Al Jazeera released this documentary and it’s available HERE. I had so much fun interviewing Huibert van Wijk for this podcast—and watching Child of Their Time left me quietly undone in the best way. Two things struck me immediately. First, this is an adoption story told with deep care by the adoptee’s brother. Second, the film allows the adoptive father to be fully seen and not as a caricature or a villain, but as someone actively grappling with paradox. Lex, the adoptive father, recalls the excitement of adoption in the 1970s: “The baby didn’t come from a mother’s belly, but from the belly of the plane. It was so exciting.” Later, we hear him say, with equal clarity and humility, “If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it.” That shift lands with force, especially when paired with archival images of women holding Indonesian babies on the plane while Lex reflects, “Now I understand the impact.” It is rare and powerful to witness an adoptive parent name both love and regret without collapsing into defensiveness. At the center of the film is Tim, the adoptee, who was adopted from Indonesia to the Netherlands and shares that he never really felt able to bond. From the opening moments, we understand that Tim and Lex are estranged. And yet, throughout the film, it is unmistakable how deeply Lex longs to connect with his son—even as Tim works to make sense of an adoption that cost him culture, history, and belonging. Part of what makes this film so compelling is that it resists a tidy narrative. Child of Their Time centers on Tim and Lex, with Huibert (Tim’s brother) guiding us through a story that refuses the familiar binaries of rescue or gratitude. Instead, we are invited into a layered, sometimes painful exploration of how the same adoption can hold radically different meanings depending on where you stand. After nearly twenty years of working professionally in adoption, I have watched the adoptee-versus-adoptive-parent discourse harden. Conversations become brittle. Defensive. Futile. As if the only way to tell the truth is to decide who is “wrong.” For a long time, inclusive conversations that made room for everyone touched by adoption felt impossible to sustain. Lately, though, something has shifted for me. I’m no longer experiencing adoption as a zero-sum equation. I’m beginning to understand it as a both/and conversation. I’m deeply grateful to my dear friend Cynthia Hansen, a Korean adoptee, who introduced me to Both/And Thinking by Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis. The authors describe how embracing paradox begins by noticing tensions—those moments that push us to choose one side over another. They name three familiar traps: rabbit holes, where strengths are overdeveloped until they become weaknesses; wrecking balls, where we overcorrect from one extreme to another; and trench warfare, where polarization hardens into us-versus-them thinking. Their invitation is not to resolve tension too quickly, but to find comfort in the discomfort. That framing feels especially alive in this episode. Lex points to generational differences in how adoption is understood, and I hear that layered alongside broader cultural shifts. Tim, born in 1970, sits at an intersection—experiencing not only the deracination of international adoption, but also a moment when Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z are increasingly willing to name harm, prioritize mental health, and choose distance or estrangement when relationships feel unsafe. These frameworks were largely unavailable to Boomers, who were raised with a mandate to honor parents at all costs. None of this negates love, but it does contextualize rupture. What is extraordinary to witness in Child of Their Time is an adoptive father taking responsibility for the complexity of adoption. Lex is able to say, “I love him. He is my son,” while also acknowledging that he may be experienced as a surrogate father, not a replacement. That kind of honesty requires relinquishing certainty. Huibert van Wijk’s documentary asks a deceptively simple question: In whose interest is international adoption, anyway? And what this film makes clear is that the only honest answer is not either/or, but both/and. Using home videos, archival footage, and deeply personal interviews, Huibert gently pieces together Tim’s adoption story alongside reflections from his father and brother. After arriving in the Netherlands, Tim struggled to land, culturally, emotionally, and relationally, and over time pulled away from Lex. The film moves back and forth between their perspectives: Tim trying to make sense of his Indonesian and Dutch identities, and Lex slowly realizing that what once felt purely loving now lives inside a much more complicated story. When Tim receives new information about his biological family and travels back to Indonesia, the past doesn’t stay politely in the background. Old assumptions get shaken. Long-avoided conversations finally get some air. The film builds toward a family constellation session, not as a magic fix, but as a brave attempt to sit in the mess together and hold more than one truth at the same time. Child of Their Time is personal, and at the same time, it’s also part of something bigger. It echoes what many adoptees are doing right now: naming impact alongside intention, and refusing the idea that love cancels out loss. Research by Shila Khuki de Vries shows how adoptees in the Netherlands have turned these reckonings into real change—shifting public conversations and pushing policy forward, even when progress is slow and incomplete. That’s where Huibert’s film, and this episode, really land for me. Not in blame. Not in neat conclusions. But in honesty. In staying curious. In choosing both/and over either/or, and letting complexity be part of the story instead of something we rush past. Get full access to The Adopted Life at angieadoptee.substack.com/subscribe
