Given these troubled times, especially on opposite sides of New York`s Central Park, it`s fitting that the September Atlantic Monthly heralds a story titled ”Problem Adoptions.”
But why no photo of Woody, Mia or Soon-Yi?
Alas, the cerebral literary and political monthly`s thoughtful effort was written long before the tabloid turmoil that has swept over the Manhattan-based media and made the Woody-Mia-Soon-Yi mess the cover tale on Aug. 31 Time, Newsweek and People, and which has drowned out important matters, such as Fergie smooching with that investment adviser.
Written by journalist Katharine Davis Fishman, the Atlantic piece underscores the ”turmoil and grief” that many adoptions bring, especially when involving kids with ”special needs,” or older kids, minority kids, those ”with mental, physical, or emotional handicaps, or siblings who should be adopted together.”
Empirical data on the success rate of adoptions are hard to come by, with claims that as many as 40 percent of adoptions end in the return of a child to the adoption agency. Figures for the number of adoptees who suffer abuse or neglect are also very high.
Fishman details the complexities of the adoption system, including the rocky state of child welfare, education and mental health policies as they affect adoptees. She`s also lucid on matters that include how a child`s inherent ambivalence may increase the older he or she gets; a sense of grieving that can suddenly hit the child as he gets older; and the torturous task of a child developing a secure sense of identity and self-esteem.
A typical problem: Many adoptive families are middle or upper-middle class and, as one expert puts it, the frequent implicit message given an adoptee is, `Your mother was poor and young, and that`s why she couldn`t keep you.` Over the long run, it`s a harsh psychic burden for the child.
Ultimately, Fishman offers some general solutions. Taken together, they amount to a call for greater honesty and rigor in confronting the adoption process.
For example, she outlines why parents who seek to adopt ”special-needs children” are forced to spend far too much time fighting various
institutions, notably mental health and social welfare agencies, that might instead seek to make those parents` task easier.
Conversely, Fishman asks us to realize that some kids are simply ”too badly damaged to adapt successfully to family life.” Hers is not a call for bleak orphanages of old but for small group homes in which kids are assisted by child-care workers ”who don`t pretend to be Mommy and Daddy” and thus don`t inspire horrendous loyalty conflicts within a child.
Perhaps Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, fabled for carrying on while living on separate sides of Central Park, should take a look at this piece.
Meanwhile, there are Time, Newsweek and People. Their blanket coverage of the Woody-Mia hoopla indirectly highlights the complexities of adoption, with the best job done by Time and, surprisingly, the least satisfying by People, which relied a bit too much on an unnamed source friendly to Allen.
Unnamed sources seem a bit unnecessary here, given the many venom-filled partisans clearly willing to be public. My favorites are Allen`s sister Letty Aronson (Mia ”adopts children in a manic nature,” she tells Time) and Mia`s sister Tisa (Soon-Yi ”has a double-digit IQ,” she tells Newsweek).
Let`s get back to Fergie smooching.
Quickly: August American Demographics` ”Myths of the 1950s” seems timely given overheated discussions of ”family values” in the presidential campaign and the implicit suggestion that life was once far different. Juxtaposing demographic analysis against what it deems lingering myths, it deflates notions that the decade was a golden age of the family (in fact, the ”decline” of the nuclear family began back then); it was a boom period for babies (birth rates merely reached pre-Depression levels); and women didn`t work much back then (they were less likely to work then, but large numbers did and, in fact, those working rose 4 percent during the decade). . . . November Movie Mirror has the Tribune`s Brenda Herrmann taking you on the road with Metallica. This includes complete details on the band`s alcohol intake and a photo taken as ”the bedraggled author lays her hands on” singer James Hetfield. And you thought Tribune reporters were wallflowers?
