Speaker 1: Hey their listeners. For this bonus episode, we wanted to
Speaker 1: reach out to an expert, someone who knows a thing
Speaker 1: or two about what adoptees experience when they reach out
Speaker 1: to their birth family, or what happens when someone finds
Speaker 1: out they're adopted later in life, like Steve Patterson. Then
Speaker 1: our producer Kate Mischkin taught with doctor Amanda Baten, a
Speaker 1: licensed psychologist in New York City who's worked with adoptees,
Speaker 1: adoptive families, and has adopted ourself. We were lucky to
Speaker 1: sit down with them.
Speaker 2: This is chapter twelve, Doctor Amanda Beten on adoption. Just
Speaker 2: to start out, would you mind telling us who you
Speaker 2: are and what kind of work you do.
Speaker 3: My name's Amanda Beten. I'm a licensed psychologist in New
Speaker 3: York City, and I'm also a professor at Montclair State University,
Speaker 3: where I also serve as the doctoral program director. At
Speaker 3: Montclair State, we train future counselors, and in the doctoral
Speaker 3: program we train counselor educators, those who are going to
Speaker 3: be professors. Training future counselors, it's very matter. And then
Speaker 3: in my practice, I have a clinical practice in New
Speaker 3: York where I work with primarily adult adoptees and adoptive families.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you're if you're open to telling me
Speaker 2: a little bit about how your own experience has informed
Speaker 2: your practice.
Speaker 3: I think you know, having grown up as a transracial
Speaker 3: international adoptee myself, of course, I understand a lot of
Speaker 3: the struggles. I know what they look like at various points.
Speaker 3: I've been working with adoptees for over twenty five years.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of stories, a lot of histories
Speaker 3: that people have shared that some of which overlap with
Speaker 3: mine and some which diverge completely. I try to make
Speaker 3: sure that I have very good sense of what's my
Speaker 3: history and what's theirs, not to confuse them, but I
Speaker 3: definitely can see that there's a lot of shared experiences.
Speaker 3: I shared history of how adoptees have an internal message
Speaker 3: system that they might use to themselves about what it
Speaker 3: means to be adopted. For kids and adolescents can be
Speaker 3: hard to articulate, so some of what I do is
Speaker 3: really helping them find words to explain their experience and
Speaker 3: to normalize it, to recognize it. They weren't the only
Speaker 3: ones who had that experience, and therefore it can be
Speaker 3: very empowering to recognize like there's a real community out
Speaker 3: there that can share some of this.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if just something we could start out with.
Speaker 2: Is some reasons adoptees seek out therapy in general?
Speaker 3: Oh sure, I think everyone is always looking to understand
Speaker 3: themselves a little bit better, looking for support when things
Speaker 3: might get a little challenging or tough. The adults that
Speaker 3: I see primarily have come for various reasons. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: the traditional reasons we understand is different kinds of mood
Speaker 3: disorders like depression or anxiety, But a lot of it's
Speaker 3: about identity. Understanding themselves is people of color understanding themselves
Speaker 3: as adopted people. Many of them have been in therapy
Speaker 3: with other clinicians who don't have adoption backgrounds, and so
Speaker 3: in many of those cases, they might say that person
Speaker 3: was supportive and kind, but maybe didn't quite understand the
Speaker 3: nuances of adoption, or they felt they had to teach
Speaker 3: them so much that it wasn't as helpful as they
Speaker 3: wanted it to be. And more recently, sometimes it's also
Speaker 3: about connections with you know, relationship issues, romantic kinds of relationships,
Speaker 3: friendships and relationships with adoptive family members and birth family searches.
Speaker 3: Those are all different reasons that people might seek therapy.
Speaker 2: And so I just want to clarify, for the most part,
Speaker 2: you're talking to folks who have been adopted. You're not
Speaker 2: necessarily talking to the adoptive families.
Speaker 3: I do work with some adoptive families, so whenever I'm
Speaker 3: working with adult adoptees, at times we'll find it might
Speaker 3: be very useful for them to have session where they
Speaker 3: bring in their parents. We're working on them developing agency
Speaker 3: to be able to express what they want, and me
Speaker 3: to serve in the role of helping improve communication, help
Speaker 3: the adopted person advocate for themselves, help interpret some of
Speaker 3: the things that the parents may struggle to understand because
Speaker 3: they didn't live it in the same way.
