The Unseen Disasters of Child Adoption
Department of English, The City College of New York
English 21003: Writing for the Sciences
Professor Anna Voisard
Daniel Gallardo
For many years, unbeknownst to a great portion of the American population, there have been many instances where very tragic happenings of parents having their children taken from them and being put into the foster care system for being deemed ”unfit” to raise the children, which is one of the many tragedies involving the foster care system. Many other issues; such as, “parents” adopting kids for the money that is provided by the government that is meant to help finance raising the kids. I will be analyzing the use of The two main issues that I will be focusing on is the issue of siblings being separated by adoptions, which is brought up by this video piece done by Dhar Mann on October 13, 2020, as with what happened to Bella and her older sister Adrianna, and how prospective adoptive parents look for a specific type of child(race, age, gender, etc.) like they’re purchasing a product they want rather than adopting a child in need of a family and a child that they should want regardless of anything. This piece has shed some light on the tragedies that the foster care system often causes.
This sad portrayal of a family being ripped apart by the foster care system caught my eye when I was learning more in depth about the causes social services; such as, adoption has on families, the author makes use of the rhetorical device pathos to appeal to our emotions on the circumstances that these two sisters are experiencing in the foster care system causing us to stop and listen to their story. This video done by Dhar Mann speaks of the sisters Bella and Adriana that are waiting to be adopted, when somebody comes to adopt Bella but finds out that she only wants Bella not Adriana as well, because she was twelve years old(older than a kid she wanted to adopt), which caused them to be separated and for Adriana to be left in the foster care system alone for a long time because of her age being older. All the other kids around her were getting adopted one by one, meanwhile she stayed in the foster care system, until she was a part of an interview about adoption where she was asked,”if she can have three wishes in the world. What would they be?” and she responded by saying Family all three times which ended up going viral online causing her so many offers to be adopted. Luckily the social service worker that was in charge of her was able to get her to be adopted by the new adoptive parents that ended up adopting Bella after her first adoptive didn’t work out.
The use of both Pathos and Ethos in this story has helped to garner sympathy with a lot of people, I believe the audience that Dhar Mann is aiming for with this video is targeting people looking to adopt in the United States in the hopes that they will look past the age, ethnicity, race, and gender of the kids up for adoption. The author’s use of informal language during the story and the purpose of him using first person language at the end of the video shows that he believes in adopting children for the purpose of building a family not for wanting a specific type of child. The pathos elicits emotion to have us sympathize with the two sisters and ethos to appeal to our character and morals to have us morally think it’s wrong to separate the two sisters and see what the foster care system really does to families quite often.
This is a touching story of a heartfelt reunion between two sisters that were separated originally, unfortunately it doesn’t always work out like this story. The foster care system also takes children away from their parents because they are deemed “unfit” and this is perceived as a good thing for the health of the children. Although he doesn’t as clearly or as effectively deliver his message by choosing the story of these two sisters that get reunited and eventually get adopted together but he does this to emphasize that although the foster care system isn’t always the best it still serves a good purpose and does end well sometimes.
In conclusion Dhar Mann makes use of the rhetorical devices; pathos and ethos, to persuade and bring us to his cause on the importance of family staying together in the foster care system. His elaborate and subtle use of it has made his intention clear and concise, had he used more rhetorical devices this could’ve been a much more powerful message then it already was.
Citations
