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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how stupports

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen

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Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline, And today we're talking about adoption, UM.

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Speaker 1: And we are talking about adoption in one episode, one

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Speaker 1: podcast episode, not ten podcasts episodes, UM, which we could

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Speaker 1: because adoption is a massive, massive topic. Oh yeah, and

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Speaker 1: there's no way that we can possibly cover it comprehensively,

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Speaker 1: all aspects of it UM in a single episode. UM.

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Speaker 1: And Plus the motivations and experiences and impacts of adoption

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Speaker 1: on both adoptive families and adopted children are so complex

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Speaker 1: and far more complex than pop cultural stereotyping and outright

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Speaker 1: stigmas suggest. And because of the scope and sensitivity of

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Speaker 1: all these issues, we are narrowing in our focus. We're

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Speaker 1: not really gonna take a lot of time to look

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Speaker 1: at all of the stigma surrounding adoption. In fact, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're going to focus more today on what domestic and

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Speaker 1: international adoption history and practices teach us about our cultural

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Speaker 1: definitions of nationality, family, and relationships. And of course there

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Speaker 1: will be dashes of racism and sexism and imperialism and

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Speaker 1: war thrown in for good measure. Well, what a bummer

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Speaker 1: that that has to be. And of course, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean the geopolitics of adoption is something that I

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Speaker 1: was largely unaware of. UM. There are so many aspects

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Speaker 1: of adoption UM that I was unaware of before diving

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Speaker 1: into research for this podcast, And to be completely honest,

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Speaker 1: the landscape is so broad. I wasn't even sure quite

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Speaker 1: where to start for this episode because I knew that

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Speaker 1: I didn't want to try to speak on behalf of

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Speaker 1: the adoptive community UM, because I have no direct link

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Speaker 1: to that UM. But I also knew that there are

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Speaker 1: issues tied up in this that everyone can relate to

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Speaker 1: that touch our lives in one way or another. And

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Speaker 1: this particular episode angle looking more at these geopolitics was

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Speaker 1: inspired directly by a Q and a over at the

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Speaker 1: toast between Nicole Chung and Arissa Oh, who's the author

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Speaker 1: of the book To Save the Children of Korea The

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Speaker 1: Cold War origins of international adoption. Yeah, and and right

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Speaker 1: off the bat, here is an issue I was not

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Speaker 1: aware of as it comes to adoption UM. I was

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Speaker 1: not aware of the links between, UH, what was going

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Speaker 1: on at the time of the Cold War and what

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Speaker 1: was happening overseas with the rise in American adoption of

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Speaker 1: foreign infants, and Nicole asks Arissa why it's so important

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Speaker 1: for us to understand the history of inter country or

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Speaker 1: foreign adoption at all in the first place, Like, you know,

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Speaker 1: this is a thing we do. Why what's the point

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Speaker 1: understanding the history? And Arissa points out that, you know,

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Speaker 1: we think of adoption, uh inter country adoption as being

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Speaker 1: a personal and private thing. Here are the parents, here

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Speaker 1: is the child, and you know, here's the agency or

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Speaker 1: organization that's facilitating the adoption. But she talks about how well, actually,

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Speaker 1: in reality, inter country adoption is an extremely public act

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Speaker 1: and their influence, she says, by large forces like national laws,

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Speaker 1: ideas about race, gender, family, geopolitics. And she says, in turn,

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Speaker 1: because of all the things adoption is and has been

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Speaker 1: used in the public sphere to signify certain things like

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Speaker 1: America's goodness or anti racism. And this is definitely a

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Speaker 1: point that we will revisit later in the podcast, but

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Speaker 1: it kind of goes to this issue of at the

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Speaker 1: time that you see adoptions rising from places like South Korea,

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Speaker 1: you also see Jim crow lynchings these terrible racist environments

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Speaker 1: happening here in the United States, and adopting infants from overseas,

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Speaker 1: particularly infants who are not white, has often will a

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Speaker 1: it's been very bit visible because Okay, that child does

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Speaker 1: not look like you white parents who adopted it. Um.

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Speaker 1: But it's also and traditionally has been a way of saying, like, see,

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Speaker 1: we are not racist. We are good hearted people who

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Speaker 1: want to save children. And the we in that case

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Speaker 1: is not We're not talking speaking to the individual parents

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Speaker 1: involved in all of this. A lot of these individual

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Speaker 1: parents just really want to parent these children. This is

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Speaker 1: more speaking in the political and even symbolic sense and

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Speaker 1: how it relates to geopolitics and um. Nicole Chung we

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Speaker 1: should mention of the toast was especially interested in talking

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Speaker 1: to Oh because she herself was adopted by American parents

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Speaker 1: from Korea. And Oh goes on to say that looking

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Speaker 1: at inner country adoption helps us understand how the micro

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Speaker 1: and macro, private and public shape each other, because we

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Speaker 1: have to ask these questions about what you were speaking to, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: of why mainly white Americans adopt non white children from

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Speaker 1: from other countries, Uh, the role the US plays in

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Speaker 1: perpetuating the kinds of global conditions that have fostered a

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Speaker 1: lot of the orphans and the situations they're living in abroad,

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Speaker 1: and and also of why Americans adopt from some countries

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Speaker 1: but not others. Um. So we figured that this was

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Speaker 1: uh an angle of adoption that all of us have

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Speaker 1: something to learn from, both about our personal definitions of

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Speaker 1: what a family means and what a family can be

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Speaker 1: and look like, but also how that is related to

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Speaker 1: our overall sense of patriotism and nationalism. Um. And this

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Speaker 1: obviously will sort of flow into more of a focus

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Speaker 1: on international adoption, but our international adoption policies in the

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Speaker 1: United States are very importantly predicated on particular trends in

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Speaker 1: our domestic adoption patterns. So before we dive into more

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Speaker 1: of the history, let's toss out some facts and stats,

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Speaker 1: starting just with the definition of orphan, because as I think,

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Speaker 1: when we think of adoption, typically we might imagine more

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Speaker 1: of an annie the musical situation where you have an

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Speaker 1: orphan who has no parents or relatives to speak of,

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Speaker 1: living in deplorable conditions. Um. Perhaps with an alcoholic Carol Burnett.

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Speaker 1: We don't know, Uh, God, I would love to live

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Speaker 1: with Carol Burnett, alcoholic or no, um, but that is

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Speaker 1: rarely the case. Yeah, I mean so that that is

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Speaker 1: definitely one definition, right, you don't have any parents anymore,

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Speaker 1: maybe they've died, disappeared, deserted, um. But there's also a definition,

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Speaker 1: according to US immigration law, that the child has a

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Speaker 1: soul or surviving parent who is unable to care for

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Speaker 1: the child uh, consistent with the local standards of the

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Speaker 1: foreign sending country, who has in writing irrevocably released the

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Speaker 1: child for immigration and adoption. All of the sounds pretty straightforward,

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Speaker 1: as we will revisit later in this show, it is

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Speaker 1: anything but straightforward. UM. So if you look at numbers,

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Speaker 1: UNISF estimates that the orphan population in Sub Saharan Africa, Asia,

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Speaker 1: Latin America and the Caribbean in two thousand five was

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Speaker 1: more than one hundred and thirty two million, and only

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Speaker 1: thirteen million of those had lost both parents, meaning that

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Speaker 1: in the legal language, they were a double orphan. The

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Speaker 1: other millions and millions of these children were so called

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Speaker 1: single orphans, so they had still um, they still had

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Speaker 1: a parent or an extended family around them. Um. And

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Speaker 1: according to the US Children's Bureau in ten, there were

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Speaker 1: one hundred and one thousand or more American children in

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Speaker 1: the public foster care system waiting for adoption. But again,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that they that that their parents

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Speaker 1: are deceased or disappeared, or that they have no other

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Speaker 1: relative of around UM. It has more to do with

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Speaker 1: the availability of a caregiver for that child. UM And

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Speaker 1: if we look a little bit more into domestic adoption,

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Speaker 1: I was surprised to learn from the US Children's Bureau

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Speaker 1: that we don't know precisely how many adoptions take place

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Speaker 1: within the US each year because there is no federal

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Speaker 1: clearinghouse that collects all of that data. Yeah, I can't believe.

