Storybook representations of adoption by lesbians and gay men

This first section is framed by the growing empirical literature on representations of non-traditional families within storybooks for children. Some of this literature primarily emphasises the positive aspects of the fact that such storybooks exist (Chapman and Wright, Reference Chapman, Wright and McNicol2008; Sapp, Reference Sapp2010), while other more recent contributions emphasise the privileged nature of the characters contained in most of the storybooks published to date (Riggs and Augoustinos, Reference Riggs and Augoustinos2007; Stafford, Reference Stafford and Epstein2009; Crisp, Reference Crisp, Abate and Kidd2011; Jenkins, Reference Jenkins, Abate and Kidd2011). As an example of the latter approach, Shannahan offers an incisive analysis of a selection of storybooks aimed at children with lesbian or gay parents, and suggests that such storybooks promote a very white, middle-class and capitalist understanding of what it means to grow up with lesbian or gay parents (Shannahan, Reference Shannahan2010). Most concerning, she notes, are the books that deal with adoption, a concern echoed in the present article. Regarding the book King and King and Family (de Haan and Nijland, Reference de Haan and Nijland2004), for example, Shannahan suggests that the young child who is ‘adopted’ is treated as a commodity with no past and no identity of her own. According to Shannahan, the implication of this is that the only image of adoption provided is of the benevolent white adoptive gay parents who have their ‘wishes fulfilled’. To elaborate these points further with regard to birth families and cultures, it is important first to outline the story.

King and King and Family (de Haan and Nijland, Reference de Haan and Nijland2004) extends the narrative presented in King and King (de Haan and Nijland, Reference de Haan and Nijland2002). In the first book, a young prince is looking to wed, and cannot find his match in all of the princesses presented to him. The story closes with him meeting a brother of one of the princesses and the two princes getting married and becoming two kings. In the follow up book, the newly married (white, wealthy) couple leave on their honeymoon ‘to a land far away from their kingdom’. From their vantage point in a plane, we are presented with an exoticised landscape of animals, trees, land and water, and one little brown person standing smiling but not looking up. No buildings are depicted, and no roads. Once the couple land, they hike into the jungle where they see many animal families. On the last day of their honeymoon, King Bertie says to King Lee ‘I wish we had a little one of our own.’ When they arrive home, it transpires that a ‘little brown girl’ had stowed away in their suitcase: the stowaway is ‘a little girl from the jungle!’ ‘You're the child we've always wanted,’ declare King and King. The child proceeds to tell the kings ‘all about her adventures’. Then, and in order ‘to make it official, King and King adopted the little girl who had travelled so far to be with them. This took lots of documents and stamps.’ The book concludes with a celebration for ‘Princess Daisy’.

We can see how the child's birth family and culture are routinely rendered invisible, though arguably not entirely non-existent. Importantly, the story is framed in terms of a ‘land far away’, thus both exoticising the child's homeland and depicting it as far removed from the lives of the kings. Indeed, so removed is it that it doesn't look like a kingdom at all – there are no houses, no roads, no civilisation, and importantly almost no people. Yet although the view from the plane presents no evidence of culture in the ‘land far away’, we glimpse traces of this as the story unfolds: Who built the rope bridge crossed by the kings? Who built and hired the boat to the kings? Questions such as these are important, as they highlight the fact that despite the illusion of emptiness portrayed in the story, the narrative cannot sustain this as a fact. What we are presented with, then, are ghosts of the culture and families from which the little girl in the story comes; ghosts that require our attention for the ways in which they depict birth families (as missing, as absent, or as lost).

