I’m sharing “Living in Adoption’s Aftermath” by Larissa MacFarquhar in The New Yorker’s April 3, 2023 edition. It’s an intense read, well-researched, with a focus on a mostly older cohort of adoptees who are reckoning with “corruption in orphanages, hidden birth certificates, and the urge to search for their birth parents.” Larissa MacFarquhar does an exceptional job revealing just how complicated adoption can be for everyone involved, especially for many people who are themselves adopted. I wish she had included some younger voices, adoptees who have grown up knowing their birth parents and origins, who have legitimate birth certificates, for whom adoption is an open, discussed subject, not hidden and taboo. But I’m an adoptive mother who looks through an adoptive mother lens and that would have been a different article.
Every sentence is thought-provoking and one statement resonated with me deeply, said by Joy Lieberthal, who was born in Korea and adopted to the U.S. when she was nearly six years old. She’s speaking here about being an international adoptee: “In the long history of time, we will exist only in a span of 60 to 70 years.” I feel the same way about my family, that we came together during a particular moment in history that is over and will never happen again. As you probably know, adoptions between the U.S. and Guatemala closed in December 2007 and show no signs of ever reopening. Indeed, “Rates of international adoption by Americans have plummeted in recent years, down ninety-three per cent since 2004.”
Finally, I think it’s telling that one of the couples interviewed, Ali and Drew, abandoned their plans to adopt and opted for surrogacy. Assisted reproduction is increasingly the future, which is why I believe at least some focus and conversation should shift to ways the new industry can and should learn from lessons of adoption’s past.
This piece made me stop and think, and I recommend it to anyone interested in adoption or curious about what it feels like (for at least some) to live inside it. To the several friends who forwarded it to me with reactions and thoughts, thank you. Xoxo
“Living in Adoption’s Emotional Aftermath,” April 3, 2023 New Yorker