It’s not usually that I’m on the other side of so many people who I usually agree with but here I am, totally on the other side.
The comments to that last post are really interesting and a good reminder to me that everyone has different limits. It’s a lesson I need an awful lot so I appreciate it.
Speaking of our own adoption, I am privvy to a lot of Pennie’s pain and I don’t think that’s hurt my relationship with either Pennie or Madison. I won’t get into specifics but this bit from Mia?
Let’s say she tells me she has collected all her favorite Disney movies for him, and she feels sad every time she watches them without him. Then I will feel sad every time I watch a movie with him, because I know his mom is still sad that she isn’t. Who is that helping? Surely the first mom doesn’t intend to have that effect, but knowing that specific pain of hers, I can’t just *not* feel it. If she hands it to me, I’ll have to carry it.
That’s pretty much exactly the kind of thing Pennie has shared with me and I do carry it but … I don’t feel like that’s been a bad thing in our situation. I could see how it might be for someone else.
One thing though, I don’t know how any person could look back on placing a child and not have some regrets. We all revisit big decisions and wonder “what if” and lord knows that placing a child in an adoption is pretty much one of the biggest decisions any person can make. I’m sure there are men and women who blithely go through life never ever looking back but I’d say that most people stop sometimes and wonder. What they DO with that wonder depends on so many things like the circumstances surrounding the adoption, the situation immediately after, the adoptive parents, etc. etc.
Here’s something else that Mia said that I wanted to address:
Or maybe she tells me she placed him during a period of financial terror that turned out to be temporary, and now that her work life is stable, she is sad that she created a permanent loss because of what turned out to be a temporary problem. Well, how in good conscience could I keep him–and explain that to him later in life? He’s not a prize with a deadline for entries–he is her son!Am I going to take advantage of her months of fear, and just say “ah, too bad you took too long to figure that out, hard cheese for you”?
Well, you know that’s the rub. I think this is going to be a wildly unpopular post but I’m going to dive in. Know that I’m speaking of my own experience.
All we’ve got to do is troll the internet a bit and it’s clear that some of the best open adoptions are due to truly fabulous first parents who are stable, intelligent, thoughtful and responsible. You know, the kind of people who make good parents. Some of the very best open adoptions like ours are maybe adoptions that never had to happen. I know that ours is the classic permanent solution to a temporary problem (or rather a temporary situation). None of us really knew that at the time. We took Pennie at her word. We believed she was empowered in her decision. She believed she was, too.
As we’ve grown into the adoption Brett and I have most definitely confronted the reality that if we had to do it all over again, we would have done it differently and yes, it chills me to my bones when I sit with that. The first time I really let myself realize it the world pinwheeled around me for a minute and I had to hold on to the kitchen counter for a minute to get my balance back. (Epiphanies often come to me when I’m loading the dishwasher.) And yes, it’s something that Pennie and I have discussed in round about and in direct ways. Let’s just say that posts like this from Jenna hit me in more ways than one.
But Madison is here now in her family. And while she’s not a prize, she is a person and the irony is that likely due to losing her first mom she is rather more terrified than the average non-adopted kid about losing us (Brett and me). So giving her back wouldn’t solve anyone’s problems or undo the adoption but would re-traumatize a child who is so far blossoming where she was planted albeit with some additional challenge. As Pennie has said (relating a conversation where someone asked her if she ever thought about trying to get Madison back), “I would never do that to her.”
Pennie, being Pennie, doesn’t dwell on regret. Like Jenna, she picks herself up and soldiers on. I know she doesn’t share every hurt with me but she does share and sometimes she shares more than she realizes. She is terrific at looking on the bright side and when she is most decidedly about the bright side with me, I can sometimes tell it’s because she’s determinedly working her way out of someplace sad.
For a fairly long time Brett and I could convince ourselves that Madison’s adoption was ultimately a good thing for everybody but recently I said to him, “What if we all made a terrible, terrible mistake?” And Brett said, “I don’t know if I could live with that.” And I said, “We will have to live with that.”
Here’s the thing — it has happened. Madison is here. Her life is definitely far different than it would be had she stayed with Pennie but it’s not necessarily better. We all of us — Brett and me included — did the best we knew how at the time and we have no idea how it would have turned out if we had made different choices. I’d like to tell myself that the successes Pennie has built, the good life she is creating, is possible because she placed Madison but the truth is I don’t really know. I don’t let my mind go there often because it serves none of us — least of all Madison — to dwell on what ifs but it’s natural that sometimes we go there. How could we not?
What the three of us work to do now is build the best life for Madison in her here and now. We work hard to create our inclusive family and we put our daughter (and her brothers) first. We put aside our petty differences. We make allowances. We remember that we both love her more than anything and we trust that love to see us through. It’s the best we can do because we can’t go back and hit “do over.”
Anyway. I always think this is rumbling underneath most of my open adoption entries and I’ve addressed it obliquely before but never directly.