Once the little girl ‘appears’ (from King Bertie's suitcase, like a souvenir or other commodity), this ghostly narrative continues. First, the girl is presented as intelligible only as something ‘wanted’, and as someone who has come ‘from the jungle’. In other words, her utility is as a desirable object, emerging from ‘the jungle’ and not from other people, a family or a community. The narrative presents the child as easily inserted into the terms of reference of the kingdom, where she tells the kings about her ‘adventures’. This is striking, both for the fact that she is able automatically to speak their language (as though cultural difference has been erased), and also for the fact that what she speaks of are ‘adventures’, not people, or family or her identity as a person. This assimilation of the child is completed by the reference to her as ‘Princess Daisy’ – a name not likely to have come with her ‘from the jungle’. The de-identification of the child from her birth culture and family is again contradicted by the narrative, which makes recourse to the ‘lots of documents and stamps’ required for the kings to ‘make [the adoption] official’. Again, we must ask: ‘who co-signed these forms?’ The ghosts of birth families again haunt the book.

Turning to the next book examined here, the trope of the absent presence of birth families features again. In the storybook Felicia's Favorite Story (Newman, Reference Newman2002), Mama Ness and Mama Linda are depicted as living in a lovely two-story house with their adopted daughter Felicia. The story of the adoption is told as a favourite bedtime story. The impetus for adoption is as follows: ‘We have so much love between us [thought Ness and Linda], let's find someone else who can share our love and be part of our family.’ From here, the narrative moves forward to the time when ‘[o]ur baby was born in a beautiful country called Guatemala. Sometimes . . . when a woman has a baby, she isn't able to take care of the child. So she does the most loving thing she can do: she allows the child to be adopted by parents who can take care of the baby and who want a child to love. Such a woman lived in Guatemala’ (Newman, Reference Newman2002: 13). At this point, we are presented with the image of Guatemala: Aztec temples and forest. The story continues by stating that once the women arrived in Guatemala, ‘a baby girl with big brown eyes and shiny black hair was waiting for us’ (Newman, Reference Newman2002: 16).

In contrast to King and King and Family (de Haan and Nijland, Reference de Haan and Nijland2004), Felicia's Favorite Story (Newman, Reference Newman2002) does make mention of Felicia's birth mother. Yet even though this is the case, the theme of a ghostly presence continues: we see nothing of Guatemala as a modern civilisation populated by people. Rather, we see ancient temples and no representation of people other than the baby herself. While registering the existence of ‘a woman who does the most loving thing’, this narrative is not populated by people whose poverty and disadvantage mean that ‘allowing’ adoption is their only choice. This is compounded by the use of the words ‘the child’, which constructs children placed for adoption as divorced from the people who conceived and bore them: Felicia is her child (i.e., the child of the ‘loving’ mother who ‘allowed’ the adoption, not just ‘the child’ belonging to no one). In contrast to this disembodied and relatively disempowered image of the birth mother, Felicia is shown with some agency focused on her adoption, she ‘waits’ for her adoptive parents and ‘only cries for a minute’, as though all her needs are fulfilled by the adoption to which her adaptation is instant.

In the storybook And Tango Makes Three (Richardson and Parnell, Reference Richardson and Parnell2005), we are told the story of two boy penguins who live in Central Park Zoo and who do everything together. ‘They are in love’, we are told, and part of this love involves the mimicry of the other penguin couples, in both the building of a nest and their attempts at trying to incubate a stone on the nest. Noticing their attempts, the zoo keeper has an idea: ‘He found an egg that needed to be cared for and he brought it to Roy and Silo's nest.’ They sat on and tended the egg until ‘craaack! Out came their very own baby! She had fuzzy white feathers and a funny black beak. Now Roy and Silo were fathers of baby Tango (because it takes two to make a Tango).’ An important addendum is added in which we are told that the book is a true story of actual penguins in the zoo, and that ‘Tango, their only chick, was born from an egg laid by another penguin couple named Betty and Porkey. That couple had often hatched their own eggs, but they had never been able to care for more than one at a time. In 2000, when Betty laid two fertile eggs, Rob Gramzay (the keeper) decided to give Roy, Silo, and one of those eggs a chance to become a family.’

