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I played with dolls. I might have played with them in the mud as I was part tomboy, but I played with dolls. I had quite a few Cabbage Patch Kids as they were the “It” doll of the 1980’s. I was lucky enough, in retrospect for this topic, to have mostly handmade Cabbage Patch dolls, made lovingly by my Grandmother. I still have them, packed away for future use and nostalgia’s sake. However, I had one official Cabbage Patch Kid, adoption certificate and all.
Looking back on it, I am somewhat horrified. It is true that if I had not placed the Munchkin for adoption, I probably would not feel that way (unless I became educated on adoption issues by reading blogs like Jan’s). However, I did place my daughter for adoption and thus I have been tossed directly into the midst of adoption issues. I’m sensitive to adoption in the news media. I’m also sensitive to adoption in marketing ploys.
The whole Cabbage Patch Kid adoption scheme really leaves me cold nowadays. (That and their lack of diversity.) To be honest, I don’t approve of the word adoption being used for streets that need cleaned, dogs that need new homes or for dolls that children will play with and eventually toss aside. While some can argue that, in the case of Cabbage Patch Kids, it could be an easy and hands-on way of teaching children about adoption, I don’t enjoy the capitalization of adoption. I don’t like adoption being made into some money-making scheme through which others can profit. (I mean, if I don’t like agencies profiting over the placement of children, I’m surely not going to like companies profiting over the “adoption” of a doll!)
Before you think I’m out there, I’m not the only birth mother or triad member who thinks that it’s somewhat off-color. Paragraphein asked the question about the dolls in a post from late last year. The responses, which are still rolling in as late as last month, offer differing views from all sides of the triad (and some not involved). Though I have to say, the idea of tattooing the name of birth parents (like Xavier Roberts did) on the babies’ behinds is somewhat amusing. (”Ma, I can’t read my birth mom’s name in the mirror! It’s backwards. Can you come read it for me?!”)
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop with Cabbage Patch Kids. A local store in my city has a big window display of babies in incubators, with signs touting baby adoption. I’m still in the process of writing a letter of severe disdain for how they’re portraying adoption. Furthermore, not one of the babies in the window display happen to be of another race or color. All lily-white babies, some with brown hair, but all white. Then we have the Precious Baby Doll company, surprisingly run by a birth mother, which only offers a white, blonde haired, blue eyed baby doll to represent the babies adopted from America. (The owner tried to justify it by stating that the doll was made after her placed daughter. That still doesn’t mean that child exemplifies every child available for or previously adopted in America!) Apparently, much like we see too often touted (and skewed!) by statistics and the media, these marketing and money-profiting ploys are seeking only white, healthy babies!
As a birth mother, I can’t handle much of it. I don’t enjoy the trivialization of something that so deeply changed my life. I don’t enjoy the flippant attitudes portrayed by signs touting adoption of babies. I don’t enjoy the lack of diversity in the dolls “available” for adoption. To me it says that dolls of diverse backgrounds and different are unsuitable to play with and, connected, the children whom the dolls would resemble are equally unsuitable for play and friendship. Furthermore, I just don’t really enjoy when people make money off of something that so many of us hold so dear to our hearts, whether with pain or with joy.
In short: Nicholas won’t be receiving any of the above mentioned dolls when we finally learn the gender of the baby still growing in my womb. I’m thinking something cheap since he’s most likely to drag it through the sandbox and into the pool and back again anyway.
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For more on dolls for adoption or related to the subject of adoption/nationality, read:
1. White Babies for Adoption by Jenna Hatfield.
2. Russian Culture: Matryoshka Dolls by Virginia M. Cilantro.
3. Bilingual Dolls by Theresa.
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Photo Credit.
Jenna,
This is something I haven’t given a lot of thought to – but personally, as an adopted person and a birth mother, I have a slightly different feeling about it. I haven’t explored it totally, but thanks for bringing it to the forefront!
Crazed
Crazed; As always, people are bound to have slightly to completely different feelings. The link to Paragraphein’s question about it explored some different perspectives from triad members, some who weren’t bothered and some who were and some who weren’t real sure either way. As always, I love to bring stuff to the forefront. It’s my job. Or something.
Feel free to hit me up if you want to talk about it in further detail.
A friend of mine who is adopted got the bee a cabbage patch doll when she was born. She said she had one that she adopted when she was a kid and she remembered talking to it a lot about her adoption. She liked it because it was adopted like she was so she had someone to talk to about it.
I guess until I read nicoles post I had never considered the other side of the issue. I like the bees cabbage patch.
I feel pretty much as you do. I believe that it is trivializing and making adoption into an all happy event – we know that is untrue. Ditto the adopt-a-????. I do not like lumping fish, puppies, roads and beaches into the same category as our children!
“I do not like lumping fish, puppies, roads and beaches into the same category as our children!”
Ditto!!
Erin; That’s my job! To remind people about other sides of the coin.
Think of me when Bee slobbers on her doll’s nose… and then smile. 
Jan; well said.
Judy; well ditto-ed.
I remember when the “Cabbies” as my daughters called them, first came out in the mid 1980s. I saw tons of them on the shelves in a department store. Since I had two white little girls and was seriously unenlightened back in those days, I wasn’t as concerned about the lack of diversity in the dolls. I was, however, very upset by the “adoption” issue and I remember having quite a few discussions about it. About a week after I saw the first specimens on the shelves, they sold out and became the hottest and most sought after items that holiday season. My daughters wanted them desperately and since they were too little to understand why I wouldn’t let them have them, I relented. Over twenty years later, I find the connection between the dolls and adoption distasteful and upsetting.