And now Marley and Suz shoot us right back into adoption territory!!
Not that I’m ignoring Joy, there’s a busy discussion happening in the comments to this post. But I’ve written so much of it before (that Pennie has a right to her decision, that I refuse to dictate how she or Madison should feel — good or bad — about the adoption) that I’m not up to writing it again. I understand, too, that the divorce anology is way imperfect but I think the parallels work — it’s a legal family decision made by adults that hugely impacts kids often negatively but is made without their input. Also it’s another place where adults tend to downplay how the kids feel about it. So that’s why I chose it.
Reading the comments did make me think more about the term “parent” and “parenting,” which segues nicely to linking up Thorn‘s thoughts on Shannon saying that open adoption can queer a straight family. While Pennie and I don’t co-parent (because I hold the legal reins in our relationship) I think she’s still a parent. I think that when she’s with Madison she does parent by definition. I mean if she’s a mother, wouldn’t she be a parent? She tells Madison to calm down or helps her pour herself some milk or wipes a tushie now and then. Plus she gave birth to her, which is pretty darn parental. I don’t know. The terminology sometimes makes me so tired. We get so hung up on what Pennie IS and what she ISN’T but there aren’t words to help people understand her place in our family and in Madison’s life that don’t have a whole lot of baggage.
Thinking today about the “queering” of our family made me think about how people sometimes say of a gay couple, “Wait, so who’s the husband and who’s the wife?” I feel like that’s what they try to do to Pennie — but who’s the real mom? On the Facebook relative widget, I have Pennie labeled as “My Daughter’s Mother” because that’s it, isn’t it?
(sigh)
Marley asked:
Why do facts mean nothing when working on “progressive” adoption legislation–or even talking to people about adoption. You can spew out a list of facts a mile long and all you get back is yabutt. If there is a response at all. Obviously people prefer their personal mythologies and you/we are “uninformed,” “uneducated” or plain stupid. And, of course, there are also agendas, which are sacrosanct. Adoption saves babies, for instance, and you’re just a baybee killer.
Marley, you answered your own question. Sacrosanct agendas and baybee killers. (sigh again) And being deathly afraid of queers of any stripe. There’s one way to be a family and that family can have one mom, one dad and a smattering of babies although one boy and one girl for best results. God forbid anyone screw with that. I DON’T get it — especially when adoptees and first parents are standing there saying, “BUT THAT WASN’T OUR EXPERIENCE!” Truthfully I am still naive as hell because sometimes I read Marley‘s blog and think, “You have GOT to be KIDDING.”
Now we throw up our hands in frustration and note that this makes for another smooth segue right into Suz‘s question:
Do you think women, infertile women, will ever come to realize that they dont have a “right” to take the child of another simply becuase they cannot have their own? Do they realize they are transferring trauma? Why do some women think they deserve a child and others dont? Is it true that as long as there is no “cure” for infertility women will be actively harvesting the children of others?
Well, I think this misses the mark. It’s true that “family building” drives the industry and that the people who generally want to build families are we infertile types but we’re all operating under these huge fallacies about parenthood and womanhood and motherhood. I mean, we’re all buying the same bill of goods that motherhood is the be all and end all if you can do it right (i.e., one mom, one dad, one of each kid) and that we are living lives unfulfilled if we don’t have kids. Couple that with a hard-driving biological urge and you’ve got some pretty fierce entitlement.
Plus for infertiles like me, you have a whole world telling us to never give up — your child is out there somewhere. (I think the infertility industry does a number on women, too.) And we all know that any serious issues with adoption are dismissed out of hand (look at Marley’s question) and so the whole issue is pretty loaded to tilt towards getting grabby.
Most individual infertile women I know (and I know a lot) are pretty lovely people just like anyone else and — other than some screwy ones online — I haven’t met any that are actively harvesting the children of others. I mean, most of us want to build a family through adoption and when we start down that path we’re operating pretty blindly. If we come across an unscrupulous agency or lawyer, it’s not always easy to tell. Plus we have a whole world telling us that adoption is grand (it’s the same world telling potential birth moms that adoption is the most unselfish choice they can make). And the adoption reform movement is still hampered by constituents whose education tends to skew toward caustic. But I feel like the internet has also made a stronger, more effective dialog possible and that with institutions like Ethica and the Evan B. Donaldson Institute there can be real change made.
I think it’s important to bring the discussion to people outside of the adoption world — to people interested in families and in women’s rights and in parenthood. I know that people outside the triad are interested because many of my readers (and most of y’all aren’t connected to adoption) tell me so. I also think that we have to work on the rest of the world, too, because you’ve got folks like Ann Coulter saying that single mothers can only raise strippers and rapists and murderers and it’s those views — far more than baby yearning — that makes adoption possible.
More of what Ann said on FoxNews:
HANNITY: Let me go to Ann. Let me go back to this single mother — this single mother issue here, because you make a pretty profound point that isn’t often made.
You know, I thought we live in a land of the free and home of the brave — brave. You have choices in life. You know, for example, if you decide to get in the back of a car, and you start making out with your boyfriend and girlfriend, and you start removing one article of clothing after another.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: This is a choice to get in the car. This is a choice to take off the clothes. This is a choice to have sex. You do it of your own volition.
COULTER: Right. And it’s a choice not to give an illegitimate child up for adoption, which is, I say, surprisingly, I think to me, an interesting statistic, is that adopted children rank better on every measure of well-being.
They don’t think about being adopted. Their parents don’t think about them being adopted. They have less use of drugs, less run away, less criminal behavior than non-adopted children.
And adoption is discouraged while legitimacy and single mothers are elevated as if they are, you know, the personification of selfless virtue.
