Adoption in Your Cartoons

Growing up, I didn't think too much about the portrayal of adoption in the tv shows I watched. Adoption wasn't even on my radar until I was six and the first two of my five siblings were welcomed home.

I do, however, recall my devotion to the kids' show Punky Brewster. Although I raised an eyebrow at the fact that she was being raised by an elderly man instead of a young mom and/or dad....what puzzled me most was why she insisted on mismatched socks and shoes.

As incredulous as her story was (a young girl who starts out surviving on her own in an abandoned apartment), it did have some good adoption lessons. Her best friend was being raised by her grandmother (showing another thriving type of non-nuclear family). Punky did well under the grumpy yet loving eye of her elderly foster father. And it was presented in a way that it didn't seem impossible or strange... it was just this little girl's story. At least, in the way my childhood memory recalls it it was perfectly normal.

Now that I'm twenty something years older and a mom myself, I'm looking carefully at the programs my son is watching. And not just for the usual reasons (violence, language, etc.). I want to make sure his life and our family is respected along with every other kind. So imagine my surprise when a cartoon about dinosaurs would set a really positive example of adoption.

Noah loves dinosaurs. He also loves trains. Television programmers know these are two pretty common denominators for little people.... so PBS came out with a program called Dinosaur Train.

Noah watches it while we're getting ready in the morning, so I don't typically sit down with him and enjoy the preschool programming from start to finish. I couldn't help but notice that a pteranodon mother (think winged dinosaur) happened to be raising four children; three little pteranodons and a bright orange T-rex named Buddy. 

Eventually I got the chance to figure out how this happened. According to the introduction, a T-rex egg mysteriously found its way into a pteranodon nest, and the mother (though surprised at her offspring) immediately accepted him for who he was an raised him as if she gave birth... er, laid him like her other three children.

It's nice to see a positive representation of adoption.... even though the producers failed to address the obvious: would a baby T-rex really be able to resist devouring his siblings? Ah, well, that's the magic of television for you!