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Speaker 1: I couldn't believe that. Well, it's because there were so

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Speaker 1: many different sources of adoption. UM In there were around

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Speaker 1: one eleven thousand domestic adoptions in the US, and by

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Speaker 1: the way, girls are a bit likelier to be adopted

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Speaker 1: compared to boys, and half though, of all the adoptions

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Speaker 1: in the US are facilitated through a public agency like

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Speaker 1: the foster care system, So those numbers we've got, we

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Speaker 1: can totally track all of that. But once we get

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Speaker 1: into the other half outside the child welfare system, it's

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Speaker 1: harder to keep tabs on private adoption agencies, independent adoptions

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Speaker 1: that might be conducted without any agency whatsoever. UM adoptions

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Speaker 1: by stepparents, grandparents, etcetera. There's just a lot of different

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Speaker 1: adoptive arrangements that can happen. But and listeners please write us,

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Speaker 1: but there's there's so there's no overarching like I'm going

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Speaker 1: to report this to this agency that this is happening

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Speaker 1: for for all of these different avenues of adoption. That

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Speaker 1: seems crazy to me. Well, I'm sure that there is

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Speaker 1: that there are specific steps that you have to go

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Speaker 1: through legally in order to legally adopt someone. But according

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Speaker 1: to the U S Children's Bureau, they cannot tell you

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Speaker 1: for certain. They can estimate, they can give you a

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Speaker 1: pretty close estimate, um, but they cannot tell you down

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Speaker 1: to the child, how many are happening. Um. When we

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Speaker 1: move into international or in her country adoptions as they're

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Speaker 1: also called, the US government considers us a private undertaking.

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Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that you're doing it all on

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Speaker 1: their own. It's sort of an interesting like we're gonna

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Speaker 1: like check in with you, but if something happens, you're

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Speaker 1: kind of on your own. It seems like, um, people

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Speaker 1: listening who have gone through inter country adoptions. Would love

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Speaker 1: to hear from you about this because, um, the government's

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Speaker 1: classification of it as a private thing makes it sound

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Speaker 1: so much simpler than it sounds, because you're in reality

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Speaker 1: going to be dealing with the State Department and the

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Speaker 1: Department of Homeman Security because you have to certify a

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Speaker 1: child's immigration status. You also have to obtain a visa

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Speaker 1: for the child to enter the US, and beyond that,

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Speaker 1: they will provide education and resources on ethical adoption procedures. Um,

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Speaker 1: because it can get very dicey, very quickly. Um. But

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Speaker 1: another thing I was really surprised to learn when it

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Speaker 1: comes to inter country adoption is that they have declined

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Speaker 1: dramatically since the nineties. Oh yeah, So in our country,

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Speaker 1: adoption actually peaked in two thousand four at about twenty

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Speaker 1: three thousand children. By ten that had plummeted to about

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Speaker 1: fifty six hundred, or less than seven percent of all

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Speaker 1: US adoptions. And in the top five countries where we

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Speaker 1: adopted children from here in the US were China, Ethiopia, Russia,

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Speaker 1: South Korea, and Ukraine. But of course, by Russia was

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Speaker 1: no longer on that list because they flex their geopolitical

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Speaker 1: muscles and said no more US citizens adopting Russian children.

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Speaker 1: And also keep these most recent rankings in mind, because

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Speaker 1: it will tie a lot into where this conversation is

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Speaker 1: going to go in terms of how those rankings are

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Speaker 1: influenced by again geopolitics. Give me a dollar for every

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Speaker 1: time I say that word Caroline, Please this episode so

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Speaker 1: I can buy some Christmas presents. Um. And the reason

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Speaker 1: why though there's been such a stark drop off is

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Speaker 1: due to things like yeah, Vladimir Putin being like, you

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Speaker 1: know what, I'm going to cut off, um, Russian adoptions

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Speaker 1: to the US because we're strong, we don't need y'all. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And it's sort of it was in that case, it

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Speaker 1: was retaliation for sanctions. Yes, Um, So you have these

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Speaker 1: tightening regulations um around just adoptions in general, and also

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Speaker 1: moratoriums on foreign adoptions like the kind that we've seen

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Speaker 1: happen in Russia. And also you know this perception more

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Speaker 1: broadly of international adoption being more of and I hate

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Speaker 1: to put I hate to use this terminology, and this

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Speaker 1: is not mine, okay, more of a necessary evil than

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Speaker 1: humanitarian good. Yeah, viewing it as a last resort of

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Speaker 1: allowing our children from whatever country to be adopted out

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Speaker 1: to the United States rather than being able to keep

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Speaker 1: the children here. And I mean, you know, contributing to

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Speaker 1: this too is that you have in geos, for instance,

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Speaker 1: working to keep kids in their extended families and communities,

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Speaker 1: rather than having children who are in orphanages, even temporarily,

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Speaker 1: who are illegally adopted out. UM. And you also, UM,

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Speaker 1: like you know Krista mentioned, regulations have been tightened. You

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Speaker 1: have a lot of unethical practices in certain countries being

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Speaker 1: clamped down on. But even with all of those changes

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Speaker 1: that have been made, a lot of which to the

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Speaker 1: benefit of these children. Um. Most children who are adopted

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Speaker 1: international only do find homes in the US. But of

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Speaker 1: course adoption is a lot more complicated than just those

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Speaker 1: raw numbers and data from the U. S. State Department

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Speaker 1: and elsewhere. UM. In fact, the more we learned the more.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the more we learned, the clearer it became

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Speaker 1: how unclear America's adoption history is. I mean, this stuff

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Speaker 1: is straight up complicated, and it's complicated by a lot

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Speaker 1: of discrimination, UM and a lot of social stigmatizing. And

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Speaker 1: I cannot recommend enough the University of Oregon's Adoption History

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Speaker 1: Project they have a terrific comprehensive website detailing the history

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Speaker 1: of American adoption. And I mean, just just stepping out

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Speaker 1: for a second now, um, to take stock of where

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Speaker 1: we're about to dive into. You can imagine adoption in

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Speaker 1: the US, the issue of adoption, okay, as being at

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Speaker 1: the center of a giant ven diagram of social taboos

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Speaker 1: because race and ethnicity aside, which will certainly come up,

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Speaker 1: consider just how many core issues related to adoption remain

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Speaker 1: taboo even today, things like premarital sex, which was not

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Speaker 1: so long ago just considered female sexual delinquency, team pregnancy,

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Speaker 1: children born out of wedlock, single motherhood, infertility. There's also

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Speaker 1: a very clear gender theme along these lines in terms

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Speaker 1: of who the target of discrimination usually is. Yeah, not

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Speaker 1: to mention the issue and the question of what even

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Speaker 1: constitutes a family, which remains a really polarizing political question,

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Speaker 1: especially when issues of race and even religion come into it. Well,

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Speaker 1: an lgbt Q status, Oh yeah, absolutely. And so we're

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Speaker 1: going to dive in to a bit of a timeline

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Speaker 1: and history of adoption this country when we come right

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Speaker 1: back from a quick break. So, really, what we're doing

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Speaker 1: when we dive into the history of adoption in the

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Speaker 1: United States is just sort of sifting through a pile

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Speaker 1: of garbage, it feels like, in order to get to

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Speaker 1: what we would like to think is really the main

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Speaker 1: motivation of all of it. It's just you know, providing

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Speaker 1: children with homes they need, you know, providing people who

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Speaker 1: really want to be parents with the opportunity to do so.

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Speaker 1: But again, it's complicated, although it didn't really start so complicated. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In eight Massachusetts past America's first adoption legislation, called the

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Speaker 1: Adoption of Children Act, which two thumbs up, was focused

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Speaker 1: on the welfare of the child child rather than the

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Speaker 1: welfare of the adult. Children needs stable homes, loving parents,

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Speaker 1: a safe environment. That's great, But we didn't really have

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Speaker 1: it all figured out, especially as America the melting pot

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Speaker 1: really began to take shape. Um, it would take us

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Speaker 1: a century to really start figuring stuff out, Like, you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe shipping immigrant children off on so called orphan trains

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Speaker 1: from the East Coast out to the West isn't the

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Speaker 1: best path to assimilation and um. Quick side note. I

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Speaker 1: was in a ballet in late middle school, the Orphan Train,

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Speaker 1: which was based around this chapter of American history from

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four to when around two thousand kids Catholic

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Speaker 1: and Jewish, particularly immigrants, yes, were shipped out away from

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Speaker 1: their parents I mean orphan. They were rarely orphans in

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Speaker 1: the sense of not having parents around. Many of them

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Speaker 1: had both parents. They were just poor. Um, they were

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Speaker 1: sent on these orphan trains out to the Midwest and

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Speaker 1: beyond to serve as sort of farm labor, free labor

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Speaker 1: for for a lot of folks out there. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I mean they were sent to so called werethy Protestant

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Speaker 1: families to help again assimilate these children into an American

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Speaker 1: way of life, supposedly, and um, the reading that we

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Speaker 1: were doing on this from the University of Oregon pointed

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Speaker 1: out that a lot of these kids actually made their

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Speaker 1: way back home one way or another. Maybe their parents

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Speaker 1: came and got them or or or whatever. But um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this this is horrifying thousands of children. They're like, uh,

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Speaker 1: it's better for you to be separated from your family

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Speaker 1: and grow up with someone else than to grow up

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Speaker 1: a Jewish or Catholic immigrant in a big city. Well,

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Speaker 1: and the big city aspect was a may motivator of this.

