psychopathy and adoption

[John G]

Seems like these days domestic infant adoption is shifting to low-income mothers who are persuaded by organizations such as Birth Right to keep the pregnancy rather than get an abortion, and are connected with the prospective adopting family. AS soon as this happens, there is pretty much no turning back for the birth mother. There are some cases when the birth mother renegs on the agreement because she just feels during the last months of pregnancy or even already in the hospital that she cannot give the baby up. It happened to a friend of mine who was going to adopt in this way. The most amazing thing is people's reactions in such cases: "that birth mother is irresponsible, how will she support herself and the baby". As if it is her duty, because of poverty and adverse life circumstances, to give her child to a family that is better off. International adoption controversies seem to have a similar spirit to them.

Then you have children who have been languishing in the foster care for before, or ever, being adopted. That would likely be the situation where the statement of "psychopaths abandoning their kids" would apply. But there we also have a lot of radical attachment disorder (RAD), which is like psychopathy, but learned as a result of prolonged obvious neglect. Very hard to separate it from any from genetic predisposition.

The education we got said it's very very important for the birth mom to be talked about in very good terms even if you don't want to for some reason. One would hope this extends to letting the birth mom keep the baby without any pressure but I'm sure the system like most on this planet, has problems. From an objective point of view one would also hope babies aren't placed in a bad home (birth mom, adoptive parents, or foster homes) but that's a problem too.

We adopted from Guatemala and from networking we knew there were questionable adoption agencies so we did a lot of research in this area. We talked to the birth mom and the economics of the situation weren't good. When we asked about any family medical history we should know, the answer was no one lives long enough for anything to be known about that. The agency owner and birth mom kind of laughed and said something in Spanish, I'm sure related to us clueless spoiled Americans.

The poverty with lots of Shanty towns and agency supplied body guards when we went shopping and government buildings guarded via machine guns, etc. could unfortuneately be a preview of America to come.

One probably has to wonder about the percentage of psychopaths among deadbeat dads for unwed mothers, lots of things to be careful about when looking at statistics.

 

[Hildegarda]

We adopted from Guatemala and from networking we knew there were questionable adoption agencies so we did a lot of research in this area.

So glad your your adoption was informed and optimal for all involved.

Have you seen this article?


Did I Steal My Daughter? The Tribulations of Global Adoption
///http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/11/did-i-steal-my-daughter.html

don't be turned off by the title alone -- it's a very in-depth and thought-provoking piece. The author draws on her experience of adopting from Guatemala, but brings in a wide variety of sources and information. The commentaries too are not to be missed, they are all over the place and show how complex and emotional the issue is.


I am not sure if overseas adoption being the solution to the world's overpopulation. As it is, the birth rates begin to drop in developing countries as soon as life conditions improve and mortality decreases. I am not sure about it, I have to think some more and find the data. As to the international adoption and the orphanage population, here is an SOTT article that suggests a connection negative for the population and the local families:

\\\http://www.sott.net/articles/show/153065-Rise-in-institutionalized-children-linked-to-Madonna-style-adoption

[..] Researchers found that EU countries with the highest rates of children living in institutions also had high proportions of international adoptions. This did not reduce the number of children in institutional care but attributed to an increase. [..]

This process has been labelled the 'Madonna-effect', so-called after the singer's high-profile adoption of a young boy from Zambia in 2006. Statistics show that the media attention surrounding this case contributed to an increase in the number of international adoptions, but at the expense of local orphans.

Child Psychologist, Professor Kevin Browne, said: "Some argue that international adoption is, in part, a solution to the large number of children in institutional care, but we have found the opposite is true. Closely linked to the Madonna-effect, we found that parents in poor countries are now giving up their children in the belief that they will have a 'better life in the west' with a more wealthy family.

"Some celebrities have unwittingly encouraged international adoption, yet it has been shown that 96 per cent of children in 'orphanages' across Europe and probably across the globe are not true orphans and have at least one parent often known to the local authorities. The fact that these rules and regulations can be broken makes international adoption an 'easier' process than it has ever been before.

