I don’t know why I’m reading the NY Times blog on adoption, because it’s mostly just pissing me off. Tama Janowitz’s entry is no exception:

A girlfriend who is now on the waiting list for a child from Ethiopia says that the talk of her adoption group is a recently published book in which many Midwestern Asian adoptees now entering their 30s and 40s complain bitterly about being treated as if they did not come from a different cultural background. They feel that this treatment was an attempt to blot out their differences, and because of this, they resent their adoptive parents.

So in a way it is kind of nice to know as a parent of a child, biological or otherwise – whatever you do is going to be wrong. Like I say to Willow: “Well, you know, if you were still in China you would be working in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks!”

I have never liked Janowitz’s writing. It’s sh*t disguised as hipsterism. But this sideways slam on the book Outsiders Within is just plain wrong. “Complain bitterly”–where have we heard this before?

Did Janowitz even read the book?  If she didn’t, then this is just an ignorant remark.  But if she did, it means that she was able to reduce the complexity of the writing down to a single sound byte–those complaining adoptees!  Shut up already!

What do domestic adoptive parents in China say to their kids? Maybe they say, “If you were adopted in America you would be dead or brain damaged by now.”

Emma Alvey. Mia Depaillat. Jessica McClure. Meghan Hawkins-Rusch. Esther Scudder. What do you think?