Yesterday I dusted off my soapbox, climbed aboard, and shared my disappointment with the irresponsible and potentially devastating bungling of adoption on “Glee.” To be honest, I was a little blown back by the outpouring of support I received. Many of you were upset by what the show had done and urged me to make my views known on a more public forum. I absolutely plan to do so, but also want to encourage YOU to share your thoughts as the situation presents itself. Yesterday I shared the emotional reasons why “Glee” got it so very wrong. Today, to help you sound super intelligent as you spread the word, I want to share a bit of the research behind why this horrifically inaccurate portrayal is damaging.
As it so happens, I already had the research ready. I recently completed my Master’s in Education from Penn State with a degree in Children’s Literature. For my thesis, I chose to study how accurately adoption is portrayed in award-winning novels for teens. As I reflected on this topic last night, I realized that while my research focused on books, stories are stories. With that in mind, here are some snippets from my research (with the most important points in bold, in case you don’t have time to read it word for word) that might help you put words to your emotions:
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There was a day when the word “family” would immediately conjure an image of father with a briefcase, mother in an apron, son clutching a football, and daughter cradling a doll. That day is not today. Today the word “family” encompasses a myriad of combinations. According to Fisher (2003), “During the past several decades, research on the family has emphasized the great diversity of forms that families have taken—as American families have included much larger numbers of stepfamilies, single-parent families, and families headed by gay and lesbian partners than was the case 40 years ago; increasing numbers of these three kinds of families are also adoptive families” (p. 336). It is to those adoptive families that we turn our attention. According to the National Adoption Attitudes Survey of 2002, “nearly two thirds of the respondents (64%) had a personal experience with adoption, meaning that someone in their family or among their close friends had been adopted, had adopted a child, or had placed a child for adoption” (p. 335). Adoption is all around us, but does it work for all members of the adoption triad: birth parents, adoptive parents, and child?
In 1996, a study was conducted on a group of 113 unmarried adolescent birth mothers. The study revealed that two years after giving birth, the women who had placed their children for adoption were more educated, more likely to be employed, less likely to be on public assistance, and less likely to have borne another child than those women who had decided to parent their children (p. 341). Adoption works for birth parents. As for adoptive parents, the overwhelming consensus is that adoption creates “profound love that bonds family members across borders of difference” (Herman, 2002, p. 12). Adoption works for adoptive parents. As for the child, Kupfermann (2010) puts it succinctly when she writes, “adoptive children can live lives as satisfying as other children do” (p. 50). Adoption works for kids.
Why, then, is adoption both underrepresented and misrepresented in our society? Fisher (2003) reports that sociology texts average two to three pages devoted to adoption, and use those pages to “portray it as fraught with risks and hazards” (p. 336). Popular media is even worse. In newspapers, “negative outcomes of adoption were mentioned more than twice as often as positive ones” (p. 354). There is a clear image that is being sent. It is an image of “birth mothers as sluts, adoptees as damaged goods, adoptive parents as second best” (Eldridge, 1999, p. 21). The message is sinking in. In a recent poll, “more than a third of the respondents believed that adopted children are more likely than their nonadopted peers to have drug and alcohol problems, medical problems, and problems at school” (Fisher, 2003, p. 344). In a 1997 national survey, half of all respondents agreed that adoption was “not quite as good as having your own child” (p. 352). It is no wonder, then, that “each year more than 1 million patients seek fertility treatment in the United States, compared with 60,000 adoptions of unrelated children that are finalized each year” (p. 355). In the end, it seems that “the very acts…that make adoption exemplary also serve to delegitimate it. Solidarities founded on social choices are construed as flimsy and superficial in comparison with fixed and unchosen natural givens. This is curious in a liberal culture whose core values include individualism, freedom, and choice” (Herman, 2002, p. 12).
