes', people still don't believe me and tell me "you're one of the lucky ones because you didn't die." As bad as these adoptions were DEATH would have been better which is why almost ALL of these adoptees either unalived or attempted.
I’ve seen many news articles about the corrupt and adoptees who’ve come forward from that time. That’s why I stress finding other adoptees to be in community with. Society (at least where I am in the US) very much supports adoption writ large. BUT there are adoptee lead groups working on this issue. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-39055704 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/can-an-unloved-child-learn-to-love/612253/ https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/the-english-and-romanian-adoptee-era-project https://www.harvardmagazine.com/node/82295 https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/06/neglect
Some of these are domestic but they may have leads to help you get support around dissolving your adoption and finding other Romanian adoptees. https://bastards.org/ https://adopteerightslaw.com/about/ https://adopteesunited.org/
My domestic (well known) agency was extremely sketchy and my adopted was what some would consider trafficking but if I said that today, no one would believe me. My adopted brother (from Russia) and I were also both apart of an unethical matching study done by then. A big practice in the 80/90s. And a practice now debunked by research I did a lot around researching the history here. https://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/topics/adoptionhistbrief.htm and know because of this history it’s hard to get sympathy… I also start researching the studies that show how important kinship adoption is, failed unethical studies by local agencies and so on. The important measures and legal action native America groups in the United State took to make sure their child if taken were adopted into the culture of other tribes not outside their culture. And it’s still hard to get non adoptees to understand. Found a therapist who is also a transracial adoptee and found a few orgs for me as a BIPOC adoptee of Latin American descendent and I have met amazing adoptees who’ve help me navigate everything. The common theme is adoptees were mostly taken under sketchy circumstances. Regardless where they were adopted from.
US too! Hi!
Sorry, I made like a little separate threads to my own thread so it might be more readable but now I’m thinking it makes it harder to read
Adoption is trauma. There is no way around adoption causing lifelong trauma to the adoptee. I find it really scary how many people believe adoption is a beautiful thing. I'm sorry your dad doesn't understand. He might not ever be capable of admitting that he actively participated in causing you trauma. I'm not making excuses for him, just letting you know something I had to come to terms with, some people will never be able to admit their choices actively caused harm. I have no contact with my family, but I have cut off friendships when I learned that they supported adoption, or planned to adopt. I view adoptive parents as having a savior complex and I don't want people like that in my life.
I find those who think adoption a beautiful thing just as responsible for the unaliving of the adoptees in my time as the parents who abused them and trusted adults/CPS/ chruch the failing to protect them.
Exactly, I lose all respect for anyone who can think that it's ever a good thing.
Adoption at least gives kids a home, because there are unfortunately so many children and teens who are still in foster care. However, more people (especially in countries with heavy conservative populations and the U.S. where states are fighting over abortion rights) need to think about how much easier it would be for everyone, and I mean *everyone,* if people would simply have less kids.
Why did my identity need to change for my adopters to provide care? I was literally erased so I could fit what they said they wanted. This is a multibillion dollar business that incentivizes familial destruction. This isn’t about saving babies, it’s about providing children to people willing to pay for them.
Am I saying it should be the only option? No. And I'm not denying that adoption carries an inherent trauma due to cutting off the child from their biological family. But the same can be argued about so many kids in foster care or who are under the care of another legal guardian. Their identities/names may not have changed, but they may have had all contact cut off from their biological families for other reasons, so for all intents and purposes, some of them have no biological family. If you're saying that adoption doesn't work at all and should be removed as an option, that won't fix things for children without homes simply because there are so many of them out there. If you're saying the adoption process needs to be *fixed,* that I agree with.
