LisaV said:

I think it’s really important that not every birthparent wants to parent, and they choose not to parent not because of economic or institutional reasons but because they don’t desire to parent (at least at the time they place a child). I frankly know several birthmoms and one birthdad who could have parented, they had lots of resources and support. They chose not to because they didn’t want to. This is not true of all birthparents, they are as diverse as any other kind of parent. I sometimes get uncomfortable that there is always this implication that circumstances have to make it impossible to parent for someone to choose to be a birthparent.

And then Cluttergirl said (first quoting me back):

“BUT the huge caveat is that the reason children are abandoned has its roots in immoral institutional policies”

could you please say more about that, or clarify it please? Children have always been abandoned as far as I know. For all sorts of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with institutions. so I am curious as to what you were refering to here.

Every individual adoption story has its own truth and I recognize the limitations of making generalized statements. However I think it’s safe to say that nobody has on their list of things to do, “Be a birthparent.” Any pregnancy that ends in adoption is likely by definition a crisis pregnancy, meaning that due to timing and/or circumstances it is a pregnancy that creates crisis or appears in the middle of a crisis. When we talk about resources, let’s face it, it often comes down to money. But it also comes down to other kinds of resources — time, support, health, opportunity, ability.

I wish I could find this blog. It’s a birth parent blog and this is the kind of birth parent who defies every single stereotype. She is married, she was not upset when she discovered her pregnancy, she and her husband happily chose to place and had no regrets. In fact, her adoption was so freely chosen that her blog read more like one written by a surrogate who planned her pregnancy. But I’d say that’s pretty rare.

I don’t mean to sound so “oh poor birth mothers” when I talk about the haves/have nots. It’s more that I think it’s important that we all recognize that most birth parents — the world over — did not plan to become birth parents. Maybe that means they would have chosen abortion had they had the chance. Maybe that means they would have parented had they had the chance. Maybe it means they would have quite simply not gotten pregnant had they had the chance.

Children have always been abandoned. As the world spins along allegedly moving forward, not enough has been done to create options and a great deal has been done to limit options. So basically what I’m trying to say is that no way of adoption is free of moral dilemmas. As people who are adopting, however, that’s kind of a great opportunity to know ourselves better. Wrestling with these dilemmas may be hard (my head is hurting just from writing these entries) but it’s a blessing, too. We get to learn more about ourselves and more about our motivations. It’s a chance to enter into the great moral busyness of the world, you know?

Bookmark
SubscribeBloglinesDiggdel.icio.usFacebookStumbleUponTechnorati

Related posts

  • No related posts.