What Adoption ‘Salvation’ Narratives Get Wrong

“The implication, whether people realized it or not, was that I was worth ‘saving,’ but my birth family wasn’t.”

When I was growing up, I was one of the only adoptees (and the only Korean) I knew. As an adult, I’ve been fortunate to get to meet and talk with a number of adoptees, including adoptees of color who, like me, were raised by white parents. Given that many of us think and talk about adoption year-round, it can be jarring to witness the burst of attention given to adoption during November, which is National Adoption Month (also known as National Adoption Awareness Month). The annual observance was established in 1995 to encourage more adoptions from foster care. But many adoptees I know today feel conflicted at best about this month, in part because the narratives leveraged to celebrate and promote adoption have not always left space for discussing its complexity, let alone a wide range of adoption and foster-care experiences.

I believe that adoptees should be leading critical conversations about adoption at all times, so I asked my fellow adoptee Tony Hynes—a Ph.D. candidate studying social connectedness among adult adoptees, the author of the book The Son With Two Moms, and a training specialist in adoption—to chat with me for the newsletter. We spoke about National Adoption Awareness Month, harmful salvation narratives in adoption, the present threat to the Indian Child Welfare Act, why adoptive families need to talk about race, and our own experiences as adoptees of color.

Nicole Chung: Tony, can you start by sharing whatever you’d like to about your own adoption?

Tony Hynes: I’m an interracial domestic adoptee adopted in the mid-’90s by two white parents, both of whom were white women, and so I grew up with this intersectional idea of what it meant to be a family. My adoption went through in 1994 and was overturned that same year by a panel of judges who decided that a white household headed by two queer women was not the right place to raise a Black male child. My adoptive parents appealed that decision, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court before being knocked down to a lower court. Ultimately, the decision was that there would be a joint-custody arrangement between my birth and adoptive families. What that meant was that I was no longer legally an adoptee, but I didn’t know that until I was older—I grew up thinking that we’d won the appeal, so that meant I was an adoptee again. In fact, my two moms, who I lived with, were my legal guardians, and my birth grandmother, who I visited every other weekend, was another legal guardian. When I was 19, I was adopted by my surviving mom; my other mom had passed away by then.

I have two sisters: an older sister who grew up with our grandmother—who, we found out later, was actually our step-great-aunt—and a younger sister, who grew up in a closed adoption. I have been thinking about taking steps to unseal records so I can locate her.

Chung: I’m curious about the narratives you heard about adoption from your family and from society, especially given that yours was in legal flux for a time. My white family was essentially told to ignore my race when they adopted me—“assimilate” was the word the judge used—but my mom would always say, “I really thought someone would at least recommend a book to us!”

Hynes: That’s interesting. The initial judge in our case actually said something similar—that race was less important than just loving and giving me a good home. But as we know, a good home for a child of color is one that emphasizes race in affirming and protective ways.

There were definitely questions I got, stares that our family got. People would ask about my story. Some were accepting, some were bigoted against queer-headed households and interracial families—in my experience, many people are much less accepting of LGBTQ-headed households than we’d like to believe. I got the questions many adoptees from interracial households are familiar with: “Why do you look different than your parents?”; “Do you have any Black friends?” My parents did not ignore race; we spoke about it at times at home. However, I don’t think they were prepared to discuss the racism I would face growing up in a liberal, progressive, yet predominantly white area.

My moms were definitely happy that they had adopted me. I knew that I was a welcome addition to their family and that, in their minds, my adoption was a positive thing. That was the message I got from society too—I was told in both direct and indirect ways that my life was made much better by being adopted. Especially when people learn that my birth mother is schizophrenic, or that I was in an orphanage and experienced the foster-care system, they want to believe that my adoptive moms saved me.

Chung: Like you got your “happy ending.” That was the assumption many people made about me as well.

Hynes: I wasn’t even a teenager when I heard these things, nowhere near the end of my story—not even the end of my childhood. And the implication, whether people realized it or not, was that I was worth “saving,” but my birth family wasn’t.

I was at a primarily white gathering a while back, and this speaker introduced me as an abandoned child who’d made something of himself after being raised by great parents. You know, one: I was not abandoned. Two: His comments reminded me of how we paint white adoptive parents, especially, as saviors of children of color, which feeds into this notion that families of color are somehow “less fit” to raise their children—which is, of course, a false narrative. It also feeds into this idea that more kids need to be adopted.

Chung: Yeah, sometimes it’s hard for me not to hear the assertion that “more kids should be adopted” as “more kids should experience the trauma of being separated from their families of origin.” Adoption always includes loss. In some circumstances, it may well be the best or only option available. But as you point out, our birth families often don’t get the same attention or advocacy.

