Adoptees live in a hostage situation

Many adoptees have a trauma behind them and feel different while growing up. When the outside world does not recognize their experiences, they join together and make each other aware - it's time they get society's support, writes Susanna Johansson.

They started adopting children from non-Western countries to Sweden in the 1950s. Sweden is one of the countries that has adopted the most children in the world per capita. Most adoptions have taken place via Adoptionscentrum and some have been done privately.

For about 7-8 years, adoption issues have been raised in the public conversation and in social media via research, books and articles by adoptees who have addressed the subject. In 2021, there was an impact with a series of articles in DN about adoption.

This is precisely why I make the comparison with the consciousness-raising political conversations of the 60s, when these radical feminist women's groups needed to share their individual experiences with each other in order to understand the extent of sexualized violence in heterosexual relationships and see that it was a structural problem.

In the same way, it is only when you as an adoptee talk to other adoptees, and when adoptees raise the issue from our perspective in the public conversation, that we become aware and take a closer look at our own experiences. Precisely because our experiences can then be problematized, mirrored, understood and reflected in conversations with others with similar experiences. The experience of living apart from other adoptees in our white families can be equated to being in the grip of perpetrators, like abused women in the 60s. A situation that has often made us blind to our own living conditions, which is also reinforced by the fact that our experiences are made invisible in the Swedish discourse on adoption. Our situation has become normalized for us as individuals living in our adoptive families.

What we adoptees as a group have become aware of is mainly how society adopted from countries that did not have legally secure adoptions and adopted away children who already had families, and that it may have happened to us as well.

Talking about one's experiences thus means raising awareness of a possible existing problem. Just as women's groups in the 60s brought the problem of sexualized violence onto the political agenda - in the same way, the problem of irregular adoption processes and the life situation of adoptees has begun to be discovered and is now being addressed as political issues. Among other things in the form of the adoption-specific conversation support appointed by the government and also the state investigation which will investigate whether irregularities were committed during the adoption processes of children to Sweden.

But in addition to that, there is also a gaslighting situation going on both in our families and in society regarding our specific adoption experiences, for example experiences of exclusion, everyday racism, special treatment, mental illness and not being validated. A situation where our feelings and experiences of being adopted may be completely neglected or even condemned - if they are not positive feelings. The narrative in the adoption discourse has been that adoption is a successful phenomenon for all parties. Not infrequently, this narrative is internalized by ourselves and it becomes difficult to see and feel anything else. But we know from research that repressed feelings also contribute to mental illness of various kinds, physical illness and can contribute to difficulties in creating one's identity.

What is still telling, however, is that adoptees - as a group - themselves had to raise the question of the consequences of adoption in public in order for them to get on the political agenda. From the politicians' side, our need for investigations into legally secure adoption processes has been discussed in a tepid manner and the Adoptionscentrum has reduced the problem and the risk of legally unsafe adoption processes.

This shows, once again, that our needs as adoptees are being sidelined in favor of the adoptive parents' and childless' "needs" to start a family. Talking about the consequences of adoption on a personal and emotional level, or acknowledging the trauma that adoption actually is, is an issue that should still be talked about more and worked on politically on a broad front in all the different instances that meet adoptees. As a child, being allowed to feel all your emotions and to be validated in them, as well as getting help to manage these emotions, is vital knowledge that contributes to the ability to feel, manage and regulate your emotions as an adult. Many adoptees carry difficult feelings that are never validated either in the family or in society. And until 2020, the state and society have neglected our needs for extra support.

The adoption discourse must therefore be changed so that we start talking about the adoption trauma that arises from the crime of our first mothers, which leaves deep traces based on the extreme stress reaction that arises in the baby or child.

It can therefore be said that our rights, not exactly as adoptees, but as human beings, have not been met in the same way as other children's. It should reasonably be included that the new country and the home one comes to have tools to take care of our particular fragility after they have adopted us here. And above all to acknowledge the trauma that adoption actually entails for a child. It is completely unimaginable and irresponsible that we adoptees have been seen and are still seen as objects to solve the grief of the childless, but since the 50s our grief and loss have been made completely invisible.

Women in the 60s challenged the status quo themselves and coined the political slogan "The personal is political". Even adoptees themselves have brought the issue up on the political agenda, and our personal adoption experiences are also highly political.

Our status quo is that the specific experience and fragility that we adopted has not even been mentioned, problematized or guarded as such during our upbringing. Therefore, no protective measures have been taken either within social services, healthcare or psychiatry. Not infrequently we come to families ill-equipped to care for our emotional needs and extra fragility due to our adoption trauma.

But not even the large representation of adoptees in healthcare, psychiatry and inpatient care or the greatly increased risk of suicide for adoptees has contributed to special measures in 60 years of adoptions to Sweden. It is unacceptable. Our experiences and feelings have been silenced in favor of the childless. We inherit their sunshine stories, and anything else we could possibly feel is pushed aside. No one asked us about our experiences and our feelings. We may not have even known that we had specific experiences and feelings from the experience of being adopted, so invisible has our experience been.

In Sweden, you don't talk about adoption trauma yet, which has been done in many other countries, including the USA, for a long time. There is an established expression that is used, among other things, for adoption trauma - disenfranchised grief. It means sadness that has not been noticed and validated and which can therefore lead to mental illness. Those who want to learn more about early trauma and developmental psychology can read about the 1998 ACE study conducted by the Centers for disease control (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente. The entire Swedish society has made the trauma of being adopted invisible - but it must be noticed now.

What has happened in recent years, and which continues to happen, is precisely an awareness-raising for us adoptees ourselves, for society and for politics about what it means to be adopted. We have woken up. It is time that our special needs and the trauma of adoption are taken up on the political agenda and that political changes and initiatives are brought about, as well as the implementation in society of interventions aimed at adoptees. A societal structure needs to be built to meet our needs - from the National Board of Health and Welfare's guidelines to social services and municipalities, healthcare and psychiatry.

It's over 60 years too late, but now society is finally waking up, thanks to adoptees' own struggles and heightened awareness.