laura@utcsstat.UUCP (08/04/83)
that it makes more sense to post this. It should probably go in net.kids, but if that group exists the control message never got here. please note, that unless specified otherwise, "adopted kids" means "the kids that were adopted and part of the survey". also note that anyone who complains that "kids" are "young billy-goats" will get ignored unless he is particularily rude about it in which case if we poll you I will send you /vmunix. Laura Creighton utcsstat!laura First of all, I have to let you know that all of these findings about adopted kids were done based on a relatively small group of about 250 adopted kids, in about 200 families. All of these kids are in some sort of trouble with the law, or have "psychiatric problems" or "disciplinary problems", two terms which cover a multitude of actual events. There ought to be a lot of happily adopted people somewhere in Toronto, but the surprising thing is that aside from the families who adopted mentally retarted or crippled children, we have been unable to find them. My brother is now in jail. He specialises in breaking-and-entry, ransacking synagogues, selling drugs, and collecting welfare under an assumed name. After visiting jails, the jail chaplains mentioned that a surprisingly large proportion of the in-mates of jails were adopted kids from middle-class and upper-class homes. After lots of searching, and phoning the Children's Aid society and various adoption agencies, we were told that we *COULD NOT HAVE* any statistics relating crime to adoption. We were told that it was harmful to "adopted children" as a class. Now I could understand if they didn't want to give a bit-basher like me the information, but some of the people asking were child psychologists and members of prison reform groups. If your mind tends towards "conspiracy thoughts", then you hit the jackpot with this one. Nonetheless, I do not think that anyone in Toronto has all the answers. It may be a case of seeing all these "bad kids" and coming up with interesting sounding theories to explain why they are not turning out. There may be a way to raise adopted kids. But there are an awful lot of bitter people in Toronto and elsewhere who think that adoption is a priori a BAD THING. They feel that they have wasted time and effort trying to be a model parent to this "cuckoo-like" parasite which has taken everything that they had to give them and then moved on to bigger prey -- society at large. (If you don't understand the zoological reference to cuckoos -- they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. The hosts have the trouble of raising the cuckoo chick which generally monopolises their resources to the extent that the natural chicks die. In some species of cuckoos the newly hatched cuckoo chick kicks its still unhatched foster brothers out of the nest as soon as it hatches, generally a few days earlier than its nestmates.) All of my comments are thus biased. I know that people have died because my brother fed them an overdose of drugs. I know that a lot of Jews feel terrified because their synagogues have been ransacked. I am not Jewish, but a plurality of my friends are, and my parents have many, many Jewish friends. For the life of us we cannot understand why my brother decided to pick on Jews; it certainly isn't anything he learned from my parents. I have reached the conclusion that the world definitely would be a nicer place if my brother were not in it. This is a horrible decision, but the only one I can make in the light of the evidence. My brother is one of the typical examples of what happened to the 250 failed adoptions in Toronto. Nobody knows what went wrong. In hindsight, one can see that my parents and others were guilty of several mistakes, but yet my parents have 2 other children (my brother David and myself), who seem to be turning out well. (My brother David is 16.) David and I do not agree with my parents (or each other) on many things and have varying ideas on how to deal with a legal system full of laws and moralities that we find incorrect, but nowhere does this lead us into beating up Rabbis with candlesticks. The courts are still out on the "genes versus environment" -- I tend to think that both matter. However, in this case, we do not even have to consider the problem, for we can look and see a common genetic characteristic and observe similarities in environments as well. Now, after viewing these 200 children (or in some cases their families) what are the Toronto conclusions? here are the common characteristics which emerged from the study. 1. Adoption agencies have traditionally wanted the ideal adoptive family to be a white, middle-class, 2 parent home. 2. Adopted kids very often have natural brothers and sisters, especially younger brothers or sisters. The theory goes that the family that has been trying to have a kid for years and years, finally has their adoption okayed, and now that the pressure is off, immediately has a pregnancy. 3. There is no one standard of morality, and the ways people determine their own morality varies. However, families in general often share a similar moral stance. 4. Adopted children are usually a lot less intelligent than their parents and natural siblings. (This is a statistical finding, of course.) 