this woman’s work

You are browsing the archives from 2006 August.

A very nice adoptive mom sent me an op-ed critiquing Primal Wound theory from Pact and I’ve been thinking on this part and wanted to hear your thoughts.

In the case of the parent-child, mother-child relationship, to ignore its’ darker, less ideal aspects condemns every mother to instant self-alienation the first time she feels anything but perfect love for her child coupled with the desire to mirror and hold.

… What better way to psychologically coerce women into “staying home” than to make them feel guilty about “abandoning” their children.

… In this context it might also be relevant to note that the logic of Ms. Verrier’s theory inescapably condemns birth parents. If the worst thing that can happen to a person in his or her life is to be placed for adoption, and if this decision is made by a man and woman who regardless of societal pressure and oppression, could have done otherwise, then every birth parent who placed a child is personally responsible for this terrible trauma, although society is also culpable. To load birth parents with this kind of guilt is absurd; it is also ironic for an adoptive mother to be making this kind of charge under the guise of defending adopted people and birth parents. What it amounts to is an adoptive mother saying to her adopted child, “Isn’t it terrible what your birth mother did to you?” This is nothing more than a sophisticated version of “Gee, how could anyone give away a child that beautiful?”

He’s got some good criticism of Verrier’s theory although this bit I’ve quoted isn’t as convincing (to me) as other parts. I do think though that it’s a valid criticism of the way Primal Wound theory is used against mothers and wanted to talk more about that.

I was thinking about this because I’ve got some women in my life who are without their children (by choice or by circumstance and not because of adoption) and I was thinking about our culture’s deeply rooted madonna-whore complex and how we silence the voices of women who are not raising the children they bear. Any woman who chooses not to parent is, in the immortal yet fictional words of Jenny Fields, “a sexual suspect.” Never is this more apparent then we talk about the saintly/selfish birth mother who is selfless enough to “give her baby a better life” yet selfish enough “to just give away her own child.”

But I think he’s on to something (the author above) when he argues this slippery-Bowlby-slope that puts all women in the firing line that powers most of our industries, the adoption one among them. (In other words, we women who want to say, “Yeah, but I’m not a birth mom” might want to rethink our disinterest.)

I want to write more but Madison wants me to stop writing about mothering and actually get to it so I’ll leave this unfinished.

Virtual high-fives all around! She’s great — lots of professional experience, no interest in full-time childcare work (she has a handy-woman business and she’s available for all your sundry tasks) so she can take my piddling 4 - 6 hours a week. She WANTS to do activities with them (I told her it would be fine if she just kept them from playing with matches and drinking drano but she LIKES planning “arts and crafts and some science experiments”). She clicked with both kids and they were chattering away at her, interrupting our Very Important interview.

Now I have no excuse to not be productive. (Damn.) She starts next Wednesday.

I had a big, bad post planned but it’s 9:15pm and I still have some busy-work to do before I can lay down my weary head. Just wanted to pop in and report my fantabulous, life-changing news! (And you know what? I have fabulous Feracious to thank because an in-real-life friend of hers happened to click from her blog to my blog, happened to read my blog on a day I was talking about our then just-beginning writing group, happened to email to say she was a writer and was interested and then last meeting gave me this recommendation. The internets, she is like a miracle to me!)

Apparently I first registered this domain five years ago today. Somebody bake me a cake! (I’d bake my own cake but it’s too darn hot to turn on the oven out here in the east midwest!) (Why is Ohio considered midwest when we are mid but not west?)

On to being jealous of Jessica. Don’t expect great prose because I haven’t had my coffee yet and everything is still looking pretty fuzzy to me.
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