The topic of the Greek-born children sent abroad for adoption is both brand-new and 70 years overdue. It does not call for publicity or hyperboles, as has been the case, but for further in-depth study and public dialogue, conversant with global trends. The topic came to me somewhat coincidentally, as I tried my best to respond to the questions of a descendant of a Greek-to-American adoptee. After all, the children of adoptees are still partially adopted themselves. Their parents’ search for origins and reliable data is also the hoped-for answer to their own search. As I tried to address the specific inquiry of the son of this “political adoptee” of 1955, I found myself unravelling hitherto unknown adoption networks, their prior histories, their subsequent scandals, the biopolitical or socioeconomic rationales underpinning these adoptions, the random records they left behind, and, lastly, the unresolved emotions and psychosocial consequences of these adoptions that have lasted to this very day. With the 2019 publication of my book and the many opportunities to present it since, the topic of the post-war Greek adoptions abroad has now gained popular civic import, along with other issues that Greece, the Greek diaspora, and migrants arriving in Greece have been raising. The need for an in-depth investigation (or Greek self-investigation), with no holds barred, remains urgent, as does the need to overhaul the savior discourse, on the one hand, and the language of illegalities-only, on the other. This online presentation points to current and future directions, in which I am eager to play a constructive role.
On 8 February 2021, the government of the Netherlands issued a moratorium on all international adoptions, that is, on all placements of foreign-born children with Dutch parents (Dutch suspend foreign adoptions after abuses found - BBC News). This very recent decision sent shockwaves through the international adoption world. How did it come about and why? And what does this decision have to do with Greece? These questions structure the exposé below.
International adoption as a mass phenomenon is now more than 70 years old, and some 65 years old in the Netherlands, specifically. Many Dutch adoptees have helped to unmask irregularities in this long history, and also the lack of political (and legislative and cultural) will to address any long-documented abuses. After all, the fairytale of adoption says that “everyone gains” in intercountry adoption, as it has traditionally been called. And isn’t any adoption better than no adoption at all? As the Dutch government rightly concluded, if international adoption cannot be done well, if it continues to suffer from systemic problems, it should be stopped altogether. The irregularities of the past should first be corrected before any new international adoptions can be undertaken, if resuming them is even desirable. Activists for adoptee rights worldwide have been working hard to advance knowledge and awareness of international adoption’s tainted, commercialized, and deeply neocolonial history. They advocate for remedial moratoria on the Dutch model.[1]
The much-touted “adoption triangle” (which ties the birth parents, the child for adoption, and the adoptive parents together in an equilateral triangle) is a deeply skewed triangle: the corners of the triangle, or the parties privy to the adoption, are not treated as equals even though they are always depicted that way. The “adoption triangle” represents older adoption terminology, and we would do well to re-imagine the adoption triangle as an adoption “constellation.” The lost birth family is broader than the suffering birth mother (and father).[2] In recent developments, it has become painfully obvious that many of the searches for a missing child are initiated by half-siblings, by half-cousins, by aunts and uncles, and even by neighbours of the missing child. It is important to reflect on the birth culture as larger than the missing connection with a birth parent, even if the child was orphaned. A potential family network and community network are at stake in the land of origin, too, and these networks are often much larger and much more close-knit than the typical small nuclear family.
This “history of loss” contrasts sharply with the supposedly “win-win situation,” or the cliché formula that has traditionally underpinned intercountry adoption. Notice how the “win-win” formula typically refers to adopted children and their new parents, not to the birth family. This mentality of “everybody gains” has been an important motivating factor for western governments and intermediaries not to intervene or even try to correct known missteps—because any redress would inevitably make one of the two parties “lose.” This mindset has been consolidated, time and again, by the fact that illegal intercountry adoptions are seldom recalled or undone—or even lead to severe punishment. The trope of the “best interests of the child” has redefined individual and societal definitions of right and wrong, and convinced many that, no matter what, the end justified the means. There is an overwhelming sense that even a criminal adoption is a still victimless crime, which erodes any motivation to further investigate the crime, since children are, after all, adopted “for their own good,” and the latter motto may well be applied to the birth mothers as well. A shift in mentality becomes viable only when the adoptive parents are bold enough to state their suspicions, when social services notice child abuse within adoptive families, and when the adult adoptees start speaking and writing for themselves—a critical point that I will revisit in future writing projects. That shift is far from complete, and the media continue to hold up a rosy picture of international adoption, in which supposedly nothing ever goes wrong. And, even if something “unforeseen” happened, the child is supposedly still better off for having been adopted.