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Speaker 1: You know, this is around the time when we first

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Speaker 1: start seeing the development of like boy Scouts girl Scouts

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Speaker 1: in summer camps because there was a lot of concern

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Speaker 1: about the negative developmental impacts of the urban environment on kids.

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Speaker 1: So that's another reason why they were sent to the

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Speaker 1: great outdoors out west, like give them some fresh air

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Speaker 1: and sunshine and some good old fashioned American apple pie. Um.

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Speaker 1: But while this is happening, you also have baby farming,

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Speaker 1: which was America's old school baby black market UM where

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Speaker 1: commercial maternity homes would bring women in, usually low income

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Speaker 1: women who are pregnant and could not care for a

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Speaker 1: child UM for for whatever reason, they would be paid

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Speaker 1: barely anything UM to have their baby delivered, and immediately

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Speaker 1: that baby would be sold for a real good bargain,

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Speaker 1: again often to like agricultural families who there was a

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Speaker 1: quote from one farmer who had bought a baby UM

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Speaker 1: who said, you know what, I bought this like farm

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Speaker 1: new farmhand essentially for a hundred dollars. It's like that's

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Speaker 1: quite a deal. Um. So final, finally, around nineteen twenty,

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Speaker 1: we had our first children's welfare organizations and bureau starting

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Speaker 1: to step in and crack down on that UM. But

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Speaker 1: it doesn't even end there I learned a whole new term,

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Speaker 1: a whole new era, Caroline. The baby's scoop era is

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Speaker 1: that like baskin Robbins. Oh oh oh, if only it

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Speaker 1: were that delightful. Um. So adoption reformers have termed the

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Speaker 1: period from to nineteen seventy two in the United States

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Speaker 1: the baby scoop era. And it's notable that it starts

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Speaker 1: right after World War Two, during this so called baby

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Speaker 1: boom um and ends with roe v wade uh. And

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Speaker 1: the baby scoop era is a term to denote this

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Speaker 1: period when at least one a half million unwed mothers

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Speaker 1: in the US were forcibly and secretly sent to maternity

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Speaker 1: homes to have their babies and never speak of it again.

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Speaker 1: And when they would be shipped off to these places

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Speaker 1: a lot of times um, if they were poorer, they

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Speaker 1: might be installed as like a temporary servant in a

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Speaker 1: wealthier person's home until they could deliver their babies, sort

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Speaker 1: of like earning their keep. Um. But regardless, at a

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Speaker 1: lot of these maternity homes, you could not take any

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Speaker 1: of your clothes. You would only be known by your initials.

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Speaker 1: Like it they really wanted to. It sounds like a

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Speaker 1: black mirror episode. Honestly, Um, you were supposed to pretend

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Speaker 1: as if this is your someone else and that's just

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Speaker 1: never happened to you. And regardless of whether you maybe

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Speaker 1: wanted to raise that baby or not, Um, you would

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Speaker 1: be forced to sign it away. Now, I mean, race

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Speaker 1: enters this conversation too, because the thing is, it's not

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Speaker 1: like black unwed mothers were facing the same sort of pressure, um,

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Speaker 1: because of racist assumptions about how natural their promiscuity was,

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Speaker 1: and also that their babies were considered less desirable to

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Speaker 1: adopt in this country, which again, unfortunately is a theme

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Speaker 1: that will recur throughout the rest of this podcast. Um.

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Speaker 1: And that snippet is coming from Catherine Joyce's book The Childcatchers,

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Speaker 1: Rescue Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption. But really

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Speaker 1: the most controversial adoption concept of all in the United

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Speaker 1: States even to this day, is the idea that parents

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Speaker 1: and children don't have to match skin color in order

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Speaker 1: to build a happy, healthy family, which leads us to

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Speaker 1: the desegregation essentially of American adoption, although in fits and starts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I mean this is what's called transracial adoption, and

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Speaker 1: the first recorded adoption of a black child by a

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Speaker 1: white family in the United States happened in nineteen in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Speaker 1: It took that long, well yeah, for the first recorded

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Speaker 1: adoption to happen, because there was just this overarching idea

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Speaker 1: that well a white families wouldn't want a black or

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Speaker 1: brown child, but be um that it was better for

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Speaker 1: everyone if a adoption wasn't spoken of and be that

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Speaker 1: you matched your family. There was there was this big

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Speaker 1: issue of matching that had always been the preference. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and matching really being short for race matching, which is

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Speaker 1: really euphemism for segregation. UM. But this is not an

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Speaker 1: antiquated notion by any means. There are uh still people

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Speaker 1: within the social work field today who, um do believe

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Speaker 1: that matching children with their respective ethnicities and cultures is

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Speaker 1: best for that child's development, which relates back to our

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Speaker 1: conversation just a second ago about um NGOs who really

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Speaker 1: advocate for UM investing in developing countries in order to

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Speaker 1: keep children there rather than adopting them out to the

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Speaker 1: United States. UM. But there is undeniable racism that's going

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Speaker 1: on in you know, sort of breaking and breaking that

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Speaker 1: that color line in American adoption because African Americans were

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Speaker 1: considered classified as special needs and quote hard to place adoptees,

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Speaker 1: and we're outright denied services even in some states. So

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Speaker 1: by nineteen the US Children's Bureau realized that they had

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand black children who were in need of adoption.

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Speaker 1: And even today there are more black children awaiting adoption

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Speaker 1: in the US than white children. So when agencies are

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Speaker 1: seeing this discrepancy, by the nineteen fifties, some agencies and

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Speaker 1: some individual private couples started exploring transracial adoption arrangements, and

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Speaker 1: we start seeing campaigns to increase African American adoptions and

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Speaker 1: they were marginally effective. They reached an all time high

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Speaker 1: of two thousand, five hundred seventy four in one year,

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Speaker 1: and that amounted to about twelve thousand adoptees total. And

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Speaker 1: even though white people at the time would be considered

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Speaker 1: extremely progressive for even considering adopting a black child at

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Speaker 1: the time, if you look at the campaigns, these campaigns

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Speaker 1: that were going on trying to promote this idea, it's

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Speaker 1: clear that no, we're we're not all that progressive. Um.

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Speaker 1: Take for example, one from the Boys and Girls Aid

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Speaker 1: Society of Oregon, which was called Operation Brown Baby. That's

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Speaker 1: honestly not surprising to me at all, because Oregon was

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Speaker 1: founded or whatever you say, estate is was started just

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Speaker 1: for white people. It was illegal for black people to

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Speaker 1: go to Oregon or be or live in Oregon. So,

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Speaker 1: but the number of African American children being adopted by

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Speaker 1: white couples plummeted starting around nineteen two because this is

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Speaker 1: when the National Association of Black Social Workers took a

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Speaker 1: direct and very vocal stand against black children being placed

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Speaker 1: with white parents. They basically said, black children in white

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Speaker 1: homes are cut off from the healthy development of themselves

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Speaker 1: as black people. And you really just see the numbers plummet,

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Speaker 1: they fall, they fell through the floor to zero. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and it's not like, you know, their peak

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Speaker 1: of almost dred was like huge, hugely high. I mean

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Speaker 1: that that also just goes to show the resistance, this

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Speaker 1: total fear of a white family adopting a black child.

