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Biting the hands that rescued you

If there's anything more pugnacious than on-line squabbling among Christians, it's the on-line pot shots by members of the adoption triad. Yesterday I was reading an interesting article at the NYT blog Relative Choices about adoption--it was a reunion story between a birth mother (a writer/journalist) who never had another child and her PhD bi-racial daughter, who didn't have a good adoptive mother, but has been quite successful and well-adjusted. Without the birth and adoption, neither would probably be where they are today (in my opinion) and both had overcome personal adversity. Still, it's a nice reunion story--many aren't.

Also at this blog there are some writers and commenters who are the younger group of international adoptees (so their birth mothers are not represented). Some have returned to their country of origin to look around. Unlike the thoughtful responders from the 1950s and 1960s who did the best they could given the mores of the time, these adoptees are subtly militant. Others from the late 80s born or birthing in a totally different era aren't the least impressed with "openness" or "family building." Nor do any seem pro-life, assuming I suppose if they'd been scraped into a garbage pail they would have been saved the horrific fate of being a well-off American. Some are journalists by profession and have definitely benefited from the anti-Wal-Mart, anti-capitalist, anti-Western culture atmosphere of their college training. They seem so mired in ennui that their "culture" or history or language (or their birth parents) were ripped from their tiny little fists in those delivery rooms and orphanages.

Who said life was fair? I grew up with married parents, 3 siblings, 6 grandparents, a good school system that offered neither art nor foreign language with its caring teachers, and with friends who pretty much looked and acted like me. There are others who grew up with many more advantages materially, but some with less familially. Some people struggle to come to the USA, others need to flee to Canada or France while they still can and leave the rest of us alone to enjoy our miserable existence.