Defending people who don’t like me
Dec 28, 2005 Adoption
I figured this blogger must have found either some anti-adoption sites or some blogs written by women who are anti-adoption. I don’t know because she’s not linking to them (she doesn’t want to give them traffic) but I will link to her so you’ll know what I’m talking about.
In her blog entry Deanna decries birth mothers who “feel they have full right to go invade someone’s privacy and worse to disturb the lives of the children they claim they love. Some of these woman are disturbing the lives of minor children that they placed 12 to 17 years ago.”
I went and looked through the blogs listed on Aimee’s ring and I think I found at least one of the ones she’s talking about: Musings of the Lame.
You know, I pitched my antiadoption article to two places and both of them said that they felt that antiadoption sentiment was so uncommon and weird that they didn’t see the point of an article on it. Further they said the same thing Deanna said — they didn’t want to give “those people” a voice. This frustrates me. “Those people” have some legitimate gripes whether or not I agree with their modes, methods or whole-hearted hatred of all things adoption. But as someone interested in adoption reform and as someone who has hung out in enough adoption forums to know that the adoptive industry can be pretty twisted in their treatment, exploitation, and prejudices against women making an adoption plan, I can see where they’re coming from. And frankly, plenty of adoptive parents are just … gross in the way they talk about their children’s birth parents. Hang on the adoption.com forums and you’ll see. Do a search on “she changed her mind” and watch people revile women who do nothing worse than parent their own children.
Now obviously I’m not antiadoption and I’m not spending my time trying to give Madison back to her natural mother but I’m also not going to point my finger at a woman who thinks I ought to do that and call her crazy. For one, what she thinks I ought to do has no impact on my life. It doesn’t have to hurt me. No matter how civil we might be to each other (and during my interviews I did not speak to one antiadoption activists who was not civil to me), we’re going to fundamentally disagree about the choices I’ve made. So be it.
Deanna says in her entry, (which also slams interracial and interfaith couples — I’m just sayin’) that clearly women who are angry enough to aggressively pursue reunion with their bio kids are too selfish to be mothers. Now this is a common claim about antiadoption activists — that they’re too crazy to raise their own kids anyway so good riddance. I think that when people do this they’re just running from the fact that crazy or not, what many of the activists have to say about adoption in this country holds a lot of water. Coercion really is alive and well in the adoption industry. And even those who were not coerced but now have deep regrets, imagine if you lost your child — just imagine! — maybe it might make you a little nuts on the subject, too.
I’m not saying that every antiadoption activists is right and ought to have her child back or absolute free access to her child or that I’m not thankful that J isn’t an antiadoption activists (I think having an open adoption with an antiadoption activists would call for professional mediation), I’m just saying that people have a right to their feelings and they have a right to put their energy into a cause that is important to them.
As to invading the privacy of the child who was placed for adoption, I only found the one blog. In that one her 18-year old (then 16-year old) son in a decision made by his adoptive parents was denied the right to hear that she was looking for him. I don’t know these adoptive parents and I can’t say whether or not they made the right decision. I don’t know where he was about his adoption or what challenges he had that year or what but that does seem odd to me, too. And I reckon I’d be pretty angry and frustrated if I was his birth mom and got that close but then couldn’t bridge that small gap. Now as an adoptive parent, I don’t know if I actually feel horrified by her actions. I mean, heck, I’m someone who periodically googles ex-boyfriends, right? And they don’t have nearly the emotional tie for me that I’d have with a child I placed for adoption. How could she NOT google him? That would be way more self-control than I’d have.
But here’s a lesson to us adoptive parents — if we have a closed adoption we still will not necessarily be able to control what happens with our children’s birth family. Further, what happens around our child and his or her birth family will ultimately have very little to do with us. We can’t keep our children in boxes. They will have web pages and they will maybe be in the newspaper and they will go out and live their lives and so even if we want to “protect” them from their birth families, we may not be able to do this. We can, however, facilitate a relationship early on. We can have some measure of openness, we can have contact through an agency if we’re not comfortable with more. We can keep sending pictures and letters to our adoption professionals even if the birth parents stopped picking them up years ago because one day that might change. We can open that door ourselves so that if and when the time comes for some sort of reunion, we will have oriented ourselves to be ready for it.
I don’t think that adoptive parents have any obligation to read antiadoption sites although I think that reading about the grim side of adoption can help us be more upright in our own dealings. You can always just read some adoption reform sites to get a feel for what’s happening among reform activists. I think that’s a good thing to do, really, because I think that we might think one way about adoption but we ought to prepare ourselves for our children to grow up and feel differently. Truthfully I have no idea (and no control over) whether or not Madison will join the Transracial Abductee contingent or if she’ll grow up and create a foundation to promote adoption.
I have more to say but Madison needs rocking.