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Speaker 1: And why aren't we talking about the flip side of that,

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Speaker 1: of say, black family adopting a white child whole Caroline's

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Speaker 1: because it just was unheard of, like seriously, like that

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Speaker 1: would not happen, because if it were to, that family

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00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: would likely be the target of protests and potentially violence. Um,

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Speaker 1: there was a situation in nineteen four I believe in

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Speaker 1: New Mexico where a Mexican American family adopted one, maybe

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Speaker 1: two white children and want to bring them into into

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Speaker 1: their family, and the white people in the surrounding community

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Speaker 1: were so outraged by it that a violent mob showed

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Speaker 1: up at their house and they forcibly removed the white

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Speaker 1: children from that home. But we should note that there

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Speaker 1: were a few times, a few really distinct times, when

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Speaker 1: white Americans suddenly weren't so skittish about desegregated parenting. And

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Speaker 1: we're going to get into that when we come right

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Speaker 1: back from a quick break. So starting with World War two,

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Speaker 1: you can reliably track the rate of America's inter country

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Speaker 1: or international adoptions with uh, the amount of military warfare

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Speaker 1: happened ng and also later on with natural disasters. And

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Speaker 1: we really start seeing this post World War two. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean post World War two. You've got soldiers and

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Speaker 1: journalists coming home talking about how widespread the issue of parentless,

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Speaker 1: poor parentless children is. Yeah. War orphans, hello, war is

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Speaker 1: the worst for women and children. This goes back to

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Speaker 1: our episode on Japan's quote unquote comfort women from World

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Speaker 1: War Two. And if you haven't listened to that episode, um,

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Speaker 1: that was the name given to Korean women in particular,

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Speaker 1: who were uh forced by Japanese by the Japanese military

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Speaker 1: into sex work to service both their servicemen and also

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Speaker 1: American servicemen even after World War Two. Yeah. Um. And

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Speaker 1: along those same lines, really, wherever you find servicemen stationed

431
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: uh mid or post prolonged military conflict, you're gonna find

432
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: their out of wedlock babies. Um. This is also a

433
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:12,840
Speaker 1: callback to our episode on Asian exoticism. Um. And soon enough,

434
00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 1: in the wake of World War Two, international adoption becomes

435
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 1: humanitarian and benevolent, not a desperate move for say, a

436
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: woman who simply can't conceive and is therefore less of

437
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 1: a woman in American culture's eyes at the time. Yeah,

438
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: I mean, America's first wave of international adoptions are initiated

439
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: in this period after World War Two. American military families

440
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: who were stationed abroad who wanted to care for children

441
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: orphan in the war were on the front line, so

442
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 1: to speak, of these international or transracial adoptions. Um. And

443
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: then slowly it became known among the American public really

444
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: gaining steam when those soldiers and journalists returned home with

445
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: stories about out all of these European and Asian orphans,

446
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 1: and and like Kristen said, it became part of not

447
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: only we as individual parents want to care for these children,

448
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 1: we want to be parents and give these children a

449
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: safe living home, but also on a larger, more nationalism

450
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: related scale of look at what good humanitarians we are

451
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:24,920
Speaker 1: here in the United States now. If we're talking about

452
00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: baby ranking, Um, West German babies were adopted first among

453
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:33,720
Speaker 1: these service members and their families because why they're white.

454
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: They're white. Uh, more than sixties six thousand babies of

455
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: Allied soldiers born to West German women. In the decade

456
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 1: after World War Two, there were more than sixty six

457
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: thousand babies of Allied soldiers born to West German women. UM.

458
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 1: But the thing is there weren't just white men fathering

459
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: children with white German women. There were black soldiers as well,

460
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: and the children that these German women had by black soldiers.

461
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 1: Black American soldiers were considered pariah's. Nobody wanted them, and

462
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 1: hundreds ended up being sent to the United States to

463
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: be adopted by black families. So even families in the

464
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: United States who were adopting children from other countries. Still,

465
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: we're not willing to accept, by and large, children who

466
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: were half black and half white. And while we see

467
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: the supply of adoptive babies rise in the wake of

468
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: World War Two, we also see on the home front

469
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:35,960
Speaker 1: in the United States the demand go up as well,

470
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: because we have sort of the return to a traditional femininity.

471
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: You have the more the rise of the Betty Draper

472
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: era where women are expected to leave their jobs if

473
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: they had taken one during the war. And hell yeah,

474
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about white women here of course. Um

475
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: white women, Uh go home, have your babies, and you know,

476
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 1: cook dinner for your your vet when he comes home.

477
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: And Uh, that put a lot of pressure on women

478
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:10,280
Speaker 1: to fulfill that identity. And if they could not, because

479
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:14,319
Speaker 1: infertility is a very common thing, you start to see

480
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:18,080
Speaker 1: the American side demand for adoption starting to meet more

481
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: of that supply side. And when it comes sout to

482
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 1: desegregating parenting, the first time we really witness white American

483
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: families and growing numbers choose to adopt a child of

484
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: a different ethnicity. Uh, it is not going to happen

485
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 1: with an African American baby. No no, no, no, no,

486
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen with children of color from overseas. And

487
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: this concept becomes popularized, uh really with the best selling

488
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:55,760
Speaker 1: memoir that came out in N four called The Family

489
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 1: that Nobody Wanted, and it was all about the Doss family,

490
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: who were nicknamed the United Nations Family, and starting in

491
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: in that first wave post World War two, they eventually

492
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:15,319
Speaker 1: adopt eleven children from outside the US, including Filipino, Hawaiian, Balinis,

493
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 1: Um Malayan, Indian, Mexican, and Native American children, but not

494
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 1: a single African American child, mind you. Yeah, because they

495
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 1: tried to adopt Gretchen, who was half African American and

496
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: half German, but they faced so much pushback from not

497
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:36,640
Speaker 1: only their family but also their community that they ended

498
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 1: up placing tiny Gretchen with an African American family. And

499
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: I believe Mrs Daws's quote was something along the lines

500
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: of her toast brown skin matched her new families perfectly. Yeah. Yeah,

501
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 1: And and Mrs DAWs was one of those women who

502
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:57,760
Speaker 1: wanted to have a big family, do her patriotic postwar

503
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:03,000
Speaker 1: duty and and have that family. But after her first childbirth,

504
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: I believe she had difficulty getting pregnant a second time,

505
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 1: and since the supply of white babies was so low,

506
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: they were really hard to come by. And they're like, well,

507
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,879
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess we'll look into maybe this inter

508
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 1: country adoption UM, with the exception, of course, of a

509
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:25,920
Speaker 1: Native American adoption, which we are going to touch on

510
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:30,759
Speaker 1: in just a second. UM. But it isn't until after

511
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: the Korean War that we really start to see more

512
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:39,480
Speaker 1: of the modern era of inter country adoption. Because the

513
00:36:39,560 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: Korean War takes place from nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty

514
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: three and leaves in its wake one hundred thousand war orphans,

515
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: including an estimated fifteen hundred so called g I babies UM,

516
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: although estimates at the time were far higher, and the

517
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 1: South Korean government had no interest in keeping especially those

518
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: g I babies around, they did not fit in. It

519
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: was you know, a sign of essentially um imperialism, you know,

520
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: Americans coming in UM. And as a result, South Korea

521
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:23,239
Speaker 1: becomes the first nation in the world to streamline inter

522
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: country adoption. Yeah, And I mean that was incredibly appealing

523
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 1: to white American adoptive parents because first of all, uh,

524
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:36,279
Speaker 1: many of these babies that were left behind were a

525
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:41,160
Speaker 1: mix of Korean and white. Um. If they were Korean

526
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 1: children with black fathers, they were usually placed with black parents. UM.

527
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:51,239
Speaker 1: But even if they adopted a Korean child, these white

528
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:56,919
Speaker 1: parents in America, still there's issues of race there because oh, well,

529
00:37:57,320 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: you know, this is a full blooded Korean baby, but

530
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:03,600
Speaker 1: at least it's not black. There were also fears about

531
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:07,240
Speaker 1: you know, birth parents or relatives or extended family popping

532
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: back up that were eased simply by virtue of the

533
00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 1: fact that you are so far away from South Korea

534
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:18,640
Speaker 1: when you're in average town America. UM. And contributing to

535
00:38:18,719 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 1: this from the other side was that mixed race children

536
00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:24,279
Speaker 1: really were not wanted in Korea, where pure bloodlines were

537
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 1: sort of part of the emerging South Korean nationalism after

538
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 1: both the Japanese occupation and then a civil war. And

539
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:36,000
Speaker 1: even today there's a stigma around adoption in South Korea,

540
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 1: even if the baby isn't mixed race. But at the

541
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:43,360
Speaker 1: same time, there's still stigma around a single mom keeping

542
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: and raising her baby and few if any governmental supports.

543
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:52,399
Speaker 1: So there's that sounds pretty familiar as an American sitting here. Yeah,

544
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,879
Speaker 1: but so whereas today there's this effort to have more

545
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 1: in country adoptions, having South Korean parents adopt South Korean infants,

546
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,960
Speaker 1: there are still all of these complicating factors, including social stigma,

547
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 1: that make it difficult. Yeah, I mean right now, South

548
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:17,839
Speaker 1: Korea exclusively prioritizes um intra country adoptions, wanting to keep

549
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 1: South Korean babies in South Korea, and in fact uh

550
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:25,919
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find confirmation of whether this went through.