5. Adopted children do not read. This is usually despite concentrated efforts of the parents to get the children to read. 6. Many adopted children are wonderfully charming to meet. They make friends easily, and are highly gregarious. In some cases they seem to have been 'led astray' by their friends, but in others you find that these smiling people really don't give a damn about their friends, but seem to be acting as if "as long as I am nice everyone will be good to me, or reward me" and are really exploiting their friends. This is most common among adopted children who have been placed in several foster homes, or potential adoptive homes, as opposed to those who were adopted as babies. 7. Parents were unanimous in saying that their efforts to raise their children were based on a desire to do the good things that their parents had done for them and avoid those things which they felt were mistakes that their parents had made with them. Thus parents who felt that their parents were too strict with them, tried to be more lenient with their children, and vice versa. 8. These adopted kids had trouble in school. This trouble seems to be more severe than can be simply explained away by the above mentioned lack of intelligence. *************************************************************************** Now, of course, people wanted to know why all of these children were so amoral. The conclusions we were told seem to make sense, but they do not speak well for adoption as it has been practiced in this Province. Most children, (generally in their early teens) go through a period of rebellion with their parents. The way they deal with this problem is related to the way that they will deal with society as a whole and the laws of society in particular. This seems reasonable for several reasons: firstly the parents are at this point in time "the law" -- you learn to deal with "the law" and in the process form your ideas about how to deal with the real laws; and secondly the struggle you have with your parents is based on your ability to do more things. thus your parents are teaching that with increased ability must come increased responsibility, while you are seeing how much you can get away with -- i.e.how irresponsibly you can live. Given that lawbreakers are very irresponsible (among other things) it is interesting to see how the adopted kids dealt with this area of their lives. For the most part, they didn't. this was due to several common factors, it seems. A lot of teenagers seem to form a fantasy that their parents aren't "their real parents". This seems to stem from realising but not accepting that their parents are not perfect. They invent "my real father who lives in Hungary and is a Prince there" or "I fell off a space ship and really ought to be growing up in Alpha Centauri". Some children are deadly serious about this fantasy, which they staunchly claim is the truth, while others write fiction about fictional characters who are remarkably like themselves, or merely indulge in elaborate daydreams. Some invent persona in SCA (the Society of Creative Anachronism) or for Fantasy Roll Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons. Eventually, though, most of these children come to accept their parents. This seems to be directly related to accepting the laws of society in general (if not individual laws, or all laws, at least the concept of the need for laws). Of course, adopted kids have an eternal way out of accepting their parents. They truly arent their "real parents" at all. Every time that they have a disagreement with their parents they can fall back on "well, if you were my real father you wouldn't do this to me" or "if a better family had adopted me then I would get better treatment". In the same way, a "real country" wouldn't put me in jail. It is interesting that every single jailed adopted kid who agreed to talk to the psychologists and psychiatrists mentioned that they thought that their "real parents" would be nicer than the ones that adopted them, or that they wished that a better family had adopted them. The frightening thing is, to some extent they are right. Most of the parents believe that they were the wrong person to be given this adopted kid. Some feel that there is no right person, but others disagree. The typical family which adoption agencies smile upon is a thinking, well-read, well-educated one. The typical adopted kid who is now in jail never fits into this family, and if there are natural-born siblings who do fit into this family, the situation is worsened. I can remember that my little brother, who is 2 years younger than my adopted brother soon was smarter, and quicker on the uptake than my older brother. I, being older still, was the fastest on the uptake. My parents did not consciously favour their brighter children, nor did David and I consciously discriminate against my other brother, but this happened. I found David more interesting to play with and would seek him out more often. David and I would both exploit my dumber brother unconsciously all the time since we were more fit at getting what we wanted. I can see no way that this could have been avoided. My parents tried to be unscrupulously fair with us, but a relatively unintelligent person is usually at a disadvantage with respect to an intelligent one. But the adoption agencies made it