From here ...

Often in the quest to educate themselves early in the adoption process, people come across points of view that seem to suggest that adoption itself is inherently a bad thing. This may present in the form of isolated cases of abuse by adoptive parents being extrapolated out to the nth degree in an attempt to convey an illusion that these are widespread and common, insinuations that the adoption process is inherently tainted by corruption and unavoidable, individual negative personal experiences touted to be universal, or an extremely narrow focus that attempts to divert attention from the enormous amount of good that comes with the huge percentage of adoptions.

Casting all adoptions in that aforementioned perpetually rosy glow grates as well, as negating all negatives is equally unhelpful. Those coming from the "loss" side of the adoption equation react strongly when representations of adoption as 'win/win' are presented as fact, and resent implications that loss is somehow a lesser relation in the process.

Because the point of reference often dictates interpretation, it happens that people coming from different directions toward the same topic see things very differently. What after days of reading looks to me like a week of irresponsible and dangerous anti-adoption grandstanding, may seem to others a nerve-wracking display of far too much blasé acceptance of the status quo.

Where I could be inclined to caution gently against over-enthusiasm, a blogger with another POV might rail against ignorance of others' pain and see openings for coercion. Where someone's take may allow a lot of interpretive leeway from those who see adoption as a negative experience, mine might demand less broad postulation and more personalization so as not to paint the whole picture with the brush of one opinion.

Being that there are a number of us bloggers here, each with our own experience, perspective and agenda, we tend to leave it to others to defend postures near and dear and focus our efforts on the areas that we were hired to address. I have three: International Adoption, which is broad enough a topic, but is aimed at adoptive and prospective adoption parents; this one on News, which runs the gamut and includes topical breaking news from every angle; and Older Parent, where I address issues of interest to geezers like me.

There are times when in the course of my daily research ... trawling for blog fodder, I call it ... I come across items on the Internet that are not simply 'adoption from another angle' or 'perhaps we should all take another look at ____' attempts to advance the conversation and widen understanding, but rather full scale assaults on adoption designed specifically to threaten the very existence of the practice. Since a good part of my professional mandate is to provide information to members of the public seeking to learn what they can ... and because my personal agenda is to preserve the option of adoption for the children of the world ... I take these assaults seriously.

Continued in the next post.