She may be one of the most offensive people saying it but she sure isn’t the only one. The money from us infertiles may drive adoption but it’s our economic and moral damning of “inappropriate” mothers that keeps us supplied.
Ann Coulter isn’t getting paid by adoption agencies, she’s just steeped in anti-woman rhetoric and wants to create policy based on it. She’s not the only one.
Wonderful answers, once again.
Learning a lot… as always.
Thanks, Dawn, for all your recent answers and especially for not minding that I used your family as an example. I think the analogy you make is a great one. I think the “but who’s the man?” response to our relationship is very much like “who’s the REAL mom?” would be in yours, and in both cases the people asking are often ones who should really know better.
Thorn, I was going to crack a joke about your picture and say, “Wait — you guys KISS? But aren’t you both GIRLS?” but then I was afraid you wouldn’t know I was joking.
(posted on blog and by email)
Reading your blog, I sometimes think about the inverse of adoption queering your family – I think that being queer sometimes makes my family adoptive.
Legally, there is no adoption in our family. My partner and I each gave birth, and where we live (Canada) we are both recognised as parents of both children from the very beginning. As a lesbian couple, there is no difference between the forms we fill out and those that heterosexual parents complete at birth. There is no “second parent adoption”. We just checked off the little box that said “mother” on the birth registration rather than the one that said “father” when writing in the name of the non-birth parent. We have the same rights and responsibilities as other parents at the birth of our kids.
That said, we do have a known sperm donor in our lives. Someone we met with the express purpose of making babies with him. He is around a lot, the kids know him, he sometimes participates in their care. But, even in Canada, there can only be two legal parents. I find a lot of usefulness in discussions about how to build a family that includes adoptive and birth parents when I think about how we want to build ours. We also are finding a dearth of appropriate kinship terms for example. (The adoption community is way ahead of the queers on that one!)
Gamete donation is not the same as relinquishing a child to adoption, however, reading this blog has shifted me from “He’s the donor, not the dad” to “He’s the dad and not the dad.” As our children have grown, I’m finding it easier to live with the paradoxes. Although I still believe that “love makes a family” I am not threatened by the importance of blood ties.
I’m glad that you are among those sharing your stories on the internet. The queer community spends so much time defending the idea that it’s okay for us parent at all — I’m glad that there are allies like you asking some tough questions, and exploring what new forms of family look like on the ground. I think it helps all of us be more compassionate towards each other and the children we are raising.
Barf on Coulter. In agreement with you there.
Curious, lets pretend (and I dont pretend well so bear with me), that the world suddenly finds it more acceptable for the all babies to stay with their natural mothers or families of origin. Imagine a world where it is considered akin to abortion to take a child from its family. What happens to those that cannot conceive? Are they on board or are they continuing to do all they can to obtain a child? It sounds like you are suggesting that if we fix the problem of young, poor, single mothers we somehow magically solve the demand created by those want a child at any cost.
Is that your thought or is my own experience clouding my ability to understand?
I tend to think that until we “solve”, “cure” (insert our own word here since I am clearly not infertile and may use inappropriate verbiage), the adoption industry will rage on like california wildfires.
Suz, do you mean akin to forced abortion? Because I think we’re both pro-choice even if we’re not pro-abortion, right?
Do you mean will infertile people still feel bitter that other people can have babies? Because, yes, infertile people likely will still avoid baby showers. And yes, if the ability to adopt shut down here, they would just keep going overseas. But I don’t think the demand is at the root of the issue. I think the demonizing of “wrong” mothers is at the root of the issue. Georgia Tann was able to exploit poor mothers and kidnap their children because no one cared about poor mothers. (They still don’t.) Likewise the Orphan Trains. People have always been infertile but adoption didn’t become a way to “cure” infertility until people decided that one way to cure poverty was to take away the children of the poor and “unfit.” I say we work on the biases against the “unfit” so that we can truly work for children (some of whom really do need families who are not biologically related to them) and women truly have a free choice (and adoption is no longer about taking from the have nots and giving to the haves).
I think to lay the blame at the feet of your average infertile woman calling up an agency is to miss the bigger picture. Not that this means we shouldn’t try to educate ourselves (we infertile adopters) or that reformers shouldn’t target wannabe adoptive parents, but that’s one drop in a very large bucket.
(posted on blog and sent via email)
Yes, very much pro choice. Yes, very large bucket. Sigh.
Not intending to lay blame. I struggle to see how one side can fix the other or vice versa. I think they both need to be fixed -hence your large bucket.
Totally unrelated, but I would welcome future posts from you, or anyone, on what is being done (if anything) to “cure” (again, bad words, I know) infertility.
While I work to support the cause of keepign children with their families of origin, I would also love to see women who wanted their “own, real children” in the first place be able to conceive and carry them to term.
I suppose I want everyone to win.
Yes, call me Pollyanna.
Suz: Honestly, I’m just not that hip to what’s happening in the fertility world these days. My experience with it was pretty negative because my take was that most of the treatments were ineffectual, unsafe and stupid expensive. I felt like my docs wanted to push me down a conveyer built without hearing what my limits were and always trying to get me to keep my eye on “the prize” because that’s how they make money. They’re not exactly interested in helping people come to terms with being child-free or stopping with one (or two or whatever). Because the infertility world is ultimately just a great big bloated money making machine, too. Sure there are good docs (and good adoption social workers) but the money is in treatment and that’s what a lot of clinics push. And this goes, too, to not respecting women and not making it easy for women to bear children younger when their fertility is higher (why in the world don’t we have safe and affordable subsidized daycare for young parents going to college??? Why are most of the university daycares full of professors’ kids when professors can afford to hire pricey caregivers instead of students’ kids since students are usually strapped?) and forcing women to choose between career and home. Why isn’t there better parental leave? A reasonable parent-track? Why isn’t there better access to reproductive health treatment so that women can get regular paps and treat STDs before they become an issue? No it wouldn’t cure all the infertility but it’d be a start.
