Literary Mama book tour!
Feb 10, 2006 Read/heard/seen
I don’t know if y’all know but Literary Mama is no longer just a fantastic web site chockfull of fabulous serious writing about motherhood, it’s also now a SHINY NEW BOOK!
(See? Although I don’t get the subtitle.)
Now this is amazingly cool not just because it’s the realization of a dream that Andi Buchanan and Amy Hudock (the co-founders of Lit Mama) have long been pursuing but also because it’s full of fabulous writers including several from my own beloved writing group! (Andi herself, Meagan Francis, and Barbara Card Atkinson)
I’m going to ask you to head over to Andi’s blog if you’re a writer and/or reader interested in motherhood because she has a lot of things to say about it. And then I’m going to encourage you to head over to your local bookstore (or click over, whichever is more fun) to pick up a copy of the anthology. You won’t regret it!
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This is a good way to start
Feb 10, 2006 Adoption
FauxClaud wrote an entry that movingly tells the stories of three women who were abused by adoption system. She ends the entry with this:
“None of these mothers really needed to have their children taken from them
All had the ability and support to keep their children.“
I started to write in her comments but then I realized that what I wanted to say had a lot to do with things I’d been wanting to say for about a week so I came back over here to scrabble it all down.
We enlightened members of the triad can all agree that when mothers do not need to have their children taken from them and when they have “the ability and support” to raise them, that losing them to an unethical adoption system is tragic. But what about the woman who hasn’t yet proved her motherhood? Or hasn’t proved her motherhood with this particular child (in other words, a woman whose other children have been removed from her care)? Or who does not appear to have the ability and support to raise them? Are the ethics different for her?
I’m going to make generalizations here and I want to say that at the outset because I know there are exceptions. I know there are special circumstances. But let’s talk generalities because policies are based on generalities.
The reason I think we need to talk about this is that many adoption policies are predicated on the idea that adoptive parents can be better parents than natural parents, right? We know that teen moms make easy targets and poor people make easy targets. (I have to pull a quote from that last link there, Martin Guggenheim, a NYU law professor, says, “The majority of cases that come into any child protection system involve what is technically called neglect. Neglect is, in the United States, almost invariably associated with poverty.”)
Foster-to-adopt isn’t perfect; the foster care system is rife with -isms. But adoptive parents who go through the system have a pretty clear idea that in most cases (we’re making generalities remember) the natural parents have been given opportunities to retain custody of their children. When a child becomes legally free, usually it means that the parents have failed to meet certain reasonable standards to ensure the safety of their children.
However when we talk about women who are making adoption plans themselves and we’re talking about a individual woman’s ability to parent the child for whom she’s making the plan, we’re setting ourselves up to be fortune tellers. If ANY woman has the right to change her mind when making a voluntary adoption plan then ALL women have the right to change their minds when making voluntary adoption plans. Because if we can’t say that, if we say instead that some women have the ability to intelligently assess their options and other women don’t, we’re on the wrong side of ethical adoption reform.
Let’s take this out of the United States entirely. Let’s talk about China’s “one child” policy. (You can head over to read American Family’s excellent “To Eat Bitterness posts to learn more about this policy.) Let’s say there’s a woman and she already has a child and she gets pregnant again. This woman, let’s say, is a terrible mother. She’s abusive. She’s neglectful. Then let’s say this woman has her baby and it’s a girl. Because of China’s one child policy, she doesn’t even think twice about it — her daughter is abandoned, placed in an orphanage and eventually is adopted by loving, kind, thoughtful parents and she has a long, happy life.
Ok, so that’s a happy ending (for that child) but does it excuse China’s one child policy? Do the ends in this story justify the means? Do they excuse the havoc that the policy makes on other families? Does it make — in hindsight — that policy ethical?
Of course not. Likewise what’s wrong with infant adoption in America remains wrong; fraudulent policies used to “save” children from parents who truly are not capable of raising their kids do not become justifiable in light of the outcome.
Ideally domestic infant adoption is not about bringing children to wannabe parents or even giving families to children; ideally domestic infant adoption through agencies or lawyers is about giving women choices when faced with a crisis pregnancy. When we take the focus off of the woman trying to make sense of her future and instead place it on the wannabe parents or the unborn child, we lose sight of the fact that domestic infant adoption is ultimately supposed to be voluntary.
We’re not supposed to be talking about what’s best for a child here because that’s a different sort of policy discussion. If a woman is truly not capable of taking care of her child, this is an issue for the state (i.e, social services).
Let’s go down another slippery slope to illustrate this. Let’s make up another imaginary woman with an imaginary adoption decision. Let’s make her poor, young (20 with two kids already). Let’s make her at risk — she lives with an abusive partner, she is struggling to stay sober. She finds herself pregnant and she makes an adoption plan. Then she changes her mind. If she’s NOT allowed to change her mind then how is this different than forcing another woman in similar straits to place her child? A woman who has NOT considered adoption as a reasonable choice? If the “voluntary” goes out of domestic infant adoption, then how is it different than taking the baby of any woman who is in an “at risk” situation? Does making an adoption plan mean that we have a right to interfere in her life? Should we then target any woman in similar straits who finds herself pregnant? (Oh wait, we already do that — oh yeah, we’ve got a long way to go, people.)
