Fertility privilege
I’ve been thinking about the controversy over Karen’s tongue-in-cheek post, specifically about whether or not adoptive moms-to-be have a right to the “stork parking” spots just the same as pregnant women.
Being a secondary infertile makes for a lot of fence straddling and this is one of those times where it comes in handy. I can remember days when seeing a stork parking sign made me depressed but I can also remember those last few weeks of pregnancy when I felt like I had a bowling ball lodged in my pelvic cradle and walking across a parking lot was a feat of Olympian endurance. (I didn’t have a car then — I rode the bus — but if I had I might have appreciated a closer parking spot.) And there were differences in how people treated me while expecting as a pregnant woman and expecting as an adoptive parent to be although not in the way other people have described. Dare I say it but people who knew I was adopting actually treated me nicer. Truly. Sure, it wasn’t obvious to strangers that I was adopting but then no one ever got up to give me a seat on the bus even when I was so enormous towards the end that I looked fit to burst. But when people found out, say, at baby stores they were inevitably nicer to me because adoption is more of a novelty.
Too, when I was pregnant at the shelter (along with my co-worker) neither of us had a baby shower as well attended as that thrown for the woman who came home from China with a daughter. We (my co-worker and I) were common, young pregnant women but the woman on the third floor was a sort of social celebration. Everyone knew they had been trying for some time and so everyone was extra-happy (tears, I remember tearful smiles on the elevator) when she finally became a mother. They felt a certain amount of ownership having been witnesses of the long journey and having vicariously experienced her frustration and joy.
But even knowing that it didn’t make things easier for me when I was trying for a baby (especially before I was adopting) because what I wanted wasn’t necessarily the special attention that I perceived pregnant women were getting (the questions — “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” — from strangers, the occasional smiles from folks who catch a glimpse of a pregnant mom patting her belly). No, what I wanted was the assumptions I could make had I been more fertile. You know, that I could plan my family as I saw fit without input from strangers. That I could pee on a stick, have it turn blue and start buying baby clothes without worrying that something bad was sure to happen. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I envied. I can understand how a stork sign could bring all of that up, remind me of all of the privilege I didn’t have and felt I was due.
Which leads me to my next thought. If fertile people are privileged, how would a fertile person go about unpacking their privilege? And would they even need to? Should there be stork parking spots for adoptive folks? What about those who are child-free? Because even though a woman who is barely ten seconds pregnant could theoretically park in that spot, I always figured they were for women nearing the end of term or so undone by morning sickness that the less they have to stagger, the better. By which I mean that pregnancy is physical and that’s a fact and allowing a pregnant woman to park closer doesn’t really do any harm — it doesn’t take from anyone. And we adoptive parents, we don’t need stork signs because adoption can be a bitch but it doesn’t give you swollen ankles.
Now I understand that what Karen was writing was farce and that she’s not really about to start a letter campaign about stork parking spots and really what she was putting a voice to was this frustration with fertile privilege. Clearly blogs like Karen’s are important for a lot of infertile women who think these things and maybe don’t have a place to vent them. She types things out that most people might not have the guts to say and all you have to do is take a gander at her zillioins of comments to realize that there are plenty of women who are relieved that someone is finally speaking their own thoughts aloud. I don’t want to take from that. I think that’s an important service (all hail Queen Julie, whom history will one day recognize as the forerunner of infertility blogs) because I think when people are allowed to say (write), “I’m mad as hell!” that they are better able to get out there and fight the good fight. To demand better care from their doctors and kinder treatment from their friends and family. In other words, I’m not here to tell people not to feel a certain way or not to comment on blogs in a certain way because the way I see it, infertility is plenty hard and you do whatever it takes to get you through the day.
That said, I really don’t know if there’s anything the average pregnant woman can do to unpack her privilege and frankly, I don’t know if she should. What I remember about being pregnant is how closed in upon myself I felt. I did feel like the world was revolving around me and I think there’s a biological reason for that. I also felt incredibly vulnerable and that certainly drove my feelings of self-importance. I remember crossing the street and just as they usually did the cars would cut a little too close trying to turn right on red even with me in the crosswalk and it felt so much more personal because I was pregnant.
I don’t really like to compare how it is to be expecting a child via a pregnancy versus what it’s like to be expecting a child via an adoption. For one thing a pregnancy experience has so damn much to do with the context while an adoption is a deliberate act, choosing upon choosing upon choosing over and over again. But it’s simply a fact that pregnancy is biological and that includes swollen ankles, aching back and the hormonal changes that made me at least a tad more self-centered than I was before.