It all comes down to how we treat women. (I’m glad we’re raising good boys, Suz!)
(answered on blog and via email)
Sigh. Yeah, again, all valid points. I understand.
What WOULD those agencies and doctors do for money if they could not take advantage of women and children? If, gaps, someone “cured” infertility, how would all those clinics and doctors make a living?
Where would the money come from to help those young moms keep and raise their children?
Money. Money. Money.
Grrr.
I’m just so glad that you posted the Ann Coulter thing. She’s like our big tent that no matter what side of adoption you fall on, you can think she is a nut.
Oh.My.Gosh. That Ann Coulter thing is INSANE. WOW. Just…wow.
Parents and children should just…FORGET about their adoption? WTF? That’s effing insane?!
Wow.
I do find that people have a hard time understanding how I can feel my daughter is “mine” and someone ELSE’S too, and that that fact doesn’t make her LESS “mine”….so I see that confusion a lot. Why can’t she have two mothers and two fathers? She, after all, DOES. And just because I think of her adoption pretty much daily doesn’t mean that I think of her as less “my” child than my son….there is no difference in the love, but my daughter includes added love of her biological family.
I think that people really DO NOT understand adoption and they FURTHERMORE don’t get openness. Like at all.
” Imagine a world where it is considered akin to abortion to take a child from its family. What happens to those that cannot conceive? Are they on board or are they continuing to do all they can to obtain a child? It sounds like you are suggesting that if we fix the problem of young, poor, single mothers we somehow magically solve the demand created by those want a child at any cost.”
Suz, I’m not infertile but my marriage is–no matter how hard we tried, neither of us wound up pregnant. So we’re an atypical adoptive family.
Having said that about my own inherent biases: I can easily imagine a world in which those who have babies are compelled to parent, or to place within the kinship network. That world is my neighborhood, as no Indian tribal member has the option of a unilateral, extra-familial placement of her birthed children.
Among my co-workers there are a half-dozen Indian women in the 26 to 49 years age range. Of these women, who live in the world you’re thinking of, 33% have revealed to me that their birthed child(ren) was/is being raised by another family member or tribal member. (I have never asked, but my kid’s appearance has caused all of the Indians who know us to ask a lot of very personal questions.) Also, 100% have raised/are raising children they did not birth.
Anecdotal but typical of their demographics. What that says to me is, If the law compels adults to treat children’s interests in connection to their bio roots on a par with adults’ interests in wanting a baby–it can happen. And folks who can’t conceive are part of the web of family that raises the tribe’s kids.
Since it is being done, it can be done, but there’s a cultural value that sees children as the responsibility of a network larger than the nuclear family, rather than as the product and the property of a one-man-one-woman marriage (best case, all others are inferior).
I would echo what Dawn says about the reproductive business. We went in thinking we would try just a few times, and two years later and many dollars poorer, we were left with two miscarriages and had done many more procedures than originally intended. The lure is great once you walk through those doors, and I have to wonder if my infertility treatments could have been a factor in my cancer since my cancer is estrogen positive — and I pumped myself full of hormones during those two years. *sigh* It’s too late for regrets, but the reproductive business is certainly just that, a business.
I haven’t kept up with it either, but as a business, I’m sure they’re doing all they can to make bigger and better treatments so that more of their patients are getting (and hopefully staying) pregnant. That’s where the money is, after all. I don’t mean to sound so bitter, but it’s like a hamster wheel that you’re not even aware that you’ve gotten on when you go in, and you just keep running and running until you’re so worn out that you just can’t run anymore. There’s always the allure of “maybe if we try this . . . ” And I wasn’t even that married to the idea of MY flesh and blood, MY OWN baby. But I also shudder when someone says that I wanted someone else’s baby. I never thought of it that way, believe it or not. I just wanted to be a mom. Yes, I was that naive.
I’m going on and on and on and should probably just stop. I do want to say one more thing, and that’s that I just watched the movie “The Hours,” which I’ve seen before and just love. I know it’s a work of fiction, but the one woman, Laura Brown, is the one in the 1950s who ends up abandoning her children and sees abandoning them as keeping herself alive, that if she would have had to kill herself if she had stayed in that life. I know, fiction — BUT, honest, not everyone who has a child is really meant to be a mother, or actually wants to be a mother. MOST do, yes. I hope I don’t get flamed for this, because I’m on your side, Suz. I want family preservation too. I just don’t see it as a black-and-white thing where adoption is abolished 100%. Actually, in the movie the kids aren’t adopted out because there’s a father there. But if there weren’t?, or there weren’t other family who were willing or able to take care of the children? — I still believe that there will always be some cases where adoption will be necessary. I hope those cases will be less and less. I just think someone or someones needs to get to the pregnant girls and offer them options or at least let them know “the other side of the story,” that it is possible to raise their own child. It’s just hard to do with the agencies, families and whoever else preaching (almost everyone else?!) preaching the other side!
PhoenixRising – Love your comment. Thank you for sharing.
Judy :
BUT, honest, not everyone who has a child is really meant to be a mother,
Understood and agreed but would also offer that every woman who adopts is not MEANT to be a mother either.
Being female does not guarantee you can concieve OR that you will be a good mother.
As for abolishing adoption, agreed as well but offer that I would like to see it abolished as it stands today and for the focus to change from finding babies for infertile couples to finding/keeping families for children – AND that the focus is on the family of origin FIRST and foremost. But as noted, you know my position.
: D
Judy, I know what you are trying to say – but *any* woman who gives birth to a child IS her child’s mother. There’s no ‘meant to’ about it. She just IS, regardless. Maybe she’s not cut out to be a parent. But that’s a different matter entirely.