Leaving aside the issue of anthropomorphism, And Tango Makes Three (Richardson and Parnell, Reference Richardson and Parnell2005) is troubling for the ways in which it presents, only to dismiss, the role of ‘Betty and Porkey’. Whilst in the author's note we are told that the egg was theirs, in the story of the egg hatching we are told that the chick is named ‘Tango because it takes two to make a Tango’, and further that ‘Tango was the very first penguin in the zoo to have two daddies’. This information is factually incorrect and contradicts the narrative: it took four penguins to make Tango (Betty and Porkey as ‘birth parents’ and Roy and Silo as ‘adoptive parents’), and Tango has three dads (Porkey, Roy and Silo). This storybook is somewhat more transparent in its inclusion of information about Betty and Porkey, however they still only function as plot narratives in the reported desires of Roy and Silo. Further, the language of deficiency is introduced, where the egg ‘needed to be cared for’, but Betty and Porkey ‘had never been able to care for more than one at a time’. This construction of Betty and Porkey as inadequate parents thus paves the way for the construction of Roy and Silo as the only ones who could give the egg ‘a chance to become a family’. Thus, again, it is the agency of the adoptive parents that centres the story, not that of Tango, Betty or Porkey.

These notions of deficiency are repeated in the final storybook examined here. Dad David, baba Chris and ME (Merchant, Reference Merchant2010) tells the story of Ben who at seven years, is adopted by David and Chris. We are told that Ben cannot live with his birth dad Alex and birth mum Val because they ‘weren't looking after me properly’ (Merchant, Reference Merchant2010: 4). Ben tells us that ‘I wanted to have an ordinary family of my own’ and ‘I wanted (David and Chris) to adopt me because they were fun and caring and ordinary’ (Merchant, Reference Merchant2010: 5) David shares some of his anger about being removed from his birth parents, but states that ‘Dad David talked to me about my birth mum Val and my birth dad Alex. I said I often worried about them and wondered how they are. But Dad David said he knew they were OK or we would have heard and he promised that when I am older, and if I want, he would help me find out more about them’ (Merchant, Reference Merchant2010: 7). With this information in mind, David is able to settle into the family and enjoy life with his adoptive fathers.

Of the four storybooks examined here, Dad David, baba Chris and ME (Merchant, Reference Merchant2010) provides the greatest recognition of the birth parents, however it does so through a frame of deficiency. The book provides some depth of detail into aspects of David's journey as an adopted child, but only two pages are devoted to his birth parents, and this part of the narrative constructs them as deficient, and then dismisses them as something that can be easily gotten over – only of possible relevance in some abstracted future. The here and now of David's birth parents and their possible ongoing desires and wishes are swept away by the celebration of ‘ordinariness’ and ‘specialness’ offered by his adoptive fathers. This is not to deny that children placed for adoption may experience abuse and neglect prior to their removal, but rather to insist that this is not something that can be simply ‘made better’ by adoption. Indeed, the issues of identity and belonging that are experienced by children who are adopted may be lifelong, and are not adequately addressed through a narrative that compartmentalises or reduces such issues, or relegates them to some uncertain future time (Yngvesson, Reference Yngvesson2010).

As discussed, the presence of birth parents, families and cultures in the sample of children's storybooks examined here is either a ghostly one marked by stereotypes and dehumanisation, or a presence of deviancy/deficiency used to legitimate adoption. In a number of the stories, the children themselves become objects alongside their birth parents, with both children and birth parents operating as plot devices for the fulfilment of desires of the adoptive parents. As suggested in the introduction, this type of narrative is not limited to the storybooks presented here, but rather may be considered ubiquitous to the narratives of adoption that circulate within western societies (Ayres, Reference Ayres2004; Riggs, Reference Riggs, Spark and Cuthbert2009). As a counter to these negative depictions of birth parents, families and cultures, the following section engages the work of Trinh (Reference Trinh1987) to explore some alternate ways of thinking about the location of all members and aspects of the adopted child's family.