It doesn’t take away from the pain, I know. I certainly didn’t think to myself, “Well, her hormones are racing and that’s why she’s just said something blatantly hurtful to infertile me over here.” And there’s no excuse for rudeness, it’s just that, well, we can choose not to take it personally, I guess.
Adopting a child will never be like making one in your own uterus and giving birth to it yourself but that’s ok. It’s its own thing entirely and it’s easier to see all of the good things about adopting if we don’t over-lay it on top of our pregnancy expectations. Or if we do compare things (and really, let’s be realistic, we will) then we can notice all the things that pregnancy is not. Personally when I think about my bio baby and my not-bio baby, I can say that Madison feels much more remarkable to me. Her appearance here in our family seems like a full-blown miracle while Noah seems, frankly, a bit ordinary although in the nicest way possible.
It’s true that there are people outside of our household who will never get that and I could be hurt by it but you know, that’s their problem. I’ve said it before but I feel a bit bad for people who never get to adopt. Adoption is so damn amazing and the opportunities it gave us to find out more about ourselves and our expectations is pretty wonderful, too.
It’s not that I’m against venting — vent away! it’s good for the blood pressure! — but you know, we adopters get so mad at pregnant women for complaining about the varicose veins and heartburn but is that any different than when we complain about homestudies and fees? Getting babies is hard whatever way you do it. But worth it all the same.
Dawn,
Another good one….Adopting and pregnancy…not the same thing. Never will be the same thing. As you so nicely wrote, they are very different animals. And we can’t pretend otherwise by saying adoptive moms should have all the rights and priviledges of pregnancy like stork parking. I hated pretending that adoption and pregnancy were the same thing. I hated saying I was “expecting” for six months when we waited for my son and then my daughter. My mom and sister frequently compared the experiences of adoption and pregnancy, and at the time (and now), I know it was because they wanted to relate to me and were so happy that I might adopt a baby at the end of the experience.
Here is an example of how pregnancy and adoption are different animals:
My sister D was pregnant when I was waiting to adopt my daughter. We didn’t know she would be a girl so we had both a boy and a girl name picked out. My sister chose the same boy name, but I didn’t tell her this. She was upset with me when she found this out, but I tried to explain that there was no guarantee that I would bring a baby home boy or girl, and she had a baby actually growing in her body who she knew would be a boy. Her chances were much better than mine that she would HAVE a baby to name.
Painful to explain, but the truth….
So, thanks for another thoughtful post.
Alison
I guess because I never tried to get pregnant I just don’t get it.
I try to be as nice and understanding as I can–I have a very dear friend right now who is going through infertility and I am so sorry for her. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make her pregnant.
But I don’t get the “woe is me I HAVE to adopt” attitude, once someone is adopting. I have only ever felt left out of the mommy club once, as an adoptive mom, but the people leaving me out aren’t really people I like very much anyway, so I didn’t care, I just noticed. Otherwise, my experience has been much more like what you described about your coworker at the shelter. We have all this lesbian-transracial-adoption chic. I mean, that itself is a little annoying sometimes, but people are at least super nice.
So I don’t get it. If fertility is privilege–and I suppose it indeed is–is whining and whining about the loss of your privilege really all that cool? I mean, wouldn’t that be a bit like suggesting that you deserve privilege which by definition someone else doesn’t have?
I don’t know. Like I said, I’m trying. I mean, when people are hurting, they’re hurting. I get that. As an adopter, I get a bit annoyed though, when other adopters act like it’s a terrible tragedy to be adopting.
Thanks so much for another thoughtful post and, like many of us, for sitting on the fence. As a bio mom and a soon-to-be adoptive mom, I get that the pregnancy and the baby are two separate things. That is, I can be sad that I didn’t have a healthy pregnancy, and I can wish that I could have a healthy pregnancy now, and I can and should grieve that real loss, at the same time as I can celebrate dc#2 and the miraculous way she’ll be coming into our family. It’s painful for your body not to be able to do something that you feel and that the world affirms as the most natural thing.
The problem for me comes in the assumption that all pregnant women take it for granted. I sure didn’t, and most women I know (closely enough to know the minds/hearts of) didn’t and don’t either. (Though I must say that my experience has led me to be less tolerant of complaints over a completely normal pregnancy, and no one seems to want to hear my wise “It could be worse” statements, so maybe smart women just don’t include me in those conversations).
I also have to say that awareness of dc#2’s loss and the losses experienced by her first family have put my own loss in perspective - not that it makes it go away, by any means.
Thanks again.
