Tandem Essay: The Underbelly of Adoption

saviorism, evangelicals, and the motherbaby dyad with kristin kirkland

I was lucky enough to be in the same lunch circle as Dr. Kristin Kirkland at the Festival of Faith and Writing this past April. We were both there for tips and encouragement regarding our Substack platforms. Naturally, we subscribed to each other, and I hope all of you reading this will subscribe to Kristin Kirkland, MD, MPH as well. As a physician with a master’s in public health, Kristin knows her stuff, and she is passionate about ending human trafficking. Imagine her surprise when she came to understand that her experience as an adoptee meets the UNʼs definition of child trafficking! Today Kristin is pushing back on the mainstream adoption narrative and saying all the quiet parts out loud (my favorite human trait) and has a book coming out! She is a resolute voice for truth and justice, no matter what feathers she ruffles along the way. Our work overlaps concerning faith deconstruction, the importance of what happens at birth, and the many problems with saviorism. I hope you will read our twin essays on these subjects—read hers here—and join us for a Substack Live conversation on Monday, August 10th at 8pmEST/7pmCST!

TW: maternal mortality, neonatal mortality, adoption trauma

My budding friendship with Kristin has got me thinking about my maternal mortality trauma in a whole new way.

When I was pregnant with my first child, my doula client died. Like, she bled out soon after giving birth to her baby—who also died. I saw the life drain from her eyes. I held her wrecked husband in the aftermath. I clutched my belly and begged my unborn son to kick.

That was all devastating enough, but the experience was also spiritually traumatizing. At the time, I was an evangelical Christian, and I believed that atheists went to hell and dead babies went to heaven. I knew with certainty that my client was an atheist; sheʼd told me so in early labor. I adored her, and I couldnʼt have anticipated that Iʼd have to face my ugly belief so immediately or viscerally. But I did. According to my Calvinist theology, this mom (weʼll call her Brittany) went to hell for all eternity, and her baby girl (weʼll call her Vera) went to heaven. Eternal separation of a mother from her baby. This destroyed me, and I let God know it:

You let her die! Why didnʼt you save her?! Vera is in Heaven because babies can’t understand the Gospel. But Brittany could have accepted Christ and didn’t, so now she’s in Hell—forever separated from HER BABY—for not following your rules. Was this your plan? Is this your perfect sovereignty at work?!

It was a lot of tears and rage and therapy and time and faith deconstruction for me to work that one out. Today I no longer believe that God is all-powerful. I do not think She let Brittany or Vera die; I donʼt think She has that kind of power. I think God is pure love, and I believe She wept with me. Also, other than the hell we create for ourselves on earth, hell is not a real place. God is not a cosmic despot.

But hereʼs where Kristin comes in. Kristin has a forthcoming book, Orphan Sunday is the Worst, from InterVarsity Press (hooray!). In it she discusses her trauma as an adoptee within Christian evangelical culture. In that world, adoption is upheld as a picture of the gospel; itʼs a beautiful, selfless act for a Christian family to undertake, and they will be highly lauded for “saving” an “abandoned” child. What is never considered, let alone discussed, is the trauma of motherbaby separation.

I learned to write “motherbaby” like that—one word—during my time as a birth worker. There is a profound respect among midwives and doulas for the mother-baby dyad, to the point that the two are considered one being. Writing them as a single word communicates that they are not to be separated, not on the page, not in life.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Kristinʼs work, Lisa Wingateʼs Before We Were Yours, and a modicum of my own research on the veiled evils of the adoption industry have opened my eyes to the truth. Thousands upon thousands of babies have been stolen from Chile, South Korea, Guatemala, and other nations—taken from their birth parents who loved and wanted them and given instead to “better” (read: whiter, richer) parents elsewhere. Wingateʼs historical fiction about Georgia Tannʼs empire illuminates how this absolutely happened in the US too. Child trafficking euphemised as “adoption” is happening still.

There is a sickening metaphor to be made here about what happened to Brittany and Vera. Itʼs not a stretch, according to evangelical theology and their framing of adoption, to say that Brittany was an “unsuitable” birth mother who “abandoned” her baby and God was the “better” parent who adopted Vera. Christians often refer to dead babies resting in the arms of Jesus, and I understand why thatʼs supposed to be comforting (once upon a time I too found it comforting). But that image goes from sweet to nefarious real quick when you apply the lens of child trafficking.

Imagine it with me for a moment. Youʼre a new mom. You have a beautiful baby; your heart is exploding with more love than you thought possible. And then someone takes her. They convince you that you donʼt have the money to give her a good life. Or they lie to you and tell you sheʼs sick and then, after youʼve admitted her to the hospital because youʼre a good mom, a doctor tells you she has died. Or they outright steal her through force. Or maybe, God takes your baby (you know, because he needed another angel or some such bullshit).