I wanted to say, too, that Sster’s grief this week is, I hope, in some way mitigated by the knowledge that she is indeed working with an ethical agency. Because Daisy was able to change her mind about her adoption plan despite having challenges (that Sster has respectfully been vague about) shows that this is an agency that is interested in giving women options. That they are a social service agency first and foremost gives me hope that Daisy will be able to get access to programs that will help her succeed in her parenting decision. And Sster can take comfort in knowing that when Boomer comes, s/he will come with the blessing of his/her first mom. I hope s/he arrives soon!!!
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Tags: adoption reform, Erica, wordpress
Parenting-lite
Feb 8, 2006 Adoption
FauxClaud wrote in response to WKH’s comment: “If a woman cannot begin to heal or have some sembalance of an OK life because she finds that being constantly reminded that she has lost her child is too painful, it makes it all the more obvious that the decision to place, if it even was an informed decision, was not right, but wrong.”
I have to agree with her here.
It seems like a lot of people think that open adoption is like parenting-lite. You know, the woman gets all of the pleasure (look! pictures! exciting visits on special days!) and none of the pain (gosh, children sure can be annoying and challenging). How unfair! Those darn birth mothers want to have it all and the poor, put-upon adoptive parents are forced to put up with it!
I just read a whole slew of comments like that so I’m all peeved out.
Now WKH didn’t say that but FauxClaud’s comment made me think of it. What WKH said was this:”imagine it’s also entirely possible a woman decides *it is time to move on* (it seems men are much more prone to this) and contact is too painful. While this is sad as well, I have to admit, it’s a legit choice IMHO. No one is forced to parent. And honestly, it shows they made the right decision to place their child with other parents.”
She has me up to “legit choice IMHO”. (I have not placed a child for adoption and so I would never tell a woman that she has NOT made a legit choice by taking steps to protect herself.) But after that she loses me.
One of the things I’ve learned from reading first mom blogs lately is that post-adoption healing/grieving is not an all or nothing proposition. Women can move in and out of the process and certain life events can make her look back with new hindsight. Surely then there will be times and circumstances when access to a child placed for adoption will bring great joy and times and circumstances when it will be something else entirely. It’s not parenting-lite. It’s not all the benefits and none of the drawbacks to parenting. It’s watching someone else raise your kid.
It’s watching someone feed your kid things you would rather your kid didn’t eat. Stick ‘em in clothes you don’t like. Give them ideas about God you don’t agree with. Or it’s watching someone do all the things you would do if you could and being reminded that you’re not the one doing them.
Now I don’t think openness is excrutiating for every first parent all of the time but I think it surely must have its moments for anyone. I think that Paragraphein’s blog does a great job illustrating how things can change in new circumstances or with new growth.
This is why I’m unsure when adoptive parents should “chase” first parents who have disappeared. While I do think that adoptees have rights and so both sets of parents have obligations, I don’t know exactly who should be the one pushing either side to honor those obligations. And since every adoption is unique and every person deals with the ramifications of it differently, I don’t think there really is a set answer. How do adoptive parents know when to give their child’s other parents room and when to push for more? How do they figure this out? How do they know when to let go and move on themselves?
Afrindiemum has written very eloquently about this on her own blog.
This reminds me that I wanted to start a post about the nature of blogs and their limits but I’ll get to that another time.
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Tags: open adoption
Bitch bitch bitch
Feb 7, 2006 Parenting
I need more caffeine. I needed more caffeine as I drove the kids to Madison’s art class because both of them were chattering away.
Madison: Mommy, I go art! I see teacher! Swimming pool? No, Noah swim, Madisee do art! Mommy! Mommy! I do art? I see teacher? Swimming pool? (and on and on)
Noah: So I was thinking that if I had two racers one would be mine and I’d call it Reptile Racer and then Madison could have the Diaper Dragster. Aren’t those good names? I was going to invent some things this afternoon, too, but I need more boxes. We don’t have enough boxes. Can you get some boxes? Because I have this idea for a digging machine and I’ll need that old exercise bike that’s in our basement and boxes. Are you listening? Can you get me more boxes?
And they talk, of course, at the same time and both of them want responses, which is really not very reasonable of them.
Then we got to art and I’m about up to here with the developmentally inappropriate art class. Only see my kid is the only one who seems to react appropriately to developmentally inappropriate thngs, that is she gets bored and wants to wander off and so we always end up leaving way early. The other kids don’t necessarily do the art (their parents help an awful lot and at least sometimes do all the work) but they’re not fussing the way Madison does. So I’m left kinda unwilling to go to the teacher since on the surface it looks like sour grapes. Personally I think Madison would lose interest in even the best designed class at this point because she’s into other things and that’s fine. I don’t mind having to leave the class early. I don’t mind having to work a little harder than the other parents to keep her attention. But I DO mind that this is a great opportunity for the kids and the parents and it’s not being presented as well as it could be.
In order to get out my frustration in a suitable manner, I will explain my imaginary perfect art class here below the cut. Skip if toddler art discussion is boring; I will certainly understand. Read the rest of this entry »
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By the way
Feb 6, 2006 Infertility
An email I just got reminded me.
If it took longer than a year to conceive your second (or third or fourth etc.) child or you have been unable to conceive a second (or third or fourth etc.) child AND you would be willing to talk to me, will you let me know? Whether or not you ever considered yourself infertile, I am looking to interview women who have this experience for another project I’m about to start working on.