Horribly titled adoption blogs

[ladypuglover]

Egg Rolls? That's horrible. Why would you call your children that? That's totally offensive.

I can see the offensiveness of calling an Asian child an egg roll but what about a dumpling? I've called my own children names that are food like sweet-pea, pumpkin, zucchini-butt* and much more. I wouldn't see a problem calling my kid dumpling (and I have) but maybe my veiws would be different if it came across as raciest.

* a nick-name to tease my Oct-Nov born babies when they didn't want to be called pumpkin.

[dirtyhippiegirl]

This was about ten years ago or so, so maybe practices have changed a bit but my mom did foster care. At the time, there was a huge push to a) keep siblings together and b) place within similar racial households. And this was with American foster children in the system.

My mom fostered a lot of black (Fried Chicken and Watermelon blog? yikes! I don't even think the most sheltered fundies would stoop that low but some of the blog names seem equally offensive) babies. The last one she fostered I think most typified the changes in the system that were happening at the time. Meth baby who was taken at birth - had five other siblings in the system, with the baby and the second youngest both taken at birth and never having any contact with the older siblings. Anyway, long story short, baby was young enough that he had several potential adopters looking at him. White families were screened out first, although my mom was very partial to one white family who really did seem to be a good "fit" for him. And then there's the pressure to adopt sibling groups. Of course, at least in our area, the only people crazy enough to adopt that many kids at once are...the freakin' Evangelical nutcases. Pastor adopts a kid or a few kids and suddenly the whole congregation has to take it on as another poster mentioned, a "mission." Almost like a race to see which congregation can adopt the most kids. This shit gets tons of positive news coverage in our area, too.

The kiddo ended up going to crazy Evangelical family basically because they would accept the entire sibling group. Even though my mom reported these people many times - they'd keep the kiddo WAY over visiting hours (usually they'd be going to church and services would extend from two hours to, like, nine hours, impromptu laying of hands and whatnot) and they were pretty open about NOT giving kiddo the meds that he needed because Jesus would heal him. Kiddo would occasionally pop up with some weird marks on him but not anything that was definitely abuse -- probably more of the "laying of hands" and whatnot that these churches do.

But yeah. And this is with American children in the foster care system.

[ceg045]

From that article: "These children don’t recognize the flags of their home countries, Moore proudly noted at a 2010 conference, but they can all sing “Jesus Loves Me.â€"

Yes, that is all that matters in life :?

Moreover, why is it considered a good thing? :(

[ladypuglover]

This was about ten years ago or so, so maybe practices have changed a bit but my mom did foster care. At the time, there was a huge push to a) keep siblings together and b) place within similar racial households. And this was with American foster children in the system.

My mom fostered a lot of black (Fried Chicken and Watermelon blog? yikes! I don't even think the most sheltered fundies would stoop that low but some of the blog names seem equally offensive) babies. The last one she fostered I think most typified the changes in the system that were happening at the time. Meth baby who was taken at birth - had five other siblings in the system, with the baby and the second youngest both taken at birth and never having any contact with the older siblings. Anyway, long story short, baby was young enough that he had several potential adopters looking at him. White families were screened out first, although my mom was very partial to one white family who really did seem to be a good "fit" for him. And then there's the pressure to adopt sibling groups. Of course, at least in our area, the only people crazy enough to adopt that many kids at once are...the freakin' Evangelical nutcases. Pastor adopts a kid or a few kids and suddenly the whole congregation has to take it on as another poster mentioned, a "mission." Almost like a race to see which congregation can adopt the most kids. This shit gets tons of positive news coverage in our area, too.

The kiddo ended up going to crazy Evangelical family basically because they would accept the entire sibling group. Even though my mom reported these people many times - they'd keep the kiddo WAY over visiting hours (usually they'd be going to church and services would extend from two hours to, like, nine hours, impromptu laying of hands and whatnot) and they were pretty open about NOT giving kiddo the meds that he needed because Jesus would heal him. Kiddo would occasionally pop up with some weird marks on him but not anything that was definitely abuse -- probably more of the "laying of hands" and whatnot that these churches do.