Speaker 2: What's a big misconception about adoption.
Speaker 3: I think the most common misconception is that people think
Speaker 3: they understand what adoption is because they've heard stories and
Speaker 3: seen movies. Almost all Disney movies have an adoption theme
Speaker 3: of some sort. So these arcs tell these stories I
Speaker 3: think that can problematize adoption and also make it seem
Speaker 3: so rainbows and flowers and stars like it's so wonderful
Speaker 3: all the time. And the fact is adoptions complex and
Speaker 3: the issues are complex. So a lot of times I
Speaker 3: think people think if a child's been adopted, that they're lucky,
Speaker 3: that they should be grateful, that the adoptive parents have
Speaker 3: done a wonderful thing, that they're do gooders, and look
Speaker 3: what a wonderful life they've been given. Those kinds of
Speaker 3: things I think come into play a lot because it
Speaker 3: calls into question motives for adopting. It calls into question
Speaker 3: things like how an adoptee's supposed to process and think
Speaker 3: about their experience. That can make it hard, because if
Speaker 3: they have this message that they should never complain and
Speaker 3: never be unhappy and never grieve anything that's related to
Speaker 3: their adoption, then that is going to become a big
Speaker 3: barrier in the relationship they have with their families and
Speaker 3: in their own processing and navigating of the feelings that
Speaker 3: come with adoption.
Speaker 2: I want to travel back in time a little bit,
Speaker 2: to the nineteen seventies. That's kind of where the sort
Speaker 2: that we're focused on takes place. In our story. This
Speaker 2: man didn't know that he was adopted to very late
Speaker 2: in life. He stumbled upon a Manila envelope with the
Speaker 2: name he was assigned at birth, but really didn't ask
Speaker 2: any further questions, and finally, when his adoptive father died
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, he started kind of unpacking. So I
Speaker 2: was wondering, you know, back in the seventies, how common
Speaker 2: was that for adopted children to not be told that
Speaker 2: they were adopted and to have kept it a secret.
Speaker 3: I wish I could tell you explicitly, because again, we
Speaker 3: don't have numbers on these kinds of things. We would
Speaker 3: not be able to estimate who's telling and who's not telling.
Speaker 3: I can say, though, that it still.
Speaker 2: Happens, and why do you think that happens.
Speaker 3: I think that there's a lot of answers to that,
Speaker 3: and they're somewhat individual to the parent to some degree.
Speaker 3: But I think the standard answers people give are that
Speaker 3: they want the adopted person to understand it fully, they
Speaker 3: don't know when a good time is to tell them.
Speaker 3: They think it will upset them and make them feel
Speaker 3: less part of the family. These are all kind of
Speaker 3: common answers, but I also think that there's a lot
Speaker 3: of fear involved, a fear that the child may not
Speaker 3: feel part of the family. They may have questions, they
Speaker 3: may want to reach out and find birth family. There's
Speaker 3: an attempt to if you pretend that we're all biologically related,
Speaker 3: then we'll all pretend and everything will be the same.
Speaker 3: I think that some folks might frame it as having
Speaker 3: protected the child, when we know that's not always the
Speaker 3: sole motivator or necessarily an accurate explanation. I've actually worked
Speaker 3: with a person once who had suspected for many years
Speaker 3: that they were adopted and had been looking into this
Speaker 3: for years, and there had been denials and denials and
Speaker 3: denials from the adoptive parents, and the person finally confronted
Speaker 3: the parent and said, look, I'm about to do this
Speaker 3: DNA test. It's going to come out, so here's your
Speaker 3: chance to tell me. And this this person was in
Speaker 3: their fifties at the time. The adoptive parents still refused,
Speaker 3: and of course the DNA test proved it, and they
Speaker 3: finally had to have the conversation. Ultimately, I don't know
Speaker 3: if they actually had a logical stream of thought around
Speaker 3: how this might play out or not, but they had
Speaker 3: been locked into this narrative for over fifty years.
