تفسیر درس

##Adoption – Commentary

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Adoption. Now, adoption is, I would say fairly common in the United States. Without even thinking very hard about it, four people come to my mind, I can remember at least four people in my high school who were adopted from mostly Asian countries, like Korea, Vietnam.

So it is something that is fairly common and so some of the reasons, this wasn’t really discussed in the conversation, some of the reasons why a mother and/or possibly mother and father would maybe want to give their child up for adoption. And one of those reasons could be financial. Y’know, maybe the child was not planned and they just don’t have the money to raise a child.

It could be that the child has health problems and like with one of AJ’s sister’s newly adopted sons, he has a very expensive health problem. And so, here again, like the financial reason, maybe a mother and father just can’t afford to take care of a child that has a very expensive health conditions or condition. So another reason could be that maybe, unfortunately, they’re just not wanted. The child is not wanted. Maybe, again, it was not a planned pregnancy and the mother and/or the father don’t want to be a parent.

I just recently met a woman who was adopted and she found out at some point that her mother had actually been, her real mother that gave birth to her, had been raped. Rape means when a man, well, in this situation, a man forces a woman or makes a woman have sex with him. So she…her mother was raped and as a result she was born. And so her mother did not want her and gave her up for adoption.

And later, as an adult, she found out where her mother was to try to have a relationship with her and her mother didn’t…her mother rejected her. Her mother did not want to have a relationship with her. For her it probably brought up a lot of the memories of what had happened to her, of being raped, taken advantage of. So it’s a very unfortunate situation.

On the other side, reasons why a mother and father or family might want to adopt a child is, probably the main reason, they can’t have a child themselves, they can’t naturally give birth to a child. And…but, so, well, that was the situation for my cousin that we talked about in the conversation.

Now for AJ’s sister, Tiffany, that wasn’t the situation. She already had three children of her own that she had given birth to. So that’s another reason I was going to talk about is that maybe actually a family just wants to help out a child that doesn’t have parents to care for him or her. So that would be the situation of Tiffany, AJ’s sister.

I also know of someone I went to high school with. She was actually adopted and as an adult then she has at least one child of her own that she gave birth to but then she also adopted one, maybe two children. And I think maybe she just, because she’d been adopted herself, she wanted to do that for someone, for, y’know, another child as well.

So I have a lot of respect for people who adopt because I actually have been inside of an orphanage. Many years ago I was teaching English in Korea and I wanted something to do besides teaching English, besides my job there. I wanted something else to do. So sometimes through, y’know, in my adult life, I’ve volunteered. Volunteer means you work somewhere for free. You just offer your skills, whatever skills you might have, or you offer yourself to work for free.

So I decided to work, or to volunteer at an orphanage in Seoul, Korea, where I was living. And I went to the orphanage the first day and it was very, very difficult. I was in with these babies and many of them had health problems and they, it was just a very difficult situation for me, thinking of all these children that didn’t have a mother and father to take care of them.

And I stayed for the full amount of time I was supposed to be there. I can’t remember how long. Let’s say it was four hours. And when I left I went home and I was very upset. It was just such a difficult, upsetting experience for me. The children were cared for. But still, there were so many more babies. I was with the babies so I shouldn’t say children. These were babies. I was with the babies.

But there were so many more babies than there were staff or workers, people there working to take care of them. And so it was just very sad, a very sad experience for me, even though they were well taken care of, there wasn’t enough, I felt, of love and nurturing that they needed. And even though it would have been good for me to have continued doing it, because they did need more people coming in to help, I couldn’t go back. It was that…that stressful and difficult for me. I just couldn’t return.

And so, like I said, I do have a lot of respect for people who adopt children, babies…even children because babies are actually, I think, much easier to adopt. They’re more in demand than an older child, y’know, a child that’s 8, 9, 10 on up. It’s so much more difficult to find parents to adopt them.

Speaking of adoption and Korea, because like I said, the adoption…or the orphanage that I went to to volunteer the one day was in Korea. But if you remember in the conversation I spoke very briefly about a friend of mine who was Korean born and then she was adopted. So this friend, she was born in Korea, I

believe in Seoul. Her mother and father were Korean and for whatever reason they did not or could not take of her, decided not to, gave her up for adoption.

So she was adopted by an American woman and to this day, she’s now an adult, she does not know who her real mother and father are. She only has her American mom. And her American mother was not married so she grew up without a father. She’s told me, she’s…it was very difficult for her growing up. She grew up in a very small town in the state of Illinois, as I think I mentioned in the conversation.

And that was difficult because it was, there weren’t many other Asian children or children from other countries in this town. It was mostly just white Americans and I think maybe she, y’know, children were not so nice to her at times. Also the fact that she had this white American mother but she was actually Korean, looked Korean. And that was…that was difficult, challenging for her as well.

So she’s actually an artist in many forms. Like I mentioned in the conversation, she’s a drum teacher, she also…she plays many instruments, she sings, she acts, she’s an actress. So, for her, she has helped to heal her…her childhood of growing up without knowing who her real mother and father were by singing about it, her situation growing up.

And she organized a play that involved her story as well as other people who had been adopted, their stories of what it was like to grow up in a family that was not really their family, not from birth. And so Joe and I actually went to this play that she organized. It was very good. And for her it was very healing. And she’s actually gone back to Korea at least two times that I know. She’s spent some time there.

One time she actually lived for one year in Seoul trying to learn the Korean language and trying to connect to the Korean culture, which she did not know growing up her in America with an American mother. She’s never, like I said, she’s never been able to find her real mother or father. She doesn’t know anything about them.

She doesn’t know why they gave her up for adoption. And I think for her that’s been one of the hardest parts. But she’s finally accepted and healed from…and also feels, I think, thankful to her American mother for adopting her, for getting her from the orphanage and taking care of her and raising her. And so that’s been, that’s been very good for her.

I’ve been curious as I was thinking of what I was going to talk about in my commentary, I was wondering if adoption is only in certain cultures, if it’s more common in certain cultures. Like I said, it’s fairly common here in America. So is adoption something that’s common in your country? And, if so, do you know of someone who was adopted or many people who were adopted?

Alright, well, share with us on the Ning site. We’d love to hear about it. And this concludes my commentary for this month’s conversation Adoption.

Have a good month and I’ll see you next time. Bye.