What does the Grinch have to do with adoption?

Last December I happened upon the Grinch wreaking his usual holiday havoc. I was in a nail salon,  watching what someone else had chosen on tv and the program was mid-stream into the story.  It was a catchy, animated remake (2018) and the Grinch was tormenting Who-ville, determined to spoil the holiday for everyone.  As the suspense around this debacle built, an explanation appeared about why the Grinch needed to do this. 

The back story was that the Grinch had been a foster child; one year he got no gifts and felt totally alone and forgotten.  Although his fortunes had improved since that painful holiday, the experience had stayed with him and left him with his grinchy self.

I never remembered this classic as a story about foster care and adoption.  How could that have escaped me?  Or had I forgotten it?  As my day went on the Grinch mystery stayed with me.  I could picture the Dr. Seuss book so I knew we’d once owned it.  I went to the box in our basement where we store the kids books too special to part with.  There it was! 

I flipped through it searching for clues.  So here’s what Dr. Seuss told us:

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!

Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.

It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.

It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.

But I think that the most likely reason of all

May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

Nothing wrong with my memory;  not a word about foster care or a traumatic childhood.  So why did the producers of this remake feel the need to inject those themes into it?  I wish I could ask them. 

Dr. Seuss, being a master storyteller, had no need to specify the cause for the Grinch’s heart being two sizes too small when he wrote this classic in 1957*.  After all, everyone knows people like this and they’ve never been in foster care! 

Did these producers felt the need to jazz up the story?  So why not a foster care twist! :-(

If so, they fell into the faulty stereotypes of adoption that journalist, adoption activist and adoptive dad, Adam Pertman described in his bestseller, Adoption Nation.  Pertman argued that these negative stereotypes “have led us, as a society, to form a distorted picture of adoption.”  Survey research confirms that when people’s knowledge (or what they think they know) about adoption comes through the media -- rather than personal sources like friends or family – their view of adoption is less favorable. 

There are two reasons why these stereotypes showing up in family-focused media are problematic:

   One is that children whose lives have involved a transition between families, don’t deserve to be unfairly and inaccurately stigmatized.  Why portray them as bad guys, even the redeemable type?

   The second is that the public doesn’t need any more reinforcement of its pre-existing hesitation to seriously consider caring for children who need families.  The same research found that 36% of the people polled reported having considered adopting either somewhat or very seriously.  The Adoption Institute made the point that if just 1 in 500 of those adults who had considered adoption would adopt, all of the children in the U.S. foster care system at that time would have families!    

This is one of the reasons that National Adoption Awareness Month, every November, is such an important campaign.  People who aren’t familiar with an actual adoptive family need to hear positive and realistic stories and see true-to-life pictures that counteract faulty stereotypes like this new Grinch. Your family’s strengths and stories have the power to influence. 

If I could speak to these producers I would keep in mind the lessons the OG (Original Grinch) learned in Who-ville:

And what happened then…?

Well… in Who-ville they say

That the Grinch’s small heart

Grew three sizes that day!

It could happen to them.  Who knows… they might re-do the remake!

 * Of course openness about adoption was non-existent in 1957, so maybe there's an adoption backstory to the Original Grinch that I haven't learned yet.  Know something about this?  Please let me know!