20 Responses to “Suz’s wish is my command”

1. PhoenixRising
   February 21st, 2008 at 2:18 pm

   

   Exactly! (Gah, I really don’t want to work today do I?)

   It’s an easy step from, “Pennie is Madison’s mother” to “and I don’t want to see my daughter’s mother treated that way.”

   This is what makes my hair straighten when I hear, Those people are ignorant and backward, or She abandoned that baby so she doesn’t deserve any rights!, those kinds of comments, that are coming from adoptive parents.

   You know, you’re talking about my kid’s family. And that makes them MY family. And I’m not defensive or guilty when someone insults my sister by blaming her bad luck on her character–I’m furious. Same thing here.

   ‘Those people’ are part of my family now. Their connection to me is transitive, through my child, but it’s real.

   As an aside: I know that I’m not normal on this stuff. AFAIK I’m fertile, I just made a choice to extend my extended family relations to complete strangers because I wanted to raise a child, not bake a baby. That’s a little odd.

2. admin
   February 21st, 2008 at 2:24 pm

   

   Phoenix, I do think the steps to adoption as first choice are different than adoption via infertility. I don’t think either start is predictive of eventual philosophy but I do think the journey is different enough to be of note.

3. Suz
   February 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm

   

   Well, thank you. You may now join my birth mom table and I will feed you one funny bone for your prompt responsive behavior.

   On a more serious note, interesting, must think about this.

   Have you read this book? Put it on your list if you havent. Interesting thoughts related to this topic. I spent days highlighting paragraphs in relation to adoption and the way many people think of it.

   Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

   And to your other reader, I like the way you think along with your handle. My own handle on LJ is feenix_rising. (Please dont tell me however you did not want to bake a baby becuase you wanted to retain your figure. THAT approach to adoption makes me want to hurl)

4. Krissi
   February 21st, 2008 at 3:07 pm

   

   Dawn -

   “3. Jealousy about fertility that morphs into personal hostility.”

   This is one aspect that I admit to not understanding in the least. I didn’t even try to get pregnant before pursuing adoption, so I have never been down the infertility path. Further I have never been pregnant nor wanted to be pregnant nor really tried to get pregnant (and after Jan 11th’s hoo-hoo-ectomy I never have to even use any forms of birth control to prevent it LOL)

   Why would infertility cause hostility (I can understand jealousy… barely.. but hostility?) I can see why it might cause pain or emotional upheaval to a potential parent, but where does the hostility [toward the birth mother, I assume you mean] come from? Why would infertility after an adoption lead to hostility?

   I mean, in the end, the adoptive parent got the child, so now be hostile to his/her mother?

   I ask honestly.

5. Angela
   February 21st, 2008 at 3:14 pm

   

   “Pennie is Madison’s mother” to “and I don’t want to see my daughter’s mother treated that way.”

   This is it….something I was trying to explain as part of that long rambling post I left on the other entry…people (not just adoptive parent) make all kinds of assumptions (based on several of those points you stipulated above) and comments and I bristle up because even in our limited open adoption (current circumstances) she is part of us and just like if it were my sister or my aunt or even a distant relative I’d be damned if they’ll pick her apart in front of me. It is because of this fierce, intense, all-consuming love I feel for my daughter that I love her mother. Are we at a point where things are perfect? heck no (then again I’m not there w/ any other member of my family for that matter) but we work on it because whether we like it or not, whether is easy or not we are bound by our little girl.

   It might also be part of what you mentioned but I would add fear and jealousy (not just about fertility but about sharing the child even w/ and abstract if birth mom is not in the picture). People are very paranoid or upset by the concept of co-sharing or loving more than one mom. When people comment that she (my daughter) might get too attached to her first mom I always say that we both already lost her to my mother (her adored “abuela”) and her daddy (who she has wrapped around her finger)LOL

6. admin
   February 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pm

   

   Angela, you’re right — I left out fear and jealousy. (I wrote this post while I was still feeling angry. I really need to not do that!)