But yeah. And this is with American children in the foster care system.

That is just so sad.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I can see the offensiveness of calling an Asian child an egg roll but what about a dumpling? I've called my own children names that are food like sweet-pea, pumpkin, zucchini-butt* and much more. I wouldn't see a problem calling my kid dumpling (and I have) but maybe my veiws would be different if it came across as raciest.

* a nick-name to tease my Oct-Nov born babies when they didn't want to be called pumpkin.

The issue I have with reading some of those blogs is that it comes across as such a FETISH.

Calling kids after food happens in English, it's not a problem. If a normal not otherwise flipping my fetish-detector person did it I wouldn't think twice, maybe even if they used "egg rolls" (though who on earth would say that? it's not a cute food - dumplings I understand!) But searching out to specifically call your kid a Chinese food because your kid is Chinese is... weird, depending on the context, and I will say that the context of a lot of those blogs (just browsing a few pages late last night, granted) comes off as "look at my exotic CHINESE kids! They're CHINESE!!! Isn't it amazing? CHINESE! Because we adopted kids from CHINA!!"

...whereas, the blogs of "regular" Chinese or Chinese-American people aren't so "look at us!! We're CHINESE!!!" all the time, while at the SAME time often having MORE just regular offhand Chinese content (you can see they have Chinese books on the shelf in some random picture of the house, for instance).

The porknbeans blog has the story of the red thread on the front page (we have that same story in Japan too) and credits it as "an ancient Chinese belief" using that horrible "ooh! Chinese food!" stereotype font, I'm sure they don't mean anything bad by it but it's just so... bad stereotype comic book, with that font.

And I GET that they're trying to maintain contact with the children's original background, which is probably better than the people who just try to whitewash the whole thing, but... it's really easy for it to come off as fetishistic, particularly IF the people they gather to do this with are really only other people in their same situation, non-Chinese (or not Chinese-aware, regardless of ancestry) people who adopted Chinese kids and dress them up once a year.

They had their own Chinese New Year fest in KC just for those families, but I can't help but wondering, did any of them go to the main Chinese New Year celebration? But so many of the parents were wondering how they can possibly buy more of those old style Chinese outfits for their kids, so it seems they've not been to a local Chinatown or have contacts to buy one over the internet.

If those kids go to college, it can get interesting...

As for the food names on the blogs, I wondered about that too. I wonder if part of it has to do with how the "melting pot" idea in the US so often uses food metaphors, or you have people who tend to think about cultures in terms of the food they eat (since you can go to an ethnic fair of whatever kind and a big part of it is the food) so to show their "mixed-ness" it's "hot dogs + [ethnic food]" and they're riffing off that theme. Dunno.

[NurseNell]

Ugg that article from The Nation hits a bit close - a fundie friend of mine is adopting a boy from China and all of her emails/fb posts about him have mentioned making him "a warrior for Jesus" and "turning him from his sinful ways." FFS, he's a 3yo boy...

OMG, a 3 y.o. does NOT have sinful ways. :roll:

[NurseNell]

I really dislike the way that Evangelicals push adoption. My old church was full of adoptive families (their kids were pretty much the only non-white kids in the church), and the church decided to call it a "ministry".

My kids are adopted. If anyone had wanted to pray over them to remove their inherited sins I'd have slapped them up side the head.

[Someonetocall]

keep the kiddo WAY over visiting hours (usually they'd be going to church and services would extend from two hours to, like, nine hours, impromptu laying of hands and whatnot) and they were pretty open about NOT giving kiddo the meds that he needed because Jesus would heal him. Kiddo would occasionally pop up with some weird marks on him but not anything that was definitely abuse -- probably more of the "laying of hands" and whatnot that these churches do.

:shock: That is not a thing! :cry: That is not a thing! :evil: People just make me so punch-y.

[ohpotteryourotter]

The issue I have with reading some of those blogs is that it comes across as such a FETISH.