PhoenixRising, if I understand what you’re saying correctly, I fail to see how any woman can be *compelled* to parent if she doesn’t want to, and as far as that child being raised in its family of origin is concerned, I don’t see how family members can be forced either. They CAN be encouraged and supported. Which, I certainly agree, should always, as far as is reasonable, be the case.
Also, it seems to me that the First Nation model is rooted in a cultural tradition that *can* be enforced via legislation. However, IMO, it would not be possible to (successfully) impose a similar formula on society in general through legislation alone – not without altering the cultural underpinnings first, that is. And that would be a mammoth task. Changing minds and hearts takes time, effort and reasoned persuasion.
Of course, I entirely agree that the business of adoption should be finding families for kids who need them and NOT to supply children to those who want them. The trawling done by agencies is quite horrible and I think many paps turn a blind eye to this.
To Dawn. On a personal note, I find it hard to believe that many people actually feel *bitter* about other people having babies. But maybe you’re right and it’s a common trait.
Envy feeds on entitlement and vice versa.
Just to add a particularly bothersome twist: I think the new frontiers of infertility “treatment” involves donor eggs, surrogates, and other permutations that further complicate the definition of “mother,” and throw in a whole new person to be in denial about. So “curing” infertility isn’t going to eliminate the fact of children having two mothers. People just have to get over the idea of exclusive motherhood, that’s all.
Not only know your position, Suz, but actually probably agree with it or the basic tenets of it, using different language though — as an adoptive mom, I would, of course. As I’ve said before, I do believe in family preservation, so that means that I believe in preserving the original family whenever possible. And of course I think that the focus should be shifted on finding families for children, not finding children for families. I think we have many more (most, probably) points of agreement than disagreement.
And you are totally right that there are woman who aren’t meant to parent who are both bio and adoptive. Absolutely and very sadly for the children.
Kippa, yes, of course that woman is a mother. I’m sorry if my clumsy word choice sounded like she wasn’t a mother. I guess she may not chose to mother (verb), but she is a mother (noun).
People just have to get over the idea of exclusive motherhood, that’s all.
People equate motherhood with who gives birth as well as who raises the child. Lets remove the first option and consider what it does. (This is a serious question and not meant to be snarky to commentor.)
Could we do this by simply eliminating the woman who gives birth? Lets go all sci-fi and say cloning and fertilize egg and sperm outside of womb and grow fetus in say a glass case.
Does this solve this problem of “exclusive motherhood” by granting it to no one?
It would seem that to some the “value” of the child is that the woman/mother gave birth. Are some infertiles attempting to mimic that experience by adopting a child to call their own and erase the fact that they could not conceive?
Does removing the ability for anyone to give birth lessen the value of the child? Are those that cannot concieve no longer quite as interested in parenting since now the playing field is level? (Cue PD James in Children of Men)
How about we create a league of women as in Handmades Tale who do nothing but produce children for others? Let them do it of their own accord (think legalized prostitution). Does that change the results?
Judy, you know I love ya… but I’m with Kippa on this one. A woman who gives birth IS a mother. She might be a crappy mother, but she’s a mother.
An infertile woman who wants a child but does not have one, is not a mother. She might make an excellent mother if she ever becomes one, but she is not yet a mother.
“Meant to be” has no place in adoption, infertility, parenting, love, and family matters. She’s either a mother or not. That’s it, that’s all. If she is a mother, and is doing an abusive and neglectful job of it, we have to get the kid away from her. Understood. If she is a mother, and she lacks resources to be a good mother, let’s help her get the resources. If she thinks she will kill herself because she feels so trapped by daily parenting, well, let’s help her figure out a way to find some personal fulfillment in parenting.
Someone mentioned never having met an infertile woman who wants to take someone else’s baby. Well, of course not–they want THEIR baby, the one they feel entitled to. If the baby happened to come out of some unknown vagina, well, it was just “meant to be” for whatever reason. (Usually some ridiculously self-centered reason like, “God wanted to teach ME about patience” or “God wanted ME to learn to appreciate parenthood so I could enjoy MY baby, when he comes, all the more.”)
The whole mythology of adoption is that people can get their OWN babies. So of course no one’s out to get someone else’s baby–that would require acknowledging there IS another person. It would require acknowledging the babies WERE ours at some time. It is much much easier to believe it was all meant to be and God put that baby in some other woman’s stomach but He really meant all along for that baby to belong to the infertile woman.
Certainly not all infertile women are like this, but honestly I’m trying to think of any I know who WEREN’T very focused on getting a baby with hardly any thought for the first mother, at some point in their journeys. Pretty much all of them are this way at some point. Some grow, some “get it” and become our dearest advocates and friends, and for that I am deeply grateful–but I’d have to say that the majority of infertile women I’ve ever met DO have a lot of entitlement at least at the beginning of the process.
I am not trying to be mean, my guess is I’d have been the same if faced with infertility rather than crisis pregnancy. That’s the whole point–it’s widespread, it’s common, it’s natural.
And I do think that plays a significant part in fueling domestic infant adoption. Sorry, but I do. It might not be the root of everything, but… if there are literally NO customers lining up for our babies, no brokers would be in a hurry to receive our babies. What businesses want a product they can’t sell?
Many implications and tangent thoughts here about race, racism, foster care, etc… but this is long enough, yes?
Took too long on my comment… sorry if it’s irrelevant at this point. Ignore.
I am overwhelmed at this response.
About the Coulter thing, does she even realize that so many adoptions happen because a women was raped? Does she think that its this womens fault she was raped?
She is probably a lucky whore who has unsafe sex all the time and is somehow spared from the possible consiquences.