worse in their selection of ideal homes. Like it or not, they selected for intelligence in parents. Our entire family was based on "reasoning out problems" a common thing for intellectuals to do. Unfortunately, it seems, that for a lot of less intelligent people, reason is not the way to settle moral questions. I have since heard of people who say "I was a bad son, and my father beat me every night, and I hated him, but now I am proud of him for it! It made a man out of me!! It taught me right from wrong!" I always thought that this sort of treatment was cruel in the extreme, but it may turn out to be the only way to teach some people. Some people have concluded that children should get a fair number of spankings up until the time that they are able to reason, but then they should be taught how to reason out their problems. No solution is given to parents whose children refuse to reason, or reason badly. Many of these parents tell a different story. When they wanted "a child" they really wanted "their concept of a child". their concept of a child was highly influenced by what they were like as children, what their siblings were like, what their friends were like and what the children of their current friends are like. Unfortunately, if you are bright, you tend to have bright siblings, and your friends are other bright children who become bright adults who have bright kids. So by the time you get around to wanting a kid, you really want a *bright* kid, because the concept that you have of "kid" is really "bright kid". You do not know this of course. The same people with the "bright kid" concept, also have a concept of "how to raise kids". I didn't mention Dr. Spock (who seems to have an incredible influence on everybody), but the point that needs making is that again the concept that is entertained is really "how to raise a bright kid" or "how I wish I were raised". This leads to problems. There are many parents who try to make their children listen to reason at a young age. If this seems to be working with some of their children, and if the adopted child is usually the least trouble in disciplining (this is common) they are quite content that they are being excellent parents. Unfortunately, the blow comes. They find that the adopted kid was being good to win affection and approval from the parents, and perhaps to be able to lord it over the other siblings, but never graduated to being good for its own sake. Being good remains something with a price-tag and the parents are expected to pay up every time the adopted kid is good. Now, often, the parents start a massive campaign of spanking and disciplining. They are rather panicked now -- what do you do when your 14 year old son says he doesn't care if he makes you happy any more, and that he will keep lying so that he will never do any homework? Some parents drag the family into counselling sessions, but others try to continue on their own. Some of the counselling is lousy, while others believe that "it is only a phase" or don't think that the problem is serious. Often at this point everybody is miserable. The parents are disappointed in themselves and their adopted kid, and the adopted kid may be seething with resentment. In an intellectual home he finds little pleasure, because he knows little joy from intellectual pursuits. Reading is hard work, and is on no account fun. Philosophical, political or religious discussions are boring. The parents may try to develop interests in sports, or *anything* that pleases their adopted child, but they cannot change their basic appreciation for the intellect. Since it is fundamental to them and their concept of morality they find it increasingly difficult to teach morality to their adopted children. Their children, in turn claim that the parents are not appreciative -- "you don't really like me!". Most often they seem to consciously decide to hurt their parents where they think it will hurt them the most -- they start failing school. This may also be done in an attempt to say "You said that you still loved me ever though I was a bad student -- prove it." . This is not what the poor parents need at all. They usually start busting their guts trying to find 'special schools' or 'a better teacher' or something else that will help. Often the other children get to resent this special treatment, but get told to bear with it... Unfortunately, if the child really wants to do badly at school, he is going to do badly no matter what school he goes to. If he interprets his parents concern, not as concern but as indications of his failure he can go back and say "gee, you really don't love me unless I am doing well at school. Look at how you punish me for doing badly.". You see how this situation develops -- the adopted kid hating his parents more and more all the time while his parents frantically search for what they are doing wrong. There are a significant number of divorces based on "who raised Johnny wrong?" which will happen later. And, of course, all of this is going on right when the adopted kid should be learning morality and responsibility from his parents. Watch this fail. The adopted kid really may have little choice, both in resenting his parents and being unable to comprehend their rational reasons for morality. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura