My kid ain’t second best either
Neither of ‘em. Because I’m apparently psychic, I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago for my WorkItMom.com post (because I’m a contributor there along with fabulous Roni): Changing Expectations
There’s so much to blog about like the MEPA report and the “birth mom and baby drain” allegedly happening in Ohio (the article is so offensive on oh so many levels). I want to write about those two things from our agency experience but I’m slammed with work so I can’t just yet. Plus a friend wants me to blog something adoption/choice related and again, the time or lack thereof prevents me.
Soon! Soon!
Great article and a beautiful way to put it.
You know, when I read Margie post (and I adore her and she knows that) I did find myself wondering “how can she be so sure since she never had her own?’ I did not mean it disrespectfully but was wondering how one can make such a blanket statement without having a certain benchmark.
You however represent a unique demographic - having given birth to Noah and then adopted Madison.
Finally, I think the real point in this discussion is being grossly overlooked. While all the adoptive parents come screaming from the woodwork saying “not me, not me, my kids are numero uno” there are adoptees saying ‘yeah, but that is what I feel”.
How do we address THAT?
Doesn’t matter if your child is or is not second best to you, the fact is that MANY adoptees feel they are. They were abandoned/surrendered/insert your own term here by their own kin and given to strangers who really preferred something else first.
I genuinely appreciated that comment from that Lori Tay. It is a sentiment many feel and see and I appreciated her honesty.
Is it universal? Of course not. But the fact that you or Margie or anyone else doesnt feel that way doesnt mean we should ignore the fact that some do and more importantly that our children feel that.
Well, that was why I wrote that essay — I was thinking about how I’m going to explain it to Madison. But I know I can’t control her feelings around this and it may be that despite my best, most sincere efforts she still feels second best to me or to Pennie when Pennie is parenting children. Pennie and I talk about this but truthfully, are good intentions may not be enough. I think that’s part of the primal hurt of adoption.
(And for the record? I don’t think “Lori Tay” did anyone a service. That’s like saying a racist flamewar is promoting thoughtful discussion by showing the ugly truth. We can talk truth without nasty, brutish hate-mongering.)
It seems that several adoptees felt validated. There is some service there, no? When they spend their lives being told to be grateful, having their feelings and rights ignored, I would imagine it would be of service to have someone finally say what you knew all along - even with a nasty tone and intent.
Could she have been nicer? Of course but when so many people in adoption avoid, deny, lie about, manipulate and abuse the truth, its is a bit refreshing to have one person be honest - even if they forgot their social graces (and is likely a total nutter)
Perhaps this can only be understood by those that have been wronged by adoption. I dont know. But for me? If the broker that sold my child honestly owned up to their heinous crimes against me and other mothers, even whilst calling me a stupid whore, I think I might thank him and clap.
For me, and I would guess some adoptees, its about being SEEN.
Suz, is she in fact then an adoptive parent? (Like I said, I didn’t read the thread.) This reminds me of something in a workshop I went to at the AAC so I’ll try to find time to blog about that tonight.
I think all she (Lori) did was perpetuate a stereo-type. There is a difference between MY child saying to me, ” I feel…” and recognizing that and dealing with it and validating it.
Lori said a gross generalization of infertile people. It would be like someone stating the all first moms “didn’t want their children.” It’s taking the facts of the situation and manipulating them. Life is gray, not black and white. Adopting after infertility doesn’t necessarily mean it is second choice. Placing a child for adoption doesn’t necessarily mean a first mom didn’t want her.
Dunno. Not a triad member, but I had bio kids simply because it’s easier. Easier is the default most people go by, no? No costs (if you don’t need medical intervention) no hassle, no home-study, no paperwork, that sort of thing. Adoption would be “harder”, meaning you’d need to put a lot more effort into it. That doesn’t mean the resulting baby would be second best, just that if the shorter route takes you from A to B, most people will take it. If the short route is blocked, they detour. I hope I’m not offending anyone.
Jessica, I’m with you so I sure don’t find it offensive. And easy is why we went to adoption as soon as the doctor started talking IVF (adoption seemed less like an ethical morass — I chuckle to remember that now)!
To Lisa V point and to clarify mine, I did not even pay attention to the gross generalizations. I saw that for what it was. I did however see some positive validation for those that had never been validated before.
Does it matter if she is an adoptive parent for sure? (She sounded like a infertile PAP). If she is, even better for the adoptees that she validated. If she isnt yet, lets hope she never will be.
But again, for me, I dont care who or what she is, I care that a one, two, or more adoptees felt validated. That someone had the nerve to say what many don’t.
As I noted on Margies, I am for some reason looking at this through a very different lense. I am still trying to figure out why that is.
But there are at least two meanings of “validating feelings”: 1.Yes, I see, those are your feelings and they are sensible and I “get” them in as much as I can or 2.Yes, that’s absolute and always truth; your suspicions are correct. It is to the second sense of “validation” that I object in this case — I do not want someone validating the “truth” of someone’s suspicion that s/he was valued less to go unchallenged. On the other hand, the experience of the *feelings* of second-best should be validated.