7. PhoenixRising
   February 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm

   

   Suz, I agree that Mistakes Were Made is a great breakdown of the cultural theme I’m trying to muddle my way to.

   I also like the description of privilege that Tim Wise uses in White like me, in which he explores why those who have privilege don’t want to discuss the matter.

   (Please dont tell me however you did not want to bake a baby becuase you wanted to retain your figure. THAT approach to adoption makes me want to hurl)

   Nah, I asked my sister the midwife what exactly an episiotomy is, shrieked, clutched my crotch with both hands, and began thinking about why adoption hadn’t already occurred to me. No, seriously.

   Like most parents, it’s fair to say that I had no flippin’ idea what we were getting into, but not for lack of attempts to educate me from the social worker, the agency, or my mom who recommended both based on her 35 years of experience in the field.

   Angela, you’ve raised a very good point about open adoption, that others outside the family sometimes believe that the attachment to birth parents is caused by openness and has the potential to harm the child’s relationships with the adoptive mom. I have heard countless adoptive moms in the int’l community tell the so-called secret that they wanted to know for sure that they wouldn’t have to compete with birth parents for their children’s hearts.

   I think this sounds so weird to me for two reasons, and they are food for thought for the rest of you who don’t share my circumstances: First, I was raised in a blended family. I was the luckiest child of a broken home ever, in that my single mom married a wonderful man who made a wonderful dad when I was still a little kid. But I always knew that Dad wasn’t related to me, and it didn’t really matter.

   More conspicuously, I’ve been really, really gay for a very long time. And until November 2003, the option of being legally related to my life partner was not available to me or anyone like me. So my sense of how I know who’s in my family is, maybe, a little unusual.

   End result being, the notion that children can only belong to one set of parents, and that whoever has their name(s) on the title is the REAL parent and no one else can be–it just feels wrong to me. It doesn’t make sense.

   I’ve been struggling with this in my work lobbying for family law and adoption law reforms. I feel like I am separated by a common language from the state legislators who are from another generation and have the shared cultural belief that ‘family’ is one thing, mommy-daddy-homemade kids.

8. suz
   February 21st, 2008 at 7:25 pm

   

   End result being, the notion that children can only belong to one set of parents, and that whoever has their name(s) on the title is the REAL parent and no one else can be–it just feels wrong to me. It doesn’t make sense.

   I shrieked at this a bit but overall I agree. My shrieking was not in theory but in word choice - and that is my own personal issue. I dislike the idea of any child “belonging” to anyone - even their natural parent. They are not objects, property or commodities. Again, my issue and my sensitivity. Too much of adoption is about who bought the child, who named the child, who is the best parent for the child, who raise the child, who invested in the child, blah blah blah.

   Its rarely ABOUT THE CHILD. Its about adult egos battling out who is more important and the poor kid standing thinking (hopefully) that we are a bunch of asswipes.

   But again, agree with you PhoenixRising.

   As a mother who lost her child to adoption, I dont care that my daughter has another mother. Not in the way most do. I DO care that she is not allowed to acknowledge me and that she is treated as property and not respected as an individual young woman with the ability to speak for herself (and that goes for all adopted adults - and even children). I care about lies fed to our children, deceit, closed records, stigmatizing young, single mothers and a whole lot more.

   Shit, you can have three or four mommies, I don’t care. You will love me for who I am and how I treat you and respect you - not if I gave birth to you or not. Being a mother - by birth or adoption - does not guarantee you are a good one.