You’re expressing some of the same things I’ve felt and thought about all my life, but for a long time I wasn’t ready to write or talk about them publicly. What was your path to writing and speaking about adoption?

Hynes: In college, my class was given an assignment to write about something hidden—something you don’t generally talk about but is a crucial part of your identity. I realized that I often didn’t mention that I had two moms, or that they were both white. People assumed I had Black parents, or had heterosexual parents, and sometimes I just didn’t feel like explaining it all to them. After reading my piece, my professor asked if I’d ever thought about writing a book. I thought I was too young to write a memoir, so I dismissed the idea.

Then I was helping my mom clean her house one day, and I found a journal that my other mom had written in 1997. She was diagnosed with cancer that year, and passed away in 2001. Her journal was like treasure to me. Reading her words made me feel as though she were still with me. So I started writing about her, and that loss, and my place in her life, and that led to writing more about my life as an adoptee and the time I spent with my moms and my birth family. All of this coalesced into chapters, and eventually became a book. After that, I started getting speaking requests and also began talking more with adult adoptees. By the time I started a Ph.D. program, I knew I wanted to research adoption.

The organization I work for, the Center for Adoption Support and Education, doesn’t place children for adoption; it’s focused on education and mental-health services and support for all members of the adoption and foster-care communities. I work to support adult adoptees and lead trainings on race and adoption and other topics for families, therapists, and social workers. Sometimes I train parents who need a certificate to be licensed as foster parents. But many parents who adopt privately are not required to do training on race-conscious parenting—or, if they are required, it’s only a very small number of hours, which is a problem.

I care about the whole family, of course, but my work is to ensure that adoptees feel more comfortable, more supported in who they are, growing up, than a lot of us did. It’s a lifelong journey, so it’s important that families continue to educate themselves, ask their child questions, listen to how they’re feeling, learn about the importance of history and birth-family connection. I always say that education about race shouldn’t start when you adopt or are just preparing to do so, but long before that. Parents also need to recognize that, even if they’re white, they are going to be in multiracial, multicultural families as soon as they adopt children of color. We talk about mirrors—making sure that kids have positive representations, friends, relationships with people who look like them. And then families have to be ready to advocate for anti-racist education and speak out against racism. If we don’t talk about racism in honest ways, and how it affects adoptees of color, then talking about everything else is almost like doing nothing. Parents, especially those in interracial adoptive placements, need to explore their own racial biases. I think, so often, parents tell themselves, “I don’t have any racial biases.” But their kids, many of whom are now adults, frequently tell a different story.

Chung: Yeah, sometimes I refer to the cultural exploration and celebration, even looking for positive representation, as “the fun part” for families—it’s very important, but it’s also the lighter work. It’s harder to have honest conversations about racism and colonialism and the impact on families and how many of us wound up being adoptees in the first place. But what does it really mean to care for and be in solidarity with your adopted children of color? One thing you have to be able to do is place their well-being above your own discomfort.

National Adoption Month was established to help boost adoptions of children in foster care who were “awaiting adoption,” though for most kids in foster care, the goal is family preservation. As someone who experienced foster care, you were part of the population this month of “awareness” was supposed to advocate for. What do you feel it does?

Hynes: I always say that I have National Adoption Month every single month—I’m always an adoptee in the same way that I’m always a Black person. I think it’s important to think about language, and I’m glad you brought up that history: National Adoption Month was not established to support the overall well-being of adoptees, but to promote adoptions. The language was “adoption is a positive way to grow your family”—you still hear that in many spaces. It’s funny, because I’m not sure I hear that “positive” wording when we talk about other ways to grow your family! You know, you don’t hear childbirth described in those terms. But again, there’s this prevailing narrative that adoption is always an inherent good, a net positive, and this is promoted in a lot of ways during National Adoption Month. Melissa Guida-Richards refers to this as a form of “toxic positivity”—it doesn’t allow you to dive beneath the surface. Not to say that kids should never be adopted, but we need to ask how we can best support all families, birth and adoptive families. We can’t just focus on one and ignore the other, or think that our obligation to the adoptee ends the moment they’re adopted. I’ve spoken to so many adoptees who had traumatic experiences not only before their adoptions, but after. There’s often a real lack of support post-adoption for kids and families.

Chung: It can be a struggle to know whether and how to engage with this whole month. But I’ve also been glad to see a kind of shift in recent years, with more adoptees challenging common simplistic narratives and leading substantive discussions. I guess it could just be who I follow online, but I think this is happening more and more in mainstream spaces.