I suspect that my daughter will at some point feel this way. I will struggle with it, but I will respond in a way that resonates with the rest of my parenting of her. She is adored and could not be loved more by me, but I can certainly understand why she would feel that in a perfect world we would not be family. I will NOT respond that it makes sense that she would feel that way because I would have preferred some imaginary child — because it isn’t so.
Suz, Honestly if this had been an adoptee saying the exact same thing, I think it would have been discussion generating. It wasn’t. It was someone claiming to speak for adoptive parents, or infertiles.
I think discussions about loss and adoptee feelings are validating. I just don’t think this was one.
The first is that hate-mongering comments suck, period. Gross generalizations don’t serve discourse. The second is that apparently honesty IS in such short supply that some people found the comments comforting. But to my mind, that doesn’t make her comment ok; it just highlights how much more work needs to be done.
Agree completely (Posted here since comments were off on the other post).
And I loved that title of the elephant in the pants.
Oh shoot — I’ll go turn ‘em on. My wordpress is doing that lately. Thanks for the heads up!!
Aww…thanks for the loving.
And for all the Dawn-ites….please leave comments over at WIM too. that way our editors see all the love you throw at her. And me if you read my stuff.
I’m not part of the triad so I certainly can’t claim to fully understand anyone’s perspective, but this is interesting to me. There are all sorts of crossroads in life. Sometimes you get to choose from all possible options, sometimes some options are closed. Maybe your first love dumped you. Maybe you didn’t get into your first choice college. Maybe you weren’t hired for your dream job. Obviously there are some people who focus on the losses, but I think there are just as many who eventually move on. Even if the first love was the one you were sure you were going to spend your life with, even if your heart was broken when he left. I imagine that most people who have that experience at some point look at their husband and see someone who has been there for them through experiences they hadn’t even imagined during that earlier relationship, and who is perfect for the person they are now, and are happy that their lives worked out in a way that brought them together. Just because something is your first choice doesn’t always mean it’s the right one in the long term.
For that matter, how many kids being raised by their biological parents were their ‘first choice’? By that I mean: children who were hoped and planned for and arrived more or less when desired? Seems to me that there are an awful lot of children out there who came along before their parents had planned to start a family, or after the parents thought they were done, or who arrived with special needs. And yet they are loved and their parents are grateful to have them.
I’m not trying to discount the concerns of many adoptees (and for that matter, many ‘accidents’). It just seems to me like the relevant question to a child’s sense of emotional security shouldn’t be “Was I your second choice back then?”, but “Am I your second choice now?”
Shanon over at Peter’s Cross Station has a thoughtful post up about this… I’m not sure if you two are on each other’s blog radar. When you get a minute here’s the link.
PS I’m a new reader. Hi!
Hi V’s Herbie! Nice to meet you! Shannon has been on my blog radar for a long, long time and I’ve even been lucky enough to meet her in real life!!
Okay. I have been withholding a little because I didn’t go through any fertility issues before adopting–we just didn’t care about biology and went straight to adoption.
But what’s the difference between how an adopted child might feel about being plan B and how a “whoops” baby might feel about not being planned? Wouldn’t it be similar?
Is that a big deal for people?
As a whoops baby I’ll chime in…and I say this a lot n similar conversations. I asked my mom when I was in HS why she still had me. She was pregnant at 18, post-Roe, and I knew she was pro-choice. All she had to say to me was “I wanted you.”
Dunno if that would work as well in a possibly more complex situation like adoption, but seriously, it will always be the most loving thing she ever told me.
And easy is why we went to adoption as soon as the doctor started talking IVF (adoption seemed less like an ethical morass — I chuckle to remember that now)!
Yeah, we were all so innocent, asking why we would spend money we didn’t have to make a baby to spec, when there are already babies who need parents?
Ignorance was bliss, though. I knew what we were doing was right.
More on topic, I think Sarah raised an interesting point.
Studies show (and yes I’m too lazy to Google right now but I’ve revealed that Google Exists) that people who are mostly happy, or in clinical terms rarely depressed, tend to see life in the way she described: the things that went in unexpected directions are perceived as having opened new doors.
Whereas those who tend to be less satisfied with their lives don’t have lesser lives, so much as they tend to perceive those unexpected developments as having messed everything up.
I think that the difference between ‘I had expected that’ and ‘I was entitled to’ can be a subtle distinction that determines how happy we are with our lives.
And it’s easy for me to say because I’m not infertile, but the adopted kid I have is exactly the one I wanted. What I don’t know, yet, is whether she will turn out to be a person who sees her losses in the context of what they did for her, most of the time. Based on current data, I suspect that she will tend to feel the loss deeply while looking for the good parts of what happened. That’s what we teach, at some level that’s our family’s religion, and it seems to have an effect. Not as much as the effect of temperament, but some effect.