An interesting question
Jul 5, 2008 Adoption
Roni said I should blog this: “[H]ow can you work with someone who thinks so little of the adoptive parent-child relationship? I know a few other mommas who can barely hear her name.” (I don’t read this as accusatory as it sounds — I think Roni’s genuinely curious and I kinda wondered when/if someone would ask me about that.)
To refresh your memory:
The most incendiary notion in Baby Love may be that, for Ms. Walker, being a stepparent or adoptive parent involves a lesser kind of love than the love for a biological child.
In an interview, Ms. Walker boiled the difference down to knowing for certain that she would die for her biological child, but feeling “not sure I would do that for my nonbiological child.”
from the NYT.
I’ve got to admit that I was surprised that Ms. Walker chose my essay for her anthology and I’m not sure why she chose it although she is nothing but complimentary not just about the essay but about my role as Madison’s mother. So even though she herself feels that she couldn’t love an adopted child as much as a bio child and even if she wonders if it could be true of anyone, she’s certainly been respectful of my relationship with Madison so there’s that. But the other thing is that lots and lots and lots of people feel this way only most of ‘em don’t have the platform of the NYT to share their feelings about it. It doesn’t bother me.
Here, I’ll tell you something funny. Once Pennie and I were talking about a mutual friend who recently adopted a baby internationally. Pennie said, “Wow, I just can’t imagine doing that. I don’t think I could love someone else’s child.” And I started laughing and she got embarrassed because, well, it’s pretty funny, don’t you think? I mean, that’s irony right there for you.
I’m sure there are a lot of my friends, family members and readers here who doubt they could love a child who was not biologically related to them as much as they could love their “own” child. Heck, I had to ask myself that question plenty of times and even still I worried I might be wrong. From caring for other people’s kids for so long, I knew that proximity goes a long way but in the dark of the night, I wondered. The gut-wrenching, instinctive, heedless love I had for Noah — would it appear? Would it take time to grow? Show up right away? Or (I’d cringe, wondering) would it always be a shallow echo?
As it turns out, proximity doesn’t go a long way — it goes the whole way. Did I ever write about the dream I had when Madison was brand new? There was a flood and we — the kids and I — were swept up in it. Without thinking I grabbed Madison because she was baby and she couldn’t swim and I watched Noah bob further way but knowing I’d made the right choice because he could swim. I woke up safe in the belief that my worries about loving were for naught. I love them both. Instinctively. Neither one is more my child.
But it’s hard to really and truly know that if you haven’t done it. Of course people — especially people swept up in that first-time love for a biological child — may not believe it. And of course someone who has raised a step child may mistakenly believe that they are the same thing (step kids, adopted kids) when there are barriers in most step relationships that can get in the way of bonding and make it a harder, slower (but certainly not impossible) trek.
So it doesn’t bother me. Although it does bother me to think that there are people who can only see Rebecca Walker in the context of this one statement because I sure don’t want to be seen in the context of a single statement (especially because I make such ignorant ones sometimes).
Finally, if I refused to work with all the people who fundamentally disagree with me I’d be out of so many jobs that I’d be living in a van down by the river. Especially if I weeded out all the folks who differ with me re., adoption philosophy seeing as how I am, apparently, a freak show. (My friend last night told me this. She assures me it is true.)
I’ve said before that I’m not threatened by these statements but I also get that Madison might be. My feeling about this is that she’s going to have to learn how to deal with it because statements like that aren’t going anywhere. People feel how they feel and we are all of us prone to assume that if we feel that way, everyone else must feel that way, too. Madison will have to stand up to that and I figure my shrugging it off will do more to reassure her than if I was demonstrating that I felt threatened by it. (How can I be threatened by something so fundamentally wrong about me and my daughter?)
July 5th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Interesting. I don’t have bio-sibs to compare myself with. However I wonder if she would say that she couldn’t love her husband as much as a bio-child or bio-family member?
equally I think she is being honest. If I asked Mom whether she would have preferred to have a bio-child I know the HONEST answer (whether she would give it to me…) would be yes. She suffered horrible guilt at being unable to provide Dad a bio-child. It isn’t nice to admit that, or think that, but it is honest.
