There's an elephant in the room where people try to emphasize that ideally there is no difference between an adoptive parent relationship and a biological one and celebrate adoptive families that uphold the ideal But a lot of adoptive parents clearly don't see it that way
-
-
It SHOULD NOT be the case that adoptive relationships are any different than biological ones but IN REALITY they are In theory we do all this vetting and training to try to eliminate potential adopters who will throw out a kid like trash but it still happens so damn often
Show this thread -
It's like stepparents I remember reading all the articles profiling great stepparent relationships and loving blended families and saying "We wish people would retire the stereotype about the evil stepmother from fairy tales"
Show this thread -
Then I got to college and actually had a prof who had written a book exhaustively doing research on stepparents that said "No sorry the fairytales are accurate"
Show this thread -
"Congratulations to your family if your family is an exception but our ancestors wrote about evil stepparents all the time because that's a basic common pattern that happens and our society hasn't changed that much" Abuse and neglect of children by stepparents is fucking rampant
Show this thread -
(It's arguably misogynistic that the stories focus so much on evil stepmoms when it's stepdads who are responsible for the most horrific and yet sadly common stories of abuse But the stats about how often stepparents are involved in CPS reports are really really stark and grim)
Show this thread -
I'm not saying this as some great defense of the ties of blood, as someone who has plenty of literal scars from blood family
Show this thread -
I almost want to say it in the much more cynical sense - bio parents with 100% of all the weight and pressure of our culture saying you MUST love your kids because they are your FLESH AND BLOOD and a PART OF YOU nonetheless still abandon their kids alarmingly often
Show this thread -
And it's like if you relax that enormous pressure by even just a little bit, you give them that one psychological out - "He isn't even really your kid" - people's eagerness to dip out when things get hard becomes overwhelming It's depressing as hell
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
What the hell?
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.