Speaking when it’s not your turn
Apr 22, 2009 Adoption
I got exciting news last week from the editors of Mothering and Blogging; their proposal for the NWSA Annual Conference was accepted and I’m going to be on a panel in Atlanta with some of the other authors in November! I’m very excited about it not least because I’ll finally get to meet Julia in person!
I announced it on Facebook, which is when I found out that a friend of mine’s panel wasn’t accepted. Her panel was about adoption and two of the other women were Anne Fessler (who, of course, wrote The Girls Who Went Away) and Marianne Novy (who wrote Reading Adoption); my friend also happens to be a first mom.
The conference topic is “Difficult Dialogues” and it seems to me that a panel about adoption from the vantage point of an artist (who is also an adoptee) and an academic (who is also an adoptee) and a academic-in-training (who is also a first mother) would be pretty amazing. I don’ t know who else might have been on the panel with them and I don’t know why the panel got turned down. I can guess but I might be guessing wrong.
Funnily enough, my essay in the blogging book? It’s about how blogging about our adoption and hearing from first mothers changed my adoption in real live true technicolor life.
Now the blogging pitch wasn’t about adoption and the fact that my essay happens to be about adoption is just coincidence but still, it made me think (again) about how adoptive parents have so much more power than any other player in the triad and how I need to think about that. I feel like it’s my responsibility to speak to this privilege and to speak about the missing player in our discussions but I do not think it’s my right to speak FOR adoptees or first parents. It’s a fine distinction but an important one. Frankly, adoptees and first parents do not need me to speak for them — people have been speaking for adoptees and first parents for far too long — but they do need me to be an ally because I have more power than they do.
In the cultural conversation about adoption, the adoptive parents’ needs always seem to hold sway. We are omnipresent whether we’re wanted or not and we get far more latitude in our feelings.
At Open Adoption Support, I have always felt like I needed to err on the side of not offending first parents, which is why I made a statement about, well, first parent as a term. There was one person who came to my site and couldn’t even fill out the survey I had up there (remind me to upload that powerpoint — from last year’s AAC conference presentation — to slideshare, will you?) because she found the term “first family” so offensive. She said that her daughter had no family before her adoption, end of discussion period. And while the circumstances of her child’s adoption could make her animosity towards that family understandable, her inability to fill out a survey seemed like a bit much. She immediately felt erased by the word “family” and she shut down.
When I got her feedback, I revisited the term because the goal of that site is to offer support to the people who need it as they’re living open adoption and if people are actually being driven away by the language, I felt like that was something I needed to think about. But then I decided once again that just as important as reaching as many people as the site can, it also needed to clearly be an ally — or as clearly an ally as a site an adoptive parent set up CAN be. And part of that alliance is being willing to offend adoptive parents for the sake of welcoming first parents.
I know that it’s easier for people to hear me as an adoptive parent than it is for people to hear Pennie or to one day hear Madison. I know that if either of them are critical about adoption people will say they’re just angry or selfish or ungrateful. But if I am critical about adoption then it carries different weight because I have no personal axe to grind. I have my beautiful family thanks to adoption. I have nothing to gain from looking critically at the institution of adoption and a lot to lose (namely my security as a “good adopter”). That’s why it matters that I’m willing to talk out loud about the things that worry me. That’s why that article in Mother Jones mattered.
I know that my voice finds an audience that I don’t always deserve just by virtue of my privilege and it humbles me and influences what I say when I’m in front of that unearned audience.
Tags: AAC, adoptees, Adoption, first mothers, openadoptionsupport.com
Adoption is a feminist issue
Mar 18, 2009 Adoption, Feminism/Politics
I’m just not sure when all the feminists are going to realize that. This is a start (from Shakesville).
Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers’ Choice for Women
Tags: Adoption, ethical adoption, feminism, prochoice
Happy Mardi Gras!
Feb 24, 2009 Adoption
Madison’s maternal birth family — both sides — were long-time residents of New Orleans. Her grandfather’s family moved away a decade or so ago but her grandmother’s family didn’t go until Katrina swept them out of their homes. (Most of them are in Houston now.)
Pennie didn’t grow up in New Orleans although she lived there for a few months while she was pregnant and she did inherit some killer recipes. When she goes to visit her family she comes back with fresh idioms that make me laugh and a new appreciation for the things that make her family unique. (She has an aunt named Peaches, for crying out loud! I love that!) Also? Pennie’s Grandfather was one of the Mardi Gras Indians (read more about their history here — it’s really interesting).
Whenever I think about Pennie and New Orleans, I think about how she is a master at code switching. She grew up in suburban Tacoma listening to Journey but her people have deep roots in the 9th Ward District. And then I think about her transracially adopted daughter here in our family and how her experiences influenced that decision (to place her brown-skinned daughter with white parents). I know that this decision wasn’t popular with her extended family down South although my (brief brief brief) experiences with them have been nothing but fine. I think about that, too.
I hope we can get Madison down there sometime — Pennie and I keep talking about it. But money is never in the right place at the right time. Madison might not get to meet them until we’re all dancing at Pennie’s wedding. I don’t really expect her to have a strong relationship with them because it is a big, busy family and we live far away. But I want Madison to feel some sense of access to them enough that if she was in town, she could pick up the phone and find someone to invite her over for dinner. I know they miss her and they love her but there are just so many obstacles.
(When Pennie first visited after Madison’s placement, she found that her god father had framed pictures of her and Madison and hung them up and down his hall. This gives me hope.)
Mardi Gras is just one of those times that I find myself thinking a little bit more about adoption than I usually do.
(This post brought to you by rumination!)
Tags: Adoption, Family, hope, houston, katrina, New Orleans, Recipes, transracial
