By Kitty Griffin
Anne
Mary
Harry
Jane
Heidi
Ella
Natasha
What do all of these children have in common? They’re
orphans in works of fiction. When writing, sometimes it’s convenient to do away
with Mom and Dad.
How many of these stories are realistic when dealing with
the subject of adoption? You’ll have to be the judge of that. Would an aunt and
uncle be as cruel and uncaring as the Dursley family was to Harry Potter?
But bad things do happen to children who are adopted. And
that’s what I want to talk about.
Do you know someone who was adopted? How would you know
unless, say, the person is of one race and the adopting parents are another?
Otherwise, really, there’s no way to tell. It’s not something most of us who
were adopted talk about.
Right. I said us. I was adopted.
So, when you write, and you decide that for one reason or
another, you want to make your character an orphan, make sure you do your due
diligence on understanding some of the obstacles that an adopted person faces.
I highly recommend the movie, “Philomena” which tells the true story of an
Irish woman’s determination to find the son taken (stolen) from her by nuns. It
shows the mother’s yearning to find the truth, as well as her son’s attempts to
find his mother. Because when you do a story where the mother gives up the
child (as opposed to one where the
parents die) it’s going to cast a different light on your character. I promise
you this, I’ve not met one adopted person who hasn’t been determined to find
out more about their past.
The other thing I’ve learned, and this one was a very
powerful lesson, was that most mothers who relinquish their children want to
know what happened to them. Until I did a newspaper story on “The Other
Mother’s Day,” a story where I interviewed women who’d given up their children. My view of a mother that would do this was one where I pictured a drunk, an
addict, a mentally defective woman, or a criminal woman. What I found were
women who never forgot their child’s birthday. It stunned me. I had to
re-evaluate.
What stirred these feelings was a story I found in the paper
today—“Adoptee from South Korea faces deportation from US.”
When people adopt internationally, if they don’t take care
of getting citizenship for the child, when that child grows up it can come as
quite a shock to find out that they can be deported.
Can you imagine? If he’s sent back to Korea he doesn’t know
the language. He doesn’t know the culture. He suffered at the hands of abusive
foster parents who are now in prison for what they did to the children they had
and the children they adopted.
See what I mean about really looking into things should you
decide to make your character an orphan, or a ward of the state?
I point this out not as an indictment against adoption, but
rather to show how many things there are than could complicate your story.
People often have this rosy image of adoption. Oh, poor little baby needs a
home. Loving parents just waiting for a baby. Everyone is happy. No. Adoption
is like anything else we face in life, a struggle. In my case, the people who
adopted me didn’t have a clue as to how to deal with me. To this day I don’t
know why they adopted me. They were older parents with a teen-age boy and my
adoptive mother put down on the form, “We think our son could use a playmate.”
I was a three-year-old girl. We won’t get into that. Sigh.
All I ask is that you think things through and do a bit of
research. You might discover ways to enrich your story and power your character
by giving them more obstacles. Or you might find that, hey, a real mom and dad would
be more realistic.
Just give it some thought.