December 28th, 2005 at 11:07 am
I’m not antiadoption by any means, but it is sometimes nearly impossible for me to separate my grief over “losing my son to adoption” (as the antiadoption sites say) from the knowledge that not all adoptions happen the way my son’s did. It’s *really* hard not to classify all adoptions wiht my own experience. In my life, adoption is the worst thing that ever happened to me, it has caused widespread disaster in most areas of my life. When I hear/read people talking anti-birthmother crap, it’s like a red cape in front of a bull, I just lose any sense of reason. I think any parent can relate to the sentiment that you don’t really know what being a parent will be like until your child is born. You hear it in every birth story, parents saying they didn’t know they could love so deeply until they stared into their newborn’s eyes, until they held and smelled their child for the first time. It’s the same for birthmothers. Even if we weren’t coerced (though I was), we just can’t know what it’s going to be like until we see our babies. Imagine losing your child, indeed. My son had a birthday recently and I tried to get my partner to imagine it. Imagine that our 4 year-old daughter were alive, but that we couldn’t see her. Couldn’t know her, see photos of her, know if she were happy, healthy, alive even because if she died no one would tell us. Imagine a father’s day when she called someone else daddy. And that someday, even if we were lucky enough to find her, she might completely reject us. Sometimes it feels completely unbearable, being separated from my child all these years. You don’t forget your child, ever. Every single day for 21 years I’ve been grieving the loss of my precious precious baby boy. I’m really not antiadopton, but when I read the antiadoption sites, I identify with them almost completely. Ugh, I just clicked through to that woman’s site, read her entry and the comments, it made me want to vomit. *sigh*
December 28th, 2005 at 11:49 am
When I did my seminar project, I really immerssed myself in most of the anti-adoption sites. They were painful and disturbing and often I would question the validity of what they were saying. However there was always a story or a sentence somewhere that rang true to me and it broke my heart for some of these (mostly) women. It made me very glad that we have not only open adoptions, but adoptions so open I could discuss these sites and issues from Mallory’s birthmother.
She herself is also an adoptee, in reunion with her birthmother, it isn’t a close relationship. She has said over and over that adoption is so different when it’s open. Mallory won’t be meeting a biological stranger who may have different expectations for a relationship than she does.
December 28th, 2005 at 11:59 am
Well, I don’t think I would have contacted people at the school, just because I think that could have led to bad stuff for the child. But heck, I’ve googled Bug’s parents to see if I can find out any information that I didn’t know. Maybe that was invading their privacy, but I figure if it is on the internet…
I read the anti-adoption websites. I try to decide what I think is valid and reasonable. And make sure that I’m applying that to my adoption.
December 28th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
After reading that blog, I can see where she’s coming from, although I completely disagree with most of what she says. Seems like she’s just terrified that she won’t get what she feels entitled to: children. Dawn, you’re so right in saying that we can’t keep our children in boxes, but as a sister with adoptive siblings, I know that so many adoptive (and biological) parents, unlike you, want to do just that.
Demonizing the birthmother is so commonplace that it took me years to reconcile my own feelings of empathy for my siblings’ teen mothers with my mother’s harsh judgment of them. Birthmothers, even more than mothers in general, are expected to be saints who swallow their own feelings.
In my experience, that’s not realistic, nor is it truly the best thing for the child. Think my siblings have forgotten their birthmothers? Think again. They love their adoptive mom, our mom, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for them to wonder about and long for information about their birthparents.
December 28th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
I went over and read the Musings sight. I like her. I don’t disagree with any of her internet sleuthing, but for contact with her son’s friends. For one of his friends to have access to information he doesn’t seems wrong and may hurt him. It seems likely she will be able to reunite with her son at some point. I hope that all of them (aparents, her, the boy) can all form some sort of relationship that is beneficial to all of them.
Reading her entries I wonder if openess and knowing this boy growing up would have made her feel differently about adoption. If I were the aparents I would have opened it up when I got the letter from the birthmom.
December 28th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Well, this was bound to happen. Kim has decided to join the discussion we’ve all started in our adoption blogs, and frankly, I’m glad. I’m not glad that she has said some pretty off-base things over at Cubbie’s site, or that she didn’t respect her son’s family’s boundaries, but she is generating some awesome discussion. Inevitably, there’s going to be a clash. We all have such raw nerves, be they from infertility, or the fact that the rest of the world seems to be biased toward biology, or because our babies were taken from us by coercion, or whatever. Things are going to get heated. The question becomes, then, what can we make of all this ruckus? How can we use the clash to work on adoption reform, or at the simplest, communication between adoptive parents and birthparents? For too long it’s been an us-or-them thing. That time needs to end. It’s going to hurt, but it’s worth it.
December 28th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
I think we are all sisters in adoption, whether we are adopters/-to be; birth-parents/grandparents, etc; or adoptees. We have all suffered losses and we all have or will have to deal with on-going issues regarding adoption.
