[ripples]

Here's an excerpt from the first major study of Korean adoptees (about 400) published in 2000 by the Evan B Donaldson Institute,

"Between one quarter and one third of the participants in each group stated that they had been abused. The reality of abuse by adoptive parents led many participants to question how adoptive parents were selected and whether the selection process has changed over time...

Gratitude was another pervasive theme. Some adoptees felt that their adoptive parents expected them to be grateful for being adopted, and they expressed ambivalence about these expectations. Most of the participants shared that they were grateful for being adopted, but realized that it came at a high price of losing their culture, country, and parts of their identity. One participant recounted her mother saying, "Do you know where you would be now if we had not done this? You could be a prostitute. Your brother might be a beggar..." Others recalled comments by other adults referring to them as a "charity mission." Some felt that such comments produced a will to be the best, but others felt the comments made them rebel. Commenting on the theme of gratitude, some facilitators noted that most of the adoptees in their groups believed that their lives had been saved through adoption, but they struggled with how much gratitude was "enough."

Maybe instead some adoptive parents should feel grateful to adoptees for being saved from the stigma of childlessness and infertility ;-)