The myths that don’t fly here
Feb 21, 2008 Adoption, Feminism/Politics
Attention people dropping by who haven’t read my blog. On this blog you will not find support for the following myths:
- Adoptive parents aren’t more privileged — they’re just more deserving.
- First parents are by definition irresponsible.
- Women who are too young, too old, too poor, or too single make bad parents.
- There is no such thing as adoption loss.
- The adoption industry is just, fair and equitable.
Got it? Comments that argue any of this will go through (I don’t moderate anything but spam and once I deleted some guy who had some ugly things to say about Jewish people) but you’re wasting your time if you think you’re going to be changing any minds.
I left this in response to an ignorant comment (scroll down at your own risk): Privilege is “a special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all.” My privilege as an adoptive parent is unearned. I am not better than my daughter’s first mother; I am luckier.
If we had to “earn” babies based on the rules (as Andrea, the commenter, describes these socially constructed ideals) I would not have any. I had sex very young, fairly often, with a number of different men before I met my husband. I didn’t happen to get pregnant until after I was married but only because my birth control (when I used it) didn’t fail. Sheer luck. I was less responsible that my daughter’s first mother and frankly quite a bit sluttier. The difference? She is more fertile. It’s damn unfair that her reproductive life is open to censure when she was more responsible and more discerning than I was. Lucky me, I get to hang the “good woman” sign around my neck because people mistakenly believe that I earned her baby. Listen, that homestudy ain’t all that hard to pass. What — some fingerprinting? A doctor’s approval? Signed checks?
I didn’t work harder; I got luckier. LUCKIER. That’s it. (My infertility saved my ass because seriously — ask my mother. I was sleeping around.)
You can’t look at any woman who had an unexpected pregnancy and assume ANYTHING about her or her behavior except that at some point she had sex. You cannot assume she did it willingly. You cannot assume she did it unprotected. Besides which, so what if she did? It doesn’t say a damn thing about her ability to parent.
Let’s play fair on this blog. I will promise not to lump every adoptive parent in with the predatory pedophiles who use adoption as their own means of procuring children and commenters like misguided Andrea can promise to quit making out like any woman who placed a child got the grief that she deserves.
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Tags: adoption ethics, adoption reform, feminism, first mothers, Infertility, reproductive rights
Oh I wanted to write a long post
Feb 20, 2008 Adoption, Spirituality
One about the myth of the redemptive power of suffering but I just got back from a morning meeting and have to leave in twenty minutes for another meeting.
Julia and I talk some about the work she does for the PKD Foundation, particularly with other parents facing a new diagnosis. She’s found a way to make meaning of her family’s challenges but you know, I get the feeling she’d give up all that meaning in a millisecond if it could make her kids healthy. But then maybe she ought to quit being so committed to serving the PKD community because that’s so much focus! So much attention to something negative! Why dwell on the bad things? Move on, Julia!
Why do we ignore the fact that the most activist good comes from people obsessed? (That MLK! That Ghandi! So single-minded! Sheesh!)We less obsessed people who show up for the rallies, write our letters to the editor — we’re riding on their coattails. (Do you think I would have testified if Marley hadn’t been keeping track of the legislation?)
I don’t know. It’s running through my head from some of yesterday’s comments and then hearing Terri Gross interview Bart Ehrman yesterday about his book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer. It’s worth listening to if you have the time.
But instead of wandering around on this topic for hours, I have to go eat lunch and head back out into the snow.
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Tags: Julia, resiliency, resilient, suffering, tragedy
Ahh, juicy adoption discussion!
Feb 19, 2008 Adoption
From Krississippi (dot) com » A Response to a Response of a Response
Adoptive parent loss is becoming taboo to even mention. Admitting one is an adoptive parent (ESPECIALLY on the net) is to say something shameful. To say “I adopted and something happened and now I grieve” is shunned. Tell me it’s not. I’ve been called a baby stealer, a raper of another culture, not a “real mother”, and a whole lot of other nasty things. But should I call my son’s mother or any other birth mother someone who can’t parent because of “x” reason, I AM THE ONE FLAMED.