She is just being rude, as selfish people are, I wish people in the media would think more carefully about what they say.
I am so glad Dawn that you are so unselfish in sharing all your wisdom and insight.
I am so glad to read all the comments made. They are opening up a world to me that I really need to know.
Nothing valuable to add.
Just thank you Dawn for all you willingness to tell the truth.
You are a breath of fresh air to my mind.
It’s OK, Nic.
It all comes back to why I shouldn’t write about adoption — it’s so muddled paradoxical and I might say 100 times on my blog that I believe in family preservation but I still can’t. say. things. right. for the life of me that I seem to need to leave it up to more articulate people like Dawn.
*le sigh*, indeed.
Oh Judy, I know you get it. And that you are on the side of justice and compassion and ethics. Overall we very, very much agree.
Though I’m not sure I buy the idea of a woman who hates parenthood (yet is a mother) having only two options… suicide or abandonment.
It was just a book and a movie, that’s all, Nic. I was just relaying it.
Yes, hence the smiley.
Still friends?
Still friends?
Always.
xo,
J
I don’t know about curing infertility, but there’s a lot we could do societally to cure the enormous gender-rooted headcake that plagues many women who are unable to become pregnant or successfully give birth to a viable child. We could, for example, get rid of the backwards notion that Motherhood = proof of “Real Womanhood”. We could deprogram the thinking that equates a woman’s reproductive capacity with her value to her family and community. We could root out all the bizarre religious BS that leads women to believe that fertility is a blessing and infertility a sign of some deity’s displeasure. You know, whacky sh*t like that, which certainly contributes to the desperation and trauma some women experience around infertility.
Says me, the inexplicably infertile woman who gets both kudos and dookie from her various peanut galleries because she’s *not* in agnst over her inability to bring forth live young. You can’t win, my friends — if you’re insufficiently effed up by your infertility, there’s a whole host of people ready & willing to pathologize you for that as well. We have found this to be even more true since we decided not to continue with our plans to adopt (ironically aborted for all the reasons an individual might terminate a pregnancy — $$, health, emotional stress, ethical concerns, and various other life plans that aren’t lining up nicely timing-wise). I swear, the pressure on infertile people to adopt is crazy! I got off the Infertility Treatment Treadmill too quickly to be able to make a comparison, but it’s freaky how many folks believe infertile people have been put on the planet specifically to save all the little orphans and bastards out there from their respective fates-worse-than-death.
(And when I say “bastard”, please know I mean it in the Bastard Nation sense and not in the perjorative. Thanks.)
Elaine Tyler May’s “Barren In The Promised Land” is a great examination of the American socieetal response to infertility, if anyone wants a good read.
Oh, and re: PhoenixRising’s post about Native American community childrearing – If we were in that cultural melieu (sp?), we would welcome the place that the community had for us as “family parents”. That’s sort of what we’re falling into now as non-parents, in that we’re helping my SIL raise her sons and serving as support when possible for friends who are raising children under stress. We both grew up with adults in our lives who were able to offer us a lot of time and attention because they didn’t have children of their own (biological or adopted), so we’re already familiar and comfortable with the role people like us can play as “peripheral parents” or even as hands-on parents if needed. It’s entirely possible that our nephew will spend some of his teenage years with us, for example. It’s also entirely possible that someone in our community may need us to act as temporary or permanent guardians at some point. We don’t feel comfortable getting involved with the formal Child Welfare system of foster parenting, but certainly there’s room for people like us to contribute to raising the children around us.
These kinds of childcare/family arrangements aren’t a big part of mainstream Euro-American culture, which I think puts mainstream Euro-American families at a huge disadvantage. There’s so much emphasis on “child ownership” in the legal sense — not that formal guardianships aren’t legal arrangements, but they’re different than the permanent legal severings and reassignments that characterize adoption as currently practiced. I really don’t understand why we can’t expand the parameters of what it means to be a Parent (or even just Family, if you will) so that a better safety net exists for children and families who need that support. I don’t mean to romanticize Indian Child Welfare (ICW), but it does seem that majority-population Child Welfare Services could benefit from incorporating those models more fully.
On the other hand, I can’t say I don’t like the freedom I have *not* to take hands-on everyday responsibility for raising a child… ANY child, not just my nephew or another child not born from my body. I suppose that’s what it really came down to in terms of deciding against adoption: Given the complications involved and the fact that we aren’t naive about adoption or adoption ethics, we realized we just didn’t WANT it badly enough to participate in a current-day adoption. And our agency is great in terms of ethics — we felt very comfortable there, as much as you can when you’re concerned about adoption ethics. That’s probably where I veer away from the experience of infertile people who have adopted… at the end of the day, they wanted to be parents even under the current practices, and I didn’t.
And I don’t say that to make myself out to be Better Than or anything – I’m just thinking out loud here on the internets. I consider us lucky in that we see alternate venues for nurturing children, and are satisfied with those options. Much of our whole experience with infertility boils down to luck.
De-lurking because this discussion is so fascinating…
Whether or not I am absolutely infertile remains to be seen. At the very least I am reproductively challenged, and will need medical intervention to get pregnant, if I ever do. And I am resistant to the idea that my stress over that is caused by society. Certainly there’d be less nosy and rude comments if society had a healthier attitude, and that would be nice. But to say that grief over infertility comes from society seems dismissive to me. (Although I’m sure that was not anyone’s intent!) My sense of myself is that my desire to be a mother is innate and deeply rooted. Not saying that there’s anything wrong with anyone who doesn’t have it–to each her own. But to me it seems very natural, which makes sense seeing as an instinct to nurture is necessary for the survival of our species.