There’s more to say but I think I’ve said enough.
Madison was hating me like crazy yesterday. She had three full fits and in every single one she hated me.
“I hate you! I hate mama!” she railed. “I’m going to live with Pennie!”
By the end of the day, I was sick of hearing it.
“Madison!” I hollered back. “I am tired of hearing how much you hate me! Enough already!”
“But you said I could hate you!”
“I know but how many times have you said it today?”
She thought for a minute then said sheepishly, “Thousands.”
It’s true that just the other day I told her she could hate me. I was thinking on something Malinda wrote about permanence and ambivalence and about our kids needing to know that their realities are firmer than their fantasies. It can seem confusing that Madison both yearns to live with Pennie and is also afraid of leaving us and that reassuring her that she will not leave us lets her be free in her yearning. So the other day when Madison seemed especially clinging and (I realized not coincidentally) especially missing Pennie I told her that she would always live with us because that’s what the grown-ups (Pennie, Brett and I) decided and that she would live with us until she was a grownup herself and decided to leave.
“And maybe even forever if I don’t want to leave?” she said, cuddling into me and I said of course.
I told her, “Even when you are really really really angry with me, even if you hate me, even if you say, ‘I hate you! I’m going to live with Pennie!’ Even then, you still live here.”
Then we decided Madison could try that out and the way she did will show you her worries about this. She said, “I hate you! I’m leaving!” then very small (hiding her head in my arms) “I’m going to live with Pennie!” And I said, “Nope, you live here.” And she laughed and hugged me hard.
I guess she really wanted to test me in the real world yesterday since she hated on me pretty much all day and (for the most part) pretty cheerfully. Except towards the end when she was sent to her room to pick up and then she was well and truly done with me.
As she screamed on the other side of the wall I sat in Noah’s room listening to him detail his decorating plans. (He’s planning a whole room do-over inspired by Madison’s.)
“You know, I used to imagine you weren’t my real mom,” he told me. “I used to imagine that my real mom was a fairy godmother who was nice.”
I know how it is. I used to imagine that I had an electric grandmother.
This morning I asked Madison if she imagined that if she lived with Pennie that she’d never have to clean her room and would never get in trouble. She said yes, that’s pretty much how she pictured it. I told her that parents are parents and that if Pennie was parenting her she’d still have things to do. It’s this hard balance of wanting to help her have her fantasies (she has a lot about her birth dad) but also help her understand that they are fantasies — especially about her birth dad.
It would be very easy for her to fixate on her adoption as the source of all of her worries and it’s hard finding the balance between acknowledging the very real, very big issues that are due to her adoption and also asking her to recognize the issues that aren’t due to her adoption. I worry about being dismissive but I also don’t want her to assume that any time she’s frustrated or unhappy that it’s all because she’s adopted. Because I can tell you right now that if she was living with Pennie, she’d still have to pick up her room.
Roy Mustang is a character in Full Metal Alchemist, which is Noah’s manga of choice at the moment (and at the center of some of his Christmas requests). Earlier today Noah came out of his room and said, “Did you know Roy Mustang is adopted?”
Madison’s ears perked right up.
“Hey!” she said. “I wish he were real so I could talk to him about, you know, adopted.”
I asked, “What would you talk to him about?”
“I’d talk to him about how it is missing your mommy.”
“You know, Madison, you have some friends who are adopted. Like [friend], [friend] and [friend]. You could probably talk to them about it.”
“Maybe I will do that next time.”
“And if you ever wanted to talk to a grown-up about some adoption stuff, I can find you a grown-up to talk to.”
She stood by the Christmas tree for a bit, making her wooden mouse toy climb up the branches, thinking about this.
“Well, I don’t think so now,” she said. “But if I want to then you’ll go find somebody?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Ok then. Maybe sometime.”
Maybe said (referring to how Madison thinks Pennie is prettier than I am):
Another thought I had – it’s positive that Madison sees a woman of color as being petty – this will help her identify with with other woman of color as she matures and not try to trick herself into thinking she is “white.” I’ve read so many stories about TRAs believing themselves to be white and rejecting all aspects of their natural heritage while they are young, only to be forced to face it upon adulthood (or when trying to forge bonds with a community of similar heritage, ie. a Korean student group at college, etc.)
That is nice, true but the very next part of the conversation was this:
Me: You look a lot like Pennie.
Madison: Yes, I’m pretty like Pennie, too.
Me: Pennie has a gorgeous smile and you have a gorgeous smile, too.
Madison: Yes, but I still wish I was white!
Me: Why?
Madison: Because … because … it’s just easier. You don’t know how it feels to be adopted!
Madison’s racial identity is very tied up in her adoption, which makes perfect sense. I’m not sure how that will impact her adult racial identity because I haven’t read any memoirs, research, etc. that are about transracial OPEN adoptions. I think most of the issues in closed adoptions are there but I think they ring differently. I used to naively think that openness would make up for a lot of the problems in transracial adoption but five years into it, I think it’s just a different way of experiencing them.
