Aging Out

Aging Out

This is another phrase, or a terminoogy, to describe certain situation in the context of adoption system. I was working on my very final essay for the political science course that I have taken this semester and got so worked up to discover that I forgot to go in front of TV, which I hardy do recenty by the way, and failed to catch a program that I was looking forward to from a while ago. Oh, how hard I was kicking myself for the disappointment!

The program was actually a documentary film about adoptees in the US;the film follows adopted kids, who got in the system rather later in their lives. It examines how the system works for or destroys them over the course of the development of the reationships they have with their adopted parents and ultimately, the society. Stupid me lost the director's name or the title of the film but I caught the radio show that highlighted the subject of adoption system as negative influences on kids. The freqently talked about subject actually has got only little attention pr changes party because not all people go through the system by themselves. So who gives a damn to kids even their parents did not care? That sort of idea is more prevalent than taking it seriouy and try to do something drastic about it.

The subject that was specificly dealt with in the show was the issue that I mentioned in the beginning: aging out. This is a word that describes the state of kids' growing out of the age that the adoption system is appicable. There was a guest of an actual adopt ee who was deemed as an 'aged out' case for being 21 years old when she was still not ready to go independent. She had her child with her husband when she was still at college. She was a faschinating talker and almost convinced me at first. But when it came to her case, I would end up holding the same opinion as I had at the beginning of the show. Go indepent alone. You can do better without all the trouble the adoption brings to you. Get a scholarship or student loan plus welfare if you want to put yourself through college.

A case like hers calls for some changes of the rule, but mostly change of her dependent mind set or the concept of family institution. Why does she need to stay in the adoption system that involves the design of family when she had nothing to like about. If she only needs certain network that brings funding to her. she can easily find a couple of different fundings she might access. Isn't this another scar she has got the abused childhood that practically let her adopted herself out of her biological family? Since she was deprived so much in the famiy institution, she has developed the fixation. Now she feels desperate to compensate the loss only from it?

The other issue she and the whole show articulated was the phenomenon of adoptees' overflow into the military. The structure is so obvious that we can assume without hearing the statistic and theory. They go the military system because they have no option to support themseves when they are opted off the adoption system. However, the military is no longer an easy place to live off but you really get sent the front and actually a lot of former adoptees are killed or injured the current war. This supports the same old thory; people who have less money get sacrificed sooner. The born underpriveledged go less and less priveledged.

The director of the film that I missed was on the radio show, too. He described what he did, saw, what was gained and what was lost during the shooting process. The whole film was dedicated to one adoptee who he had followed as one of his subjects in it and who actually died on drugs before the film was completed. She was a Mexican American who was born on drug addict parents. She was bounced back and forth among adopted families. Although she was underpreviledged all in her life, she showed conspicuous exellence in the academic field. As the director put it, she was the most likely to succeed among all adoptees he was folowing in the process of filming. What happened to her was that she could not shake off her drug addiction after she started her college with the scholarship she won.

Athough all kids had different backgrounds and different problems, the director describes, there seemed to be a key element for endurance w hen some could survive obstacles and hardships. If they had somebody who cared them, and somebody they care, they showed remarkable strength no matter how hard their lives got.

This show turned into a talk in style as usual. Most callers were formerly adoptees who went through their negative experiences but the amazing was a woman who was going through all the hell of orphan, adoption from a family to another, sexually abused, ran away, got married just to find hersef to be even more abused by the husband, finally saw the guiding light in getting education. Now she was a lawyer, as she described, "I was so angry that I really wanted to change the system." Isn't this really aspiring?

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