Hynes: I agree. I think more adoptees have been willing to tell their stories, and I give them all credit for doing that. Technology has helped us create spaces for ourselves, and that’s really important. Narrative can be a powerful tool for change. I study adoption, so I see this shift happening in academic spaces too—it used to be dominated by adoptive parents or studies of adopted children only up to a certain age, but we’re increasingly hearing and learning more from adult adoptees. I would like to see adoptees in as many spaces as possible leading public conversations about adoption, and not just this one month.

I think sometimes, we want to stop short of saying this, but adoption has been practiced in some very harmful ways. We’ve had the Indian Adoption Project, which ripped Indigenous children from their homes to be placed with white families. We’ve had the National Association of Black Social Workers, as recently as 1972, coming out against interracial adoption because of the forced assimilation and Black kids experiencing terrible racism in predominantly white communities. We’ve had the sealing of birth records, so adoptees do not have the opportunity to know where they’re from.

Chung: Yes, and some adoptees were adopted as “orphans” but in fact had living family who may or may not have been properly informed. Some adoptees have been deported because their agencies and families didn’t take proper steps to secure proof of their U.S. citizenship. Some adoptees have experienced abuse or neglect or were abandoned by their adoptive families. I also think of far more benign cases like mine, in which one family—the white adoptive family—was perhaps treated as more important, and one family was left behind.

I’m glad you brought up the Indian Adoption Project, because this month, the Supreme Court is scheduled to review Haaland v. Brackeen, a case challenging the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act. In 1978, ICWA established federal standards for custody arrangements, removal, fostering, and adoption of Indigenous children. The law is supposed to ensure that a child’s family and tribe are not cut out of these proceedings, and gives tribes jurisdiction, exclusive or concurrent, over cases involving Indigenous children.

Hynes: Yes. Under ICWA, Indigenous children who are tribal members—or who are eligible for membership and are the biological child of a member of an Indigenous tribe—who are removed from their homes are supposed to be placed first with their kin, if that is possible. If it’s not, then they should be placed within their tribe or with another Indigenous family. If that’s not possible, they could go to a home outside of their tribal community, whether that is a foster home or adoptive home, that is approved by their tribe. Either way, their tribe needs to be informed and involved.

In Haaland v. Brackeen, a child of Navajo and Cherokee descent was fostered by a white family, the Brackeens. A Navajo family wanted to adopt him. The Brackeens took the case to court and were ultimately granted the adoption at the state level. I was trying to understand both perspectives, so I watched some interviews with the Brackeens, who said that they felt called by God to adopt and save this child. That tells you what their perspective on the child’s community is. It’s extremely problematic, but also so common when it comes to adoption.

Chung: They want to adopt the child’s sister as well, even though one of her family members wants to adopt and give her a home on the Navajo reservation. Now the Brackeens have brought this suit challenging the constitutionality of ICWA. Part of their challenge is based on a claim of racial discrimination. But when it comes to adoptions and custody of Indigenous children, we are talking about the rights of citizens of sovereign nations—the process does not rest on a racial classification.

Hynes: Yes—I was listening to a podcast from the Lakota People’s Law Project, and a member of the Lakota tribe made the point that historically, the U.S. has made treaties not with racial groups or corporations, but with nations. The U.S. has made treaties and agreements with Indigenous nations as nations, not as racial groups. So this is not, as some claim, a matter of racial discrimination.

Chung: As much as ICWA is about the best interests and well-being of Indigenous children and families, it is also very much a tribal-sovereignty issue. Thanks for sharing that episode—I also want to recommend This Land, hosted by Rebecca Nagle.

Hynes: Professor Angelique EagleWoman, a law professor and the director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute, has spoken about how undermining or overturning ICWA would be a violation of the sovereignty of Indigenous nations. It could have a domino effect when it comes to other aspects of tribal life. That’s what’s at stake. From an adoption perspective, it’s clear that without ICWA, even more Indigenous children would be growing up separated from their tribal communities, living in predominantly white communities, and it will be harder if not impossible for them to remain connected to their culture and heritage, from a generational perspective.

Chung: As an adoptee, the threat to ICWA makes me think of how often colonizers and white-dominated institutions have tried to appoint themselves the primary arbiters of who is a “worthy” parent or caregiver to a child; who can provide a “good” home and who cannot. The tribes these children are part of are sovereign nations whose members know what their children need and also what they could lose. They want to care for and protect them, and their right to do so is under attack.

Hynes: Listening to some of the arguments against ICWA actually makes me emotional as an adoptee. Indigenous people know that children are still being removed from their communities based on judgments made by those with little knowledge or respect for their traditions. Back to your point about how this case is being heard now, just a few days into National Adoption Awareness Month: How can we claim to support adoptees and their families if we don’t remember and talk about the historic and continued harm that has been done to an entire group of Indigenous adoptees?