I realize my reaction to the article I quote is a direct reaction to experiences that I had as a child, and to the “adoptees movement” of the 70’s and 80’s who never met an adoptive parent they liked, and felt that all adoptees were hurt by the mere act of being. But if a celeb dies and their children or one child was adopted, the obit still mentions that. If an adoptee kills or rapes, it’s always mentioned. By that thinking if an adoptee accomplishes anything it should be mentioned. But why would adoptees bring it up? I wouldn’t if I didn’t have a blog. My ex-husband found it much more fascinating than I did. He found my matter of factness about it intriguing. The constant use of the word “adoptee” might by itself bring its own set of problems.
I was going to write a warm and fuzzy post about David Berkowitz’s capture on August 10, 1977 as he had held the city hostage, and now it was no longer in fear. Then I read this:
Scott Weinberger, a WCBS-TV reporter, interviewed Mr. Berkowitz recently to make the 30-year anniversary of the killings. Mr. Berkowitz, who was adopted as an infant, said that as a young man, he felt guilty after he was told by his adoptive parents, incorrectly, that his birth mother died while he was born.
David Berkowitz was a sick person. His adoptive parents sound like idiots but that’s not the point. He and he alone was responsible for his actions. He might have inherited “bad” genes; he might not have been nurtured properly.
I feel oh so earnest and stupid when I get into one of these things but I remember going to “adoptee rights” meetings where people would totally negate their adoptive families.
“I met my birth mother. She’s in a mental hospital for life and I have seven half-siblings all with different fathers but now my life is complete.”
Yes that’s simplistic thinking. I had to listen to it without throwing up. I did walk out. I went to a meeting when thinking was supposed to be a bit less simplistic. A woman asked a panel what to do as she had found her birth mother but her adoptive mother was old and sick and she didn’t know whether to tell her or not.
A valid question? Not to that panel who went on and on about how they never had liked their adoptive families and how wonderful their birth families were. I’m not going to go into my reaction. It’s in the archives.
I wrote published article on meeting my birth mother that I should scan in. It wasn’t a great meeting.
But neither she nor my parents are responsible for any problems that I might have. They’re mine and mine alone. Yes my Dad was hard on me. But we always loved each other immensely and I was a rather wild teenager.
Not because I was adopted but because of the times I grew up in, and because maybe I did have my birth mother’s rebel streak. My parents weren’t exactly conformists and at times encouraged my rebellion.
Fortunately life isn’t in black and white but many shades of gray–and pink, blue, green….
This was the day from hell. I reached a place in my book where I’m revising, taking out, editing and adding. Today I added a story about my nine year old self fighting with my 45 year old father.
My book isn’t really, Pia, the very early years but sometimes explanation in dialogue is needed. It wasn’t fun to write and I probably shouldn’t have on a day I had no AC, it was in the 90’s and the city was at a standstill.
I probably should have gone to bed and read magazines, but uh, I would have felt guilty
While I don’t think fighting with my father was the most fun I had, I knew even then how much he loved me and cared about me.
All families are screwed up. It’s the families that work out their differences that produce functional members of society.
Being adopted doesn’t make a killer. Genes, nurture, and ones self do. With the emphasis being on the last.
I shouldn’t personalize. I know that. But I am a staunch believer in a woman’s right to choose and one of those choices is adoption. I don’t understand people who are so vain they have to have their own egg or sperm. Yet when they read things like the above quote it gives validity to reasons not to adopt.
Most “satisfied” adoptees never talk about being adopted. I find that sad also. Maybe if more people talked about their “happy” home life, statistics about too many adoptees being in mental hospitals wouldn’t be bandied about so much.
David Berkowitz wasn’t the only adopted serial killer. So were Ted Bundy and Joel Rifkin for two that come to mind quickly. Maybe they had horrible upbringings that fostered their “bad” genes.
Maybe Berkowitz’s parents should have told him he was adopted when he was an infant or small child and not lied about his mother. Maybe he would have been a serial killer had he remained with his birth mother and she was in that most perfect of all situations, married.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a stigma to adoption if records were open and families made every effort to talk to their children about their roots.
Maybe if the word “adult” didn’t have to be put in front of “adoptee,” things would be different.
I am an adoptee. I am an adult. I would rather die myself than kill another human being unless they were physically attacking somebody that I love. Most adoptees feel as I do. We are a true silent majority. That’s sad.
Fortunately life isn’t in black and white but many shades of gray–and pink, blue, green….
