Here’s a story I’ve told before, elsewhere. When the Dude was about eight, I took him round to a friend’s house to play. The friend’s little brother was there too. ‘Put your hand up if you’re adopted!’ demanded the little brother, and the Dude dutifully did. ‘You’re going to go to prison!’ the little brother announced. ‘All adopted people go to prison.’
I have no idea where exactly the little brother got that idea from. I don’t think it was his parents – at least, I hope not – but, let’s face it, it wouldn’t need to be, because there are enough stereotypes of adopted and care-experienced people around to sink any number of proverbial battleships. I’ve read so many books featuring adopted characters over the years, and watched so many films and television programmes, that I could list them in great detail, from the saintly adopted child who brightens everyone’s life to the monstrous cuckoo in the nest who destroys his or her adoptive parents with a cold, glittering joy. That character slinking around on the sidelines, unable to form relationships: my spidey senses will start to tingle, and when it’s revealed that they’re adopted, I’ll add them to my mental list, cursing the fact that the Dude and his adopted and care-experienced peers have yet another stereotype to battle against.
A few months ago, I read the latest novel from one of my favourite novelists. It featured not one but two adopted characters, and it was disappointing, to say the least. The fact that these characters were adopted served no other purpose other than to underline the fact that they were both a bit odd. They weren’t outright villains – they weren’t criminals, and they weren’t even seething with resentment – but the reader clearly wasn’t meant to like them. They were depicted as being a little bit ridiculous, and a little bit mercenary. Their adoption wasn’t central to the plot in any way. There was no big reveal about their biological parents, and the fact that they were adopted was only mentioned a couple of times in the whole novel. It only seemed to be there to mark them out as other, and to underscore the fact that their relationship with their parents was less than perfect. Not dysfunctional, not unhappy; just a little bit distant, and unaffectionate.
It’s a pity. This particular writer is skilful enough to create a slightly odd family without needing to make it an adoptive family. It seemed to be used in this particular novel as a complacent form of shorthand, resting on a shared understanding between writer and reader. Look! This is why they’re a bit weird! And it’s an example of how such stereotypes slip through the writing and editing process unquestioned, as if adoption and care experience are somehow up for narrative grabs.
In the Epilogue to her extraordinary memoir Ootlin, Jenni Fagan writes of the stories we are told about who we are. Fagan, who grew up in the care system, points out that ‘for many of us those stories are complex and sometimes wholly against our own well-being.’ Other people were afraid of her, or refused to accept her, or didn’t bother to find out who she really was, ‘because they often could not get beyond what I represented as a child in care.’ Having an identity projected onto you, being ascribed certain characteristics purely because of the circumstances of your early life: this is something we shouldn’t accept for any of our children, and we shouldn’t allow our publishing and entertainment industries to perpetuate these stories, either.
It was excellent, then, to read the BBC’s article on stereotypes of adopted characters in films, because I have felt that for far too long, the entertainment industry has made vast amounts of money out of peddling the kinds of images that would be unthinkable if they related to any other minority group. Money that could, incidentally, be diverted towards providing support, because the other big adoption-related story in the news over the last few weeks has been the story about adopted children being returned to care because of a desperate lack of help. Young people suffering the effects of developmental trauma, and families unable to cope with the violence and aggression that can result from this: it’s an appalling read. As a society, we need to do better.
My son’s reply to his friend’s little brother was brilliant. ‘I think you’ll find’, he stated, ‘that actually, most superheroes were adopted.’ And indeed they were, but that’s another stereotype. There is danger in a single story, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie points out, but there is danger, too, in a bifurcated story, a binary division. It would be really good to see some adopted characters in fiction who are just going through life like their non-adopted peers, neither misfits nor superheroes, but people treated with nuance, understanding, and dignity. And it would be even better to see an increased understanding of the reality of life as an adoptive family, so that the desperate struggle for support can be alleviated.
Passing It On 