Adoption is Difficult Enough
Last week a friend sent me this article and asked me what I thought. The basic argument is that even as newborns, adopted baies are traumatized by the separation from their birth mothers and this trauma stays with them for life. A clinical social worker and adoption assessor writes the column. She knows much more about adoption than I do. What I think she should learn a bit more about is behavioral science.
To give the author, Ms. Davis credit, I think she is sincerely trying to both educate and provide support for adopted kids and their adoptive parents. I also have no issue with her general conclusions concerning how adoptive parents deal with the issues their kids may face. What bothers me is the characterization of the importance of infancy in determining the quality of individual life.
Ms. Davis cites the work of Dr. David Chamberlain (Babies Remember Birth) in which he states that newborn infants can recognize their own mother vs. other women within days if not hours of birth. This is true. Both recent and long-standing research on infant perception indicates that newborns can recognize the sight, sound and even smell of their mothers. There is also a great deal of additional evidence that these infant memories are very fragile and difficult to recall as we age, but be that as it may, newborns can recognize their mothers.
What troubles me is the logical jump from these findings to the existence of what Nancy Newton Verrier is quoted as describing as a “primal wound” suffered by infants separated from their birth mothers that significantly disturbs the rest of their lives. This wound is a “feeling of abandonment stamped onto the infant’s unconscious mind.” Infants temporarily separated from their biological moms due illness/placement in neonatal intensive care or other reasons are also thought to feel this unconscious wound.
As I’ve stated before, my background is in behavioral science research and this sort of logical leapfrog is always problematic.
It may well be true that such a wound exists. It may also be true that such a wound is the root cause of many personal and behavioral problems experienced by adopted children. The problem is that there is no way to either clearly support or refute this possibility, and further that the clear implications of the proposal are so damming for adoptive parents and kids.
Here’s what I mean.
1) Assume that what we think we know about babies’ abilities to recognize their own moms at birth is true. There is clear evidence to support these conclusions so it seems a good bet.
2). Lots of research on adopted kids shows higher than average incidences of problematic behaviors and experiences. Given both the amount and consistency of these results, believing this seems a good bet as well.
3) The “primal wound” idea first asserts that if babies can recognize their birth moms, then separation from that recognized figure for any significant length of time is severely detrimental to the child. It further proposes that not only does such a wound exist; it is the primary cause of many of the life-long problems that are reported in research on adoption.
Again this may be true, but the assumptions are questionable and there is simply no good way test the theory. We can’t ask infants if they either remember or miss their birth mothers after an adoption or stint in a NICU. We can’t figure out if such memories (assuming they exist) cause the infant or older child any emotional problems.
The biggest problem here is the lack of any consideration of the impact of the experiences in child’s life beyond the point of adoption in infancy. The column states “adoptees often are unconsciously aware of their “difference”. This may be true, but I would argue that if so, this likely has much more to do with the child’s daily life than any primal wound from infancy. For example, an adopted child’s extended family may treat her differently from her brother and this may cause her emotional trauma, but there is neither any need nor evidence to support going back to infant separation as an explanation for these problems.
My final issue with the primal wound idea is that it is hopeless. If true, adopted children are doomed to pain and their adoptive parents are doomed to failure. The simple fact of adoption demands this and there is no way out. This conclusion sounds hopeless to me, and if it were much better supported, I would be saddened by it, but support its dissemination. The simple fact, however, is that the primal wound is an un-testable idea and deserves to be treated with much greater skepticism that is the case in this column.
Be brave. Be Human.
-Grant
March 25th, 2007 05:49
Grant, I read your post with interest and then went and read the column by Naomi Davis.
I am an adult adoptee, one of four kids adopted in our family. I suppose I want to comment on two things. Firstly, the issue of abandonment and the feeling of being different. You question the evidence for this, and I can certainly understand this. For me, I have experienced both the feeling of being different to a mild extent, and of being abandoned or rejected. And this has not come from being treated differently by my parents. What happens is that adopted children do “remember” or “experience” that separation from our birth mothers, and we also pick up on society’s attitudes towards kids who are adopted. By these, I mean comments like, “aren’t you lucky to have such special parents”, or an awkward silence when you talk about being adopted because of the secrecy that surrounds adoption. So if you get what I mean, we assimilate these sort of attitudes which tell us that we are different and that it’s not ok to talk about our feelings or where we’ve come from, and on top of that, we do have the “feeling or memory” of being left.
I’ve had a very stable family upbringing as I said, but I still lived with issues of not being good enough - because I was given up - and of always looking for rejection, because it’s what I’m used to.
The second thing is your concern that if all this is true, then we as adoptees are doomed and our parents can only fail. I’d hate to think this is true and know it isn’t. As Ms Davis says, by adoptive parents being aware of these issues, they can be dealt with effectively and “soften the blow” so to speak. I’m not aware of the research re behavioural problems. But what I believe is that if adoption issues are rrecognised and addressed early on, then these problems wouldn’t exist. They exist, I feel, because they are ignored or treated with disdain.
I hope you can understand what I’m trying to say. Adoption happens and it is. It’s sad, on the face of it, that kids are separated from their natural families, but sometimes, this can be a better thing. The clinicians in the area have done the research no doubt from hundreds of counselling sessions with adult adoptees to give weight to their findings. On a small scale, I know that these themes are universal as I’ve spoken to quite a few adoptees. The point of articles like Ms Davis’ is to inform and educate to give everyone more chance at living whole lives, and not disconnected ones.
March 26th, 2007 23:09
Hi Janet, and welcome to Brave Humans,
Thank you for the thoughtful reply to my post on adoption. I especially appreciate your comments given your own adoption. Given what you’ve written, I want to make sure I’m clear about my concerns with the claim of a “primal wound” in adoption.
According to the column by Ms. Davis, Nancy Newton Verrier, (http://www.nancyverrier.com/prim_book.php), claims that even adoption in early infancy leads to a primal wound in the adopted child due to that child’s memory of separation from the birth mother.
This is a radical claim, given what most developmental psychologists currently believe about the limits on stability and strength of infant memory. As such, the claim needs to be evaluated extremely carefully before it is accepted. Ms. Davis seems to promote the idea in her column without acknowledging such considerations, and that is my primary concern.