by Aurora Skye
It wasn’t easy, growing up adopted.
You hear it, banded around as a casual insult, all the time. People constantly joke about others being adopted. It’s still a taboo, really. In my house, it felt like an unwritten rule, that my sister and I weren’t allowed to talk about this big thing that happened to us. I recall, at times, feeling invalidated, because adoption apparently isn’t traumatic if it happened to you when you were a baby and have no memories of your birth family. But, I have always felt the need to find members of my biological family, as though I belonged with my biological mother and half-brother.
Birth families are important to adopted people, even if they love their adoptive families. Which, for the record, I do. Very much. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss my birth mother, too, because I do. Finding my half-brother in May has been one of the highlights of my year, because I’ve found him and our mother. My adoptive family have always been supportive and kind to me, but they didn’t always handle us being adopted well. It felt like a shameful secret, but it doesn’t need to be. Author Jacqueline Wilson, evidently knows this.
Wilson was a staple of childhood reading for many British millennials and Gen-Zs. Her hit book, The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991), is about a highly spirited young girl, living in a care home, because her parents are separated and her mother, Carly, cannot look after her. Tracy clearly idolises her birth mother, in spite of her being an incompetent parent and very shallow. Tracy’s mother doesn’t put her daughter first. Cam, Tracy’s adoptive mother, is a much better mother to her, which adult Tracy points out in My Mum, Tracy Beaker, the sequel series. This was Wilson’s first portrayal of the care system in the UK–the emotional difficulties Tracy faces when her mother doesn’t show up, time after time. Abandonment issues are hard to shake off.
Although Tracy is Wilson’s most well-known and popular character –a British cultural icon to an entire generation–she wasn’t the character I found myself the most emotionally invested in. Tracy knew who her birth mother was. I didn’t. Her second most popular character, Hetty Feather, was the one I was the most drawn to instead.
The first book in the five-book series follows the eponymousVictorian girl’s quest to be reunited with her birth mother. She mistakenly believes, from age five to ten, that her biological mother is Madame Adeline, a circus lady with bright red hair, like her. In order to find her, she runs away on the day of the Foundling Hospital’s outing for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. There, she discovers that Madame is an older woman, who is infertile. Hetty therefore couldn’t possibly be her daughter. She returns to the hospital, only for Ida, a servant at the hospital, to faint. It is then revealed that Ida is her birth mother.
As a child, this came as a surprise. As an adult, you realise it was set up well. Ida and Hetty are both small and slight, with big blue eyes, and they are both headstrong and independent characters. Ida almost cries when Hetty gives her a Christmas present for the kindness she shows towards her and Ida helps Hetty get through being locked in an attic. It makes me tear up every time I read the revelation.
What I like is that Hetty’s foster mother, Peg, is also presented as her mother, and Madame Adeline becomes a mother figure to Hetty as the series continues. Hetty arguably has three mothers. Ida is the dearest of them, however, and a lot like her daughter-similarities are frequently drawn between the two characters, emphasising the connection that children have to their birth parents. Although Ida is different in personality to my birth mother, she reminds me in some ways of her –loving, but incapable of raising a child.
These are far from the only narratives of hers that discuss adoption or care. April, from Wilson’s Dustin Baby, is adopted. On her fourteenth birthday, she looks for her birth mother. She doesn’t find her, but does find the man who heard her crying and saved her life. I appreciate how realistic this is, and how it sends the message that it is okay to disregard a biological parent who treated you or your siblings poorly; Wilson appreciates the nuances to be had in conversations surrounding adoption and care.
Many other characters also have mixed families. There are many single mothers, and their children have different fathers –such as in The Illustrated Mum, Lily Alone, Little Darlings, and Diamond Girls –each of the five girls has a different father. The single mothers in these books are often portrayed as loving and involved in their children’s lives. Some characters have half-siblings they don’t see as well as step-parents. This portrayal of mixed families in children’s books is crucial, because a lot of children have families like this. Alongside being adopted and having a full sister, I have two older half-brothers, and my adoptive brother-four siblings in total, and none of mine and my sister’s three brothers are related to each other! I might be a young adult, but children reading this will sometimes have families like that, and feel out of place around children with a standard nuclear family. Representing different types of families in children’s books is so important, and I feel as though Jacqueline Wilson researched well and did an excellent job.
As is stated at the end of her Young Adult book, Baby Love, it is not an adopted person’s fault they were put up for adoption, and if some of your life story is missing, that can be difficult. Wilson makes me feel validated and seen as an adopted adult, and I daresay she has the same effect on many children. No doubt this is why her writing still stands the test of time.
When writing about adoption, talking to people who are adopted is always important, or at the very least doing thorough research. What Wilson appreciates is the nuances to be had in adopted people's feelings and perspectives. Dustin Baby shows that you don't have to meet a birth parent who didn't care for you. Hetty Feather shows that it's okay to search for your birth parents. It's also okay not to care. Sending these messages is important. Validating the feelings of adopted people, and portraying multiple perspectives, is vital to getting it right and connecting with people who are adopted, children and adults alike. The best works on adoption help to break the stigma, and open up conversations between adoptive families and their adopted children, and it can be a truly beautiful thing.
Thank you, Jacqueline Wilson.
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