I remember that there was this little twinge of regret in me when I became pregnant with Aubree. I knew it was unlikely that I would ever experience open adoption again. I would have been happy to become a part of another family’s life again. I frankly didn’t mind the homestudy and all that came with it. I can see the logic in it and don’t resent it. We waited 20 months from application at the agency to baby in our arms. They told us 2 years, so we hadn’t gotten really anxious yet, so even the wait didn’t eat away at me. And yes our baby shower for Mallory was huge. 50 people, couples, a dinner, everyone cooing over my 6 week old baby. All these people had seen our journey and rejoiced with us.
I had alot of the feelings Karen’s commentors sometimes have while we were activlely trying to have a baby. Once we made the decision to adopt most of the time they were gone. It just became a different mind set for us.
I totally get what you are saying. I think that a lot of it has to do with the loss of pregnancy. To me, it’s not really comparing adoption to pregnancy, but it is accepting the loss of no pregnancy. I don’t feel it’s tragic to adopt at all. But I feel it is sad to not be able to experience pregnancy (if you can not). And I think because both are about children, the lines get blurred and adopters get mad at pregnant ladies or mad at society or mad about their adoption and really it is about their own personal loss.
I had this big, long post that ended up with me bogged down in some rant- so let me try again. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck.
If a bunch of infertile women who appear to be pretty smart feel that adoptism exists, maybe it exists. I might be projecting my own interpretation into Karen’s topic, but that is what it meant to me. I never thought it was about not being able to get pregnant or a special parking space. I understand the logic of the homestudy and paperwork, but watching lots and lots of people get pregnant without having to build a fence around their irrigation pond, for example, while we may have to (at significant cost), certainly feels, while minor, like discrimination. THAT is what my issues are and why I think as infertiles, we get frustrated with the perceived privileges fertiles do have. And it REALLY grouses me out when we rant about it and get called on it by people who haven’t got a clue. I get and believe that pregnant women need extra support. Guess what? So do we, just a different kind. And in my experience, that support is certainly less likely to show up for us than it is for obviously pregnant women. Not a single person in my real life who knows about our plans has once offered a “congratulations!” If I had announced a pregnancy, I am certain it would be different. That totally sucks. And yeah, yeah, people just don’t know how to respond and whatever else the excuse is. What? They don’t think we are happy about it? That it isn’t a happy event? How much of a stretch is it to understand that? My conclusion is that the majority of people view adoption not only differently than pregnancy but also not something to be excited or congratulatory about. Why?
i find myself in a very peculiar place — something right between primary and secondary infertility, i guess, in that my partner gave birth to our daughter, but i was unable to sustain a pregnancy to term…. so while my infertility was enormously painful in that i had lost an experience i very much wanted to have (pregnancy and childbirth), i did already have a child, i had already achieved motherhood, and frankly, i can’t imagine how hard infertility would have been without that solace.
i don’t think fertility carries with it priviledge in the same way that having white skin does, say, or being heterosexual, or male, or financially secure. there is no social structure that systematically oppresses infertile people. for example, the hoops i have had to jump through to be a parent as a lesbian, and the fear i feel as a consequence of being a lesbian mom, have been much more daunting than the hoops and fears of infertility.
i would compare my infertility not to my experience of being a lesbian, but to my experience of losing my mom when i was twenty-four. they have been the two most painful experiences of my life, the ones that caused me the greatest grief, and pushed me to the greatest personal growth. and you know what? when i was grieving my mom’s death, i resented the hell out of folks who had living mothers and took them for granted. i felt bitter when people would complain about their mothers, and think “well, at least you have one to complain about.” but i wouldn’t say that what they had was “living mother priviledge.” it wasn’t about priviledge, it was about sensitivity. i guess what i would ask of anyone who is watching from the outside of any painful experince is not that they “unpack” their “privilege,” but that they show some sensitivity. that they realize they have no idea what this person is going through, and accept that grief is just damn hard, and few folks do it with perfect grace and equanimity. show some empathy, and most of all, realize that it’s not all about them. i think that’s what makes me most crazy when fertile people get all worked up about some bitter, angry or even mean-spirited thing that an infertile has said while venting (especially when she’s doing it on her own blog for goodness sakes!) it always has to be all about them, about how *they* are not that sort of fertile, or *they* feel hurt by this comment, or this bitterness and negativity is bringing *them* down. i wish that fertile women could just resist the temptation to make everything be about them, and instead just listen, and learn, and let the stuff that doesn’t fit roll off their backs.