Photo by Luigi Boccardo on Unsplash

Now before you start rage-commenting, I am not suggesting that adoptive parents themselves are manipulative or deceitful. But child traffickers certainly are, and I am being inflammatory on purpose by casting God as the “better” adoptive parent and Brittany as the “unsuitable” birth parent. I want you to squirm thinking about God holding the babies in heaven, because millions of birth parents are living their worst nightmare while well-intentioned adoptive parents rock their babies to sleep every night.

Honestly, though…itʼs not that inflammatory. Everything I just described is evangelical theology. Ephesians 1:5 reads, “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ,” and that verse gets thrown around a lot. I donʼt have any direct experience with adoption, but I did grow up in a non-Christian home, and it was implied to me numerous times that my “adoptive family” (other Christians) was superior to my family of origin. My unbelieving parents were just like Brittany in evangelical eyes. I was pitied for my lack of a “good Christian family,” and it was made clear to me that adoption by God into his family was leveling up.

I hope the image of God killing a baby to “save” her from the horror of being loved by non-Christian parents—even unaliving the mother to make doubly sure of it—makes you shudder. It absolutely should, not only because otherwise we need to see if you possess a soul, but also because the heart of this repulsive metaphor is true. Birth parents are indeed presented as heartless abandoners when the truth is usually far from it. Adoptive parents are indeed viewed as saints when the truth is they are complicated people like the rest of us, easily exploited by the industry to turn a profit. Adoptees are indeed told that they are very lucky when the truth may be that they are tragic.

Besides adoptionʼs entanglements with Christianity, another reason itʼs presumed to be purely righteous is due to our cultural conditioning to save and fix. According to writer and activist Parker Palmer, “Many of us ‘helperʼ types are as much or more concerned with being seen as good helpers as we are with serving the soul-deep needs of the person who needs help. Witnessing and companioning take time and patience, which we often lack—especially when we’re in the presence of suffering so painful we can barely stand to be there, as if we were in danger of catching a contagious disease. We want to apply our ‘fix,ʼ then cut and run, figuring we’ve done the best we can to ‘saveʼ the other person.” Adoption is the “cut and run” that society vastly prefers over meaningfully addressing vulnerable womenʼs suffering. Kirkland points out that adoption has become a “fix” for many things and therefore commodifies adoptees: it atones for biological parents’ assumed shortcomings, it solves infertility, and it satisfies adoptersʼ needs to be seen as dutiful Christians.

Photo by Joylynn Goh on Unsplash

Of course, children who truly have no living (or safe) parents to care for them should be adopted into loving families. But this scenario is far rarer than most assume, and we cannot gloss over the motherbaby separation that is inherently part of the adoption process. Even when a birth mother dies, or is incarcerated, or is in the clutches of drug addiction or domestic abuse or mental health crisis—or any other circumstance that would tempt the close-minded to think she had no heart—she loved (loves!) her baby, was one with her baby, and was separated from her baby. Mothers donʼt relinquish their children without pain in their hearts. Those who suggest otherwise betray that they know nothing about mothers. Or physiology.

The eternal motherbaby separation that I feared God imposed on Brittany and Vera actually happens—and not infrequently. Itʼs not God who does the separating, but greed and sin, capitalism and evil. And idolatry. Evangelicals have made an idol of the white nuclear family, and people will do just about anything in service to their idols, including dehumanizing those who are different from them so that they might abscond with their children. An atheist mother, a queer mother, a poor mother, a birthing trans man turned happy dad, even a Black mother would potentially fall outside the lines of white evangelical acceptability for parenthood. That baby deserves better, they might subconsciously think. I can give that child what their birth mother never will.

A Korean proverb speaks of “giving a disease and then offering the medicine.” It refers to the impulse to manufacture or exaggerate danger to set up an opportunity to play the hero. In evangelical Christian culture, the disease is sinfulness, the danger is hell, and the medicine is faith in Christ—conveniently mediated through churches. Under Trump, the disease is purportedly “illegals,” the supposed danger is crime sprees, and the “medicine” is the tyranny of ICE. In adoption, the disease is impoverished and sexually “promiscuous” birth parents, the danger is a subsequent generation of poor, “sinful” people, and the medicine is giving away their children to wealthy, Christian (white) adoptive parents.

Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

We would all do well to be more suspicious of the various “medicines” offered by those who present themselves as saviors. If youʼve seen Wicked, you know the power of examining a story from a different point of view. Good and bad are not as simple as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West—itʼs crucial to hear from Elphaba, from Dr. Dillamond. Who benefits—and who suffers—from the medicines we swallow without a second thought?

Just as I ultimately found evangelicalismʼs medicine to be bitter and spat it from my mouth (and quickly did the same with Trumpʼs poison when he came down that stupid elevator), I must do the same with adoptionʼs elixir. I reject the notion that God separates mothers and babies, sending one to bliss and one to rot—I know in my bones that Brittany and Vera are resting in peace together. I reject the corrupt adoption industry that takes children away from parents who want them. I take the call seriously to bring Godʼs kingdom to earth, and that means roundly rejecting any and every system that does what Mother God never would.