Speaker 2: I canmuchure it's hard to break that after fifty years
Speaker 2: telling the same story based on your experience and your expertise,
Speaker 2: when is a good time to tell a kid.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. And we have a lot of
Speaker 3: colleagues who do adoption research as well, and one of
Speaker 3: them who's quite well known in the field, David Brezinski,
Speaker 3: had sent two independent researchers to me to say, hey,
Speaker 3: maybe Amanda will do this study with you, because they
Speaker 3: were both what they called late discovery adoptees LDAs, and
Speaker 3: so they came to me with this idea and I
Speaker 3: was entruy. So what we did was we did a
Speaker 3: survey to look at the impact of when you found
Speaker 3: out you were adopted, and the results were very compelling.
Speaker 3: What we basically found out was that if an adopted
Speaker 3: person has a memory of finding out they were adopted,
Speaker 3: then that's already a little late for them. They've already
Speaker 3: experienced some distress. So we looked at whether distress, satisfaction
Speaker 3: with life, and coping mechanisms how they all impacted this.
Speaker 3: But if you account for the coping mechanisms that people have,
Speaker 3: adults have more coping mechanisms, that the impact of finding
Speaker 3: out that you're adopted after the age of three gradually increases.
Speaker 3: The older you get, the more distress. So what it
Speaker 3: meant to me was that memory really sits in people's minds.
Speaker 3: In my role as a faculty member, I teach a
Speaker 3: course on multicultural counseling, and when I do bring in
Speaker 3: adoption into the course, I do a little quiz for
Speaker 3: them and I ask them at what age do they
Speaker 3: think a child should be told they're adopted. What's fascinated
Speaker 3: me about it is that there was this range. There's
Speaker 3: always a few students who say immediately at birth, as
Speaker 3: soon as you can, but there's far more who say five, eight, fifteen,
Speaker 3: eighteen or never, which really surprised me. And then my
Speaker 3: explanation my response to them would be, so I don't
Speaker 3: think a child needs to understand all of the complexity
Speaker 3: of adoption to understand that they were born in someone
Speaker 3: else's body and that there's another family out there. And
Speaker 3: if you wait until they're three, five, ten, how many
Speaker 3: times have you had to lie to your child? Most
Speaker 3: of the LDAs they often talk about the awareness that
Speaker 3: they'd been betrayed and lied to. It's much harder to
Speaker 3: keep these secrets, and we know secrets have a way
Speaker 3: of coming out often, so we try and help families
Speaker 3: recognize that if you can't be honest with your child
Speaker 3: about their history, you're going to create wedges from the
Speaker 3: very beginning that's going to make it hard to have
Speaker 3: just an honest relationship with them.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, in general, how do late discovery adoptees differ
Speaker 2: from other adoptees.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the difference is more in they have
Speaker 3: a late start. One of the things we struggled with
Speaker 3: when designing the study was how we wanted to define late,
Speaker 3: and our study finding showed that, yeah, four is already
Speaker 3: a little late. So I think that the difference will
Speaker 3: depend to some degree on when they find out. Because
Speaker 3: the person that you're doing this podcast about, he's just
Speaker 3: now identifying as an adopted person and now just diving
Speaker 3: into that world and has maybe changing all the things
Speaker 3: he's had to think about who he was and where
Speaker 3: he came from. Whereas adoptees who've known forever have had
Speaker 3: a head start in that. That doesn't mean they've always
Speaker 3: gotten there or done the work or had effective progress
Speaker 3: with it, but they've had the opportunities in some cases
Speaker 3: to join adoption communities, to be with other adopted people
Speaker 3: to start incorporating that into their identity from a very
Speaker 3: early age. And the challenge is not being able to
Speaker 3: incorporate that into your identity means it may feel like
Speaker 3: your identity has to alter drastically from what you thought
Speaker 3: it was. And knowing that there's this other family out
Speaker 3: there who may or may not have ever wanted to
Speaker 3: reconnect or something like that can throw people into a
Speaker 3: tail spin.
Speaker 2: In your experience, how typical is it for an adopt
Speaker 2: you to discover that they were adopted, you know, finding
Speaker 2: paperwork or some other way, but to not raise it
Speaker 2: with their adoptive parents.
Speaker 3: I think that there's definitely communication problems in all families,
Speaker 3: and I think that some folks are more willing to
Speaker 3: have those challenging and difficult conversations than others. Someone who
Speaker 3: has not had a practice of that and maybe more unwilling.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 3: And sometimes people want to close the door on something
Speaker 3: that doesn't fit into their narrative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two people in this story is that they knew
Speaker 2: and they just didn't want to rock the boat. They
Speaker 2: didn't want to hurt their adoptive parents' feelings.
