Now this is interesting
Lisa was saying that Mallory’s birth grandparents “still pine for the grandchild that they didn’t get to fully embrace.” I think that any of us who are parents can relate. I would be heartbroken if either of my children decided to place a child for adoption although I hope that I would support them (be a bit hypocritical of me if I didn’t, eh?).
When I was a sexually active teenager and not always as responsible about birth control as I could be, my mom told me that if I showed up pregnant she would make me have an abortion and if I refused, she would kick me out. I don’t think she would have — I thought then and still think now that this was scare tactics.
I wonder now what I would have done with an unplanned pregnancy. I can’t say for certain because it depends on which boy would have been the father. If I had loved the boy, the whole decision would have been harder. And even at 15, a part of me very much wanted a baby. So I can picture myself not dealing with the pregnancy until I was past the point of having an abortion and I can picture myself being pretty passive throughout and I really have no idea what I would have chosen. I don’t think my mom really knows what she would have done either although we can all be assured that would have involved a lot of yelling.
Had I been older — in college — I think I would have had an abortion. Wanting a baby as badly as I already did, I don’t think I would have trusted myself to follow through with an adoption plan and I knew I wasn’t ready. I had such baby hunger, though. That’s why I got a job in daycare; I figured it would fulfill the part of me that wanted to parent. (It actually fueled my desire to adopt since I realized how much I could love children not related to me although at that time I pictured myself adopting a toddler or preschooler since the was the age I was teaching.)
Had I been J’s age when she got pregnant, it would have been Chris T’s child — not a good thing. I would have had an abortion. Had I been a year older, it would have Brett’s baby and I think I would have kept it. And would now be divorced, most likely. We were so screwed up when we were first dating.
All of this to say that I think I would have a very hard time not projecting my own feelings about parenting and pregnancy onto my kids. I guess if the rabbit ever dies too soon for either of them, I will be knocking on my therapist’s door and asking for help mediating the discussion. Otherwise their mother might get all twitterpated about the idea of a little chubby-kneed infant and forget that it’s NOT HER LIFE.
My mom used to give me lectures like you wouldn’t believe. She was quite open to me using birth control. I wasn’t sexually active. I told her that, but sometimes she was scared. She used to say “Don’t mess up a third person’s (a baby’s)life because you were too lazy to take a pill.”
I dated the same boy from 13 to 19 , we broke up here and there, but we were consistently a couple. We actually talked about getting pregnant on purpose. We both had baby hunger, especially around 16, plus we could escape our parents and be together all the time. Thank god we never took that leap. Now what I know about my body, I would have had a miscarriage probably shortly after the wedding because of my messed up uterus. By the time we were sexually active, after we graduated from high school, I think we might have had an abortion- we knew the relationship was dying.
Mallory’s birthparents banned their families from the hospital when Mallory was born, save N’s grandma. I remember her Grandma apologizing to me for her daughter, saying she couldn’t believe her child was treating own child this way. I actually remember saying I understood. I think their reaction would probably be my first reaction. However, I hope after an hour or day I would process it and move on to support my child. The irony is that N is adopted. They were once in my shoes. They intially told her that they thought we were lying. That anyone in their right mind wouldn’t want them (birthparents) near the baby. They wouldn’t have wanted N’s bmother. It really was a big leap for them to get where they are today. When N found her bmom a couple of years after Mallory was born, I think they blamed me. Okay I helped make phone calls, so I did have responsiblity. But I think they blamed my existance, not my role. They did meet her eventually and were reassured to see their child didn’t abandon them. It was the opposite, she became closer to them. She realized she had little in common with her bmom and that her family was who she was meant to be with. She rarely sees her bmom. Obviously open adoption is important to her because of her own experience.
I worry about Mallory getting pregnant. There was some research that teenage adoptees got pregnant at higher rates than the general population. Our social worker said they really felt it was because of girl’s trying to identify with a birthmother they had never met,and in some way process their own adoption. N, Mallory’s bmom was an adoptee. I know 3 other bmoms who were adoptees. However, I think open adoption would significantly decrease the likelihood of this happening. They know their birthmom, so hopefully they won’t be subconciously trying to identify with her.