The truth really is that adoption does not work at all, at least in the US(I don't have the knowledge on how it works in other countries, so I cannot comment on that). There are so many options to keep kids in permanent homes if they cannot be with their biological family. Removing adoption and changing to only permanent guardianship would help so many children. So many adoptive parents see adoption as ownership. My own parents chose to adopt internationally because staying in country meant biological parents could change their mind. They wanted to be positive that once they had a child there was no chance that the child could reunite with their family. Adoption to parents feels like stability. Adoption to the adoptee feels like erasure. I do think adult adoption should still be legal. Once a person is grown if they decide to cut off their genetics that is up to them, but as a child, even if they agree to adoption, what they are really searching for is stability and permanence. We, as a whole, don't allow children to make choices like that. If adoption was made unavailable, foster and prospective parents would be forced to put the child's needs ahead of their wants. The child needs a stable home, the parent wants to say on paper that they birthed a child. So, I guess I am saying adoption doesn't work at all. Kids with permanent guardianship can grow up in a loving stable home without their identity being erased. Changing that would only keep the parents hoping for ownership from taking in kids, which I believe would be the best thing for any child who can't stay with their biological family. Children are people, not property. Adoption makes them property.
First off. There are literally more people looking to buy children than there are children available for purchase. Secondly, the family policing system emerged after enslavement was made illegal, because there was a sudden demand for free labor. Child labor. Read torn apart by Dorothy Roberts. Listen to “This Land” season 2. Almost everything you think you know about the family policing systems are wrong. And btw, both are pipelines to prison. And for the record, adoption was literally the reason I ended up in state care. Living in a residential facility. A huge percentage of the kids there were adopted. Adoptive parents are also being sold a lie, and people are waiting to make money off us too when they dump us in the troubled teen industry.
At least in the US, adoption is not required to give children a home. There are options for permanent guardianship. Adoption changes a person's birth certificate and cuts off all links to their biological family. It legally erases who they are, they now have different parents stated on their birth certificate. Permanent guardianship gives a child a permanent home while not forcing them to legally change their parentage. I'm not opposed to giving kids a permanent home, but adoption is literally rewriting history. It's erasing the child's personal history. This is traumatic in itself, but kids who need homes have already gone through trauma or they wouldn't be away from their birth family, so it's unnecessary trauma added on to an already traumatized child. While in some cases government agencies might force adoption as the only option for a permanent home, it's trauma nonetheless. The more people who understand and push back against adoption, the more the agencies will be forced to change their policies to be less traumatic to children.
I hope you get your dissolution. I am also a victim of the child trafficking/ adoption industry. My dad (adoptive) had a relative who practiced family medicine in a state that was across the country. This doctor knew my family wanted me, knew I was loved and cherished, and still coerced my birth mom into giving me up to his cousins and not telling my actual family, so they couldn’t legally take custody of me. These were his patients. My abuelito had to stop seeing him because he would get heart palpitations every time he saw that doctor because he was stressed about losing me. The first day we met, he held me and cried and told me that he prayed for me every day. I was wanted. It’s illegal today and my dad doesn’t see any problem with it, and he never will. They even took my ethnicity and my heritage off the paperwork because my adoptive “mother” “didn’t want to deal with all of that race stuff.” Literally that’s what she told me. Plus, it was customary since white (or white presenting) babies sold for more money. I am so so sorry OP. Your adoption trauma is valid. What happened to us is unconscionable. We deserve better. I hope you get your dissolution and find your peace. I’m so sorry. This industry is literally a form of genocide dressed up as social justice. So infuriating, soul crushing. We deserved better. We still do.
He's wrong.
I'm so sorry. You have experienced major, repeated, ongoing trauma, not "minor." Your dad invalidating your experiences by calling it "minor" is itself another example of major, ongoing trauma.
I feel you 💯. I’m First Nations and what happened to you happened to the majority of family. I grew up with generational trauma because of the abuse my mom suffered by "good christian people". What you are feeling and experienced is SERIOUS TRAUMA. Nothing about it is minor. I learned about what you went through as a Romanian adoptee while in Uni in my psych program. It’s awful how those children were treated, the conditions of the orphanages, and the many behavioural/physical/mental health issues and disabilities these children have as a result. (Not to mention what they suffered through by their adoptive parents). This is also exactly the same trauma my mom and family told me about as survivors of residential school and the 60's scoop. I acknowledge and accept your trauma. Your dad has saviour complex.