Last night we had a hot dinner at a nearby church. The kids and I walked to downtown Worthington and got lunch at Old Bag of Nails while I checked wifi. That’s how we’ve been doing things — one big, hearty meal at a restaurant and then snacks for breakfast and dinner. It mostly works, plus the kids are foraging off the smaller apple tree we have in back (the bigger apple tree has limbs too far out of reach and only drops the wormy apples). But yesterday when we got back from our downtown trip and were settling back into our home addition, (which is what we fondly call our front porch) we found a flyer stuck by our front door inviting us to a free spaghetti dinner at the church down the way.
You may not know that the Seventh Day Adventists have quite a nice little set-up near downtown Worthington. They have a school and a daycare and a big, beautiful brick church and a couple of other buildings besides. Worthington Foods, makers of fine meat-free sausage products (among other things) used to be here, too. (Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarians.) We used to drive by and Noah would sniff the air and sigh, “Oh they’re making chik nuggets today!” But then they got bought out by Kellogg’s and, sadly, they knocked the factory down.
Anyway! A free spaghetti dinner sounded like just the outing we needed last night. I called Kristen and Abby to let them know and they agreed to meet us.
I was reminded that mitzvahs go both ways. That it’s a mitzvah to give but also it can be a mitzvah to take, which is a lesson I seem to be learning at this stage of my life (I have a blog entry working on that later).
We walked in and Madison saw our next door neighbor among those serving and began to jump up and down. “It’s neighbor! It’s neighbor!” she said, then ran up for a hug. Our neighbor was just as happy to see her. And the rest of the volunteers looked happy to see our kids — all eight of ‘em — because kids, especially those who appreciatively load up on garlic bread and lemonade and shyly murmur their thanks, can make the person serving spaghetti feel even better.
We settled ourselves in for dinner, chatting with some of the volunteers who came by to welcome us and invite us up for more. Kristen got a little choked up because niceness can be so nice and make the inconveniences that got you there almost seem worth it. A guy came by and joked we’d have to sing for our supper, indicating the tiny empty stage at the front of the room and the little girls took him at his word, performing to (our) applause.
Madison was impressed with the church’s sanctuary, which was much more elegant than our temple’s modest 70s-inspired space. She was equally charmed by the bathrooms, which had gilt mirrors and busy flowered wallpaper. (She sat on the potty swinging her feet and singing, “FAHN-cy! FAHN-cy!” I think she wants to convert now. She’s all about the fancy!)
Then we took the kids to a nearby park and I accidentally forced Abby and Kristen to walk miles and miles to see Rush Creek. Oops.
We hear power will be back to us on Sunday but some of our neighbors have power already so we’re cautiously optimistic that it might be sooner.
When it comes right down to it, I vote primarily on the issue of choice. I’m a pro-choice, pro-reproductive rights, pro-sex ed voter because I don’t see how I can be a woman who cares about women and vote otherwise. I don’t see how I can be an adoptive mother who cares about adoption reform without supporting abortion rights. I don’t see how I can be a mother by birth and not understand the toll that an unwanted, unplanned and unsupported pregnancy can take on a woman.
I care about the war and the environment and education and the economy (boy howdy) but the issue that is most important to me is choice period.
So it’s hard for me to understand women who feel otherwise. I just don’t get it. You want to stop abortion? Quit cutting social services. Stop eliminating support for single mothers and teen mothers and families who are struggling. Make birth control more effective and more available. (Remember McCain thinks vaigara should be covered by insurance but not birth control.) Work to bring better sex education to the schools and while you’re at it, set up a daycare there for the teens who get pregnant anyway. (Because it sure looks like whatever we do, some teens will get pregnant anyway.)
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be against abortion but refuse to do the things that you need to do to make abortion less needed.
But even if all of those prorgrams were in place, I’d still vote on pro-choice issues because ultimately the decision about whether or not to be a parent needs to lie with the woman facing the positive pregnancy test. Only she knows whether or not she’s ready, willing and able to make the sacrifices it takes to be a parent. Anyone reading my blog knows that adoption isn’t the easy-out for any unhappily pregnant women.
We deserve access to ALL of our options. We can have our own conversations with God (as we understand him/her/it). We don’t need the government intervening for us.
From Krississippi (dot) com » A Response to a Response of a Response
Adoptive parent loss is becoming taboo to even mention. Admitting one is an adoptive parent (ESPECIALLY on the net) is to say something shameful. To say “I adopted and something happened and now I grieve” is shunned. Tell me it’s not. I’ve been called a baby stealer, a raper of another culture, not a “real mother”, and a whole lot of other nasty things. But should I call my son’s mother or any other birth mother someone who can’t parent because of “x” reason, I AM THE ONE FLAMED.