It’s hard to talk to your 13 year old about unplanned pregnancy when she was the result of one. I can’t use the tactic my mother did, saying it would mess up a baby’s life. That implies Mallory’s life is messed up. I can’t say it would ruin her life, that would imply that N’s life is messed up. I talk little about unplanned pregnancy to her. I tell her all the emotional reasons that a sexual relationship and that kind of intimacy is hard for a teenager to deal with. I have told her my preference would be that she left that aspect of her life for when she was older. BUT I am also really honest about birthcontrol with her. Right now it’s easy. Sex scares her I think. But I know in the next couple of years those hormones will begin to really kick in. Time that with a cute boy and it makes it harder not to give in. I’m not letting her date unitl she is 35 though. I hope if it does happen I can take a step back and suppport her (or any of my children) in what their decision is.
Lisa V
Lisa, that part about their reaction being your first reaction? That’s what I think happened with J’s dad. I think if pregnancy lasted, say, 18 months instead of 9 (and every woman found out she was pregnant right away instead of sometimes almost half-way into it) that grandparents-to-be would have more time to come around. I think that J’s dad hadn’t even processed things when she signed the papers.
That’s interesting that N was adopted and that likely fueled her parents’ angry reaction in some way.
And I think you’re right about openness helping to interrupt a cycle. Also it shows how different adoption can be — closed with N’s parents feeling so threatened by her finding her birthmom and then you guys with a regular, open relationship not feeling threatened at all.
Jeez I hijack your blog a lot.
We have actually been having some discussions about this in our house the last few days.
This was brought on by the “homeschooling” that we are doing. I found a great show from the eighties Degrassi Jr. High, on dvd and have been watching it with my daughter 11 and my son 14.
One of the storylines is about a 14 girl who gets pregnant and is struggling with the choice of what to do about it all.
If you’ve never seen the show, it is very well done and a great vehicle for discussion.
I volunteered at Planned Parenthood for a year when I was 21. I had always been pro choice anyway and that experience confirmed it for me. Especially the young woman who came in with her boyfriend and his mother. They wanted her to have an abortion and over the course of our appointment it became clear that was not what she wanted. She was a happily adopted person and while she couldn’t see herself as a parent in the near future, she could see, crystal clear, herself as a birth mother and placing her child with adoptive parents.
To me that is the point. Supporting her decision.
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Mallory watches Degrassi High at friend’s house, they have a dish. She also watches My So Called Life. She never told me about the adoption storyline. I wonder if she has seen it.
That was the one we just watched yesterday. I think it was very well handled. There is a scene where the character who is pregnant talks to the character is adopted about how he feels about being adopted and how she would feel about giving her baby up to be adopted.
I remember being 12 (!) and wanting to have a baby. Looking back it was more about needing the people in my life who should have been protecting and loving me to do so.
When I was 16 I convinced my then boyfriend (who is now my husband of almost 13 years) to try and have a baby with me. I went to the public health nurse to try and find out how to “not” get pregnant so that I could. It didn’t work out though, my boyfriend and I were barely allowed to see each other and so trying to make a baby never happened and ironically to this day it still hasn’t.
My parents would have thrown me out on my ear had I come home pregnant, probably would have locked me up in some sort of wayward children’s home or something. I would have just run away like I did at 14. My grandparents would have taken me in, like they did my mother who was 18 when she got pregnant with me. Abortion would have never been an option for me, regardless of who the father was I think.
Now I’m 36 and still childless (not by choice) and some days I allow myself to daydream about wishing I would have gotten pregnant at 16, even though it would have been hard. I don’t go there often because they are selfish thoughts really, more about what I wanted then what would have been best for my child.
If I ever end up having a 16 year old who comes home pregnant (or gets someone pregnant) I can only hope I remember how I felt when I was that young and do what is right for everyone involved.
Excuse me while I hijack your blog. I could never write about this on my un-password protected site.
My aunt and her second husband began the paper-chase to adopt from Korea in early 1986. Right in the middle of their home study, my aunt’s oldest son (who was one year out of high school) came home with the news that his exceedingly brief casual fling had led to pregnancy. The girl/mother was a high school junior. (It belatedly occurs to me to be grateful that no one thought about statuatory-rape charges.) My cousin, his semi-girlfriend, and my aunt all thought abortion was the best choice, and the girl in particular was all set to go that route, but the girl’s parents were Catholic and insisted she choose adoption. So she did.