You know, I’ve heard more than once that adoptive parents are feeling hemmed in by “political correctness” on the adoption front — at least on the internet. This hasn’t been my reality but since I’ve heard it in more than one corner it’s clear it’s an experience other people are having. I’m bothered by any us vs. them mentality and am unhappy that much of the adoption community has been so segregated but I do think that we need our own safe spaces. (Although off the internet? I see no political correctness. And also other spheres of the online adoption world seem to be havens from political correctness. I guess we’re a progressive bunch.)
Frankly (and I know this is unpopular to some) I think that we adoptive parents have more room to give here. I remember this atrocious flamewar (I’ve mentioned it before) that was on misc.kids.adoption between anti-adoption activists and pro-adoption adoptive parents. It was one of those schisms where everyone was executing black/white thinking — the kind that really only happen on the internet because people become so entrenched in arguing. Anyway, one of the adoptive parents typed something like, “Yeah, well we have your babies!” (I don’t remember exactly what she typed, just the “we have your babies” line at the end.) And that’s the thing — we adoptive parents have the babies. To me, forgetting that important fact is a little like a white person hollering defensively, “But I didn’t own slaves!” in the face of someone hurt by racism.
It’s a delicate balance — acknowledging privilege isn’t the same thing as admitting to wrong-doing we haven’t directly participated in. It may be that we had wonderful, totally ethical adoptions but still, we have the babies and we got our babies within a system that isn’t equitable. Even if we ourselves are absolutely swell people, for some other hurting people we may symbolize the oppression they’re fighting. I get that. Frankly I choose not to own other people’s judgment about my family and my adoption and I choose not to get defensive when I get confronted by people who are angry but don’t know me or the particulars of my life. (I’m not always good at this choosing — sometimes the choosing comes after some angry stomping around. Although frankly ugliest judgments I’ve received have come from other adoptive parents so you know, that’s where I’m coming from.)
I don’t doubt there is grief that I can’t begin to understand having not gone through it myself. I can’t assume how one would feel if I hadn’t experienced it.
But, based on that thought, how can anyone else who hasn’t been in MY SHOES assume to know how I WOULD FEEL?
I don’t assume on their behalf and I’d rather they not assume on mine. I guess that was one of my main points in my post. I can’t dismiss your grief any more than you can dismiss mine.
See, I haven’t yet read anyone dismissing your grief or any adoptive parent’s grief in this conversation. What I’ve read is that people feel the discussion in that newspaper article was one-sided.
There are far more birth parent loss websites than there are adoptive parent loss sites.
Well, how could there NOT be? As Andy wrote, “Losing a potential placement is NOTHING like losing an actual child… it is losing a hope, a dream, a thought… all non-tangible things. A mother who has placed her child has lost a piece of HER. and it cannot be replaced. Not by her next child, not by anything. But potential adoptive parents can grieve (because yes, there is grief and it is hard) and then MOVE ON TO THE NEXT potential placement.”
Hey, no one told me about the long-term repercussions about adopting. No one told me how I would struggle to answer my son’s questions, long for the ability to know his mother, deal with the guilt I always hold, understand how to help my son with his own journey, and be allowed to call myself a “mother” without remembering EVERY TIME that I wasn’t until someone else was.But I did have the ability to do my own research about adoption, talk to adopted people and adoptive parents alike, read books, and find resources to at least help myself do the best that I could. Why expect a birth parent to do any less?? Adoption, on either side, is a huge decision and commitment and I don’t believe it’s SOLELY up to any agency to do 100% of the educating. I believe it IS the SOLE responsibility of the agency to do as much educating that they can, but you can’t take away, for a second, the personal responsibility aspect. Unless you’re, say 11 and pregnant by incest (as mentioned in the original article), and/or you are a CHILD, then it’s not up to anyone other than YOURSELF to take that responsibility.