Great line, Pia.
We do tend to label each and everything. That includes human beings too.
THoughtful post, thanks.
I come from at least 2 generations of bi-polar… you can inherit crazy, but the way in which we deal with it is a matter of choice. I seriously doubt he can blame his killing on thinking he killed his mother in child birth. I have a thousand reasons I could do bad things, and no jury would convict me with my past…
But I don’t- I get on with life. This creep, and so many others are as adept at making excuses as they are at killing.
Glad you played over at 3WW.
As a doctor, I think there is some validity to the statistical significance regarding adoption, in that people with certain types of mental illness are more likely to be unfit parents, and those illnesses are inheritable… but there are many many many other reasons that children are put up for adoption, and it is faulty logic to say that all who are adopted are likely to be criminal or dangers to society. There are many others who are in dysfunctional families that are equally likely to become serial killers, rapists or do far more harm in other unspeakable ways, and the fact you are not adopted does not make you “safe.”
The truth of the matter is that mental illness is a problem in this country that we’re afraid to talk about, and people like John Travolta and Tom Cruise don’t do us any favors by adding to the stigma.
And many health professionals are over-eager to hand out drugs to people who don’t need them… who really just need to sit back, take a look at their lives and adjust their priorities, while they overlook others who really and truly need their help. It’s a messed up planet. But I guess we all already knew that…
Some people are genuinely good, and will continue to be so no matter what life puts in their way. Others are the opposite, and will be no matter how hard we try to rehabilitate them and how well we treat them.
As sometimes happens I just have to read with no comment as their is nothing I can add to what you have so perfectly written.
I didn;t know those serial killers were adopted! Every family is dysfunctinal…GO REBEL! I was a rebel too!
My ex was adopted and boy he had issues. he was like, My parents are rich and Jewish and my real dad is some labor worker from the UK. I have no idea if that was true about his biological dad since he couldn’t really reach his real parents. I mean the guy broke up with me and starting making out with all the guys in manhattan!
That’s interesting. I grew up with a ‘best friend’ that was adopted. She was Pakistani, brought up in a very middle class English white family, when really, there were only 2 other people of any other kind of ethnicity in our entire area.
I have to really think that her own problems were due to that, not the fact that she was adopted per se, but they could have been better parents. They were very cold emotionally, and she is a naturally warm and caring person.
I think if they’d also brought her up with more awareness of her own beautifully rich background and culture, she’d have done a lot better, but tha fact that she was Pakistani was always sort of whispered among the grown-ups. Us kids couldn’t have cared less, for the most part.
What it led her to, (Or was she naturally like this anyway?) was compulsive lying. She would fantatsize about who her natural parents were, and make up the most incredible things.
I can understand her need to do that, in this case. But it became a bit ridiculous.
She was however, given a lot of opportunities I never had. Her parents were far more wealthy than mine, and I always had a lot of envy of the things she was given, that I never had. What exacerbated things was that her emotional problems led her to steal things from me! I had to learn to go steal them back again, and that went against my nature a bit.
I think she would have been like that to a large degree anyway, regardless of her status as an ‘adoptee’. I think the cultural/silently racist thing was most likely more to blame in her case, as to her not doing so well in life, by the measure that we traditionaly use to a person’s ‘success’.
What else it’s lead her to, is really positive. She’s the mother of 4 boys, and I don’t think I’ve ever met a more caring mother!! She’s amazing in that way.
I’ve also known a lot of well-adjusted adoptees, who love their adopted parents a lot. So I really am not inclined to blame it on that, just her own particular set of difficult circumstances, and parents that didn’t raise thier biological child any better, either. He is a 2 years older than I am, and has already been through 3 marriages.
Pia, it sounds like you got so lucky with your parents, they sound wonderful. 🙂
Brilliantly written and oh so well put my dearest Pia!
I once read a Paulo Coelho book (I love that man) entitled “Veronica decides to die” and one of the things in that book, arising from his personal experience in mental wards, was that patients in mental wards tend to act out even more, play out their “insanity” and not really focus on healing because the very fact of their being there gives them an unspoken license to act crazy. We do that with labels in society, all in the spirit of scapegoating the problems elsewhere and avoiding responsibility.
And so it is with the label of “adopted”, “adoptee” and whatnot…
And bravo to you for seeing past the BS and saying it like it is sistah! (That needed a “sistah” thrown in”… and my fist is raised and my other hand is on my chest… yep! FO SHO! 😉 )