as for adoption, i too absolutly love that my family grew through domestic transracial adoption, and i also feel a little sorry for people who won’t experience adoption. it is a profound and awe-inspiring thing. having said that, for me the wonder, pain and awe of adoption is entirely separate from my pain over my infertility. never, ever did i feel that it was a terrible tragedy that i was adopting, — anything but! it’s an experience that i’ve always wanted to have, even when i thought i was fertile. adoption is not, however, a cure for the pain of infertility. oh sure, it heals a huge hole in your heart, no question. but for me, my profound joy in my son was separate from the loss of infertility (for me it was the experience of pregnancy and childbirth i wanted; i never cared one whit for a genetic relationship with my child). i think it’s a big mistake to confuse an infertile woman’s lingering pain and bitterness over her infertility with any sort of feeling that she’s having about adoption. in my experience, they are really two completely separate things. and for me, at least, mothering my son was not what ultimately healed my grief. it helped, no doubt, but it took more time, and other things, to get me to a place where i really feel whole again, and not broken by infertility.
marta
I know this wasn’t your point, but I really hate those stork parking spots.
Pregnant women are supposed to walk. They’re pregnant, not disabled. And if pregnancy is so incapacitating for them, they can get a doctor’s note and a handicapped sticker to park there. I think it furthers the pregnancy paranoia culture we live in where pregnant women are seen as potential disasters waiting to happen. So delicate and fragile. Bah.
Now parking spaces for moms with kids, I would be ALL over that. Nothing worse than herding a tribe of 3-4 kids age 8 and under to the car in a busy lot. Especially when a toddler insists on walking.
Thanks, Dawn, I like the way you think about this. As someone who is an the process of adopting, and has no bio kids (haven’t tried), but is surrounded by glowing pregnant women, this is an issue I’ve been thinking about a lot. A (pregnant) friend compared adoption to being in her first trimester - it’s there, and it’s real and all-consuming, but no one knows (unless you tell them) and no one responds to you the way they might if you were preceded by a giant belly. Since I’ve never been pregnant, I haven’t felt like I’m missing out on people’s responses, but it IS true that a lot of people don’t seem to know how to respond when you tell them. I actually had someone (not someone I knew well) recently ask me if I was adopting because I was infertile - when I told her that adoption is our first choice, THEN she said “congratuations!”
Wow, Dawn, what a brilliant and thoughtful post. I may have to link to it.
I have nothing to add, but I have been kicking an idea around for a novel about fertility privilege (you know I’m into scifi and fantasy, right? it would fall in that genre)…
Perhaps you and all the people who agree with you might want to give one of your children to someone else since you think adoption is so wonderful. That way you can get to experience all the wonderful sides of adoption.
i know i will prob be saying some things that some people may not
like. i was not blessed with the diplomacy that dawn and many others
have. i dont have a way with words. but im figuring that this is
the 12th response here and its from 11.05 so its likely no ones
gonna read it anyway. and ill feel better just for responding.
what are you talking about. fertile privilege. i read this blog and
my poor middle-aged mind gets more confused than it usually is.
when i was in college, we were given an assignment. there is a
situation where only six people from the entire world can survive. wd
you include yourself. here i am, 19 years old, and i said, no cause
i didnt know if i cd conceive. i am sorry to say this here, and i
can understand how heart wrenching infertility must be cause as
i approached my late forties, i had baby lust so strong that i was
nurturing everything in sight: 2 cats, 2 birds, four fish, 100
plants. (i said must be. of course, i dont know exactly.)
well, the college student that i was was a moron. most woman (i
cant quote the statistics, but i believe this to be so) can have a
child. i guess i was pretty much the same person twenty years later,
cause when i did conceive, i constantly checked for spotting through
the fourth month, ASSUMING, i would miscarry. (ok, i was an older
woman, but i was shocked to conceive in the first place and took four
preg tests and still wasnt convinced i was pregnant.)
if most of us cdnt conceive, what wd happen to the human race. and
maybe im misunderstanding some of what i read, but i think being
pregnant is special. you are growing a life inside of you. and if
woman didnt conceive, then woman who cdnt conceive wouldnt be able
to adopt.
ok. i had more to say, but i wrote so much i already forgot half of
what dawn said, and im at work and shdnt be doing this now anyway.
just let me say that i am not meaning to diminish the pain of
infertility or the journey it may precipitate.
and i love this blog. it the only one i read. dawn is open minded
and non judgmental and a great writer. and her posts and their
responses make me think, and thats a good thing.
ok, im going. lets give a collective sigh of relief.
correction: as i approached my late thirties.
ok.
one other thought.
i was reading other posts and also thinking about my post.
i think i was nurturing everything in sight cause i needed to have a child. i believe my body instinctually wanted a baby. thats what i believe was true of me and is prob true of many woman.