What Was Not Published

My comment to the Janowitz post:

When I first saw the word “Mongolian”, I thought to myself, “Janowitz can’t seriously be using that word to describe her daughter’s features!” It’s just as demeaning as the word “Oriental”.

As I read further, Janowitz managed to be even more extreme with her steamrolling attempt to flatten the differences between her and her adopted daughter. It’s one thing to acknowledge universal experiences in parenting, but it’s another to belittle and disqualify her daughter’s birthparents in order to assert maternal supremacy over her child. Janowitz shows recklessness with this attitude.

Having been adopted myself, I know firsthand the pitfalls of unconditional gratitude toward decisions my adoptive parents made without my knowledge or consent. So, when I read Janowitz’s insinuation that her daughter should express gratitude for not being left in China to work “in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks”, I literally cringed. It’s bad enough to feel, as an adoptee, that you continually have to seek others’ approval in order not to be rejected or abandoned, but to shift the responsibility of emotional and physical survival squarely onto an adopted child’s shoulders is inexcusable.

As Willow grows older and perhaps comes across this post by her mother, I hope she sits her mother down and has a long, serious talk about how dismissive she was of her daughter’s unique history as a transracial adoptee.