Madison’s interest in IFIF (the support group for all multiracial families that actually caters most to black adopted kids with white parents) is that most of the children there also have birth mothers. She is very intrigued that there are other people who don’t match their families AND who have birth mothers.
I don’t know how it would be if our adoption weren’t open. I’m not sure how her racial identity would be forming differently (if it would be forming differently). Sometimes she says she wishes we were black and sometimes she says she wishes she were white. I think this is another way of saying she wishes she weren’t adopted. (She doesn’t know any children who were adopted who DO match their parents — she knows adults but not kids. So to her, adoption is not matching.)
If there was less or no openness, she might be less forthcoming with her feelings (I’m not sure about that but I think her experiences give her something to hang her processing on so I think much of her discussion would be happening more internally if she didn’t have the language around her experiences in openess to make sense of her feelings.) If she were not trancially adopted, I also think her adoption processing might be less because it would be easier for her not to think about it and she would also be able to keep her adoption closeted if she chose. I think that both the openness and the transracialness of her adoption are part of what makes her so cognizant of her experience and so articulate about it.
Here’s another thing she said recently that I thought was interesting.
Brett and I were driving and she was in the backseat and I was teasing Brett. I said, “If you knew that the road led to HERE [we were having a glamorous day of cleaning out the basement and we were running errands beforehand], would you have had second thoughts about getting down on one knee to ask me to marry you?”
And Madison pipes up, “But Mommy! If you didn’t say yes, I wouldn’t exist!” then she corrected herself. “If you didn’t say yes, who would Pennie have found to give her baby to?”
You see, it’s very concrete for her.
This round we’re going to consider one critique of fully open adoptions. Have you ever heard–or perhaps even made–statements like these?
- “We have medical histories and can share the information we have about their birth parents with our children now. If they feel a need to initiate contact with their birth families when they are adults, we will fully support them.”
- “The decision to have a relationship with her bio family should be hers when she is ready. Creating a relationship between them before she wants it might cause issues in the future.”
- “Children deserve to have just one family during childhood and not to deal with anything adoption-related until they are more mature. A fully open adoption robs a child of a normal childhood.”
These statements are from people participating in closed and semi-open adoptions. I paraphrased them slightly, but left the meanings intact.
The writers share a certain point-of-view: that direct contact during early childhood between birth families and children placed for adoption may not be the best idea. Adopted persons should be free to initiate relationships with their first families–or not–on their own timetable. The parents (first and adoptive) in an adoption shouldn’t make such an important and personal decision for them.
What is your response? Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Well, obviously I disagree. And these kinds of arguments drive me crazy.
Let’s get this out of the way right now, ok? People usually bring up abusive birth parents when they’re describing these scenarios, to which I say, duh, we do not let our children hang out with people who will abuse them. That goes for bio relatives, non-bio relatives, friends, soccer coaches, teachers, religious leaders, babysitters, etc. That goes without saying and it isn’t even part of this discussion.
If we’re talking about limiting first parent contact with our kids simply because those people are first parents, it’s idiotic. Let’s try on other relative scenarios, shall we?
- “We have medical histories and can share the information we have about their grandparents with our children now. If they feel a need to initiate contact with their grandparents when they are adults, we will fully support them.”
- “The decision to have a relationship with her cousins should be hers when she is ready. Creating a relationship between them before she wants it might cause issues in the future.”
- “Children deserve to have just one family during childhood and not to deal with anything divorce-related until they are more mature. A relationship with step-parents robs a child of a normal childhood.”
Ludicrous, right?
First family members are family members. If you would allow your child to have contact with YOUR family members (their adoptive family members) under such-and-such circumstances, likewise you should allow contact with HER family members. And the reverse is true, too. If you wouldn’t let one of YOUR relatives treat your child such-and-such way, likewise there’s no reason you should allow HER relatives to treat her such-and-such way.
The one caveat I have is that we adoptive parents have to stretch a bit because it may be that we’re trying to build relationships over difficult cultural divides. Like say everyone in our family (our child’s adoptive family) listens to Nat King Cole albums for the holidays and everyone in your child’s bio family listens to Handel’s Messiah over and over. Maybe just maybe we might want to consider putting up with Handel a bit, you know? In our own open adoption I can point to the time Madison first met her grandfather (on Pennie’s side) and she had a pork chop. We don’t eat pig (Jewish!) and if my mom tried to feed Madison a pork chop I’d say, “Yo, Mom! What the hell!” But when it came right down to it — and I believe there’s an essay in this somewhere — I figured that going to the mat about a pork chop could do a lot of long-term harm while letting her eat a bit of pig wasn’t going to kill anyone.
And you know what? Madison loved that pork chop and the photo opportunity it created was priceless so I’d say I went the right way there and I’ve let that pork chop incident guide me when faced with similar non-dilemmas both big and small.