551
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:28,680
Speaker 1: But in an older article we were reading, South Korea

552
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: had declared that it would put a moratorium on inter

553
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: country adoptions, especially to the US. By and so between

554
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:41,360
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three and nineteen sixty two, Americans were adopting.

555
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: Americans had adopted fifteen thousand foeign children. And there are

556
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:48,359
Speaker 1: a couple of names that pop out during this era.

557
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 1: So in nineteen fifty five you have evangelical Oregon couple

558
00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:56,839
Speaker 1: Harry and Bertha Holt, who actually obtained a congressional order

559
00:39:57,440 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 1: in order to adopt eight in orphans, and the couple

560
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:06,080
Speaker 1: would go on to form the whole International Children's Services,

561
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 1: which specialized in international adoption. And it's worth noting here

562
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:16,800
Speaker 1: that the Christian religious community in the United States is

563
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 1: huge when it comes to international adoptions. Oh, right after

564
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: World War Two, as early as nineteen Lutherans, Catholic services,

565
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:31,360
Speaker 1: you know, even evangelical groups, they were the first ones

566
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: who were getting involved with facilitating inner country adoptions. But

567
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: the angle they were coming from did have a humanitarian

568
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 1: edge to it, but certainly, um, a religious edge to

569
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 1: it as well. Yeah, there was a bit of a

570
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:53,439
Speaker 1: missionary bent to a lot of those adoptions. Yeah, wanting

571
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: to essentially like save their souls and raise them in

572
00:40:56,960 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: Christian homes explicitly. Um. Josephine Baker, Yes, that Josephine Baker

573
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: was not uh inspired by religious motivations when she adopted

574
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:13,200
Speaker 1: twelve children from all around the world. Um. She called

575
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,879
Speaker 1: her children the Rainbow Tribe. And of course this wasn't

576
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:19,959
Speaker 1: related directly to the Korean War either. She adopted twelve

577
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:24,600
Speaker 1: kids from Finland, Venezuela, Japan, France, Belgium, all told, ten

578
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 1: boys and two girls. Okay, starting out, that sounds great.

579
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:31,840
Speaker 1: She's giving these kids a home and she wants to

580
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: show how we can have a racial utopia. Oh my gosh, Yeah,

581
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 1: look at all these kids from different backgrounds. That's fantastic. However,

582
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 1: the kink and all of this is that, Um, she

583
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:48,720
Speaker 1: a lot of times with a lot of these children,

584
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 1: would make them act as though they were born in

585
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: a certain country or with a certain religion and make

586
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:58,840
Speaker 1: them adhere to it. So, for instance, she adopted a

587
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: French boy and gave him the name of Moses and

588
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:06,880
Speaker 1: told him and everyone who encountered him that he was

589
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:10,359
Speaker 1: Jewish and raised him to be Jewish. Um. Obviously there's

590
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with being Jewish. I'm just saying that some

591
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:14,880
Speaker 1: of her practices were a little questionable, especially when you

592
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 1: take into account that she sold tickets for fans and

593
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: visitors to watch her and her Rainbow Tribe hang out

594
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:26,839
Speaker 1: at her palatial estate in France. I mean you could say, well,

595
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 1: you know, she was like she built her career on

596
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:35,040
Speaker 1: entertainment and singing and that famous banana skirt dance. Um.

597
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:38,799
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean there there's like, there's this core

598
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:43,879
Speaker 1: of her that has really good intentions, but the execution

599
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 1: not so great. Um. But her humanitarian desire and her

600
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:55,680
Speaker 1: celebrity did make me wonder, Caroline, whether her Rainbow Tribe

601
00:42:55,680 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 1: sort of imprinted the humanitarian glow, whether a valid or

602
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: not onto today's trend of celebrity international adoptions. But I

603
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: don't want to get ahead of ourselves because we still

604
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: got a lot to get through. Um, like the Vietnam War. Yeah,

605
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of Operation Baby Lift? I had not? Yeah,

606
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:22,120
Speaker 1: so um it wasn't there a Disney movie called like

607
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:26,960
Speaker 1: Operation Dumbo where they airlift Dumbo drop I think? So okay,

608
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:30,839
Speaker 1: something about an elephant being airlifted. Yes, all right, maybe

609
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:34,719
Speaker 1: questionable from an animal rights perspective, but that that's one

610
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 1: elephant and a Disney movie. What was not a Disney

611
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:45,240
Speaker 1: movie was in nineteen in uh Saigon, when the Vietnam

612
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 1: War is shutting down, the American government is like, oh,

613
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:51,359
Speaker 1: you know what we need to do because we've really

614
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: caused a mess. Uh. One thing we could do is,

615
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: I don't know, like airlift at least two thousand Vietnamese

616
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: children in to the US before troops withdraw. Um another

617
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred in addition to that two thousand would be

618
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 1: airlifted and sent out to Canada, Europe and Australia. And

619
00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:18,800
Speaker 1: you can say that's questionable, That is so questionable. That

620
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 1: was just a touch of a disaster. Because it turns

621
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: out that a lot of those um presumed Vietnamese orphans

622
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:32,720
Speaker 1: were not orphans at all, um, which again is nothing

623
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:36,000
Speaker 1: new or old in the realm of adoption. Well yeah,

624
00:44:36,680 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: and that's also why at the top of the podcast

625
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:44,359
Speaker 1: we wanted to spell out the definition of an orphan

626
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: according to US immigration law. UM. This is part of

627
00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:54,279
Speaker 1: why those standards were um established because uh, when they

628
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 1: started realizing from the children and also from very angry

629
00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:01,719
Speaker 1: relatives of the children who were like, oh cool, America,

630
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 1: you come over here, you make a mess, and then

631
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:06,319
Speaker 1: you steal our kids on the way out. Yeah not cool,

632
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: great great um. And it was such a diplomatic disaster.

633
00:45:10,239 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 1: And so this is why US adoption policies thankfully began

634
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 1: checking more rigorously as to whether kids are actually orphaned um.

635
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: Whether that is um, single parent or dual parent orphaned um.

636
00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: Although that will come up again with Madonna. Yeah shocker um.

637
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: But around this time too, on the home front in

638
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,360
Speaker 1: in the United States, we have to pass the Indian

639
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:46,440
Speaker 1: Child Welfare Act because there had been sustained protests and

640
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 1: activism against the practice of removing Native American children from

641
00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:54,760
Speaker 1: their families and placing them with white families. About seven

642
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 1: hundred of these kids were taken as part of the

643
00:45:57,719 --> 00:46:02,359
Speaker 1: Indian Adoption Project man by the Child Welfare League of America,

644
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 1: and not surprisingly, protesters argued that this was a form

645
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 1: of cultural genocide. But as this was going on from

646
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:16,480
Speaker 1: nine fifty eight to nineteen sixty seven, the leaders of

647
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:20,200
Speaker 1: the Child Welfare League thought that they were doing this

648
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: extremely progressive and enlightened work of Hey, you know what

649
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 1: we're you know, our nation is so uncomfortable with children

650
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 1: of color, you know, being raised in white families. But

651
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 1: look at us. We're now able to bring at least

652
00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:42,400
Speaker 1: Native American children into white homes, people, white people. What

653
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 1: is wrong with you? Um? Oh god, So that's that's

654
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:48,239
Speaker 1: a that's a hard question to answer because it's just

655
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:53,919
Speaker 1: so much UM. So it's understandable that, um that that's

656
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:59,799
Speaker 1: certainly backfired as well. UM. And this whole time, if

657
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: we if we look at the sixties going all the

658
00:47:03,520 --> 00:47:09,760
Speaker 1: way up to South Korea will remain the primary country

659
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:13,360
Speaker 1: of origin for children adopted by American families, all because

660
00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 1: in the wake of the Korean War, the government, i

661
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: mean made it what some people referred to as the

662
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:24,839
Speaker 1: Cadillac A kid, you not the Cadillac of adoption. Um,

663
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 1: they've made it so systematized. I don't want to say easy,

664
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 1: because I doubt adoption is ever easy, but they made

665
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 1: it streamlined and accessible. UM. And now we have to

666
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:39,399
Speaker 1: dig though into some geopolitics because during the Cold War,

667
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:45,359
Speaker 1: the US government is totally cool with the roughly one

668
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: fifty thousand babies who are adopted from South Korea because

669
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:53,840
Speaker 1: we are at Cold war with the U s s R.

