NAM/NAAM Day 6: Are Safe Haven Baby Boxes Patriotic? Another Meme

As I wrote on November 3, The Cult of Personality is the engine that runs Safe Haven Baby Boxes

Take this meme…Please.

This meme is so over the top that I could not find the words to respond. I sent it my draft box to ruminate over, but a couple of months later, I still can’t find the words, so I’m not writing a dissertation on it. Just some (disconnected?) observations.

Mrs Kelsey says that one of her team came up with meme, not her. Fair enough! But I am sure that it warmed the cockles of her Benedict Bastard heart. In this era of toxic American nationalism, the meme message fits right in: Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc–and Mrs Kelsey–are patriotic. Sticking your baby in a box-in-a-wall is patriotic. Adoption is patriotic.

America to the Rescue!

Mrs Kelsey’s patriotic adoption is the domestic side of Harvard’s favorite neolib, Eizabeth Bartholet, who claims that residents of the Global South or whatever other location not living up to her American/Western European standards. owe it to themselves and their countries to send their children to the US to be ground up in the American adoption mill, then dumped into respectable forever families. I first heard her absurd proposal at a National Council for Adoption conference. I looked around the room, expecting nods of agreement, since attendees, for the most part, were NCFA agency social workers and administrators. What I saw instead were side eyes sending out distress signals. What in the hell is she talking about? (see here and here for a lengthy explanation,

Bartholet’s weirdo scheme is a 2-way nation-building scheme . (1) build up your own country by ridding it of poor useless eater children holding back their parents and their country at large and (2) build the US with this poor but worthy and ultimately grateful insta-familied detris. I wonder what Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have to say about that? Even if somebody bought into this absurdity, I can’t imagine why they would ship their kid off to a taser-cracking ICE welcoming committee. That said, the Bartholet Patriotic Adoption Model seems to have been taken up by Mrs Kelsey, at least on an iconic level, though I doubt that Mrs. Kelsey is adoption literate beyond Pollyanna, to have heard of her.

The idea that adoption is patriotic is nothing new in the US. It goes back to post-Civil War America expansionism, urbanization, and neo-colonialism. On a secondary level, adoption created moral permission, which had not earlier been officially available for single or widowed women to fulfill their “natural” desire for motherhood. Under the guise of patriotism, women could now fulfill that dream. Years ago I read a great journal article on patriotic adoption but can’t find it online now. Something similar may be in a book that is in storage, too, but I can’t access it right now due to the house fire and the reluctance of the contractor to finish the repairs. t’s only been 6 1/2 months. I’m hoping for a Christmas move-in, but I won’t count on it.

There is a lot more to say about patriotic adoption. Orphan Trains, foundling homes, orphanages, eugenics, and Christian Nationalism family building, but that’s for another day.

Mrs Kelsey’s descent into the overt patriot trope is disturbing, but not unexpected. It’s always been there, it’s just open now. She’s a Navy vet, Republican, evangelical Christian, flag-waver, and Trumpkin. Like so many of her persuasion today, Jesus walks beside her. Crucially, patriotism is marketable, but I believe she truly believes her anonymous boxes and fast-track adoption scheme make ‘merica proud or a better place or some weird thing.

I believe, in he beginning, Mrs Kelsey was well-intentioned but wrong. Baby abandonment boxes might be an attempt to work out her own adoption issues. (It takes one to know one!). Now the Person has become the Product.

We have a Cult of Personality trying to swing a wrecking ball at adoptee rights. If you don’t believe it, check out Factbook, TikTok,*and and the S afe Haven/Beyond the Box YouTube channel.

*I am blocked for accessing the SHBB Inc TikTok account, but I think this is the link. You can also click on the link for the FB page.

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Cross-posted fto Safe Haven Baby Boxes