Yet I know she, and Dad, love me. They chose to bring me into their lives and they have loved me (even if not always liked what I did) throughout.
July 5th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Not all biological parent-child relationships are loving. I believe you can love just about anybody you make your mind up to love. Especially a child, who comes to you asking for nothing and needing everything.
July 5th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
great post, dawn. i’ve been thinking and writing some about this lately, with the addition into our family of the first biological grandchild. i think many of the biases against adoption boil down to how most people beome parents (biologically), and the assumptions they make as a result. becoming a parent is so earth shattering that people make the link of that intensity to the way the baby came in. people assume that what they have is most “real” and so they assume that how other families are formed must be/feel less so. i totally get that assumption- even if i believe its false- and so don’t personally get bothered even if- as you said- those biases may affect my (adopted) son differently.
July 6th, 2008 at 6:05 am
I think it’s pretty common to think, when one is in love, that no one else ever loved this much or this way. And to think that you yourself could never love another person as much. I think a lot of parents with one child think they will never be able to love a second child as much as the first - bio or not. It’s just part of our egocentricity when in love. But then you have another lover, another relationship, or another child and your realize that yes, love expands and there is always another layer, deeper, stronger, more. We are made to love. It’s just fear or inexperience that puts limits on it.
July 6th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Of course you’d never know unless you’ve experienced it… isn’t that the way almost everything is in life? That’s why it’s too bad when people make such “know-it-all” statements about adopted kids vs “real” kids or saying things about situations they just really don’t have a clue. I guess that’s when we’ve just got to have grace as we walk along in life - and that’s what you’ve done so well.
Great post.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
How can I be threatened by something so fundamentally wrong about me and my daughter?
Okay, can I say that with that one little sentence I was able to shake off all of the negative feelings that have been building lately.
I don’t know why, but every negative thing someone says about international adoption and IA parents and just adoption in general has been wearing on my heart and I’ve been taking it all so personally… like it was a truth about me and my future child (I’m a PAP through China)
Not now though. You said exactly what I needed to hear.
Thanks!!!
July 8th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
That’s an interesting quote, as removed from its context it appears to be a slur against adoptive parenting.
In context, what Rebecca said is that she feels differently about the child she lived with in her 20s, the now-teenage son of her then-lover, than she feels about the child she baked with her current lover.
It would be strange if she felt otherwise, I think.
That raises all kinds of interesting questions about privilege, race, hetereonormativity…I could go on. But it really doesn’t have anything to do with adoptive families.
What speaks poorly of Rebecca is that she’s surprisingly ignorant about the differences between step-parenting in a relationship that is not and could not be (at the time) socially or legally recognized, and adoptive parenting. It’s mighty entitled of her to work in this field and not bother to learn the first thing about that distinction.
But hey, since I’ve done both (lived with a woman whose child I could not be even a step-parent to, and adopted a stranger’s child to raise as my own) I guess it would be surprising if I didn’t know more than she does about the topic.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
In my experience, biology and abuse have so often(tragically) been hand-in-hand that I don’t worry as much about “as good as.”
July 10th, 2008 at 6:02 am
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have also “step-parented” a nonlegal partner’s child and as far as my mother heart is concerned he was my first baby. I did always try to keep myself at a certain distance from him, knowing that I would not have a lifelong relationship with him or any parenthood rights or privileges. But crazy me, I fell in love with him anyway because he was a helpless child who loved me unconditionally. This made it impossible for me not to return the love. Yes. I would have thrown myself off a cliff for him if necessary.
I feel differently about my “own” adopted children because my responsibility for them is more concrete. But I do not love them more, or in a more real way.
Never had a bio baby, never plan to have one, so I can’t address that.
I’d appreciate it if people who never adopted would refrain from addressing THAT.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:05 am
It also occurs to me that this question of who you would die for can be much more general than a parenting question.
Would you, for example, rush into a crowded intersection to push a toddler out of the way of a bus, even if you never laid eyes on that kid before?
I think I would. I think many people have this “protect children” instinct with regard to the whole species, not just the kids they are personally responsible for.
So the “who would die for” question is really kind of silly, and I don’t think it has as much to do with love as with instinct. Love is soooooooo much more complicated than that.