Calling kids after food happens in English, it's not a problem. If a normal not otherwise flipping my fetish-detector person did it I wouldn't think twice, maybe even if they used "egg rolls" (though who on earth would say that? it's not a cute food - dumplings I understand!) But searching out to specifically call your kid a Chinese food because your kid is Chinese is... weird, depending on the context, and I will say that the context of a lot of those blogs (just browsing a few pages late last night, granted) comes off as "look at my exotic CHINESE kids! They're CHINESE!!! Isn't it amazing? CHINESE! Because we adopted kids from CHINA!!"

...whereas, the blogs of "regular" Chinese or Chinese-American people aren't so "look at us!! We're CHINESE!!!" all the time, while at the SAME time often having MORE just regular offhand Chinese content (you can see they have Chinese books on the shelf in some random picture of the house, for instance).

The porknbeans blog has the story of the red thread on the front page (we have that same story in Japan too) and credits it as "an ancient Chinese belief" using that horrible "ooh! Chinese food!" stereotype font, I'm sure they don't mean anything bad by it but it's just so... bad stereotype comic book, with that font.

And I GET that they're trying to maintain contact with the children's original background, which is probably better than the people who just try to whitewash the whole thing, but... it's really easy for it to come off as fetishistic, particularly IF the people they gather to do this with are really only other people in their same situation, non-Chinese (or not Chinese-aware, regardless of ancestry) people who adopted Chinese kids and dress them up once a year.

They had their own Chinese New Year fest in KC just for those families, but I can't help but wondering, did any of them go to the main Chinese New Year celebration? But so many of the parents were wondering how they can possibly buy more of those old style Chinese outfits for their kids, so it seems they've not been to a local Chinatown or have contacts to buy one over the internet.

If those kids go to college, it can get interesting...

As for the food names on the blogs, I wondered about that too. I wonder if part of it has to do with how the "melting pot" idea in the US so often uses food metaphors, or you have people who tend to think about cultures in terms of the food they eat (since you can go to an ethnic fair of whatever kind and a big part of it is the food) so to show their "mixed-ness" it's "hot dogs + [ethnic food]" and they're riffing off that theme. Dunno.

I'm half Mexican and if my mother (who is white) ever called me something along the lines of "my little enchilada", I would be horrified. "Pumpkin" and "Sweet Pea" are okay because those are common, basic foods in plenty of countries. "Egg Rolls" are so obviously specifically Asian, just as "enchilada" is obviously specifically Hispanic.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Oh, I agree - food names for kids as a general concept is one thing (and not inherently dehumanizing, I don't think) but calling your internationally transracially adopted kid a stereotypical food name from the kid's birth country because ("LOL - it's like sweet pea, but she's CHINESE!!!") is just way out there offensive. I definitely went for the understatement with merely "weird."

As it happens I went on a giant blog binge last night reading those linked blogs and others that link to them and others that link to THEM and and... there is a LOT of what I'd generally just term "problematic" (if I'm being nice again - but heck, yeah, racist) content out there, quite frankly. From the food names thing, to people talking about their "China dolls" (cue the David Bowie again), to people who are thrilled that their kids don't recognize the flags of their original countries (as in that Nation article posted above), to the perhaps well-meaning but VERY skeevy (from my POV) "all that matters is that we're part of Jesus' family" whitewashers, to the people who go ON and ON about how they're saving these kids and want to save as many as possible because God "laid it on my heart" and that's that (who don't like it when commenters point out that in many cases they're clinging to old no-longer-true images), etc etc ETC. The people for whom it's all about spreading the gospel to a newly captive audience and their blogs really start to read like they're collecting children.

And there's the (I'll be charitable here) well-meaning ones, who perhaps sincerely want to introduce the kid to his or her heritage culture but seem to know nothing about it and have no ties, so at best it's groups of similar adoptive families all doing the same thing (to the point that some of their kids assume any Chinese or Chinese American kids they meet must also be adopted!!) and end up teaching sort of stereotypical images of ancient historical periods with no connection to the modern country (as one person put it, "all silks, fans, and Mulan") and have no connection to non-adoption-world Chinese-American or Chinese people.