670
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:58,839
Speaker 1: And we want to look as benevolent and peacemaking. Oh

671
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 1: and also not quite as racist as all of the

672
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: news happening due to the Civil rights movement UM would

673
00:48:09,719 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: make America appear. So it was like, hey, you know what,

674
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 1: let's we're still not cool with white families adopting black babies,

675
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 1: but hey, you know, if if you're an international child,

676
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 1: you are welcome here. UM. So we do see at

677
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 1: this time international adoptions increasing at a rate much higher

678
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:34,600
Speaker 1: than those so called transracial adoptions in the US. UM.

679
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 1: And getting back though to geopolitics, in the nineteen eighties,

680
00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:45,399
Speaker 1: you see an uptick in a number of American adoptions

681
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:50,719
Speaker 1: in Central and South American countries, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala,

682
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 1: and Mexico because in nineteen eighties, you also have an

683
00:48:53,719 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: uptick in civil wars and issues of poverty happening there. Yeah.

684
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:04,320
Speaker 1: And in the nineties, of course, the Cold War starts

685
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:07,719
Speaker 1: to thaw, and we then see an uptick in Romanian

686
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:11,320
Speaker 1: and Russian adoptions. But the New York Times in nineteen

687
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:16,800
Speaker 1: nine one documented the underregulated Romanian so called baby bazaar,

688
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:21,759
Speaker 1: which Romania actually shuttered their international adoption program in two

689
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: thousand one. I mean, just like scary, scary, scary stuff

690
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:28,719
Speaker 1: when it comes to the way that children were sent

691
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 1: to the United States to be adopted. UM. And in

692
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: the Hague Adoption Commission, international agreement is drawn up that

693
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: basically establishes an adoption authority in every participating country. And

694
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:45,879
Speaker 1: in the meantime up to I think it was two

695
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:50,880
Speaker 1: thousand six when it was fully ratified. Um. This whole time,

696
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:56,279
Speaker 1: there have been super shady adoption operations identified in like

697
00:49:56,360 --> 00:50:01,480
Speaker 1: you said, Romania, South Korea, Cambodia, Guatemala, Vietnam, and Nepaul,

698
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 1: to name just a few. UM. And on the flip

699
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:10,000
Speaker 1: side of that, Reuter's investigative journalists discovered a spate of

700
00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 1: adoptive parents here in the US putting out ads like

701
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: Craigslist ads essentially to re home. In quotes, they're adopted children,

702
00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 1: particularly troubled kids, and often, as should come as no surprise,

703
00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 1: this led to issues of sexual and physical abuse for

704
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:33,839
Speaker 1: the children who were rehomed, but especially through World War

705
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 1: Two through the end of the Cold War. UM, adoption

706
00:50:38,120 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 1: really becomes a form of diplomacy, American diplomacy. UM. Not

707
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 1: that all of these adoptive parents were thinking that way,

708
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 1: but in terms of the kinds of regulations and relationships

709
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:54,840
Speaker 1: and support that the US government would provide for that

710
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:59,759
Speaker 1: it was certainly motivated um by wanting to make the

711
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: US look good. So if we come out around full

712
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 1: circle to what we were talking about at the top

713
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: of the podcast about the adoption cliff, as it's been

714
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 1: called that plummet of international adoptions. UM, why is that?

715
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:22,200
Speaker 1: I mean you mentioned putin revoking adoption access in response

716
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:26,880
Speaker 1: to sanctions imposed by the US. UM. But there's more

717
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 1: going on than just Russia. Yeah, China did it too. Um. Yeah,

718
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 1: China wants to to flex its muscle the show that

719
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:38,680
Speaker 1: it's like a superpower and not this developing country where

720
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 1: it's children need to be sent off to the United States. Right,

721
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 1: because China has had that one child policy for a

722
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 1: long time, and now that that's been revoked, China is

723
00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:51,200
Speaker 1: basically like, hey, no, we're we're going to keep our kids.

724
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 1: United States, get out of here. Um. So you know,

725
00:51:54,960 --> 00:52:00,239
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, Russian children were twenty five of

726
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 1: all inter country adoptions to the United States that year.

727
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:06,560
Speaker 1: And you know, so once they say no more, we

728
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:08,719
Speaker 1: don't like your sanctions, you can't have our children. We're

729
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 1: going to keep them, um, a lot of American parents

730
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: are going, Okay, well, I still want to adopt. I

731
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:18,399
Speaker 1: still want to be a parent, Like who to whom

732
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: can I provide a safe home? Well, a lot of

733
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:27,240
Speaker 1: parents then turned to Africa because you have far fewer

734
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:31,120
Speaker 1: countries in Africa that are committed to that Hague Adoption

735
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 1: Commission International Agreement, countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, and Malawi. Um.

736
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: In Ethiopia, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, you've

737
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:45,879
Speaker 1: got issues of poverty and limited social services and few

738
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:50,520
Speaker 1: adoption institutions, which basically amounts to having a very high

739
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 1: number of adoptable children that are not under some of

740
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:58,360
Speaker 1: the same regulations that children in perhaps your other European

741
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:03,240
Speaker 1: countries or Asian countries are you also have parents going

742
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:07,759
Speaker 1: to or not going to, but communicating with countries that

743
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 1: have undergone natural disasters, places like Haiti. But again, often

744
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 1: these orphans, whether it's in these African countries that we

745
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 1: just mentioned, are in places like Haiti. Again, a lot

746
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:20,880
Speaker 1: of these orphans are not the so called double orphans.

747
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:23,920
Speaker 1: They either have a parent still around or they have

748
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:28,080
Speaker 1: an extended family. And so a lot of times what

749
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:30,800
Speaker 1: you see, and this is horrifying to read about, but

750
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:33,400
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps a family has fallen on hard times

751
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: or cannot pay the bills. They might place their child

752
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:40,759
Speaker 1: or children in an orphanage temporarily so their children have

753
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:45,719
Speaker 1: care while they can get money together. Well, then some

754
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 1: of those less reputable organizations or orphanages will end up

755
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:55,360
Speaker 1: placing out the children right from under their their parents

756
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:58,400
Speaker 1: or their grandparents or their families noses. So the family

757
00:53:58,480 --> 00:54:00,520
Speaker 1: comes back to say, okay, you know, thank you for

758
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:02,279
Speaker 1: gearing for our child. We'd like to go home now.

759
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: Well the child isn't there well. And and also to

760
00:54:06,440 --> 00:54:11,879
Speaker 1: a lot of children in uh orphanages and similar institutions

761
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:17,120
Speaker 1: in developing countries are children with developmental disabilities UM and

762
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 1: we should note that in terms of the shift towards

763
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:26,840
Speaker 1: Africa and UM recent sites of national natural disaster, that

764
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 1: it's not like we have parents, you know, turning to

765
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:37,600
Speaker 1: them in mass because remember UM, as of I believe

766
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:41,320
Speaker 1: you know, when we have barely fifties six hundred international

767
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:44,680
Speaker 1: adoptions taking place in the US, that represents only seven

768
00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: per cent of all of the adoptions happening by US parents.

769
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 1: So I'm saying this because international and inter country adoption,

770
00:54:56,800 --> 00:55:00,200
Speaker 1: especially if you want to adopt a baby, UM and

771
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:04,680
Speaker 1: a baby who has no physical or developmental disabilities, that

772
00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 1: is now becoming an issue of class and status because

773
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:15,239
Speaker 1: it's way more challenging because of supply and demand. It's

774
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:19,080
Speaker 1: way more challenging UM to adopt a baby baby first

775
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:24,080
Speaker 1: of all, UM, but a baby internationally UM due to

776
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:29,239
Speaker 1: all of the regulations that exists now that again are

777
00:55:29,400 --> 00:55:33,719
Speaker 1: enforced for the welfare of these children and UM. When

778
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:36,719
Speaker 1: I first started reading up for this podcast, Caroline, I

779
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:43,360
Speaker 1: got stuck in a celebrity baby adoption UM sort of

780
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:49,759
Speaker 1: circle because I realized, you know that you have the

781
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:53,680
Speaker 1: scandal in two thousand nine when Madonna attempted to adopt

782
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:59,719
Speaker 1: her second baby from Malawi and she was stopped. There

783
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 1: was a complaint by the child's grandmother, UM, saying that

784
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:07,240
Speaker 1: there was a financial coercion going on. There's a similar

785
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:11,560
Speaker 1: situation with the first baby that she adopted from Malawi,

786
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: and that was really, I mean the biggest news making

