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EXTRACTS of Infancia y adopción , number 5, january-june 1998
 
 

Searching for one’s origins

Adopted children are forced to integrate the duality that has shaped their personal history: on the one hand, they have their family, the parents who have raised them, with whom they have identified, with whom they live day in day out and, on the other, the progenitors, as absent as they are real, about whom they often know nothing at all. While some adopted children do not show any interest at all in contacting or finding out more about their original parents, others go to various administrations trying to find the answer to the many unanswered questions, trying to find that piece they feel is missing from the jigsaw of their life. Hardly anyone, whether from Government authorities or the Justice Department, helps them out very much, often not even their own families.

What is it that makes an adopted child want to, or not, inquire into his/her biological origins? Why is it that the mere possibility that an adopted child might want to find his/her original mother is still too often a taboo subject among adopting families? How important are one’s origins in the development of one’s identity? What do we call «origins»? What is it that shapes the «identity» of an individual?...

All these questions clearly show the complexity of the subject. What is true is that, at the onset of adolescence, when the individual starts thinking of himself/herself independently from his/her own family, the question «who am I?» becomes a central pivot of his/her life. If this adolescent is, in addition, an adopted child, he/she will inevitably start asking, as well as «who am I?», also «who could I have been?». And it is at this point, faced with this lack of information, this black hole, that different individuals conditioned by their own particular history and their own experiences develop different attitudes ranging from mild curiosity with no active effort made to find the answers, to a real need to find the answers using all possible means.
 
 

Identity in the adolescent

This century, human beings have directed their questioning in on themselves, both at an individual level and at a social level. The fact of controlling the world without having been able to control one’s own inner self creates a potentially very dangerous situation. This leads us to believe that the study of identity in our times is as essential as was the study of sexuality in the time of Freud.

The authors of this work propose the idea that identity is the result of a continuous interactive process of three integrating links: spatial, temporal and social. The first one is composed of the relationship among the different parts of oneself, most importantly, of the physical being, which maintains its cohesion and allows for the comparison and the contrast with others. It tends to differentiate between subject-object. We call it «the spatial integration link». It corresponds to the feeling of individuation. The second one aims at distinguishing a link between the different representations of oneself in time, establishing a continuity between them. We are speaking of the «temporal integration link». It is the basis of the sense of sameness. The third link concerns the social connotation of identity and is provided by the relationship between one’s own features and those of others, by means of identification mechanisms. We are speaking of the «social integration link». It provides the sense of belonging to a group.
 
 
 

Vicky Sherpa or the strength of education

Vicky Subirana, or Vicky Sherpa, her married name, is a Catalan teacher who has spent 8 years in Nepal developing educational projects for children with no economical resources. These children, along with their families, belong to the lowest castes of the Nepalese society, and are considered to have no right to education. Convinced that access to education is a basic tool to improve living conditions of children and of society in general, Vicky Sherpa presents us with the crude reality of everyday life in Nepal: poverty and squalor, a very high percentage of illiteracy among the population, child labour, the terrible division among the castes, as well as the reality, not always ethical or legal, of adoptions. We present here some of her answers to our interview:

«It is through education that we can transform the environment. If we only concentrate on the social and economical aspects, ignoring education, the result is not the same. We are trying to create in Nepal a “transformation” school, open to all castes and ethnic groups, which teaches children to look at their surroundings with a critical gaze, to think in a creative and analytical fashion, and thus enable people to influence their own cultural reality in the way they wish. Nowadays, schools in Nepal not only don’t reach the most under-
privileged classes, they do not give the individual any freedom to think by him/herself. The schools are run according to the dictates of cultural tra-
dition and castes which perpetuate great social injustices».

«I insist on the fact that access to education is a tool for transformation, capable of generating changes led by the active agents of that society itself (families, children...) and in response to the actual needs of that environment and not those imposed by politicians and other countries. The idea is to train individuals to choose and develop the society they want by themselves. We cannot solve the problems thinking with a Western mentality. The solutions have to come from them».

«We should focus our energies on raising government awareness, applying pressure for them to carry out policies that are truly in everybody’s interest. Our educational project and our help programs in economical projects for families are in fact a small help that does not change much. I am perfectly aware of this, but it is also important to mention that 600 families have been able to progress thanks to these programs».
 
 
 

Towards a new adoption culture

Each one of us has a specific view of adoption. Based on preconceived ideas, life experiences, intuitive feelings and more sophisticated re-
flections, this view gives a particular meaning to the very concept of adoption; a concept that, in addition, is essential in the social work of protecting children. There are few subjects which reveal, as much as adoption does in a particular society, in a given historical period, the value of childhood, the need for pulling together in a common effort,
the power of indignation, the incomprehension
of administrative and cultural obstacles, the im-
perative need to do something, the idea of family, and, to a certain extent, the meaning we give to life.

In Brazil, as in other countries, our major challenge is to develop a new adoption culture for the child, for that child who needs to find a new family, to have the possibility to grow up with the protection he/she deserves during childhood. If we can accept that an abandoned child is the most serious sign of the deficiencies of a society, we can understand the degree of our responsibility. By culture we understand the interaction of a series of behavioural models, beliefs, institutions, spiritual and material values developed and transmitted collectively by all communities. The «culture» concept is also associated with de-
velopment, the creation of new values; culture is always associated with transformation.

When we speak of adoption, we are talking about the construction of a life project for thousands and thousands of children, we are talking about the creation of civic moral values, the future of our society and the collective efforts to improve human rights and values.