Who deserves to be a parent?

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial.
0:04.8	When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow.
0:09.8	Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family.
0:13.6	For additional information, visit DignityMemorial.com.
0:20.0	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.
0:41.9	November is National Adoption Awareness Month.
0:45.7	And no, it's not one of those made-up holidays like National Nacho Day.
0:47.3	It's a real thing.
0:52.0	President Bill Clinton personally declared it a national priority in 1995.
0:57.4	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
1:03.8	celebrate adoption stories. They paint a beautiful picture of a child in need going to a loving family.
1:13.0	Sometimes those stories transcend race and identity. I'm looking at you, Angelina Jolie. But lately, the narrative around adoption
1:19.2	has been shifting, from the perfect Hollywood happy ending to something a little more complicated.
1:26.5	There's a whole community of adoptees online talking about their experiences.
1:30.3	On TikTok, there are over 50 million videos tagged adoptee.
1:35.3	I think it's really important to remember that in private infant adoption,
1:40.3	it always begins with loss for the baby.
1:48.0	Three things I wish adopters understood about adoptees.
1:54.3	Number one, the adoptee experience is literally so complex because we're grateful that we have a family, sure.
1:58.2	But we can also resent the fact that we are with you to begin with.
2:02.6	There's a popular term some adoptees use for becoming more critical of adoption or for facing the grief within their adoption story.
2:05.8	It's called Coming Out of the Fog.
	...

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