Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture?
From a screenshot of the Gladney Center for Adoption, a private adoption agency:
They had a billboard up in my neighborhood using this same imagery and it bothered me a lot.
An adopted child is a puppy who will never fit in with the ducklings in his or her adoptive family, even if the puppy (aww, how cute and funny) thinks the duck is his or her mommy?
I’m not writing that out very well, but yuck!
See, as an adopted child I don’t see it that way. I think that they were trying to make the point that although the adopted child IS different, at least genetically speaking (and different isn’t always a bad thing!), they are special, and viewed by the entire family as just that, one of the family. It probably wouldn’t have had the same effect if the little ducky had just been brown. I see where you could take offense. But people who deal in adoption in any way are extremely sensitive to the subject, and would in no way want to offend anyone. We have to deal with that crap enough already!
Maybe I’m just too paranoid!
I had the same reaction to it that you did, Princess, but I think Januari also has a point. Still, it seems like sort of risky imagery to use.
It makes me say yikes, mostly because, um, the dog is a predator animal and the duck is prey. Plays into those stories you occasionally read of Bad Seed ™ adopted kids.
As an adoptive parent, I see a lot of things that really piss me off. This isn’t one of them–it’s a bit skeevy-making, but hardly the worst thing I’ve seen in this vein.
The main problem I see with this is that dogs aren’t the same SPECIES. I adopted a child who, being from China, looks nothing like her mother and father, but she is still a human girl child, for crying out loud. I didn’t adopt a tapir, for example.
They could have gotten the point across by using a different type of duck–like a Mallard or something.
Gladney has such a long history with adoption that I’m surprised they dropped the ball like this.
I should note that I just showed this to T (husband) and he didn’t mind the image at all. He thinks that using a different duck would have been too subtle, and they were just trying to convey that a non-genetic child is ok and can be accepted into the family. They needn’t look like the parents.