Recommended Reading

I read a fabulous book, the first I've read which is specifically tailored for the friends and family of an adopting family--that would be YOU! It gives dos and don'ts for grownups and tips on how to explain to your kids what has happened in the life of our kid. It's called "Cross-Cultural Adoption: How to Answer Questions" and is by Amy Coughlin and Caryn Abramowitz. Got it here via interlibrary loan, no problem--it's a quick and very helpful read. Please do!

Please Don't Meet the Robinsons

Some of our readers have seen my extensive collection of animated movies, which I hope to like enough that Gus's insistence on the 30th consecutive viewing of a particular film won't make me ill, but perhaps no movie can hold up to that standard. One that certainly doesn't is the newest Disney production, "Meet the Robinsons." This movie is adoption-themed and so caught my attention, but it's not good attention. Early reviews make me think that the movie is poorly researched and that the major theme is actually insulting to adoptees. I'll read more reviews and write more on this later (it's a busy day), but for now, I ask that you please exercise pro-adoption activism by not supporting such a fiasco with your hard-earned money.

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Sorry to make you wait the weekend for the rest of this discussion--Easter weekend is so busy, and yes it was WONDERFUL. Quick synopsis of the movie: hero was dropped off on an orphanage's steps as a baby. He is a child genius, and is rejected by 124 potential adoptive couples (he keeps a tally), finally deciding that he wants to search for his birthmother since she's the only person who may ever have really wanted him. Then a child from the future snatches him from a science fair to rescue the future. While doing so he sees his future, and it's a good one. He decides that to have that future he must "keep moving forward", and abandons the search for his birthmother (although in the time machine brought by future-kid he has the chance to see her and find out who she is, to be able to search for her in his own time) in order to have the new future with a science-geek adoptive family.

Here's why I dislike this movie, from least to most exasperating.

First, the portrayal of the hero's birthmother is incredibly limited. It is unbelievably rare in this country today for a child to be just "dropped off" anywhere. The birthmothers I have met through Bethany care deeply for their children and maintain open adoptive relationships. Although I understand using this situation as a narrative device and I was glad that the birthmother was portrayed in a relatively positive manner, it is still distressing to see a situation so far from normal presented to children as the adoption scenario.

Second, the interactions of potential adoptive parents in the early stages of the movie are overwhelmingly negative. The hero of the story is visited by 124 potential adoptive families, all of whom reject him in person for trivial reasons. The hero is adopted at the end; but as a potential adoptive parent, I found it demeaning that only 0.8% of adoptive parents mentioned in this movie were portrayed as reasonable human beings, especially when many adoptive parents seek to adopt children with known special physical needs.

Third, I was absolutely horrified to see the theme of the film, “Keep moving forward”, applied to adoption. Adoptees have been told for generations to “keep moving forward,” to forget their past, and to “move on” with their new families, as the hero does at the end of the story. Such advice has brought great grief and trauma to many adoptees, who have found en masse that the loss of their birth families is a hole that their adoptive families simply cannot fill. Children are better adjusted in adoptive families that empathize with the grief of their children about the loss of their birth families. Past experience and current research has led to the welcome practice of open adoption, in which adoptees maintain contact with both their birth and adoptive families. Applying the theme of “keep moving forward” to adoption insults the real-life experiences of adoptees, which tells us that their emotional health requires addressing the past: precisely the opposite.

I'm pretty upset about this mischaracterization of adoption and adoptees especially; I'll be sending a letter to our agency and to Disney. If you can think of any other way for me to advocate for real education about adoption regarding this movie, please let me know.