Away We Go

I am always fascinated when the media chooses to portray adoptive families. They almost never get it right. On the one hand there is the deification of adoption and that's creepy to me because we're just regular families with slightly different problems. On the other hand, there are the books and movies that want to act as if all adoptions result in emotionally barren moms and serial killer kids. It irritates me to say the least. Are you with me? I know you are.

So a while back Brian and I went to see "Away We Go" starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. We like indy flicks and we both love Dave Eggers, who wrote the screenplay, so we figured it would be a winner. And it really did have some great stuff. Until adoption came into it.

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So if you've continued reading you obviously have willingly ignored my spoiler alert warning and will not leave me a nasty comment about giving away part of the movie. So the basic plot of "Away We Go" is that Burt and Verona are expecting a baby, experiencing a quarter life crisis and feeling disenfranchised from their families, so they travel all over the country visiting friends in search of a community for their imminent offspring.

They arrive to visit some old college friends and it immediately becomes obvious that they are adoptive parents. They had 4 kids between the ages of roughly 15 and 4 of all different races. When we meet these children they are watching "The Sound of Music" and Adoptive Mom is making them turn it off about 1/2 way through the movie. She then explains to Burt and Verona "We don't let our kids watch the scary parts. There is just too much sadness in the world for that. They'll have time to learn how awful life is later." [wistful look to stage right] Ummm, weird, it's a musical for crying out loud.

The next time we see Adoptive Parents the four adults are out at a bar. There is some kind of amateur singing contest in the background. Verona is about 7 months pregnant and telling them all how healthy she is: no problems, no fatigue, feels great. Adoptive Mom is knocking back drinks. Suddenly she leaps on stage and takes the microphone. She begins to sing a sad song and do a sultry dance while removing her clothes. Umm, super weird. Her husband says, "She had another miscarriage Tuesday. I mean she loves those kids like they're her own but she just wanted to have our baby so badly."

I was so mad I nearly threw up. Sure, a lot of us have had incredible sadness before making the choice to form adoptive families, but this was such an unfair representation of unresolved psychosis and "second place" adopted kids. Later in the movie Burt and Verona are discussing their incredible blessings (of which there are many) and Burt says, "How does it work? Why do we get this (touches her full womb) and Adoptive Mom has to suffer so much?" That line really made me angry. The Adoptive Parents portrayed in that movie were wealthy, attractive people living in a huge, beautiful home raising 4 gorgeous kids. They had every blessing and the entire film just discounted all of that because, of course, as everyone knows adopted kids just aren't as good as biological kids. They aren't a blessing at all - only biological kids count as blessings.

I'm tired of watching my child, and his status in our immediate and extended family, be portrayed as "less than" or even worse as "nothing" by the media.

--Rosemary