Professor Browne added: "Governments and orphanages can reap substantial financial gains from international adoption and this appears to be fuelling its growth but many are breaking the UN Convention of Rights of the Child which states that international adoption should only be used as a last resort in situations where all other means of fostering, adoption and care within the child's country of origin, are exhausted." [..]

 

[sailing away]

Once someone is willing to part with tens sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain an infant, others will coerce, steal, and kill to keep supply up with demand. I do not mean to be unduly harsh on adoptive parents, I’ve met many who genuinely understood the issues but many confessed that they hadn’t a complete picture going into it. The adoption agencies are careful to sell the concept and use “adoption friendly language.”

I don't mean any offense to aParents here, obviously you're knowledge seekers. But I have general issues with these parents who feel entitled to a child because they have cash. Infertile or just do gooders, the adoptive parents are looking to the child to fulfill their needs as much or more than fulfilling the needs of the child. The prospect of molding a child into a successful adult grateful to them for ‘saving’ them from poverty sounds more like a project than parenting and if the child doesn’t affirm their parenting skills the child is often subjected to further torment in the form of attachment therapy, pharmaceuticals, and language that will just confirm there’s something inherently wrong with him/her. It’s STS masking itself as STO. I was extremely fortunate in my adoptive family but I know so many others who were not, my experience was the exception not the rule and yet it still reads like an account from Verrier or Soll. I know so many adoptees that ended up in the hands of psychopaths. They seemed to be very adept at passing their home study.

I recall as a child listening to a sermon on the Judgement of Solomon and having to get up and leave to cry in the bathroom. It strikes me that if these parents really “loved their child as their own” they wouldn’t split it in two but would help the mother and thereby they child. Truly doing what is best for the child.

Studies, statistics, and research show that when newborns are born, their 5 favorite things are all from their mother. Favorite sound, site, touch, smell and taste all = mother, natural mother; there’s no substitute. So why is it that for poor, young mothers and their infants; this is deemed irrelevant? Poverty is the measure of fitness; people can’t understand why a poor woman wouldn’t just let someone take the child. Or as others have put it “how did my baby get in your belly?” But for everyone else the loss of a child or parent is understood as one of the most devastating life experiences.

I know that many adoptees profess to be free of all these issues, feel privileged to be a part of the process and just love their adoptive parents and I can accept that. But I do have my doubts, major doubts, because I used to be one of them. I learned at an early age that I wasn’t supposed to talk about it and if I did that I was expected to use “adoption friendly language.” I would freely discuss it with another adoptee but never a non adoptee. And sometimes I even believed the lies myself. I do dearly love my adoptive parents but I was never close to them. Paradoxically, I grew much closer to them after my reunion.

Aside from the emotional issues induced by the loss of your parents there are the more practical considerations. Try going to the doctor and getting an accurate diagnoses. You might have some information but it won’t be updated and complete. People have died. Try getting a passport.
http://www.thetelegraph.com/news/birth_22725___article.html/adoptees_records.html

Pursuing self knowledge becomes a serious battle. The library is closed to you and genealogy won’t be your hobby. It strikes me as an experiment, one that despite the early evidence of it’s detrimental effects was continued. Why? Why are accurate statistics not kept? As of 1988 an adoption statistics database was supposed to be kept but it was never funded. I realize a lot of money is changing hands and it undoubtedly improves the bottom line of big pharma but it also seems to be part of an effective strategy of depopulation and inducing a form of psychopathy or at least producing good candidates for MKUltra programs.

I have a good friend who is an adoptee reunited with his mother. She will not tell him who his father is. He’s on good terms with his some of his natural family but he’s now assuming the worst. He has come to think that he may in fact be the product of incest. I asked him how he would feel if this was in fact true and would he still want to know. He said “I am a grown man. I can accept that truth but not knowing is utterly unbearable.”