787
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:21,360
Speaker 1: its way into American you know, headlines far and wide

788
00:56:22,160 --> 00:56:27,040
Speaker 1: regarding international adoption probably since uh, the last war that

789
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: we had. UM. Now, it seems like so much of

790
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 1: our focus on inter country adoptions is very celebrified and

791
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:41,439
Speaker 1: celebrified specifically of you can see, so there's so many

792
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:44,320
Speaker 1: Google results for this of the basic question of like

793
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:47,920
Speaker 1: why are all these white celebrities adopting black babies from

794
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:52,920
Speaker 1: Africa specifically? Yeah, I mean Sandra Bullock also adopted to

795
00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:56,920
Speaker 1: African American children. UM. But yeah, there's a lot of

796
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:01,280
Speaker 1: concern not that like people should be able to adopt

797
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:05,360
Speaker 1: children of other races and ethnicities, but like, are you,

798
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:09,799
Speaker 1: as a parent, introducing your child to his or her

799
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:14,120
Speaker 1: culture of origin? You know, there was the concern back

800
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:17,080
Speaker 1: in the seventies of black children being adopted by white parents,

801
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:20,360
Speaker 1: and I think that that concern is obviously still valid

802
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:24,200
Speaker 1: and still stands of like, Okay, if you adopt a

803
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:27,760
Speaker 1: black child or or what have you, You know, is

804
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:31,520
Speaker 1: this child going to be aware of its history of

805
00:57:31,760 --> 00:57:34,920
Speaker 1: the people who came before, or are you just going

806
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:37,800
Speaker 1: to claim what so many white people do claim and

807
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:41,280
Speaker 1: say that you're totally color blind and raise the child

808
00:57:41,360 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 1: with no sense of identity, which can lead to a

809
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 1: lot of problems when that child gets a little older

810
00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:50,600
Speaker 1: and starts asking questions about his or her identity. Well,

811
00:57:50,640 --> 00:57:52,640
Speaker 1: and the exact same thing can be said too for

812
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,800
Speaker 1: those tens of thousands of UM children who were also

813
00:57:56,840 --> 00:58:00,640
Speaker 1: adopted from South Korea. I mean, any time you have UM,

814
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:05,720
Speaker 1: to use old school terminology, an unmatched UM family, they

815
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: are rightfully so concerns over child development and cultural identity

816
00:58:11,320 --> 00:58:14,680
Speaker 1: and national identity, and ultimately it roots back to that

817
00:58:15,040 --> 00:58:20,280
Speaker 1: question that still perplexes so many people. Unfortunately in my

818
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:25,520
Speaker 1: opinion UM of well, what should a family look like?

819
00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: And I mean this this episode has certainly made clear

820
00:58:30,120 --> 00:58:33,560
Speaker 1: some of the reasons why that question has has plagued

821
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 1: our culture for so long UM. And there isn't a

822
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: consensus really within the adoption community, uh, the adoption advocacy

823
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:47,120
Speaker 1: community at large, as to what the absolute best thing

824
00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:51,440
Speaker 1: to do is especially when we're talking about say uh

825
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 1: brand Alena r I p brand Alina's sort of rainbow

826
00:58:56,360 --> 00:59:02,320
Speaker 1: family Allah Josephine Baker Um that they have formed with

827
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:07,200
Speaker 1: adopted children from Cambodia and Vietnam and elsewhere. Um where

828
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:10,200
Speaker 1: you have some people saying, at the end of the day,

829
00:59:10,800 --> 00:59:12,880
Speaker 1: it's going to be terrific for any child to grow

830
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: up in Angelina Jolie's house versus pretty much any other

831
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:19,680
Speaker 1: else you could think of. But then you also have

832
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:22,360
Speaker 1: NGOs on the ground Una Sef and Save the Children

833
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 1: or two um main ones who do see that as

834
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:30,680
Speaker 1: more of a last resort where it's like we have

835
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:36,480
Speaker 1: a crisis, yes of onty two million orphans around the

836
00:59:36,560 --> 00:59:41,760
Speaker 1: world who don't necessarily need adopting, okay by white families,

837
00:59:41,920 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 1: but who are indicative of all of these community resources

838
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:51,240
Speaker 1: that celebrities say could use their millions of dollars to

839
00:59:52,280 --> 00:59:55,120
Speaker 1: build up. And and Madonna for her part, like with

840
00:59:55,280 --> 00:59:59,640
Speaker 1: the whole Malawi scandal, you know she did invest I know,

841
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:04,680
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of money into that local community. Um.

842
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean there's there's really no easy answer

843
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:09,959
Speaker 1: to that. That's one thing that I that I picked

844
01:00:10,040 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 1: up from a lot of what we read, and especially

845
01:00:12,320 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: first person accounts of what we read, UM, which is

846
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:18,320
Speaker 1: that there's there's no there doesn't seem to be a

847
01:00:18,400 --> 01:00:22,280
Speaker 1: blanket answer, there is no panacea for all of these

848
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:24,800
Speaker 1: issues happening. But in the middle of all of this

849
01:00:24,960 --> 01:00:27,240
Speaker 1: is we're trying to figure it all out. You have

850
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:33,280
Speaker 1: children who are relatively helpless in a lot of ways,

851
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: and not just children born in countries outside the United States. Um.

852
01:00:41,640 --> 01:00:44,960
Speaker 1: Once we got to almost the end of researching for

853
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:47,640
Speaker 1: this episode, I thought, wait a minute, hold on, hold on,

854
01:00:47,800 --> 01:00:51,080
Speaker 1: hold on, what about what about American babies that are

855
01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 1: then adopted out so to speak? Oh, yeah, they do exist,

856
01:00:56,680 --> 01:01:04,240
Speaker 1: but they primarily uh are from a very particular demographic. Yeah,

857
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:08,360
Speaker 1: there's a lot of black babies that get adopted, specifically

858
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 1: to Canada, the Netherlands, and Ireland. Those are the top

859
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:16,760
Speaker 1: three countries that adopt American children. Yeah. According to Joan

860
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:21,320
Speaker 1: hi Feazer Hollinger with the Berkeley Law School, around five

861
01:01:21,440 --> 01:01:25,400
Speaker 1: hundred infants are adopted out of the US annually, quote,

862
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:29,600
Speaker 1: most of whom are black. And one major motivation that

863
01:01:29,720 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 1: comes up a lot in stories about this is the

864
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:38,240
Speaker 1: opportunity to allow that child to grow up outside of

865
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:44,000
Speaker 1: American racism. Not to say that racism only exists in America, UM,

866
01:01:44,520 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 1: but you do have a birth mothers who say, you know,

867
01:01:47,800 --> 01:01:50,320
Speaker 1: I want to give my child a better chance, not

868
01:01:50,640 --> 01:01:56,320
Speaker 1: just financially, not just with domestic stability, but also when

869
01:01:56,360 --> 01:02:00,320
Speaker 1: it comes to race. So that says a lot. And UM, Canada,

870
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:05,360
Speaker 1: you are the number one adoptive country for American babies.

871
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: So I say thanks, because you know we love Canada.

872
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:13,760
Speaker 1: Yeah we do, UM, Okay, yeah we do. So, listeners,

873
01:02:13,800 --> 01:02:17,120
Speaker 1: We've covered a lot of territory and there have probably

874
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:20,360
Speaker 1: been a lot of generalizations caught up in that in

875
01:02:20,520 --> 01:02:23,440
Speaker 1: US wanting to offer UM this snapshot for you, and

876
01:02:24,160 --> 01:02:26,800
Speaker 1: I do want to reiterate that a lot of what

877
01:02:26,920 --> 01:02:30,720
Speaker 1: we're talking about is more of the high level geopolitical

878
01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:36,800
Speaker 1: UM and and diplomatic aspects of adoption UM. And we,

879
01:02:36,920 --> 01:02:41,600
Speaker 1: by no means are are trying to impugne adoptive families UM,

880
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:47,280
Speaker 1: but rather to highlight all of all the reasons why UH,

881
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 1: it remains such a complicated issue. And I would like

882
01:02:50,680 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 1: to hear from our adopted listeners if you do struggle

883
01:02:54,040 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: with some of these identity issues that we brought up

884
01:02:56,280 --> 01:02:58,160
Speaker 1: and parents. We also want to hear from you what

885
01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:00,920
Speaker 1: have your experience has been going through the process and

886
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 1: also going through people's reactions to it. We have We've

887
01:03:06,360 --> 01:03:09,400
Speaker 1: got a lot of baggage and and stigma and stereotyping

888
01:03:09,480 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: when it comes to the even just some mere concept

889
01:03:13,120 --> 01:03:16,640
Speaker 1: of adoption, and to me, it is time for those

890
01:03:16,800 --> 01:03:21,000
Speaker 1: taboos too. And um so share with us mom Stuff

891
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot Com is our email address.