In response to Suz’s question, please believe me when I say I have absolutely no desire to cause separation between mothers and children! In fact it’s issues like the ones Suz brings up that give me the strongest sense of desperation with regards to my fertility treatments. I start feeling “These treatments HAVE to work, because otherwise my only chance to become a mother is through adoption, and if I’m not careful to do everything right I might cause some woman out there to unnecessarily lose her child, even though that wasn’t my intention, and that would make me a miserable excuse for a human being!” Talk about pressure! There’s nothing that society in general can through at me that can hold a candle to it! But it does not make me want to raise a child any less.
If the treatments don’t work, the temptation to rationalize what I really want to do will be enormous–that much I can tell already. Hopefully I will not stop asking the hard questions and listening to the challenging voices, but I haven’t yet been put to the test. I think the adoption reform has to change the attitudes toward adoption in society as a whole, rather than specifically targeting infertile women in the decision-making process. It’s a whole lot easier to listen to difficult veiwpoints now, when I don’t have to make any decisions yet and the conversation is still kind of abstract. And I think it may also be able easier later on, when decisions are safely behind you. It would be hardest in the middle of the process–and unfortunately I’ll be that’s when a lot of women encounter these issues for the first time.
Ruth, I don’t at all mean to dismiss any experience of infertility-related grief or what a Swedish friend calls “Childwish”. There’s such enormous variance in individual experiences of infertility, as evidenced right here by the difference between your, my, Judy’s, Dawn’s, and other participants’ reactions to their inability to become pregnant or carry a pregnancy to term. For example, when I speak of my “lucky infertility” experience, I include the fact that infertility for me = never ever becoming pregnant, and therefore never experiencing miscarriage or stillbirth. For me, that’s been a blessing – I’ve never had a pregnancy to lose, and therefore don’t feel that loss. Other women I’ve spoken with have felt the opposite, that they mourned their miscarriages but were comforted by the fact that they had at least become pregnant.
That said, I do honestly believe that many fertility-challenged women suffer with internalized misogyny that complicates the already difficult experience of not being able to have a baby when we want one. I don’t believe that we came up with the message of Real Woman = Childbearer on our own, nor do I believe that there’s no societal element to the notion that “good” women “deserve” to be mothers more than “bad” women do (with “bad” usually defined as engaging in some stigmatizing behavior, such as non-marital sex, susbtance use, being poor, being single, etc.). I’m not saying that we wouldn’t still feel infertility-related trauma or grief if we were living in a society that didn’t so strictly monitor our sexual behavior and define our worth in accordance with our ability to produce babies – infertility is, for many people, a serious blow to their core sense of self regardless of any outside factors. But I do believe the ego-twisting that can result, which can lead us into de-humanizing other women who are able to have what we so desperately want (to grow babies), stems in large part from internalized misogyny. That sense of entitlement, and that sense of “I’m hurting so much, only a baby will fix it, I’ll do whatever it takes to get one, and That Woman doesn’t DESERVE that baby/isn’t a Real Mother anyway!”, can lead us to treat other women in ways that I honestly do not believe we as humans would go if we didn’t suffer so much societally-programmed baggage around female reproductive capacity.
So I don’t at all mean to be dismissive. If anything, I mean to acknowledge the complexity and depth of the grief some women experience around infertility, and to shine a light on places where we can let go of BS that we shouldn’t be having to carry anyway. Messaging that makes us believe we’re “not a Real Woman” if we can’t have babies doesn’t serve us anymore than messaging that denies the reality of another woman’s motherhood simply because she is not raising her child herself. I see those as flip sides of a very ugly coin.
And I may not be articulating myself very well. I haven’t really sat down and written out this line of thought before, so it may be clumsy.
No worries, Lula, I wasn’t offended. It was just that none of the comments from the other infertile women on this thread fully rang true for my experience, and that pushed me to speak up for myself, which is a good thing! It is really interesting to read the range of reactions that we have to a similar predicament.
You may very well be right that internalized misogyny is responsible for the shame and bitterness that translates into dehumanizing behavior. Although I have felt lots of anxiety and stress, I have not really felt shame or bitterness thus far. I enjoyed Christmas cards that came with baby pictures, I don’t wince when I see pregnant coworkers, I don’t feel a need to avoid baptisms or baby showers. And maybe that’s just because I may have a long way to go in this journey, and maybe it will get worse before it gets better. Shame and bitterness seem to be common emotions and I’m not going to be arrogant enough to assume that I’ll be immune if this journey drags on and on. On the other hand, maybe my feminist upbringing by my awesome parents has spared me from some institutionalized misogyny, and maybe that will help me avoid de-humanizing other women. I hope so.
I have noticed the use and misunderstanding of words from time to time. The first book on adoption that I read (luckily) was “The family of adoption” by Joyce Maguire Pavao. I like how she clarifies this (hope it is okay to quote):
“The truth is that both sets of parents are “real.” During the developmental stages of early childhood, when a child’s thinking is concrete, an adopted child needs to understand that there are two mothers and two fathers, but there is only one set of, or one parent. The role of parent must be made clear and distinguished from that of mother and father.
A child, after all, clearly understands that there can be many mothers and fathers. People may have multiple grandmothers and grandfathers, a godmother and godfather, a stepmother or stepfather– and they may also have a birth mother and a brith father. In all adoptions, legal and emotiona, it is the roles, not the labels, that must be most carefully defined for the child.”
Just a thought.
“n the other hand, I can’t say I don’t like the freedom I have *not* to take hands-on everyday responsibility for raising a child… ANY child, not just my nephew or another child not born from my body.”
Yes. The cultural differences that make the broader definition of Family possible have another side. Among Navajo one of the most insulting things you can say about someone is, ‘He acts like he doesn’t have any relatives’. Meaning, he’s got a nice truck and a warm house but his nephews are running wild in the street in Albuquerque or Phoenix.
