Part 1 of a 3-part series

Two prevalent themes exist in nearly all the adoption-themed fiction I read, including Christian fiction. Both themes play up the worst fears and deepest sorrows of people involved with adoption.

First, there’s the theme about birth parents who suddenly decide they want their child back. Second, there’s the theme about angst-ridden searches and reunions between birth parent(s)/child.

Adoption, in and of itself, isn’t very exciting. Who wants to read a novel about normal, happy adoptive families (which constitutes the vast majority of families) or well-adjusted, content birth parents or children?

No, authors who write adoption fiction inevitably veer towards the tragic and the melodramatic, highlighting a theme the media delights to sensationalize: Adoption Gone Wrong.

Books that focus on such themes do a disservice to all who live adoption every day. During the past week, I’ve been exchanging e-mails with a woman who is planning her first post-adoption visit with her 6-month-old daughter’s birth family. She’s scared.

Why?

Because she’s afraid that her daughter’s birth parents will want her back.

It doesn’t matter that the waiting period for the birth parents to revoke their consent is long past. It doesn’t matter that the adoptive mom was present in the delivery room during her daughter’s birth, visited with them several times immediately after the baby was born and thinks the world of them.

“The protective side of me is scared,” she writes. “You hear all the horror stories of the birth parents wanting their children back and I just worry.”

Her head knows that she has nothing to be afraid of, but her heart isn’t yet ready to embrace that fact.

Fiction books with adoption themes that play up these very themes don’t do much to assuage people’s fears.

Since adoption fiction plays up sensationalized news story about adoption, what can we expect next? My predictions for themes we’re going to be seeing in upcoming adoption fiction:

• Adoption scams, perpetuated either by birth mothers or by adoption “professionals.”



• Black-market baby selling.



• Parents adopting internationally bribing government officials in order to pave the way for their child to leave the country.



• Adopted people (both children and adults) battling issues that arise due to abuse, institutionalization and the foster care system.

In the next post: Fiction book review: Like Dandelion Dust by Karen Kingsbury.
http://christian.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/adoption-fiction-book-review-like-dandel