892
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:25,960
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or

893
01:03:26,000 --> 01:03:29,120
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages

894
01:03:29,200 --> 01:03:31,200
Speaker 1: to share with you when we come right back from

895
01:03:31,240 --> 01:03:37,280
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, I have a letter here

896
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:41,160
Speaker 1: from Star Sminty listeners Stephanie, in response to our barri

897
01:03:41,320 --> 01:03:45,280
Speaker 1: your Gaze Trope episode. She says, I'm friends with many

898
01:03:45,400 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 1: queer women who write about TV and or are heavily

899
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:51,280
Speaker 1: invested in the fandoms, and I cannot emphasize how much

900
01:03:52,240 --> 01:03:55,320
Speaker 1: has gutted us, especially earlier this year, as it seemed

901
01:03:55,400 --> 01:04:00,400
Speaker 1: every show we loved kept killing us off the hundred, which,

902
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:03,480
Speaker 1: thank you, she corrected our pronunciation from the one hundred

903
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:07,200
Speaker 1: to the hundred. Uh. The Walking Dead person of interest,

904
01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:09,560
Speaker 1: Jane the Virgin Orange is the New Black, etcetera, etcetera.

905
01:04:10,040 --> 01:04:12,840
Speaker 1: My expectations for queer women characters have gotten to the

906
01:04:12,880 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 1: point where if someone is revealed to be attracted to women,

907
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:18,120
Speaker 1: I start a mental countdown for them and start to

908
01:04:18,200 --> 01:04:21,520
Speaker 1: emotionally pull away because it's only a matter of time.

909
01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 1: For example, when I started House of Cards over the summer,

910
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:26,680
Speaker 1: I started liking Rachel, but when her storyline had her

911
01:04:26,720 --> 01:04:29,800
Speaker 1: becoming closer to a new female friend, I actually started saying,

912
01:04:30,080 --> 01:04:32,680
Speaker 1: Oh God, don't kiss her, Rachel, No, you're gonna die now.

913
01:04:33,720 --> 01:04:37,480
Speaker 1: It's weird when you get used to desperately wanting representation

914
01:04:37,560 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 1: on TV, but now you dread it because you know

915
01:04:39,800 --> 01:04:43,000
Speaker 1: they're probably going to die and die in a really random,

916
01:04:43,080 --> 01:04:46,120
Speaker 1: nonsensical way. But I did want to share some TV

917
01:04:46,240 --> 01:04:48,840
Speaker 1: shows that are bright shining light on the dead lesbian

918
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:53,080
Speaker 1: or bisexual landscape of if you're interested in TV shows

919
01:04:53,120 --> 01:04:57,120
Speaker 1: that feature badass, multidimensional women characters and queer women characters

920
01:04:57,160 --> 01:05:00,640
Speaker 1: that are not just love interests that die, were disappeared

921
01:05:00,640 --> 01:05:03,480
Speaker 1: and never seen again. Two shows I recommend our Winona

922
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:08,040
Speaker 1: Earp and Supergirl. Winona Earp was actually revolutionary for me,

923
01:05:08,160 --> 01:05:10,560
Speaker 1: as it had a very purposeful meat cute for its

924
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:13,120
Speaker 1: two characters. This was not a vague, oh, she's just

925
01:05:13,200 --> 01:05:16,800
Speaker 1: being friendly meeting, but established romantic interest from the start.

926
01:05:17,560 --> 01:05:21,160
Speaker 1: Supergirl's recent coming out storyline of supergirls older sister Alex

927
01:05:21,240 --> 01:05:24,439
Speaker 1: dan Verse is also fantastic and beautifully portrays the story

928
01:05:24,560 --> 01:05:26,960
Speaker 1: of an older twenty or thirty something year old woman

929
01:05:27,040 --> 01:05:30,400
Speaker 1: realizing that she's gay, which is not something we often see.

930
01:05:31,240 --> 01:05:33,919
Speaker 1: I hope this email wasn't too long, but as Caroline said,

931
01:05:33,960 --> 01:05:37,080
Speaker 1: I have a lot of nerd rage from thanks again

932
01:05:37,200 --> 01:05:39,360
Speaker 1: for the wonderful podcast and all you guys do, and

933
01:05:39,440 --> 01:05:42,720
Speaker 1: thank you Stephanie. And I've got a letter here from

934
01:05:43,040 --> 01:05:48,080
Speaker 1: Priscilla about our Barrier Gays episode, and Priscilla writes, there's

935
01:05:48,160 --> 01:05:50,360
Speaker 1: something about the history of the Dead Lesbian Trip that

936
01:05:50,440 --> 01:05:53,160
Speaker 1: I thought you guys might be interested in knowing that

937
01:05:53,320 --> 01:05:56,040
Speaker 1: trope goes much older than TV and seems to have

938
01:05:56,120 --> 01:05:59,960
Speaker 1: originated with lesbian pulp novels. In order for those novels

939
01:06:00,040 --> 01:06:02,840
Speaker 1: to be published, the authors had to give all lesbian

940
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:06,520
Speaker 1: characters a bad ending like death, losing their minds, or

941
01:06:06,600 --> 01:06:09,200
Speaker 1: ending up with a guy. Most of those novels were

942
01:06:09,240 --> 01:06:11,560
Speaker 1: written by queer women, which is really troubling. It's a

943
01:06:11,640 --> 01:06:13,760
Speaker 1: part of the history that for whatever reason, tends to

944
01:06:13,800 --> 01:06:17,840
Speaker 1: be left behind on the barrier Gays conversation. On another note,

945
01:06:17,880 --> 01:06:20,360
Speaker 1: I'll start by saying that this is my personal opinion.

946
01:06:21,080 --> 01:06:23,960
Speaker 1: I consider any queer character, regardless of the motivation or

947
01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:26,760
Speaker 1: story justification, to be in the trope. With a low

948
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:28,960
Speaker 1: amount of queer characters and the media and the negative

949
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:31,880
Speaker 1: portrayals and the history, we're still not at a point

950
01:06:31,920 --> 01:06:34,640
Speaker 1: where the death of a queer character doesn't hurt the community.

951
01:06:35,040 --> 01:06:39,840
Speaker 1: Who says death specifically completely fits in the trope, especially

952
01:06:39,920 --> 01:06:42,640
Speaker 1: because of the low number of queer women of color

953
01:06:42,960 --> 01:06:46,800
Speaker 1: on TV and in most media right now. Well, thank

954
01:06:46,880 --> 01:06:49,560
Speaker 1: you for filling us in on that, Priscilla, and thanks

955
01:06:49,640 --> 01:06:53,040
Speaker 1: to everyone who's written into us. Mom's stuff at how

956
01:06:53,160 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com is our email address in Caroline.

957
01:06:56,680 --> 01:07:00,360
Speaker 1: Where else can people find you? Well, I'm over Twitter

958
01:07:00,600 --> 01:07:03,360
Speaker 1: at the Caroline IRV and you can also bug me

959
01:07:03,480 --> 01:07:07,160
Speaker 1: on my personal website, Caroline Irvin dot com because I'm

960
01:07:07,200 --> 01:07:10,560
Speaker 1: too cool for the m You can also find me

961
01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:14,120
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Kristen Conger and if you head over

962
01:07:14,200 --> 01:07:18,600
Speaker 1: to tiny letter dot com slash Kristen, which is c

963
01:07:19,120 --> 01:07:23,880
Speaker 1: R I S T E. N it's often misspelled, you'll understand.

964
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:27,080
Speaker 1: You can sign up for a newsletter that I've started

965
01:07:27,320 --> 01:07:30,800
Speaker 1: called The Do Better Dispatch. And if you'd like to

966
01:07:31,480 --> 01:07:35,000
Speaker 1: follow stuff Mom Never Told You social media, watch all

967
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:37,200
Speaker 1: of our videos, read our blogs, and listen to all

968
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:40,240
Speaker 1: of our podcasts with our sources so you can follow along.

969
01:07:40,440 --> 01:07:43,360
Speaker 1: There's just one place for that, and it's stuff Mom

970
01:07:43,480 --> 01:07:49,920
Speaker 1: Never Told You dot com. For more on this and

971
01:07:50,040 --> 01:07:52,760
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com