Choices

Today I stumbled across a blog called "Land of the Not-So-Calm", written by an adult adoptee who came to the US from Korea at six months of age. In the post, An Inconvenient Truth, the writer discusses feeling second best as an adoptee, knowing that her adoptive parents tried infertility treatments first. She also raises the question on whether her birth parents considered her "second best" as well. I thought it was a very thought provoking article, and have posted it here. The beginning of the article says this:

"Adoption was my parents’ second choice. I don’t know exactly how far down the infertility treatment path they went, and I’m not sure that I really want to know just how distant their second choice was from their first. How many years of trying. How many dollars in futile doctor’s visits and medications and hormones and injections. I mean, it’s bad enough being second choice — I’m not sure I want to know just how second.

The way I look at it is facts are facts: adoption was my parents’ second choice. I consider it a kind of inconvenient truth, and to me, sugar-coating this truth is like sticking your head in the sand and trying to rewrite history. Trying to say that it somehow really wasn’t second choice, that all those wasted years TTC and those thousands of dollars on infertility treatments were a mistake, sounds suspiciously like revisionist history. Shouting loudly how much you love your kids and how YOU don’t think they’re second-best is great — and when you think about it, is exactly what adoptive parents should be thinking, if not doing — but that still doesn’t change facts." --Sang-Shil

After reading Karen's blog last week about having relatives make comments that adopted children somehow are "different" than biological children, this article makes me wonder how many people who have been adopted have indeed felt like they were somehow a second choice. I know many adoptive parents could argue that adoption WAS their original decision on how to form a family, but this thought provoking article has me pondering choices this morning....the choices of birthparents, adoptive parents, and the children. Does society as a whole still consider adoption a "second choice?" What are your thoughts?

Amy Eldridge