The baby was born on my brother’s eleventh birthday and the birth/bio mom gave him my brother’s name (not knowing squat about my brother). My aunt told that story two or three times–so I know she felt a connection to the baby, and it possibly caught her by surprise. The baby was placed with a family in Ohio by Catholic Social Services.
It’s my impression that the bio-mom and my cousin had no input whatsoever into the placement. I do know they were both allowed to write letters of introduction to put in the baby’s file, for him to read when he turned eighteen, if he chose. I do not know whether anyone knew what the adoptive family’s intentions were with regards to sharing his adoptive status. My aunt and my cousin saw the baby a few times in the hospital, and it wasn’t an easy time for either of them. My aunt cried, talking about who the baby resembled.
I feel pretty confident that my cousin hasn’t spoken to the biomom in years. No one ever speaks about the baby, whether because they believe it’s a finished story, or whether because there’s just nothing much to say. We’re not a family that knows the meaning of stigma so I feel pretty confident that it’s not an “adoption/crisis pregnancy is so yucky” issue.
My aunt and uncle had halted their homestudy in the middle of all this, and then resumed it, once they got some family counseling. They got their referral in July–for a baby girl born three days before the grandson placed for adoption. She arrived in September.
The kicker to all this is that four years ago, my cousin and her family travelled to Korea, hoping for a birth-family reunion. Although they were told at the time of the adoption that my cousin’s birth parents were unknown, it turns out that in the part of Korea where she was born (and all of Korea? I don’t know), all births are registered and it’s just about impossible NOT to know a baby’s birth parents. (Apparently the agency in the eighties wasn’t sharing this info with adoptive parents because people were freaked out by the possibility of reunion. If the babies’ parents had been known, the theory goes, people wouldn’t have chosen Korea, because Korea’s attraction was the lack of traceable birth parents. Argh.)
When they got to Korea, they found out that my cousin’s bio mom was married to her bio dad and had three older girls. My cousin was born (prematurely, and with some minor injury to one arm) when her bio dad was working out of the area to support his family, and her bio mom placed the baby for adoption, then told her family that the baby had died. The bio mom was very carefully approached three times in a week by the agency but categorically refused contact with my cousin. She wouldn’t even accept photos and the letters my cousin and my aunt and uncle wrote to her, although the agency agreed to hold them for the bio mom and told her she could have them, if she ever changed her mind. It was after that trip that my cousin started letting people say stupid stuff like “well, she’s not REALLY Korean” and I can’t help thinking that there’s a lot percolating below the surface.
I believe that my aunt’s openness to seeking out the birth family (which was a MAJOR goal of the trip) was at least helped along by the fact that she’d lost the ability to grandparent her first grandchild. Although mostly it’s just that she’d give her daughter the sun if she could. My aunt isn’t a crazy gramma (my mom certainly IS) and she doesn’t fetishize bio connections at all (not just in terms of her daughter, but also in terms of step-relations of various kinds) but I know the adoption hurt at the time. Although no one EVER suggested keeping the baby with either bio family.
The baby turns eighteen this year, and it’s crossed MY mind to wonder whether he’ll seek out his birth parents, so I have to think it’s crossed my aunt’s and my cousins’s minds. I guess the statistics on male adoptees aren’t encouraging (most of them don’t seek out their parents? can’t remember where I read that) so I think they’ve got their hopes firmly in check. It’s funny, there is almost nothing I can’t ask my aunt about, but I don’t feel ready to ask her about that one….
When I was a teenager, I remember sadly telling my mother (through my life-long baby hunger) that if I were to get pregnant I would have to have an abortion. She offered instead to raise the baby for me…
On the one hand, I think that was probably one of her most shining “Good Mom” moments…. but honestly, I also think the idea of offering up a child into her hands was a better deterrent for me than the idea of an abortion. (Sad, but true.)
Have you read Promises I Can Keep? It’s about single parenthood in poor neighborhoods, and talks a bit about how much adoption is stigmatized, while there’s little stigma in being a single mom.
I’m sure I would have had an abortion if I had gotten pregnant as a teenager or in college. Possibly without telling my parents, but if I did tell them, I’m pretty sure they’d have assumed I’d have an abortion.