I agree that it can feel scary to think about a person whom one perceives as being unstable entering your life and upsetting your child and having no control over it. I’m a custodial step-mother – over the years that has happened in my family often – I don’t have to imagine what it would be like. I have always talked about my step-son’s mother respectfully and tried to minimize his bitterness about her to the extent possible – but she makes it hard even now that he’s almost 22. I also agree that birth parents should not be demonized for feeling a loss or feeling regret, that’s very natural. I’m not going pass judgment over what they do about their adopted children, I haven’t walked in their shoes.
I certainly hope that my child will not feel like an abductee, that site absolutely broke my heart. I want to learn how to be the best mom, and the best adoptive mom I can be. So thanks for discussing this issue. I am really conflicted and pained about my prospective child’s birthmother and her loss which may be due to factors beyond her control, I don’t know if I’ll even know if she had a choice or an option to keep her child.
Finally, I want to comment on this kind of post. I don’t know how to do it as sensitively as I wish to. Posting about someone else’s post, rather than commenting - it feels like your talking behind her back. I hope no one will ever write about one of my posts this way. I’d prefer a comment. Lets all remain sisters, sisters who sometimes disagree.
December 28th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
I don’t agree with you Dawn, I think adoptive parents DO have an obligation to read antiadoption sites as well as pro-adoption sites to see all sides of things. I think the adoption reform movement is not going to go away it’s going to get stronger and louder. I also believe only the most emotionally secure people should be allowed to adopt, those who understand that the child will have two mothers and be willing to share that love out of love for that child.
I do love your input Dawn, I don’t agree with everything you say but I do love your input.
December 28th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
hmmm Dawn I’m gonna write you privately and let you know who this is but, I’ve got perspective from the opposite angle on this. Some months ago, my husband, who was raised by very loving wonderful adoptive parents who were always so honest and open that he was adopted and never hid it from him, went on a possessed man hunt to find his bio dad. A couple years ago he and his bio mom met under mutual looking (he went to file the papers to say she can contact him, came home to find HER papers saying contact me in his mailbox). Anyway, she went and found his bio dad who, to put it mildly, crapped himself upon hearing from her as he never expected to again. He said he wasn’t interested in meeting their son right now as he’d told his partner he had no children and felt this would bring drama.
My husband was absolutely ENRAGED and said “look just because you gave me up doesn’t mean you are no longer my bio-dad. If you didn’t want to deal with this you should have worn a ^&&^ condom 29 years ago.”
He doesn’t want a relationship with bio-dad, just to look at him and say “hmmm so that’s where I come from.”
So DH is giving him a deadline whereby he can “make it easy on himself” and come meet him man to man, or as DH said “he can run, he can hide, he can slam the door in my face, but I will go and see him to lay eyes on him once.”
There’s a lot more to this story. Like bio-parents were 16 and 19 and decided to have sex since she was moving and she got knocked up and lots of tears and her parents flipped and bio dad begged her to run off with him and get married and keep the baby but she was too scared sort of thing.
Anyway, my long winded point is: those who are anti-birth parent rights, or who think they are doing their kids SUCH a favour, may do well to remember one day their precious cargo may be the ones barrelling down doors. Nurturing is powerful. And so is that primal biological force wanting to know from whenst we came.
December 29th, 2005 at 3:39 am
Aimee writes: “I’m not antiadoption by any means, but it is sometimes nearly impossible for me to separate my grief over “losing my son to adoption” (as the antiadoption sites say) from the knowledge that not all adoptions happen the way my son’s did. It’s *really* hard not to classify all adoptions with my own experience.”
I feel the same way, even though I’m coming from the completely opposite direction. I placed two sons in an open adoption and it is wonderful. There is trust, honesty, and respect between me and the adoptive parents. We probably take “openness” to a new level, as I currently do daycare for my 3-month-old son 2 days a week. I need to remember, though, like Aimee, that not all adoption experiences are like mine.
Dawn, I agree with you, and I think you make an important point when you say:
“…know that the adoptive industry can be pretty twisted in their treatment, exploitation, and prejudices against women making an adoption plan, I can see where they’re coming from. And frankly, plenty of adoptive parents are just … gross in the way they talk about their children’s birth parents.”
I believe much of my positive experience was due to the fact that I went through a nonprofit adoption agency which provided free counseling for me before, during, and after. When I was having doubts and took my son home for a few days because he had spent his entire hospital stay in the NICU, my adoption caseworker supported me, and told me to take the time that I needed to make my decision.
I read things about for-profit adoption agencies and shudder. Check out the Adoption Recruiter job description on AfrIndie Mum’s blog, for example.