I find this site to be a good resource for primary and anecdotal information.
http://www.babyscoopera.com/

 

[Hildegarda]

But I have general issues with these parents who feel entitled to a child because they have cash. Infertile or just do gooders, the adoptive parents are looking to the child to fulfill their needs as much or more than fulfilling the needs of the child. [..] I know so many adoptees that ended up in the hands of psychopaths. They seemed to be very adept at passing their home study.

Sadly, I can relate to the last sentence, but still, the real problem here is IMO a larger one.

The real culprit is the ponerizing idea prevalent in the society, that abandoning a newborn child is a choice that is not only moral and responsible, it is EASY psychologically and should be simple logistically. Its influence on adoptees' mental health is a lot more devastating IMO than a possibility of having a "psychopathic dead-beat [biological] father".

Yet, adopting the child to fulfill the parent's emotional needs is no different, fundamentally, than giving birth to a child for the same reasons. It happens all the time. It is the narcissistic family model, as detailed by Pressman and Donaldson-Pressman. The adoption system as it is today just happens to feed the narcissistic family model. The end result is a lot of emotional damage, confusion and illusion, not only among adoptees but also among birth parents and adoptive parents.

The idea that abandoning a child is responsible choice is very pervasive, even made it into movies. A recent movie "Jade", about a teen mother who gives a baby up for adoption -- in the genre, of all things, a comedy -- was criticized by adoptees both for its message and for how lightly the subject was treated. Not only adoptees found it uncomfortable. I have an acquaintance, a birth mother chose children, both the one adopted out and those born in a subsequent marriage, are grown. She is very vocal about how "she had made a right choice both for herself and her child", but this movie, she couldn't bring herself not only to watch it, but even talk about it. Very telling. Yet the movie's message was received unquestioningly by millions, including teenage girls and guys.

I am not sure that inducing a form of psychopathy or preparing serial killers candidates for sinister projects is the main "hyper-dimensional" reason for adoption. Those cases are extremely rare. Also, with people such as Son of Sam there was a ton more going on; consider also the possibility put forward by David McGowan that they weren't the lone super-crazies as they were portrayed, instead, they were part of a larger family network and took the fall to protect it. I do wonder though about all the efforts to keep the records sealed. It almost defies explanation.

Overall though, I think it's more of an individual challenge to recover your psychological and bio-historical wholeness when faced with uncertainty and conflicting messages. A lesson to learn, and a wound to heal, because the world is as it is.

I have wondered if it would be good to have more public dialog between adoptive parents and adult adoptees. Every time I see a conflict between the two parties on the issue of adoption-friendly language or emotional impact of adoption, I wonder whether the adoptive parents realize that their own children could be saying the same words to them when they grow up. If a system designed in the best interests of the children produces so many grown children who have legitimate criticism towards how it works psychologically and legally -- and nobody wants to listen to them -- something is wrong. While openness solves and prevents many problems.

 

[John G]

Have you seen this article?

Did I Steal My Daughter? The Tribulations of Global Adoption
///http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/11/did-i-steal-my-daughter.html

I am not sure if overseas adoption being the solution to the world's overpopulation. As it is, the birth rates begin to drop in developing countries as soon as life conditions improve and mortality decreases. I am not sure about it, I have to think some more and find the data. As to the international adoption and the orphanage population, here is an SOTT article that suggests a connection negative for the population and the local families:

\\\http://www.sott.net/articles/show/153065-Rise-in-institutionalized-children-linked-to-Madonna-style-adoption

That is a good article and discussion. The suggestion of supporting a child overseas was good. We do that and they have given us older teenagers cause they say those are the hardest to get people to support. The letter writing though stops when the kids graduate from high school so that is kind of an impediment to bonding with the older kids.

I guess now I could think of adoption (international or domestic) as being better than bringing a child into this world at this time in history but I would tend to look at that as personal case by case thing not a global advertizing strategy for adoption.

We actually started out doing a domestic adoption and filled out some forms they sent us online only to have them tell us they weren't allowed to do adoptions in our state. We started doing better research after that and ended up going international based mostly on liking the agency. We definitely didn't want the agencies for Chinese adoptions. You had to take a bus ride out into the middle of nowhere to do the monetary transaction.