I’m running through the adoption questions first and then I’m going to hit the freelance questions. Also here I’m going to answer one that starts to head out beyond out personal adoption and that’ll segue nicely to the ones Marley and Suz asked me.

From Mirah again: When you are out and about and people admire Madison. Do you offer that she is adopted or allow then to assume that she might be your by birth?

Sometimes and sometimes not. I asked my husband and my good friend Abby (who have both been out and about with me) if they could tell if there were times when I was more likely to or not and neither could say for certain. I think it depends on who’s asking (random salesperson? the soccer coach?), what we’re doing when they ask (rushing to get out the store? hanging at the park?) and how I’m feeling (friendly and open to discussion? in desperate need of caffeine and solitude?). It also depends on how they ask it, I think, but I’m not sure.

Sometimes when people compliment either of my kids I just smile and nod or say “thanks” or “we think so, too.” Sometimes when people compliment them I say, “He has his daddy’s eyes” or “Her birth mom has a big wide smile, too.” I’d say the situations when I do this for either kid are pretty similar. Basically if I have the time, inclination and interest in expanding, I will. I really don’t think I am less or more likely to mention Pennie than I am to mention any other relative.

I know that there are arguments for and against bringing up adoption to strangers but 1) having a transracial adoption makes things more obvious; 2) Pennie, as folks now know, is a very present person in our life and not referring to her would be as weird as not saying, “Yeah, his grandmother has blue-blue eyes like that”; 3) I err on the side of being open. If Madison ever wants me to stop, I’ll stop.

Then Joy asked:

I can’t help but be struck with the question though, why would you invited this kind of pain/drama into your life?

I am an adoptee and have strong feelings about the difficulties adoption leaves a child with, so maybe that really colors my ability to understand how people could want to be a part of something like adoption, actually pay money to be a part of it.  Even without that aspect, if I could really believe adoption was good for children, what it does to their mothers and even the adoptive parents, it is not something I would ever invite into my life.

It is ironic that adoption makes more sense to me when it is done by people just blindly grabbing at a baby, lost in fantasy, I mean obviously that will be harmful for the child but smart people trying to do it “right” only brings into sharp relief how truly bizarre/harmful the whole situation is.

I mean Pennie sounds great, you sound great, how did this happen?

First of all Joy, I do appreciate your question and I do take it not in the spirit of hostility but in the spirit of discussion and much-needed debate.

I am pro-choice. I do believe there is much too much money and coercion present in adoption and far too little practical and cultural support for women who parent outside of our often rigid cultural mores. So I think there needs to be adoption reform and more support for parents but I don’t think adoption should be abolished anymore than I think abortion should be abolished. I would love it if there was less need for either abortion or adoption but given that the world is what it is, I think abortion and adoption must be available to the women who need and want it and that they should be supported — not forced — around their decisions.

I also believe that adoptees experience loss and that adoption is less than ideal but I don’t think that every adoptee feels that loss or processes that loss in the same way. I do believe that children (and adults who were once children) have essential rights. Some I’m still trying to figure out (i.e., relinquishment periods) but I’d say original birth certificates are unarguably a human right.

Ok, I’ve used this parallel before but I’ll use it again.

I think divorce is sub-optimal for kids BUT:

• I don’t think there’s only one right way to do a divorce.
• I don’t think divorce is always worse than staying together.
• I think some married couples’ kids would be better off if their parents divorced.

I believe divorce needs to be available but that marriage counseling needs to be available (and affordable) and I think post-divorce services need to be available (and affordable).

I think divorce can be the best case scenario for a child and still be painful and still be loss. I believe it can both be the best thing and the worst thing that happens to a family. I believe that ultimately that decision needs to rest with the adults even though the decision will forcefully impact the children.

This is how I feel about adoption, too. And can you imagine if there was an industry behind divorce that was as present and as pushy as the industry behind adoption? If there were agencies that aggressively promoted divorce in the interest of making money on brokering divorces? Or that promoted better, prettier, more accomplished wives and husbands? Or that told people that if their marriage looked like xyz that divorcing was the most loving thing they could do for their kids? I mean, really. We’d be up in arms.

Back to our own adoption. I am not Pennie and I cannot and will not try to explain her decision to place Madison with us. I will say that in some ways her decision — in the context in which it existed — seemed inevitable. Much of that context is stuff I’d like to see changed (and this from a feminist perspective more than an adoption reform perspective — but then my adoption reform springs out of my feminism) but within the context, too, exists her free choice. (I’m saying here that her decision really became cemented before she ever called the agency and while the agency and the adoption policies and my presence in her adoption is a very big part of what happened, it’s not in anyway the whole part and addressing the one without the other would have been unlikely to change what happened next.)

I know that it’s hard to see free choice in the maelstrom that is adoption in America today but it’s there in as much as many of other choices (to marry, to practice a religion, to leave a husband, to have gastric bypass, to send our kids to school). In adoption, it’s easier to follow the money. The industry itself is much more obviously present and also (and this is why adoption interests me so much) so many of our other preconceived ideas about womanhood, motherhood, family, class, race, etc. are really, really present.