It must be the phenomenon that once something is close to you, you see it everywhere. My daughters and I find adoption issues cropping up everywhere, even in books and shows that aren’t supposed to be about adoption at all.
The girls and I have been reading all of Laura Ingalls’ Wilder’s books –nine books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her life from age five through the first years of her marriage–plus a book written from Laura’s mother’s point of view, another from her daughter’s point of view, and even one from the viewpoint of “poor little rich girl”, spoiled Nellie Olson). I found sunbonnets on E-bay which the girls received last Easter. This Christmas they got dresses and aprons–which were actually Pilgrim dresses bought at clearance prices after Thanksgiving—all they needed was a change of bonnet. (For more ideas on frugal presents and playthings, see our Frugal Blog here at Families. Com.)
In the book Little Town on the Prairie, one of Laura’s high school friends is Ida, who was adopted by the town’s minister and his wife when she was a baby. The things I recall about this story line are:
–when Ida introduces herself to Laura, she says that her name is Ida Wright, but she is called Ida Brown. From this I infer that there were no legal name change papers required at the time, and I would also venture to guess that Ida had some hesitation about using Ida Brown if she mentioned her birth name while introducing herself.
–Ida next explains that her adoptive mother picked her out from on orphanage. She says something like, “I know I’m only an adopted child, but I think she must have liked me to choose me from all those babies, don’t you think?” The phrase I’m only an adopted child felt to me like a hit in the solar plexus. I hope my kids never feel that way. (Laura’s response: “How could she or anybody not like you!”)
–Ida matter-of-factly explains that because she is an adopted child, she has to get home to help her mother with the housework and she has to wash dishes at the church dinners.
Ida is presented throughout as a very positive character, kind, smart, and always smiling. She becomes one of Laura’s best friends, she is selected as one of two students to take a lead role in a school program where she must speak about history, and she later witnesses Laura’s wedding.
I admit that I pretended to lose my place and deliberately omitted several words of these sections while I was reading aloud to my eight-year-old daughter. I’m sure she’ll find them eventually, but I hope by then adoption is a normal enough part of life that she’ll find the comments as jarring and out of place as I did.
Please see these related blogs:
The Little House on the Prairie series — Laura Ingalls Wilder
Book Review: Talking with Young Children about Adoption