But happily! Happily!! There are a lot of people out there NOT stuck doing those things, even among the religious, who are actually aware of the identity issues their kids are dealing with and hooking up with regular community and modern Chinese people in the US, teaching them about Chinese American history in the US (since as one of them pointed out, their kids are first-gen immigrants, they're PART of that story too). It was a breath of fresh air by that point...!

There's a blog "chinaadoptiontalk" with a lot of interesting posts from this point of view. Quite an interesting read, and links to plenty of other blogs off of it.

[Morton Fan]

To be fair, internationally adopted children are not quite in the same boat as immigrants. It's possible that internationally adopted children feel more akin to other internationally adopted children, since that is their culture too, in a way.

ETA: I am NOT trying to condone calling children "egg rolls" or anything similar, by the way. Just that adoptive gatherings make sense to me (though not in exclusion to everything else pertaining to their culture, of course).

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Oh yeah - it's just when that's ALL they do that it comes off weird (at least to me, reading the blogs). 100% agreed that the adoption thing, on its own, regardless of the "other" country involved, is a commonality that the adopted kids share too. Meetups about it would make total sense.

The weirdness is when the bloggers will go on about how they are introducing the heritage culture specifically (rather than hey we're specifically having an adoption-related meetup event), but then only ever seem to go to events that are just other families with the same "white parents, kids adopted from China as very young children" makeup, and there's no people there who actually LIVED or LIVE the culture, ever, to share it. (And it wouldn't have to be Chinese-ancestry people, even, but just... people who have lived or spent some time in China - even as expats! - or connected to a Chinese community in the US, just... someone who has experienced the modern thing.)

[Morton Fan]

Oh yeah - it's just when that's ALL they do that it comes off weird (at least to me, reading the blogs). 100% agreed that the adoption thing, on its own, regardless of the "other" country involved, is a commonality that the adopted kids share too. Meetups about it would make total sense.

The weirdness is when the bloggers will go on about how they are introducing the heritage culture specifically (rather than hey we're specifically having an adoption-related meetup event), but then only ever seem to go to events that are just other families with the same "white parents, kids adopted from China as very young children" makeup, and there's no people there who actually LIVED or LIVE the culture, ever, to share it. (And it wouldn't have to be Chinese-ancestry people, even, but just... people who have lived or spent some time in China - even as expats! - or connected to a Chinese community in the US, just... someone who has experienced the modern thing.)

Agreed. I understand now. :)

[Clementine]

I wonder if they got their inspiration from McKmama who has named her kids after McDonald's meals in her blog. Maybe it's the new blog trend, just like a lot of mommy bloggers changed the colours of the photos of their kids a couple of years ago so that they looked rigor mortis white and had corn blue eyes.

Both trends are really tasteless.

[LilMissMetaphor]

The couple from this blog (paulandchrissyDOTblogspotDOTcom) that I mentioned earlier in the thread are adopting 5 kids from Ethiopia (making a total of 12). Their most recent post details the building of the bunk beds. The boys are in one room, the girls in another. At least the beds seem to be attached properly, but the mattresses are made out of cut-up memory foam. What do you guys think? LiaS-worthy or not really comparable?

I don't know. I can't see adopting a handful of kids if I didn't have a big enough house to comfortably accommodate them all. This may be adequate but I don't think it will be comfortable.

ETA: bringshalinghomeDOTblogspot with the header: "Shaling's journey from rice in China to popcorn in Illinois"...because, you know, no one in Illinois eats rice. :roll:

[Dinaberries]

Ugh, this makes me so sad. Way to dehumanize your child and deeply impress his/her otherness upon him/her. The comment about being proud that these kids don't know the flags of their birth countries but they can sing "Jesus Loves Me" is so tragic. I don't know how these kids will grow up without having serious issues from being treated this way. It reminds me of how I heard that the Portuguese nobility (maybe it was done elsewhere in Europe too) would keep African children as pets centuries ago.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

ETA: bringshalinghomeDOTblogspot with the header: "Shaling's journey from rice in China to popcorn in Illinois"...because, you know, no one in Illinois eats rice. :roll:

HA. As someone who lives in Illinois and eats rice three meals a day, I am just laughing. Amazingly enough, there's plenty of Asian people in Illinois!