It Turns out Female Adoptees Have a Lot to Say About The Relationship Between Their Hair and Their (Adoptive) Mother
Judging from the responses to the meme I posted about hair on Instagram and Twitter, it looks like hair is a thing between adopted girls (and some boys, of course) and their mothers.
I have some questions:
Is it too painful for some adoptive mothers to face femininity in their child if the child came into their live because of infertility issues?
Do some adoptive mothers struggle negotiating differences between the girl child they adopted and themselves (since people, for example, in line at the grocery store love to comment on differences), and hair is an easy one to address by cutting off? (Many, many adopted females report having their hair cut short by their mothers)
What would happen if adoptees arrived in their new home with a photograph of their mother and father and instructions for hair care from those that created the hair in the first place? Is that too much to ask?
On a personal note: Was my mother full in her body as a mother? Was she dissociated and so putting a bowl on my head and cutting around it made sense to her as she flew over the surface of the world at a thousand miles an hour, never really seeing me or what my hair actually looked like?
On another personal note: I know hair was an issue for one of my brothers, but I thought that had to do with race. It did have to do with race, but as with anything to do with adoption, I wonder if my mother’s ability to process the difference between her hair and his hair affected his comfort with his own body.
