Whatever Things Are True: the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the World of International Adoption

Foreign adoptions by Americans plunge again | ajc.com

Associated Press: Foreign adoptions by Americans plunge again  | ajc.com.

Time Magazine Editorial: Kids' Movies Have Too Many Orphans!

illustration from Time.com

 

 

TV Critic Jeff Alexander has an opinion piece in Time this week that will have many adoptive parents nodding their heads knowingly. In "Children's Movies Have Too Many Orphans," he writes:

This year, I’ve had to have The Adoption Talk with  [my seven-year-old adopted son] Max after almost every film I’ve taken him to see, because they all had lead characters who were taken from their parents at an early age. Rapunzel in Tangled, Po in Kung Fu Panda 2 and Blu in Rio all grew up far away from their biological progenitors. The origin of Rango‘s title character is shrouded in mystery, but his love interest Beans is a card-carrying member of the Dead Dad Club. I’m glad Max is too young for Thor, in which one character’s belated discovery of his own adoption contributes to inter-dimensional catastrophe. By the time we came out of Puss in Boots last weekend, I didn’t even feel like discussing Puss’s fraught relationship with his human adoptive mother. And that’s not even mentioning last year’s Megamind (with the title character’s Superman-like escape from a planetary catastrophe that kills his parents) and Despicable Me (which we avoided entirely based on word-of-mouth from fellow adoptive parents).

For plenty of kids, stories about young people with dead, absent or galactically evil parents are a novelty, a look into a different life. For other kids, they can be a raw nerve. Most raw nerves are treated with some sensitivity, but not this one. And that’s why I’m going to think twice before going to see the upcoming and much-anticipated Hugo, about an 11-year old orphan in Paris who explores his father’s dark past. Even if it is directed by Martin Scorsese.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/04/childrens-movies-have-too-many-orphans/#ixzz1d3BuqRkl

    

    My own kids were disturbed by elements in Kung Fu Panda and Rio this year, though Tangled was no big deal. Parents, do you get tired of having to debrief the adoption themes in practically every movie your kids see? If you're an adopted person, how do you feel when an orphan storyline pops up unexpectedly?