December 29th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
My niece was adopted in an incognito adoption at age 2. There was letter-box contact between her and my mum and me all through the years. She’s 20 now, there was a meet between her and my mum two years ago, and although it seemed that she was very keen on meeting her father (my brother) and generally knowing more, her mum kept holding her back. In fact, contact is a lot less now than before.
Not sure what my point is, but I was reminded of our family when I read about the 16/18-year old whose mum decided not to tell him about his birth mum.
December 30th, 2005 at 10:25 am
Have you seen this blog? It’s amazing.
http://www.bastardette.blogspot.com/
December 30th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
I also wanted to quote this:
“the adoptive industry can be pretty twisted in their treatment, exploitation, and prejudices against women making an adoption plan, I can see where they’re coming from. And frankly, plenty of adoptive parents are just … gross in the way they talk about their children’s birth parents”
and say “Amen to that!”
Whether the anti-adoption crowd are being “fair” or “reasonable” or whatever, they definitely have justifiable and understandable anger and grief. And you are right–ten seconds of imagining the loss of my child is all I need to completely get why they are upset.
I feel really lucky to have found what I think is an ethical adoption agency. In a quick google at the outset of our adoption journey, 99% of the agencies I found made me sick, frankly, and I could NEVER work with them.
January 1st, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Dawn, it does my heart good to read your take on the adoption equation. I’m an adult adoptee. While I don’t think every adoptive parent or bioparent is emotionally stable enough for open adoption, it’s the wave of the future. It has to be.
When I began my search, I was shocked at the anger, the pure rage, that existed among all sides of the triad. I’m glad you know that just because an editor tells you there’s no interest in “those” anti-adoption people doesn’t make it so.
My adoptive parents were lied to. Every step of the way, my adoption story was crafted out of lies. My biomom was abused and forced to give me up. My adoptive mother was terrified that during the year it would take before the adoption was complete, my biomom would change her mind. The state agency that handled my adoption reassured her with the following: Don’t worry. Your daughter’s parents told everyone the baby died.
Until I started searching, it never dawned on me that even pets have papers, while I’m denied my real birth certificate. Perhaps a crude way to look at a closed adoption, but it’s the reality of it. My records are sealed to make life more comfortable for an abuser. My identity, hell, my health, is secondary, all in the alleged name of privacy.
To my parents’ credit, they told me everything they were told by the agency. And they spoke to the sadness of it as much as they could. I’m not sure how I’d feel to be adopted by parents who were convinced that bioparents are somehow unworthy or selfish. My mother was mentally ill and abused. My father was a criminal. My parents didn’t harbor any fears that I would somehow follow to type and turn out the same way. I’m convinced that this is one of the primal fears that continues to support the closed system.
The eye opener for me was Dan Savage’s book The Kid. I think he has it right. No matter what the situation with his son’s bio parents, it’s better to know than to never know, or worse, to live a lie. Reading about adoption is still difficult for me, but I appreciate what you do.
January 1st, 2006 at 4:36 pm
First, I DID NOT slam interracial and interfaith couples. If you are going to write something about me, either quote me exactly as you started to or read what I said carefully. I have NOTHING against inerracial couples, interracial adoption or interfaith adoption. I said I think it can be easier for couples to date people of their same race and faith. I didn’t slam anyone, not in the slightest!
Second in two of the blogs I’ve been reading by birth mothers they went far a beyond just “googling” their child’s info. They crossed a line even after they were provided more photos and updates from the adoptive parents and a request for the birthmother to wait to contact her and him.
Third, I am not anti-birth mother and I’m not even for closed adoptions. I don’t want a closed adoption for our child. What I want is to know that my child will have the choice to decided when he or she wants to meet their genetic family. It won’t be my decision or the birth mother’s decision. Don’t lump me in with the people on adoption forums who slam birth mothers. I’m far from that. I respect women who put their children first. Being a good parent means putting the child first!
Anyone who wants me to clarify my points please have the courage to email me directly at: alex_deanna@yahoo.com and not leave annon comments on my old blog.
Thanks!
January 7th, 2006 at 2:04 am
Sorry gotta comment:
“Second in two of the blogs I’ve been reading by birth mothers they went far a beyond just “googling” their child’s info. They crossed a line even after they were provided more photos and updates from the adoptive parents and a request for the birthmother to wait to contact her and him.”
Whose line? Who draws that line? I asked for an update after not having one in over 15 YEARS..and asked for contact. I got an update and pictures, but i was told that they “didn’t think it was the right time to introduce me to him even in the form of a letter”
They actually didn’t ask me not to. They just said they didn’t think it was right..maybe that’s a loophole. But It was the right time..because it was WHEN it just happened to happen.
It couldn’t have been his decision, because he didn’t know he HAD a choice…they withheld the truth.
My line..was being truthful with my son. When I found him, I told him and he was / is happy.
Whose best interests? The boy is happy..doing well.