are you grateful to your parents?

i just saw sib*erian a*doption story on DHC and one of the couples portrayed seemed very very odd. besides the weird obsession with a blonde haired, blue eyed "american looking" kid (what does an american kid look like anyway?), they kept referencing the 35K they spent and how they were 'rescuing' their adopted daughter from her otherwise reduced circumstances. they took pictures of their daughter's homeland so that they would have visual evidence of the favor they provided her by adopting her.

now, i'm sure it is infinitely better to be raised in a family than in an orphanage. but i think that couple expecting their child to be grateful she was adopted by them is just a tad bit unrealistic. infants have no say in their birth or adoption. it just happens to them, the same as it happens to all babies. when was the last time anyone gave thanks to their *biological* parents for just being born? or for not being 40X poorer or twice as crazy as they were? seriously, all our parents are crazy, but they could have been a hell of a lot crazier, and then where would you be? if you expect the adopted child to be grateful for her adoption, then you must yourself be grateful for the circumstances of your birth...that you were born to relative priveledge in america and not to, say, a drug addicted sex worker on the streets of bangladesh. now, go give your biological parents a sincere, heartfelt thank you for creating you and not being worse than they were, and THEN maybe you can start wanting your adopted kids to start feeling grateful for their 'rescue.'

people's circumstances are what they are. all of us could have been born/adopted into better or worse, just as easily.

that couple sounded very concerned that after their 35K spent etc. that their teenage daughter would resent them and go looking for her "real" mother. i think if they spend her upbringing hoping she'll be grateful for her adoption, they may actually create that which they most fear.

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i also have a feeling that if i ever do have bio kids and i demand that they be grateful to me for the fact of being born at all because of all the time and heartbreak and expense and invasive vaginal procedures with cold steely probes at zero-dark-thirty in the morning and nowhere to park etc. involved with concieving them in the first place (to say nothing of carrying/delivering etc) well, i think they would be justified in saying 'i never asked you to do any of that!' which is 100% true.
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on a completely unrelated note, look at that cute little baby tushie!!! my teeth hurt it's so sweet :)