Speaker 3: That goes with the grateful narrative too. Who am I
Speaker 3: to question and challenge them? I don't want to rock
Speaker 3: the boat. Maybe I don't want to deal with it either,
Speaker 3: or maybe I like pretending because bringing that up is
Speaker 3: going to change a lot, and it's going to force
Speaker 3: some change and a lot of times, as humans, we
Speaker 3: avoid discomfort, we avoid change, and that's where denial comes
Speaker 3: into play a lot.
Speaker 2: So I'm wondering if that's something we would recommend. Seeking
Speaker 2: out records and finding a birth family.
Speaker 3: Great question. I never say that one answer fits for everyone.
Speaker 3: Back in the seventies and eighties, even the nineties, the
Speaker 3: prevailing perspective was that any adopted person who wanted to
Speaker 3: find their birth parents probably was dysfunctional in some way,
Speaker 3: unhappy with their families, had some issues. Now the tables
Speaker 3: have turned completely and the perspective is if you don't
Speaker 3: want to find your birth families, then you must be
Speaker 3: in denial or something like that. So there's a lot
Speaker 3: of pressure either way. Adoptees are all pathologize and they
Speaker 3: can't win completely. But I don't think there's a blanket
Speaker 3: yes or no. I think the individual needs to really
Speaker 3: think about what they want from that, whether they're ready
Speaker 3: for it. I highly recommend therapy counseling for someone who's
Speaker 3: considering it, because I've worked with lots of adoptees who
Speaker 3: went in with this mission to do the detective work
Speaker 3: and find the birth family and then had no idea
Speaker 3: what they wanted to do with that relationship or how
Speaker 3: to approach it, and it became challenging and painful for
Speaker 3: both sides because here the birth family thinks, oh, they
Speaker 3: want to know me and want to connect, but they're
Speaker 3: withdrawing and they're withholding, and it's very confusing. The communication
Speaker 3: is challenging. So anyone who's an LDA would benefit from
Speaker 3: finding community, and if they're able to and willing to
Speaker 3: get some therapy from someone who understands this experience, it
Speaker 3: can be very beneficial to them.
Speaker 2: So once you go on that journey and you find
Speaker 2: your birth mother and she can't answer all your questions,
Speaker 2: I wonder how that might impact your sense of self.
Speaker 3: I think that you know, when you do find a
Speaker 3: birth family member, you're never going to have all your
Speaker 3: questions answered. You know, even when you're born to your parents,
Speaker 3: they can't answer everything. There's some mystery that's always going
Speaker 3: to be involved. But the sense of self is sometimes
Speaker 3: how we make a sense of what we're hearing. Sometimes
Speaker 3: adoptees make their interpretation of the relinquishment is about them.
Speaker 3: They think it's some deficit they have or some punishment
Speaker 3: for themselves, when in fact, most relinquishments are about the
Speaker 3: problems that the birth parents are having. Yeah, and these
Speaker 3: are adult problems. When you go into a union, it's
Speaker 3: going to be hard because there are back and white answers.
Speaker 2: And I wonder if we can talk about the adoptive
Speaker 2: parents a little bit. I can imagine might be a
Speaker 2: challenging time for an adoptive parent when their child is
Speaker 2: seeking out the birth parents and siblings they never knew
Speaker 2: they had. I'm wondering what kind of feelings this might
Speaker 2: bring up for adoptive parents.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing they would feel frustrated that they had to
Speaker 3: reveal the truth, maybe they never intended to, or maybe
Speaker 3: they feel some shame about it. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of adoptive parents who keep these secrets don't come and
Speaker 3: present for therapy. They may not be willing to confront
Speaker 3: what's happening. One of the reasons that they may have
Speaker 3: decided to keep this secret has been their own insecurity
Speaker 3: about their status as parents, as rightful parents, as true parents,
Speaker 3: and so I would guess that it would raise a
Speaker 3: lot of those issues again for them. I've heard many
Speaker 3: adoptive parents say they didn't want to share their child,
Speaker 3: they want to erase the idea that birth parents even exist,
Speaker 3: And in those cases we could say with fair certainty
Speaker 3: that those adoptive parents have not worked through their own
Speaker 3: issues around deciding to adopt.
