As a white woman who was adopted into a white family, I have it easy in a lot of ways. On top of all the privileges white people in America enjoy, I am shielded from many difficulties that can accompany interracial adoption. Unlike some of my adopted friends, I don’t experience the feeling of not being fully accepted by either people of my own race or people of my adoptive family’s race. I don’t get asked where I’m really from. When my white father-in-law asks flight attendants to let his family board early with him, they carefully check the last names on his racially diverse childrens’ tickets but just quickly scan my barcode and move on. I benefit from physically matching my adoptive parents (and my husband’s adoptive parents) in a way that exempts me from a vast collection of potential hurts and hardships. However, I have still found myself wondering what my birth culture is.
Once, when I was speaking on a panel about adoption, the moderator asked what we wish our adoptive families had embraced about our birth parents’ cultures. I was the only white adoptee on the panel, and I totally blew it. I stumbled through a couple lines about how I didn’t know because both my birth family and adoptive family are white before the woman to my left put me out of my misery by offering to take the mic. She challenged me to think about what my adoptive family’s and birth family’s cultures are, even if that just meant their different familial cultures. She dropped the hard truth that, by not really viewing my families’ cultures as cultures, I was participating in the insidious practice of viewing American whiteness as the norm against which all other people and cultures are judged.
Feeling convicted, I started thinking about my adoptive family’s culture. The word culture has multiple meanings, and I am not qualified to parse those out. However, one of Merriam-Webster’s definitions captures the way I am using the word here. It defines culture as “the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions and a way of life) shared by people in a place or time.” Armed with a definition, I tried to identify characteristic features of my childhood.
Our lives, and the lives of most people in our community, were centered around a coservative Presbyterian church and school activities. We prayed and ate meals as a family. We celebrated Christian and national holidays with enthusiasm. My dad regularly played golf and I (probably illegally) drove the golf cart. We took a lot of vacations and spent too much time worrying about whether we had been polite enough. Basically, we ticked a lot of boxes on the “white, southern, upper class Christians” bingo card.
Next, I tried to define what my birth family’s culture was. I realized that this is where the woman from the panel was partially wrong and where I had been partially right—I didn’t really know what my birth family’s culture was. I could make guesses, but I couldn’t pinpoint any specifics beyond broad generalizations about white people in America. This left me feeling an unexpected hole in my identity. I didn’t know what their core values were, whether they were Believers, what foods they treasured, what activities they loved, or what traditions they held close. I didn’t really know anything.
As I floundered, I thought back to when I was in college and saw a number of Chinese and Korean adoptees find joy and answers in Chinese and Korean student groups. I know those groups don’t always explore the subcultures within them and certainly can’t pinpoint everyone’s unique familial cultures, and I know that many adoptees don’t feel fully accepted by those groups, so it felt unfair for me to want more than generalizations. Unfair or not, the questions lingered. I wished I had some group to go to, but there weren’t any student groups that matched the few tidbits that I could guess about my birth family. For good reasons, there weren’t specific student groups for the things I knew about my birth parents: white and (probably) midwestern. I also considered the possibility that either of my birth parents could have come to the United States recently or could have identified with some other ethnic group’s traditions. But I wasn’t going to add the German or French student groups to my packed schedule based on a guess. As I revisited these questions after the rocky panel experience, I felt like I hadn’t made any progress.
So where do you go to explore your birth family’s culture when you’re white and have a closed adoption? Honestly, I don’t know. I assume that learning about your birth family’s culture is easier if you have an open adoption (at least for getting information—I know it’s certainly not always easier emotionally). I know some adoptees use genetic testing kits to learn more, but those services make me nervous. I also don’t want to hire someone to covertly search for my birth parents and report back. My data is essentially limited to the few things my adoptive parents have told me and guesses.
The closest I have gotten to learning more about my birth family was during a medical crisis when doctors wanted any information they could get about my birth family’s medical history. My adoptive parents called the adoption agency, and the agency told them they had my birth mother’s contact info and knew it was current. The agency reached out to her, asked a single yes or no question, and assured her that neither I nor my adoptive parents would contact her. In my hour of medical need, she didn’t respond. Nothing. I guess I learned that I am genetically predisposed to not answer urgent emails. Unfortunately, my doctors didn’t find that helpful.
Beyond that small, indirect interaction and some broad generalizations about what white people who (maybe) live in the midwest and don’t answer emails are like, I have very little data to work from. I know the “right” Christian-y answer is to say “oh, I find my identity in Christ, and that’s all I need.” Sure, that is all I truly need, but it doesn’t mean the questions aren’t there or that they aren’t important. Sometimes it has been painful and isolating, and I feel like I would be hurting my adoptive family if I expressed the desire for more. So those questions are currently stored at the bottom of my mental bookshelf. Right now, I am just mashing together my husband’s and my adoptive families’ familial cultures, and it’s lovely. Questions pop up here and there, but it has been a while since something heavy has reared its head. Other than little things, I only have guesses, and I’m okay with that right now. Even though the hole sometimes looms large, maybe it’s not a hole that needs to be filled. Maybe God knows that, at least for now, there’s something out there that I don’t need to find.
For anyone who’s searching or who has given up, I wish you well. May you experience God’s peace and comfort in whatever journey you’re on. And if you have any tips, let me know.
Elizabeth
The title of your blog really caught my eye because I am also a white adoptee but born in Russia. I do not look “Russian” whatever that means. I agree that I was never seen as being different, always fitting in physically but usually wanting to be seen as unique. The other difficulty for me is that I really do have another culture, that is not American! Although my adoption records and research shows with international adoptees: it is important for the adoptive parents to engage their children in their birth culture; for personal reasons, that did not occur in my family! So in college I started taking Russian and finding my identity and became a Christian. Although I cannot relate specifically to your story, I can relate to part of it. Thank you for sharing part of your story Elizabeth!