My focus on the importance of accuracy in the portrayal of adoptive teens and their families stems from my belief in the power of bibliotherapy. According to Crago (2005), bibliotherapy can “provide a language in which a child or adult may begin to talk about what has previously been inchoate…provide the comfort of knowing that one is not alone” and “…can provide vicarious insight into one’s problems” (p. 187). At its heart, bibliotherapy claims that children benefit from reading about children like themselves. Within the children’s literature community, this belief is a given. Rustin and Rustin (1987) write, “the fluidity of the boundary between the imaginary and the real in the lives of children…make children especially capable of being moved by stories which give form to the experience of their inner worlds” (p. 15). Within the adoption community, however, the importance of a child “seeing” himself in his books is amplified even further. Gaskins (1999) cuts right to the heart of the matter when she writes, “It’s good to see other people who are like you, it’s invaluable” (p. 195). Part of what makes it so invaluable is that books “can open exploration of this topic [adoption] along new lines—making room for curiosity in adoptees, adoptive families, and those called on to assist them” (Pivnick, 2010, p. 3). Quite simply, the right book can act as a “road guide” for children (p. 6) because “fantasy provides the child with a means of both deepening their understanding of, and experimenting with reality, working through feelings related to both positive and negative experiences, and gaining a sense of mastery that is inaccessible to them because of their tender years” (Rubin, 2005, p. 243-244). According to Eldridge (1999), “the right tale can have a profoundly healing impact for years to come” and provides the opportunity to “meet your child on his own ‘turf’ and have a good chance of drawing out his secret feelings and beliefs about being adopted” (p. 76, 78).
The critical element, however, is accuracy. Quite simply, a book that misrepresents the joys, struggles, and feelings of an adopted child is far worse than a book that doesn’t mention adoption at all. Meek (1982) writes, “From the stories we hear as children we inherit the feeling mode, the truth value, the codes, the rhetoric, the transmission techniques that tell us who we are” (p.288). The implications there are incredibly heavy. If books help to “tell us who we are,” it is absolutely essential that they transmit truths. Nakazawa (2003), an adoptive mother of two, writes, “If your child’s own experience is denied they will be forced to tell themselves:‘This must not be happening because no one else can see it happening, therefore I must not be experiencing- so I must be crazy. Something must be wrong with me’” (p. 21). The importance of accuracy can not be overstated.
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Again, my research focused on books, but I feel that the main points seamlessly transmit to stories on TV as well. The point is that adoption is everywhere, it works, and yet it is underrepresented or misrepresented in popular media. It’s important for kids (and adults!) to see themselves in the stories that they read/view/hear because it helps them put words to their own stories. If stories communicate lies, they will have greater difficulty in processing their own reality. This is exactly what “Glee” has done. And, while this is supposed to be a research-based argument rather than emotional one, I can’t help but remember that at this very moment, somewhere out there is the woman carrying MY baby. Oh, how I hope she doesn’t watch “Glee.”
Below are the references from the segments of my paper that I have shared with you:
Crago, H. (2005). Healing texts: Bibliotherapy and psychology. In P. Hunt (Ed.), Understanding children’s literature (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Eldridge, S. (1999). Twenty things adopted kids wish their adoptive parents knew. New York, NY: Dell.
Fisher, A. P., (2003). Still “not quite as good as having your own”?: Toward a sociology of adoption. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, 335-361. Retrieved using Academic Search Complete.
Gaskins, P. F. (1999). What are you?: voices of mixed-race young people. New York, NY: Henry Holt.
Herman, E. (2002). Child adoption in a therapeutic culture. Society, 11-18. Retrieved using Academic Search Complete.
Kupfermann, K. (2010). Will you be my mommy?:A quest of a child to fill in the gaps in the process of bonding with her adoptive parents. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 30, 41-53. Retrieved using Academic Search Complete.
Meek, M. (1982). What counts as evidence in theories of children’s literature. Theory Into Practice, 21, 284-292.
Nakazawa, D. J. (2003). Does anybody else look like me?: A parent’s guide to raising multiracial children. Cambridge, MA: Lifelong Books.
Pivnick, B. A. (2010). Left without a word: Learning rhythms, rhymes, and reasons in adoption. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 30, 3-24. Retrieved using Academic Search Complete.
Rubin, L. C. (2005). Superheroes and heroic journeys: Re-claiming loss in adoption. In T. Duffey (Ed.), Creative Interventions in Grief and Loss Therapy: When the Music Stops, a Dream Dies. New York, NY: Haworth Press.
Rustin, M., & Rustin, M. (1987). Introduction: Deep structures in modern children’s fiction. In Narratives of Love and Loss, 1-26. New York: Verso.
