In America, popular narratives about adoption tend to focus on happy endings. Poor mothers who were predestined to give their children away for a “better life”; unwanted kids turned into chosen ones; made-for-television reunions years later. Since childhood, these story lines about the industry of infant adoptions had gradually seeped into my subconscious from movies, books, and the news.
Then, following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the tropes proliferated. Photos of smiling white couples holding signs that read we will adopt your baby went viral this summer, quickly inspiring online mockery. Many U.S. adoption agencies prepared for a potential increase in adoption in states that have made abortion illegal, despite limited evidence that a need for these services will increase.
As I found while researching a book on identical twins raised in radically different circumstances, the reality of adoption is far more complicated than some might think—and, as many adoptees and scholars have argued, deserving of a more clear-eyed appraisal across American culture. I began reporting Somewhere Sisters in 2016. The identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam in 1998, and their mother struggled to care for them. Isabella (born Loan) was adopted by a wealthy, white American family that gave her a new name and raised her in the suburbs of Chicago. Hà was adopted by a biological aunt and her partner, and grew up in a rural village in Vietnam with sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons.
Over several years, I interviewed the sisters, their first family, and their adoptive families. I also followed the twins’ anticipated yet fraught reunion at age 13 and the time that followed. Meanwhile, I delved into the archives of adoption history and scholarship. And I interviewed other adoptees from around the world. This all made clear to me that when reunions with birth families do happen, they aren’t always happy; they can be painful, confusing, or traumatic.
I also saw how scores of adoptees who are parents, lawyers, educators, or activists have been challenging the rosy image of adoption that stubbornly persists in our culture. One of them is Victoria DiMartile, a biracial Black and white adoptee raised by a white family, who is working toward her Ph.D. in anthropology at Indiana University at Bloomington. She studies the social and economic effects of the adoption business and is the founder of Wreckage and Wonder, which provides adoption education. Children are not offered up for adoption in a vacuum, she told me. Many of them “are available because of certain, very strategic political policies.”