9. Lula
   February 21st, 2008 at 7:30 pm

   

   Krissi, I won’t claim to be an expert on the subject because my own emotional reaction to infertility has been blessedly unremarkable, but here’s my take on the infertility-hostility link from reading/watching other people react to theirs. Some folks, esp. some women, experience infertility as a serious blow to their self-concept as a successful and “normal” human being. For some people, there’s the additional blow to what I’ll call “gender success”, or validation of “real womanhood/manhood” via procreation — for people whose whole self-concept of being a woman or man rests on making a baby, infertility can really be a kick in the privates. If they’re coming from a religious or family background that equates procreation with full adulthood or God’s blessing or other complicated stuff, the ego blow can be even more severe, for obvious reasons having to do with faith and convention and fear of being stigmatized and judged.

   Whatever the exact reason, folks who are struggling with this kind of shattered self-concept just don’t cope well with being unable to make their bodies do what they want them to do: Create a baby. My personal experience has been that the infertility-challenged who feel like they’re being punished or unjustly denied procreation are the ones whose anger, grief, jealousy, and guilt over whatever they may have done to deserve infertility (real or imagined) can roll over into hostility, esp. of the “But I’m BETTER than that woman is! She broke society’s laws, while I did everything right (or at least not as wrong as she did)! She’s a whore and a Bad Person, so why does SHE get to have a baby and I don’t?!” variety. They’re looking for divine justice, and they’re not finding it…. so sometimes they go a little batsh*t and become overtly hostile. It’s like the flip side of beating themselves up, which is what some people do instead. Some people get hostile at themselves, baby-havers who they judge less worthy, and the entire physical and spiritual world all at the same time, which is really not pretty.

   Anyway: If these people adopt, the idea of receiving less than full Parent credit may be untenable, particularly if they are clinging to beliefs like they are *better people* than the child’s biological parents, or deserve to control the entire adoption because they suffer with infertility and that really sucks, or because the child’s first mother didn’t show the proper appreciation for the gift of procreation because she agreed to the adoption, etc. They’re hostile because they hate that they weren’t able to create a baby, and that they were dependent upon someone who could in order to be parents. Therefore they certainly don’t want reminders of their “failure” hanging around or calling or wanting visits that’s too much of a threat to their already fragile (or perhaps destroyed) sense of self, so they get lizard-brained about it and lash out in defensive anger. Often this will be framed in terms of “protecting the child”, which sounds more parental and valid than “self-protection” or, in some cases, “serious denial”.

   And just as they are unable to make room for more than one set of parents in their child’s life, they are unable to make room for more than one victim. They’re victims of infertility, so they’ve already got the lock on the Victim Room — whatever claim to victimization their child’s other mother might make, they don’t want to have to see/hear/acknowledge it. And as Dawn notes in her list, they often have plenty of people onhand supporting them in that view, and in considering their kid’s first parents something apart from their own concern. It’s THEIR kid now, so first parents fall outside the scope of people to be concerned with.

   I write this with compassion for people who are in that horrible headspace, though I can’t condone the behavior. I have seen infertility turn perfectly normal-seeming people into twisted wrecks of their former selves, and it is a sad sight to behold. The question for me is whether people who are so harmed by their experience of infertility do anyone (themselves included) any decent turn by adopting. I’m not in a position of responsibility for deciding who is and isn’t a good candidate for adoptive parenthood, but I do often wonder why more people don’t go with a surrogacy arrangement (assuming they’ve got viable eggs and/or sperm to contribute) or opt for life without parenting when reading/talking with adoptive parents who hold so much grief and anger over their inability to have their “own” child that they are overtly hostile about their child’s origins.

10. PhoenixRising
    February 21st, 2008 at 7:49 pm

    

    Suz, I meant ‘belong’ in the sense of ‘community with’ rather than ‘as property’ though now that you mention it, I think that is what creeps me out about the lobbyists who are Professional Christians ™. [I'm being extremely exacting here, not referring to anyone's religious beliefs but specifically to a group of lobbyists who I am constantly arguing against, who actually take a paycheck to yell about their interpretation of their holy writ at state legislators who are volunteers. If I were their brand of Christian, I'd be freaked by it, but don't tee off on me for calling them something bad--they really are Professional Christians (tm).]