In majority culture that stepping away from one’s roots is ‘making it’. When my SIL placed her newborn after hiding her pregnancy from family, she was told by the advisers in the adoption industry that she was going to be able to rise above her upbringing and ‘make something of herself’. Which is a completely different way to frame ‘acting like [she] doesn’t have any relatives’.
I am so lucky to live and work in a place where the mainstream white American way of seeing things is not the majority way.
While I think keeping a child within their extended family is the ideal and to be strongly encouraged – I would really like to see that integrated into the N.A adoption model (though I don’t hold out much hope so long as private agencies out to make big bucks continue to be allowed to run the show) – it’s not always possible or even desirable.
I’m thinking here of tragic situations like that of little Jeffrey Baldwin, where CSS were so anxious to place within natural family that they egregiously overlooked the fact that the grandparents who eventually caused Jeffrey’s death had previously been convicted of child abuse. So long as the same degree of vigilance is applied to natural family as to outsiders my preference would always be for child to remain with suitable relatives. But relative doesn’t necessarily = suitable.
A small gripe, for which I hope, as someone who has moved around the world a great deal before settling down – and who knows a number of young people who have taken jobs elsewhere rather than be unemployed or horribly under employed at home – I will be excused.
In majority culture there is no real equivalent to tribe to provide the sort of extended care that benefits children most. Unfortunately it’s something that can’t be simulated or conjured out of the blue. Whether we like it or not, we live in a fragmented society. So I personally don’t accept that, while it *may* be a sign of such, stepping away from one’s roots is in and of itself, an indication that a person simply wants to ‘make it’.
It’s not always mainstream white American culture with its materialistic values that prompts people to up and leave their communities. Sometimes they just need to earn a living – and occasionally even to earn money to send to help people back home.
And then here we are, back at the Queer Family vs. Euro-American Nuclear Family Fetish. The U.S. has a long and ugly history of pathologizing non-nuclear family structures — to the point where sovereign indigneous tribes had to get the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) passed in order to halt the wholesale removal of Indian children by the Indian Adoption Project and other federal & state child welfare policies that didn’t understand or respect the validity of the kind of extended family and community child care networks (I won’t even go into the whole forced-enculturation Boarding School inter-generational trauma thing, in the interest of space and the need for me to finish some work here before noon). Tribal communities and families have always been way too Queer for majority-population comfort. We just had a big argument about the ICWA and adoption on Strollerderby because of that recent illegal-adoption-in-progress that was disrupted in Utah. That was a pretty freaky conversation – I always forget how controversial the ICWA is, and how threatening to the majority-population’s view of sole parental autonomy in decision-making around guardianship of dependent children.
I can’t believe you have written that the demand isn’t the problem.
Haven’t you ever taken economics? the demand is exactly the problem.
If it wasn’t for the demand, people like myself would not live their lives as someone else’s toy.
Joy, the demand is part of the problem but it’s not the whole problem. I also think that pitting women against each other (infertiles vs. expectant mothers) helps folks feel more entrenched in their views by putting them on the defensive. I’d like to see adoption reform at a policy level and at a cultural level as well as at a personal level. And I’d like to keep personal attacks out of our efforts since the do so much to keep us from understanding and hearing each other. There’s a great divide that really needs to be bridged.
Demand is a given, now that adoption is considered an acceptable (even lauded) way to add children to a family. People who want to be parents and either can’t or don’t want to grow biological children can certainly *want* to adopt; I don’t see any way to restrict the desire fueling the demand. But that demand only creates the opportunity for an industry to arise and/or flourish. That opportunity is easy enough to exploit within a capitalist society that commodifies pretty much everything, including children — but the United States could certainly implement federal policies that restrict the business and financial-gain aspects of adoption as an industry. I’m not a Liberarian, so I’m fine with the notion of a paternalistic government saying “NO, you don’t get to do X simply because there are people out there with $$ who want to adopt babies” and “NO, you don’t get to do Y simply because you have $$ and want to adopt”. The demand population doesn’t *have* to be catered to like a spoiled preschooler, no matter how much money there is to be made from them. And it’s not like restrictions don’t already exist on the state level, as evidenced by crap like denying adoption to same-sex couples. There’s plenty of demand there, but gay/lesbian folks are still S.O.L. in certain states despite their demand (and despite their access to the required amount of $$).
There’s deamnd for slave labor too, otherwise illegal human-labor trafficking wouldn’t be such a problem. But regardless of whether the U.S. is doing an effective job of enforcing anti-trafficking law, such laws do still exist — they’ve been developed and implemented because the U.S. public consciousness holds that slavery is morally wrong (with certain unfortunate caveats like incarcerated folks, folks without legal immigration status, and other de-humanized populations that are making me feel now that this isn’t such a good analogy after all).
There’s tons of demand for illegal drugs too, as well as tons of money to be made… no free market there regardless, what with the War On Drugs and all. The possibility of a best-practice-policy-driven War On Adoption Industry exists, and is being fought for. I have deep personal doubts about whether the changes most of us want to see will come about on the federal level anytime soon, but doesn’t mean the structures for reform aren’t already in existance despite the demand.
“While I think keeping a child within their extended family is the ideal and to be strongly encouraged – … – it’s not always possible or even desirable.”
For me, I saw my options as abortion, parenting, baby with my extended family, or placing for adoption. I didn’t feel ready/able to parent but I wanted to see who my child would grow up to be so I chose adoption. However, if adoption had been removed as an option or become difficult to pursue, I would have chosen abortion rather than letting the child go to my extended family. Or I would have chosen safe haven if it was still available somewhere. People focus on the “extended family” as options but for many people, “family” is a word that conjures nightmares. People who have supportive close trustworthy families are already considering them as an option…and people who don’t usually have good reasons.