Krissi, the fact that we (adoptive parents) often feel ill-prepared to deal with the fall-out from adoption is something we should talk about when we talk about reform. I agree with you. As to the rest? That really gets my back up.
1. I was at two bookstores over the weekend and both had a shelf full of adoption books for adoptive parents. I didn’t see one for people contemplating placing their children. Same thing at my local library (although it’s interesting to note that in the poorer neighborhood by my daughter’s old preschool I did see two “so you’re unexpectedly pregnant” books for teenagers, both of which pushed adoption.) So I’d say it’s a little harder to do that research.
2. I counted on my agency to show me the way in a lot of things. That was a luxury that it’s clear expectant parents can’t afford since obviously the agencies show them even less than they show us adoptive parents.
3. Now try going to the search engines. Type in “adoption”, “choosing adoption” and “thinking of placing my baby for adoption.” Tell me how many non-biased sites (i.e., not related to the business of adoption) come up. Who do you think can afford better keyword placement — unbiased adoption sites or adoption businesses? No wonder the search engines are loaded.
4. Say you find a few voices in the wilderness. Say you find the blogs of first parents or some of the keep your baby sites. Now imagine the weight of the people who say that if you place you will be heroic, loving, unselfish, good versus the few small voices who say, “You will also be unbearably sad.”
Considering the way the cards are stacked I can’t condemn any woman who looks back and says, “I wish I had done it differently.” I do believe we are responsible for our choices but I also appreciate how the world sometimes (often) impacts our choices in ways we didn’t expect.
We women get trashed in our reproductive lives: having babies too late to make them without assistance; having them too young; having them with the wrong men; having them and putting them in daycare; having them and spoiling them by staying home; and having them but then giving them up. Yowza. A girl can’t win for trying.
It looks to me like first motherhood is a journey and some women end up in different places — happier or sadder or guiltier or more content. Like anything else, people have to make sense of their own lives and every woman who placed or lost a child through adoption is going to have a different story to tell. But I do know that this industry that gifted me my daughter doesn’t work in a fair and honest manner. I know that. Domestic infant adoption is about getting babies to us — like the lady said, we have the babies. And in that newspaper article, we also have the right to all the tears. Now that’s just getting greedy.
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Tags: adoption ethics, adoption reform, daycare, domestic infant adoption, grief, preschool
My response to a response
Feb 19, 2008 Adoption
I tried to comment on Krississippi’s blog but my comment got eaten somehow so I’m bringing it over here. (I’m rushing — I have an 11am meeting across town and it’s seven ’til ten but I will try my bestest to make sense.)
Krissi was talking about an article about Bethany Christian Services in Modesto, CA, specifically about a first mom’s unhappiness with this part of the article:
“One of the things that needs to be said is it’s very rare (for a birth mom to change her mind about adoption). But for those who go through it, it’s one of the most painful experiences they’ve every had. It’s like a death in the family when that happens. It takes a toll on us as staff members, too.
“But assuming that the birth mother is making a choice that she can raise the child with the support of the family or a boyfriend, that’s still positive.”
The original post that called my (and I believe, Krissi’s) attention is not available for public consumption so I’ll try to fill y’all in. A first mom was bothered by the emphasis on adoptive parent loss and the complete neglect of first parent loss. Krissi responded with:
I don’t understand why adoptive parents aren’t allowed to have the same feelings about an adopted child who is removed and returned, as the birth mother/family has in surrendering a child?
I wanted to talk about that, as an adoptive parent, and about some of my other issues with the article.
Now I’m not crazy about Bethany and wasn’t crazy about them before I really started thinking on ethics. I need to say that upfront. Their worldview is not mine, obviously, since I’m a feminist Jew and they’re coming from a place of conservative Christianity. Their beliefs — as they appear to practice them in the agency — run right up against my own from their emphasis on adoption over other choices to their bias against unmarried parenting.
