Entitlement revisited
Sometimes on the adoption boards I’ll read about someone whose adoption was disrupted (mom decided to parent) and there’s such hostility towards the birthmom. I’ve been thinking about this because right now I feel so sure that I wouldn’t feel that way and I’m wondering if I’m fooling myself.
Grief I can understand. Loss, sorrow, anger, frustration — yes, I can totally appreciate having those feelings in general but when it’s targeted at the birthmom, I don’t get that. After all, it is her baby and as much as I want T. to place her baby with me, I am always aware that I can’t know the path that their relationship is meant to take.
What really disturbs me about some* of the anti-birthmom posts is the underlying racism and classism. There’s an idea that some people have that says that poor women should not have babies. Or that uneducated women or young women should not have babies. The implied flipside is that those of us who are privileged enough to pursue an adoption must (by mere material privilege) be better suited to parent. Not true. Not true at all.
Poverty, youth, and lack of education don’t a bad parent make. Poverty, youth and lack of education may be linked as risk factors for bad parenting but they aren’t predictors. Even in shelter working with women without any resources or support, I saw examples of wonderful mothering and I don’t think that those children — even living with the horrors of homelessness — would necessarily be better off if they had been placed for adoption at birth. And I know that some of these children were disrupted adoptions, meaning that mom had made an adoption plan and then chose to parent.
I think it must be extremely hard if the potential birthmom is a complete mess, i.e., drug addicted or has lost other children to foster care due to abuse or neglect. Still I think it’s impossible to know how another child can impact a woman’s life. I know women who have turned their lives around and I can only hope that this will be true for an at-risk birthmom who chooses to parent. Mostly though I don’t think that those of us who are emotionally involved as potential adoptive parents are in any place to judge.
Perhaps I am not feeling this entitlement to the same degree because this is an agency adoption and not a private one. There is always the presence of the institution between us, which is one reason we chose this route. I did not want her to include any sense of obligation to us in her decision-making. She does not rely on us for financial or emotional support and if she is concerned about hurting us, the social worker can remind us that we will go back in the pool and wait for a baby who is meant to be ours. I also like that the social workers for the birthmom make sure that their clients are aware of community support that might allow them to keep their babies.
I wish they were able to do that a little more actually. In fact, I wish that there were independent birthmom social workers whose interests (i.e., paychecks) were not tied to the adoption agency and who could take even more time to work with potential birthmoms on a parenting and/or adoption plan. Ahh well, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride and birthmoms would have more options.
I’m trying to examine how I feel about this particular baby, the one who is in T’s womb. I see myself attaching to him certainly but there is this baby that’s been floating in my head for the past four years and I have learned to be flexible about who he or she is. I have already said good-bye to a very specific little boy (with Brett’s tilted-up brown eyes) who represents the bio child we did not have but with the loss of his image came the comforting knowledge that the child who will come to us is still waiting.
I wonder how it might be to hold T’s baby and then have her choose to parent. As of now, she wants us to come to the hospital after he is born. Our being there and holding him does not mean that her adoption plan is still in place. As our social worker said, there are women who take their babies home for those three days to nurse and to rock and to sing to and they still choose to place. There are other women who refuse to do more than glance at the babies while in the hospital who choose to parent. Some put the babies in temporary foster care while they struggle with their decision. No action, our social worker tells us, can predict what she will choose.
I try to appreciate that bonding to this baby is part of bonding to our ultimate baby. I know from the grief of miscarriage that loss of a child about which I’ve been dreaming is excruciating but I also know from getting the thermometer back out and trying again, that hope sustains me. I must try to remember that we are part of T’s story, too, even if we never get to hold her baby or take him home. This is part of the tie in adoption, a tie that Maria so eloquently explores when she writes about the death of the twins and her relationship with the woman who bore them.
*I want to add that I am fully aware that I have not been through a disrupted adoption and cannot know the grief of one. I hope not to know, frankly. My discussion here is based on a particularly hateful post about a birthmom I read on an adoption board recently and a tone I’ve read in others. I also recognize that venting on a bulletin board does not necessarily paint an accurate picture of the poster’s heart.
How did you come to be so wise Dawn? Every time I read your posts, I learn something vital about seeing life from every view possible, about not standing so firmly in a position that I can’t budge from it even when it’s keeping me locked in the path of disaster. I should send you a check for the therapy!
This is so beautifully written. Thank you for writing this; there is so much wisdom in your heart, and I’m honored that I can read your words.
Blessings,
Youn Hie
Beautiful, beautiful post.
Dawn, you are so cool. I can’t wait to see how your adoption story turns out.
My comment was getting so huge that I decided to blog about my own entitlement feelings. Short version: Yes, I felt all those awful things. It all stopped the minute I met Jackson’s birth mother. She wasn’t ready to parent, but she loved her child and had she chosen to be a mom she would have done a wonderful job. It changed how I thought about birth mothers forever.
And thank you for calling me eloquent. Coming from you, that’s a very high compliment.
Being a birth mother is the single most lonely, sad, difficult thing of my life. I normally avoid places where adoption is discussed, in part because of the entitlment that some adoptive parents seem to feel. It makes me CRAZY when I hear people talk badly about birth mothers, makes me want to scream, “YOU HAVE NO FREAKIN IDEA WHAT IT’S LIKE!!” The reality is that most people in our lives expect us to forget our babies. We give them away (sometimes without any help making the decision, and perhaps only intense pressure from our families) and are expected to forget we were ever pregnant. But, obviously, you don’t forget. The depth of sadness and longing is immense.
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness, kindness, compassion, that you express for T. and all birth mothers, Dawn. Sometimes it’s hard for me not to be, I don’t know, just angry whenever I read about adoption, but your writing about it has really helped me calm down a bit and think about things from a place other than my own pain.