You know, not all infertile couples adopt, so railing against infertile women is kind of…eh.
Also, isn’t anybody else’s head tilting like the RCA dog’s? All this talk of infertile women feeling entitled to everybody’s babies, and so little talk about infertile men, or infertile couples. Just women.
“I also think that pitting women against each other (infertiles vs. expectant mothers)…”
“…there’s a lot we could do societally to cure the enormous gender-rooted headcake that plagues many women who are unable to become pregnant…”
“An infertile woman who wants a child…”
Do men exist in this discussion?
Oh, and for the record, one of the reasons we didn’t pursue adoption is because I could not reconsile the current state of adoption in this country with the happy win/win situation that all the “JUST ADOPT!” folks seem to think it is. So I’m not exactly coming from a “Yes! Give more babies to infertile couples” standpoint, over here. I think it’s a pretty ethically messed up arrangement these days.
Ginger said: “People who have supportive close trustworthy families are already considering them as an option…and people who don’t usually have good reasons.”
Good point, also the father and his family have to be considered as well.
My son’s first mom didn’t want certain people in her family and his father’s family to be in any position of power or authority, or even moderate influence, in his life. It was a major factor in her decision.
re., extended families
Also there are families who aren’t interested in or able to help.
(sent via email and posted on blog)
Okay I am going to be really really honest and hope it is taken in the spirit it’s intended… which is to further discussion, not to try to divide further or hurt anyone. And I freely admit I am a little raw lately and working through some stuff.
So here goes:
Above I said this is not meant to “divide further.” And the thing is… I do mean “further.” Because there is already a divide. Whether it can be bridged or not… I don’t know. Maybe we can talk respectfully to each other from our respective sides of the chasm, but bridging the chasm completely? To be honest, I’m not sure.
FWIW, I AM angry at the entitlement that seems to exist in yucky quantities in infertile women who start the adoption process. That’s not railing against ALL infertile women, it’s railing against the ones who (a) adopt AND (b) do it with a sense of entitlement that is damaging to other women.
So comments about entitlement aren’t directed at the women who never adopt, obviously, because this is a discussion about adoption.
Furthermore, comments about entitlement aren’t direct at women who don’t have that sense of entitlement, again obviously, because that’s not the group of people we’re talking about here.
Whether entitlement is the root of the problem or not… well, I don’t think there is A root. There are many roots, many problems, and plenty of “blame” to go around. There isn’t one solution that will solve it all–it’s going to take many solutions, many reforms, on many levels.
I do though think demand is PARTLY an issue, and that it should be an issue that is okay to talk about.
Lula’s comments were very interesting, about how it’s probably harder to tackle these issues (ethics, reform, etc) in the midst of making decisions about adopting. I’ve never adopted so what do I know, but… that sounds right? It makes sense to me that we should start changing society’s opinions of adoption (and women and motherhood etc). So that before they even come to the adoption decision, they’re already inclined to think of the first mother and the child as individuals, rather than as means to an end.
At the same time, I am not sure it’s worthless to address the demand issue even at the point of just prior to adopting. There ARE women who will take it all in and listen and frankly, choose not to participate in the system, or choose to do their absolute best to do it ethically. That IS worth something. It is worth something to me that there are amoms who I’ve witnessed go from “me me me,” go from writing posts about “why does that teen in my street get to have a baby and I don’t? It’s not fair, she should be giving that baby up” to, eventually, embracing openness and talking to moms they’re “matched” with about their reasons for placing and supporting them to the point that the women parent! That is worth something!
Maybe it’s not worth anything on a grand scale, but on an individual scale, there are literally women and children who WEREN’T ripped apart from each other because individual potential amoms recognized (through discussions like this) that if those (bio) moms should keep their babies, they should.
That matters.
As far as men in this discussion… I don’t know. Isn’t it women who generally drive this whole process (both adoption and relinquishment?)
That doesn’t mean we should be leaving them out of the picture, but when it comes to the “demand” question, I do think it’s women creating most of the demand. Can’t back that up with any proof, though. (FWIW I also think it’s women driving the “supply” side of the equation, too.)
Paragraphein, I agree with all you say here. I think I came down too hard against the demand discussion only because I saw it (in this context) as putting the onus entirely on infertile women and I think the issue is so much bigger and “curing” infertility besides which how are we going to cure infertility any old way? And I feel like infertile women are the privileged side of a very ugly anti-woman, misogynist coin. And we absolutely need to address and break down the privilege, yes, but we also need to see the bigger picture and see that what hurts first mothers in adoption hurts EVERY woman. We’re all swilling the same kool-aid. One woman drinks until she thinks giving up her baby is a way to get back in the good graces of the world and another woman is drinking so that she can take her baby without guilt (and even feel superior). But if we adoptive parents think that the damning eye will never be on us, we’re nuts. We have a personal responsibility but we have a collective responsibility, too. I think I hammer on the personal responsibility a lot around here but I guess I felt like this was too us/them at start and was heading it off (very) awkwardly.
I know Dawn. And I’m, again, really trying here to not create even more of an “us” “them” mentality. But it is HARD. Every single word… and still it seems we end up offending each other. I am trying very very hard to look at the big picture and might admittedly be failing, again admittedly due to personal crap that isn’t resolved as well as it should be.
Not even sure what the point is here. This is a very hard discussion. Very hard.
[...] kept thinking about this, reading the comments on Dawn’s blog. The image of the chasm is what popped into my mind. Three groups of people standing on different [...]
Nic, I know, I know. That’s why I think I didn’t come out as clearly as I should have. I’m not personally offended by anything anyone said here. I’ve winced some (but not anything you and Suz said!) and I’m owning my wincing.