But in this article I had two big concerns: One, that they believe that their push towards adoption is appropriate in their counseling:
“One thing that is true is that while we promote adoption, we’re helping her make an informed choice. We’re not about persuading them one way or the other. We provide counseling for (a woman) regardless of her decision.”
Looking at their web site, I see a lot of promotion of adoption but very little of that information one would need to make an informed choice. Which leads me to my next concern, the “death in the family” for wannabe adoptive parents when the mom decides she’ll parent after all.
If you look on their site, you can see a whole page devoted to “disrupted adoption“. (They’re using the term wrong because there is no adoption when this happens — it’s an adoption plan turned into a parenting plan.) There’s a whole lot of sympathy there for adoptive parents just like there is in the article. This although they say, “it’s very rare.” By their own admission, adoptive parents rarely have to face this pain (if they’re using Bethany because I learned early on in my adoption journey that when an agency says “it’s rare” it can be code for “we are coercive” but there, that’s my bias showing again).
What we do know, because research tells us this, is that first parents definitely feel grief. Best practices (as set out here by the Donaldson institute) can help but there’s no way around it: “grief … invariably accompanies such a profound loss.”
Thing is, in the popular understanding of adoption most of what we hear about is the loss of the potential adoptive parents when an expectant mother changes her mind. I’m not downplaying this. I’m not arguing that it doesn’t hurt when an adoption plan doesn’t happen. But it’s almost a legendary part of our understanding of domestic infant adoption. And — at least over at Bethany — it happens rarely.
First parent grief? It happens every time an adoption happens. Every. Time. It “invariably accompanies such a profound loss.” It’s documented. We’ve got smart folks crunching numbers to back it up. Only we rarely hear about it. (Ironic that — we hear a whole lot about a rare thing and rarely hear about a thing that happens a whole lot.)
We hear about first parent grief when we talk about reunion. We hear about it as if it happened only way back when in the baby scoop era. We hear about it when we want to talk heroics (in another coercive strategy) but somehow we never hear it in those counseling sessions where we help women make “informed decisions.”
Back to the Bethany site, here’s the “unplanned pregnancy” list of resources. Do you see anything like the “disrupted adoption” page for adoptive parents? Wait, we’ll dig deeper — it’ll be on the “adoption” page, right? Because that’s where they explain the pros and cons, right? I’ll check so you don’t have to click through. Let’s see, I learning that Bethany will take care of legal arrangements. I see they’ll help you with living and medical expenses. I see (with an enthusiastic Yes!) that you can choose your baby’s family. I see that you can visit with your baby in the hospital “as much … as you want” and can arrange a open (or semi-open) adoption. I’m seeing that you can choose an adoption that dictates how much your child knows about you (no mention of how all of that is actually out of your control), that birth father’s have rights and that state laws dictate your (and your child’s) right to search. Nope, nothing about the long-term repercussions in choosing adoption.
This bias is evidenced in the article in The Modesto Bee as well.
I have to run to my meeting but that’s my argument against this article.
And quickly, I wanted to share this post from Seeking God Knows What about her last meeting with a Bethany agency.
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Tags: adoption agencies, adoption ethics, adoption in the media, adoption reform, Bethany Christian Services, boyfriend, first parent, PTSD
More on Nebraska
Feb 18, 2008 Adoption
Adopted Baby Must Be Returned | Yankton Press & Dakotan
Thanks to H. S. Ema for posting this in the comments below! Does share some more information that definitely colors my view a little more. I know our agency did specifically talk about their “not pregnant” policy in the context of continuing treatment. They were sympathetic but firm about this. I am surprised (but pleased) that the woman’s wishes for her child were honored. (Did I mention surprised?)
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Tags: Adoption, domestic adoption, our agency