    Their thinking about how the law should read is completely reflective of a deeply held belief that kids are property. Which squicks me out completely. I try to respond rationally but inside I’m cringing at the language of possession and ownership.

    If I own my kid, does that mean I bought her?

11. shannon
    February 21st, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    

    I’d add to your list–or perhaps nuance a couple of items already on it–by saying that there is this “Only One True Mother” rhetoric in our society. I think it’s mostly fired by the patriarchal nature of our economy. Mothers are supposed to give up anything and everything freely and joyfully to raise their children and all they are really offered in return is this pedestal upon which only mothers can stand. And there’s just room on that pedestal for one mother per person. She is the Goddess Above All. I think women who want babies often at least partly want to be someone’s one and only goddess and many adoptive mothers (because this conversation rarely incorporates fathers’ points of view) feel that a first mother regarded AS a mother (a “real” mother) threatens that status.

12. Lilian
    February 21st, 2008 at 8:31 pm

    

    YES!! We need that book of yours!! Someone has got to take it and I trust they will, sooner or later. And we needed one by Kateri too, she has a gift to express the deeper and most troubling truths of birthmotherhood and articulate them in a extremely coherent manner. Thanks for letting me know about her being interviewed for that article. She already blogged about it and responded to some AWFUL comments left at the Chicago Tribune’s site.

13. Dawn
    February 21st, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    

    Lula, dearheart, why don’t you have a blog? And if you do, why aren’t you linking? (Because I’d be all signed up to read it!)

14. Lula
    February 21st, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    

    Oh, I don’t know. I’ve only just entered the blogging world — I’ll need more time before I have the gumption to put myself out there like all you good & brave people. Thanks for the encouragement, though.

15. Suz
    February 22nd, 2008 at 7:37 am

    

    Hmmm, Shannons comments got me thinking about the AS IF statement. You know, that lovely adoption language that says adoptive paents must treat the child “as if born to”. Does this not set everyone up for a life of lies and challenges?

    I understand the legal intent (treat the child like you would your own biological in the way of monies, inheritance, love, etc.) but I often wonder if it inadvertantly puts adoptive mothers in a never ending psychological race to treat the child “as if”. As in some other wierd message comes across.

    The child was NOT born to you. How can you emotionally, psychologically pretend he or she was?

16. Suz
    February 22nd, 2008 at 7:40 am

    

    PhoenixRising - Gotcha on the clarification. Again, totally my issue, I know. My daughters parents won the lottery and for that reason were able to afford to adopt her. They told her with their winnings “they bought a house and bought a baby”. And they have defniitely treated her like property. So yeah, I am admittedly overly sensitive to the owning aspects of adoption.

    As for the Professioanl Christians, ooh, the discussion we could have there. I recently dated an adoptive dad whose ex wife and family were hard core fundamentalists. Interesting conversations he and I had on the very topics you mention.

    (BTW, I read your blog and love it)

17. Krissi
    February 22nd, 2008 at 10:55 am

    

    Lula -

    “Therefore they certainly don’t want reminders of their “failure” hanging around or calling or wanting visits that’s too much of a threat to their already fragile (or perhaps destroyed) sense of self, so they get lizard-brained about it and lash out in defensive anger. Often this will be framed in terms of “protecting the child”, which sounds more parental and valid than “self-protection” or, in some cases, “serious denial”.”

    First of all, thank you for the comment and everything you said. I think the above quote hits it on the head and in terms of understanding it - I do.

    Bravo!

    Krissi

18. kimkim
    February 22nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    

    “I often wonder what is gained by those adoptive parents (besides the obvious - our children) who like to blame the victims in adoption (or refuse to believe there are victims).”

    I think those people just don’t care. This woman who adopted children from a widow who couldn’t afford to raise them after her husband died said “but we can’t have children”.

    Those people really don’t give a shit about us Suz, that’s the reality.

