Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [36]
While the world has changed a great deal in the last three decades, the developmental needs of teenage girls have changed very little. I needed, and girls today need, loving parents, decent values, useful information, friends, physical safety, freedom to move about independently, respect for their own uniqueness and encouragement to grow into productive adults.
Girls like Lori, who are the happiest, manage against great odds to stay true to themselves. But all girls feel pain and confusion. None can easily master the painful and complicated problems of this time. All are aware of the suffering of friends, of the pressure to be beautiful and of the dangers of being female. All are pressured to sacrifice their wholeness in order to be loved. Like Ophelia, all are in danger of drowning.
Chapter 4
FAMILIES—THE ROOT SYSTEMS
FRANCHESCA (14)
Betty and Lloyd came to discuss their daughter, who was born Lakota Sioux on an Indian reservation. When Franchesca was three months old, she was placed with Catholic Social Services, who offered her to Betty and Lloyd. Betty showed me a picture of Franchesca in an infant swing. “We loved her from the moment we saw her. She had shiny hair and eyes the color of black olives.”
Lloyd said, “There was some feeling against the adoption in Betty’s family. They didn’t call it prejudice, but they worried about bad genes and wondered if Francie would fit in.”
Betty apologized for her family. “They were small-town people. It took us a while to teach them to say ‘Native American’ instead of ‘Indian,’ but once they saw Francie they loved her.”
Lloyd clasped his hands over his ample stomach and looked sober. “Everyone’s done their best really. We don’t blame them for what’s happened.”
“What’s happened exactly?”
Lloyd and Betty explained that Franchesca had a typical childhood. Lloyd was a pharmacist who ran his own store. Betty stayed with Franchesca until first grade, then she worked part-time with Lloyd. Franchesca fell off her bike in second grade and broke her leg. She had a slight speech impediment that was corrected with speech therapy in third grade. They lived in a quiet neighborhood with lots of kids. Franchesca had birthday parties, summer vacations, Girl Scouts and pottery lessons.
Lloyd added, “In elementary school her grades were good and she was popular with her classmates. She had a sweet disposition—always smiling.”
Betty agreed. “We never treated her differently because she was adopted or Sioux. At the time, we felt that was the right thing to do. Now I wonder if we didn’t gloss over things that needed to be discussed.”
Lloyd looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Francie got teased at school about being a Native American. When we knew about it, we stopped it, but I wonder if we always knew. We told her that being adopted didn’t matter, that we were just like other families. But we weren’t really. She was brown and we were white.”
I thought about how adoptions were handled fourteen years ago. Social service agencies reassured parents that adopted children would be just like their own. This was more true for the parents than for the children. Parents tended to bond immediately, but children almost always felt that adoption made them different.
In particular teenagers, who are focused on identity issues, struggle with the meaning of adoption in their lives. Often they are silent about their struggles because they don’t want to be disloyal. When adoption involves mixing races, the issues become even more formidable. Racial issues are difficult for Americans to discuss. We have so few examples