Speaker 2: What suggestions might you have for someone who wants to
Speaker 2: find the courage to say they'd like to get to
Speaker 2: know their birth family, but doesn't necessarily want to disappoint
Speaker 2: their adoptive parents or hurt someone's feelings.
Speaker 3: I'd say that therapy can be a good start, because
Speaker 3: sometimes with the work of a solid therapist, they can
Speaker 3: help them find the words, and sometimes the therapists can
Speaker 3: even help navigate that discussion. Whenever you come against something
Speaker 3: that feels like a barrier, what often helps is to
Speaker 3: empathize with the other perspective and then try and inform
Speaker 3: that perspective. So what I might suggest someone do is
Speaker 3: empathize with their parents' fears and their anxieties and insecurities,
Speaker 3: because they may feel that they're going to lose their child,
Speaker 3: or something's going to shift and change for the worse
Speaker 3: without recognizing that it often can shift for the better
Speaker 3: if they can stay open and engaged in loving about it.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of documentaries that exist, a lot of
Speaker 3: movies that exist that can be a great conversation starters,
Speaker 3: where then you can talk about this process and how
Speaker 3: these parents, Why were those parents so engaged in this search?
Speaker 3: How were they able to make sense that you know,
Speaker 3: that can give that opportunity to have some of those
Speaker 3: discussions that they may struggle bringing up themselves.
Speaker 2: In that vein. What are some things that people within
Speaker 2: the orbit of the adoptee, you know, everyone in their life,
Speaker 2: what can they do to help the adoptee and support them.
Speaker 3: I think that it can be helpful to listen, certainly
Speaker 3: without a ton of advice giving. I think the advice
Speaker 3: giving can often be well meaning, but can sometimes reinforce
Speaker 3: a lot of the stereotypes about adoption, and a lot
Speaker 3: of advice giving often recreates some of the microaggressions that exist.
Speaker 3: Like for example, one of the adoption microaggressions be named
Speaker 3: was the phantom birth parents, and that's this idea of
Speaker 3: trying to make them disappear, where the birth parents are
Speaker 3: supposed to go off and not think about this. Again,
Speaker 3: if everyone just does their role, then everything will be fine.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't really work that way, And there's a
Speaker 3: lot of adult adoptee communities out there that can be supportive.
Speaker 3: I would say for this person, the big challenge a
Speaker 3: lot of times is for them not to get stuck
Speaker 3: in their anger and to keep moving through it and
Speaker 3: to get the support to move through it. Because what
Speaker 3: we see is someone who's struggling with making sense of
Speaker 3: their identity or something getting stuck in that and not
Speaker 3: making any movement.
Speaker 2: Then yeah, I can definitely see that there's something you
Speaker 2: wish people knew about adoption that you've gleaned from your work.
Speaker 3: I guess I would say I wish that people would
Speaker 3: recognize that adoptees aren't all damaged, that we're not all
Speaker 3: the same, that there's just as much diversity among us
Speaker 3: as there is in any other group, and that it's
Speaker 3: not a sexy narrative to put in every movie, in
Speaker 3: every book, even though it seems to be a very
Speaker 3: compelling one to put in every time I'm watching a show.
Speaker 3: I'm like, op, yep, there's another one. And so the
Speaker 3: point where my family lasts because we see you any
Speaker 3: show that's not at all connected to an adoption story,
Speaker 3: that narrative still makes its way in as a quick
Speaker 3: and dirty way to explain why someone would turn this
Speaker 3: way or turn that.
Speaker 2: Way, or you know, yeah, as a narrator to face
Speaker 2: in some sort of way.
Speaker 3: It really is, and I guess I wish if they're
Speaker 3: going to use that that they do it with real
Speaker 3: education about it and with real caution, because it does
Speaker 3: contribute to the stereotypes and the stigma.
Speaker 2: Doctor Rianton, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 2: to talk to me. This is this is great, no.
Speaker 3: Problem, glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to doctor Amanda Baden for taking
Speaker 1: the time to share insight. We'll have some links to
Speaker 1: her work in the episode description. Her website is doctor
Speaker 1: Amandabaden dot com. Hello, John Doe has and original productions
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