19. sluggomarie
    February 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    

    I think Shannon has hit on a major issue in this discussion. The societally constructed notion of motherhood establishes a “the-one-and-only” narrative that leads to a territoriality that seems almost instinctual at times (for adoptive mothers and birth/first mothers. Surely, more the former, but definitely also the latter). It’s as if, somehow, acknowledging the humanity, opinions, and experiences of “the other woman” would result in the annihilation of our own humanity, opinions, and experiences. If “she’s” the mother, then “I” can’t be.

    Interestingly, this isn’t necessarily the experience from the fathers’s perspectives because it’s OK in our society for there to be more than one father or no father or whatever…one of the many joys of partiarchy…

    And then there are issues of entitlement (which are related, in some ways, to Lula’s great explanation of the hostility sometimes resulting from infertility). Adoptive parents tend to be middle-class or upper-middle class people, very often white, and gosh darn it — they have a RIGHT to have a child (I’m saying this sarcastically. Hope no one freaks out thinking this is how I feel). If the birth/first mother wasn’t “good” enough to be able to take care of her child, then adoptive parents have the right to step in and have that child. And no one can tell them otherwise! To contend that a birth/first mother should also have rights — even if simply the right to be respected and acknowledged — is, to them, unthinkable.

    I also think there is sometimes anger stemming from a different place (not just from fertility issues, since that isn’t the experience of everyone who adopts). Depending on the circumstances leading to the adoption and whether there is a “plan” or a child is abandoned (which is, in some cases, all the planning that is possible). I am most familiar with adoption from China and know that the many adoptive parents in that community walk a fine line between idolizing the unknown birth mother and being pretty darn ticked off at her for abandoning the child that is now their own. While they may rationally know that the circumstances leading to the abandonment are complex and varied and that the birth mother likely didn’t really have all that much say in the matter, she is the one person (even though we know nothing about her — or maybe because we have the “luxury” of not knowing who that person is) at whom we can aim our anger at our child’s circumstances (because we never blame the fathers or the grandparents or the society or…) So, why should I care what this woman’s experience might be? She left my daughter in a box on the side of the road…? What kind of person could do that? (Again, sarcasm).

    Sadly, I also think Dawn’s reasons 4-6 are major — and perhaps the most frightening. There are just too darn many people who are too clueless and willfully so! They are perfectly contented living in a happy little world full of puppy dogs and sunshine where everything about adoption is great, no one gets hurt in the process, and there are no complex issues to consider. In these cases, acknowledging the victimization of the birth/first mothers isn’t the only problem. I also suspect they will not be even close to able to deal with the acknowledgment their children may someday need as they are forced to wrestle with different issues (because, like reason 7 states, adoptive parents are the ones who have the privilege that affords them the luxury of not having to think about such things)…

20. PhoenixRising
    February 27th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    

    While they may rationally know that the circumstances leading to the abandonment are complex and varied and that the birth mother likely didn’t really have all that much say in the matter, she is the one person (even though we know nothing about her — or maybe because we have the “luxury” of not knowing who that person is) at whom we can aim our anger at our child’s circumstances (because we never blame the fathers or the grandparents or the society or…) So, why should I care what this woman’s experience might be? She left my daughter in a box on the side of the road…? What kind of person could do that?

    The more I read of this thread, the weirder I get.

    Yes, this has been my observation as well. The ambivalence about the birth moms is this throbbing vein of yuck in the international adoption communities I’ve been part of.

    But for me it’s one more way that, in taking my child out of her first culture, we took something that we can’t give back. Because her first mother’s experience of the patriarchy, and the strong likelihood that the decision to place was made by the elders in the extended family and it took into account the circumstances of the whole network of support…these are literally foreign concepts to my kid.

    Regardless of what language and cultural experiences we provide, she will never understand what it was like to put her baby self in that basket and walk away. We are raising her to believe that women are people, that individual desires matter, that she is a member of our family rather than the least possession of a clan. Those are all cultural beliefs.