Our finished liberalism and adoption piece is titled, "The Liberal Roots of the Modern Adoption Movement."
Here are the first few paragraphs. (To read the rest of the essay, please click on the link at the end. It will take you to Gazillion Voices.)
Please leave any comments you might have either here or at the end of the article in Gazillion Voices.
THE
LIBERAL ROOTS OF THE MODERN ADOPTION MOVEMENT
by David Smolin and Desiree Smolin
INTRODUCTION
Gazillion
Voices provided us with the assignment of writing
something about liberalism and adoption. We accepted the assignment largely
because we agree with the purposes of Gazillion
Voices to provide a platform for “adoptees and their allies” and to provide
topics and content that will “reframe and reshape the conversation about
adoption.” We like to think that we are among the allies! Nonetheless, the
topic is awkward for us for several reasons. First, as long-term critics of
adoption systems, we have tried to appeal to legal rules or broadly shared values,
rather than to a narrow set of values that appeal primarily only to a specific
group. The primary exception, our work on the evangelical Christian adoption
movement, involves us as evangelicals critiquing evangelicals, using the
religious beliefs we share with that group as a common basis for communication.
Second, while we would characterize ourselves as political moderates, it would
be more accurate to say that most of our adult lives have been spent in
difficult spaces between political and other contesting groups. Unfortunately,
in addressing the subject of liberalism and adoption we are stepping into new
territory likely to make even more people unhappy with us.
Adoptees,
of course, like all people, run the
spectrum of political, cultural, and religious perspectives. Nonetheless, much
activist adoptee discourse critiquing various aspects of adoption has employed
popular or scholarly language that is progressive, liberal, or “left” in rhetoric,
reference, and tone. Added to this tendency has been the new wave of largely
progressive critique of the recent evangelical Christian adoption movement. Further,
activists addressing the long history and current circumstance of Korean
adoptions are often reacting against elements of American and Korean culture
and practice that are variously religious, conservative, and traditionalist. All
of this can give the impression that
disputes over adoption, or specific aspects like transracial or intercountry
adoption, are primarily left-right disputes.
We
argue, to the contrary, that the modern adoption movement has become embedded
in all major streams of American culture. (In referring to the “modern adoption
movement,” we are focusing on the popularization and expansion of adoption in
the post-World War II era, including both intercountry adoption and domestic
adoption.) Indeed, liberal and progressive thought is at the center of the
modern adoption movement. Thus, any attempt to “reframe and reshape the
conversation about adoption,” as Gazillion
Voices and many others seek to do, must address the liberal roots of the
modern adoption movement. We further challenge activist “adoptees and allies”
who identify themselves as progressive, liberal, or left politically, to take
the lead in critiquing the role of their own self-identified
cultural/political/religious paradigms in the modern adoption movement. Adoption
discourse that merely reinforces religious, political, or cultural identities
and prejudices will become swallowed up in the broader fragmentation of
cultural and religious values, and will do little to actually reform
adoption.
CONTEXTS
Politics, religion, and
culture have become embedded in intertwined identifies defined in opposition to
stereotyped images of enemy others. One such polarization is between secular
liberals and evangelical Christians, who so often vilify one another. Yet, as to adoption,
secular liberals and evangelical Christians fundamentally agree and, indeed,
have agreed for years. This agreement is sometimes hidden by differences in
vocabulary and justifications, with each side using rhetoric that the other may
sometimes find repugnant. The agreement across this polarized divide is a part
of a broader American consensus on adoption, from which each group draws.
Americans share a common understanding of what adoption is, a common belief in
the “facts” of adoption, a common view of themselves and the “other” in relation
to adoption, and a common undifferentiated belief in adoption as the best
solution to many child welfare problems. This American understanding reflects a
naive blindness to the roles of self-interest in adoption, a disinterest in the
power/privilege/gender inequality/class/wealth-differentials that drive and
have always driven adoption, as we understand it, and a common ignorance of the
history of the institution of adoption.
