In the summer of 2022, I was interviewed for an article about the experiences of Asian American adoptees in the Midwest. I was recently notified of a shift in the article focus and that the quotes selected from my interview will be from my professional expertise as a public adoptions social worker and advisory council member of the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN). I am grateful that this journalist is seeking multiple adoptee perspectives for this work, and I feel humbled to be able to serve my community and be seen as leader with professional knowledge to share. While I am comfortable with the quotes chosen, one request from the journalist caught me off guard. She said that she would like to publish a photo of me individually and a photo of me with my adoptive family in this article.

My role in the article is to provide professional insights on the developmental needs of adoptees and advice to adoptive parents. I am not discussing my personal adoption; I am discussing my work. Consider if my work was mycology or marine biology. Would a journalist ask for a photo of me with my parents? I think the answer is probably not. And if this request would be consistently odd in every other field, it probably is out of place when discussing adoption professionally, as well. While I love my parents and love sharing family photos of us, they are irrelevant to an interview that relays my professional opinions.

In her paper, “Do you know your real parents” and other adoption microagressions,” Dr. Amanda Baden describes the infantilization of adoptees as a microfiction. This is evident by people referring to adoptees as “adopted children” throughout their lives. I can think of many articles that interview adult adoptees but ask for or highlight images of them as young children for the cover photo to the story. Adoptees are infantilized by adoption agencies and in adoption research when adoption professionals only consider outcomes for adoptees through age 18, as if adoption ends when formal childhood ends. I shared instances where professors perpetuated the infantilization of adoptees in my autoethnography. And I think of the ask from this journalist as another form of infantilizing adult adoptees, because it does not recognize me as a professional individual outside of my adoptive family unit.

Adult adoptees have been conducting research, challenging adoptee representation in the arts, and advocating for changes to adoption practices for multiple decades now. I am in awe of scholars and activists who have been doing this work longer than me, and I am thrilled that I get to contribute to this dynamic effort for change. But in order for our words to carry the weight they deserve, adult adoptees must be seen as the competent adults we are.