The inappropriate/d (m)other

Trinh's writings on representations and experiences of otherness provide valuable insights into how dominant discourses of the other can be challenged. Trinh's central argument is that it is only through recognition of the fact that otherness is within us as much as it is outside us that we can truly grapple with the operations of otherness as a practice of exclusion. In distinction to positioning difference as the province of the other, it is necessary to recognise both that those other than ourselves indeed represent an incommensurable otherness that cannot simply be assimilated as a counterpoint to ourselves, but at the same time that we are foreign to ourselves – that we are never self-identical. Trinh uses the notion of the ‘inappropriate/d other’ to highlight both that the other cannot be appropriated in the simplistic ways that are often attempted in western discourses of otherness, and, simultaneously, that those other than ourselves are located right at the heart of our sense of self. It is only through our relationship to others that we come to be in the first place, and thus we are fundamentally reliant upon others to maintain our sense of a coherent self.

With this summary of Trinh's theorisation in mind, we can reflect upon what this might mean for families formed through adoption and their relationship to birth families. In terms of appropriation, it is important to consider how it is that birth families are treated as sites of appropriation in the context of intercountry adoption. Appropriation occurs when something belonging to someone else is taken by another. In the context of adoption, what is taken is complex: it is relationships (between birth parents and children), it is reproductive labour, it is future opportunities or outcomes that might arise from raising a child and, for some birth parents and children, it might well mean the taking of psychological well-being.

Given the negative nature of the appropriations that occur in the context of adoption, it is thus important to consider how this is rendered acceptable to adoptive parents. As per the examples provided earlier from children's storybooks, it is primarily the case that appropriation entailed in adoption is made acceptable via the construction of birth parents as invisible or as inadequate or deviant. Of course, what disappears in this construction is the fact that the formation of adoptive families is entirely dependent upon the fertility of birth parents, alongside the existence of a context that positions them as incapable of raising the children they produce. It is the capacity of others to reproduce and the ways in which they are incapacitated by societies that fail to support them to raise their children that makes it possible for the incapacities of adoptive parents (i.e. infertility) to be resolved.

Putting together Trinh's notion of the inappropriate/d other, and the points about adoption summarised above, it is possible to suggest that the reproductive and familial role of birth parents can never truly be appropriated. Rather, attempts at appropriating or overwriting the role of birth parents are already a reactionary response to their ‘inappropriate’ location. That is, birth parents highlight the dependency of adoptive parents upon others. Further this dependency doesn't simply disappear, and for this reason the ghost of birth parents continues forever as an absent presence for adoptive families. Birth mothers in particular are thus ‘inappropriate/d (m)others’: they are treated as sites of appropriation (as are adoptive children), but their experiences and existence can never be entirely appropriated or rendered invisible.

So what does this mean for adoptive families and their relationships to birth families? Trinh's work again here provides insight into alternative ways of conceptualising the complex relationships that shape adoptive families. Trinh suggests in relation to otherness and notions of the self that we need to move beyond an understanding of interdependency as one in which one party is always already enslaved to another. Rather, she suggests, what is required is the development of a ground between parties that belongs to no one – that is, a place that is marked by all parties’ fundamental reliance upon others. At present, this ground does not truly exist in the context of intercountry adoption, as the depth of the interdependencies of all parties is not adequately recognised and the inequalities between them are also pronounced.

In terms of moving towards this place owned by no one in the policy, practice, and lived experience of intercountry adoption, for adoptive parents this requires recognition of their dependency upon the fertility of others, along with acknowledgement that their capacity to adopt that is underpinned by their relative economic and political power (i.e., white middle-class adoptive parents living in the overdeveloped west). For birth parents, the issue of dependency is highly complex, but this does not mean it should be skirted around. In most respects, the dependency of birth parents upon other people who are able to raise their children is entirely a product of a context that fails to support them to raise their children themselves. This arguably must be the first point given attention in any discussion of intercountry adoption. Given that for the foreseeable future disparities in access and capacities to parent are likely to continue, we must recognise that birth parents are to a degree dependent upon those who by the fact of their privileged social location are able to both access and raise the children of other (poorer and less powerful) people