Our culture loves to celebrate adoption stories - and a lot of state governments put millions into promoting it. But adoptees and birth parents are opening up online about "coming out of the fog" - a term for becoming more openly critical of adoption, or facing the grief within their adoption stories. November is National Adoption Month, and Brittany Luse takes a closer look at how adoption functions in our culture by examining the supply side of adoption - the birth parents. She's joined by Gretchen Sisson, the author of Relinquished: the Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. They dive deep into the stories told about birth parents, and how our culture decides who deserves to be a parent.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Full Episode
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. November is National Adoption Awareness Month. And no, it's not one of those made-up holidays like National Nacho Day. It's a real thing. President Bill Clinton personally declared it a national priority in 1995.
As we celebrate National Adoption Month, Americans can take pride in the progress we're making. But we know there is much more work to be done.
And as a culture, we love to celebrate adoption stories. They paint a beautiful picture of a child in need going to a loving family. Sometimes those stories transcend race and identity. I'm looking at you, Angelina Jolie. But lately, the narrative around adoption has been shifting from the perfect Hollywood happy ending to something a little more complicated.
There's a whole community of adoptees online talking about their experiences. On TikTok, there are over 50 million videos tagged adoptee.
I think it's really important to remember that in private infant adoption, it always begins with loss for the baby. Three things I wish adopters understood about adoptees. Number one, the adopting experience is literally so complex because we're grateful that we have a family, sure. But we can also resent the fact that we are with you to begin with.
There's a popular term some adoptees use for becoming more critical of adoption or for facing the grief within their adoption story. It's called coming out of the fog. And birth parents are weighing in too.
It was my experience with adoption that caused me to start to rethink everything that was told to me about adoption because I was now living it. None of what was panning out after signing away my parental rights was the story that I was told about what adoption would be like for me.
Today on It's Been a Minute, we're taking a closer look at how adoption functions in our culture. We're zooming in on one side of the adoption triangle, the birth parents. We're diving deep into how the stories that are told about birth parents stack up against their realities and ultimately asking, how does our culture decide who deserves to be a parent?
I'm joined by Gretchen Sisson, the author of Relinquished, The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. She'll be taking us through her research with birth parents. Gretchen, welcome to It's Been a Minute.
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