You know, I’ve heard more than once that adoptive parents are feeling hemmed in by “political correctness” on the adoption front — at least on the internet. This hasn’t been my reality but since I’ve heard it in more than one corner it’s clear it’s an experience other people are having. I’m bothered by any us vs. them mentality and am unhappy that much of the adoption community has been so segregated but I do think that we need our own safe spaces. (Although off the internet? I see no political correctness. And also other spheres of the online adoption world seem to be havens from political correctness. I guess we’re a progressive bunch.)
Frankly (and I know this is unpopular to some) I think that we adoptive parents have more room to give here. I remember this atrocious flamewar (I’ve mentioned it before) that was on misc.kids.adoption between anti-adoption activists and pro-adoption adoptive parents. It was one of those schisms where everyone was executing black/white thinking — the kind that really only happen on the internet because people become so entrenched in arguing. Anyway, one of the adoptive parents typed something like, “Yeah, well we have your babies!” (I don’t remember exactly what she typed, just the “we have your babies” line at the end.) And that’s the thing — we adoptive parents have the babies. To me, forgetting that important fact is a little like a white person hollering defensively, “But I didn’t own slaves!” in the face of someone hurt by racism.
It’s a delicate balance — acknowledging privilege isn’t the same thing as admitting to wrong-doing we haven’t directly participated in. It may be that we had wonderful, totally ethical adoptions but still, we have the babies and we got our babies within a system that isn’t equitable. Even if we ourselves are absolutely swell people, for some other hurting people we may symbolize the oppression they’re fighting. I get that. Frankly I choose not to own other people’s judgment about my family and my adoption and I choose not to get defensive when I get confronted by people who are angry but don’t know me or the particulars of my life. (I’m not always good at this choosing — sometimes the choosing comes after some angry stomping around. Although frankly ugliest judgments I’ve received have come from other adoptive parents so you know, that’s where I’m coming from.)
I don’t doubt there is grief that I can’t begin to understand having not gone through it myself. I can’t assume how one would feel if I hadn’t experienced it.
But, based on that thought, how can anyone else who hasn’t been in MY SHOES assume to know how I WOULD FEEL?
I don’t assume on their behalf and I’d rather they not assume on mine. I guess that was one of my main points in my post. I can’t dismiss your grief any more than you can dismiss mine.
See, I haven’t yet read anyone dismissing your grief or any adoptive parent’s grief in this conversation. What I’ve read is that people feel the discussion in that newspaper article was one-sided.
There are far more birth parent loss websites than there are adoptive parent loss sites.
Well, how could there NOT be? As Andy wrote, “Losing a potential placement is NOTHING like losing an actual child… it is losing a hope, a dream, a thought… all non-tangible things. A mother who has placed her child has lost a piece of HER. and it cannot be replaced. Not by her next child, not by anything. But potential adoptive parents can grieve (because yes, there is grief and it is hard) and then MOVE ON TO THE NEXT potential placement.”
Hey, no one told me about the long-term repercussions about adopting. No one told me how I would struggle to answer my son’s questions, long for the ability to know his mother, deal with the guilt I always hold, understand how to help my son with his own journey, and be allowed to call myself a “mother” without remembering EVERY TIME that I wasn’t until someone else was.But I did have the ability to do my own research about adoption, talk to adopted people and adoptive parents alike, read books, and find resources to at least help myself do the best that I could. Why expect a birth parent to do any less?? Adoption, on either side, is a huge decision and commitment and I don’t believe it’s SOLELY up to any agency to do 100% of the educating. I believe it IS the SOLE responsibility of the agency to do as much educating that they can, but you can’t take away, for a second, the personal responsibility aspect. Unless you’re, say 11 and pregnant by incest (as mentioned in the original article), and/or you are a CHILD, then it’s not up to anyone other than YOURSELF to take that responsibility.
Krissi, the fact that we (adoptive parents) often feel ill-prepared to deal with the fall-out from adoption is something we should talk about when we talk about reform. I agree with you. As to the rest? That really gets my back up.
1. I was at two bookstores over the weekend and both had a shelf full of adoption books for adoptive parents. I didn’t see one for people contemplating placing their children. Same thing at my local library (although it’s interesting to note that in the poorer neighborhood by my daughter’s old preschool I did see two “so you’re unexpectedly pregnant” books for teenagers, both of which pushed adoption.) So I’d say it’s a little harder to do that research.
2. I counted on my agency to show me the way in a lot of things. That was a luxury that it’s clear expectant parents can’t afford since obviously the agencies show them even less than they show us adoptive parents.
3. Now try going to the search engines. Type in “adoption”, “choosing adoption” and “thinking of placing my baby for adoption.” Tell me how many non-biased sites (i.e., not related to the business of adoption) come up. Who do you think can afford better keyword placement — unbiased adoption sites or adoption businesses? No wonder the search engines are loaded.
4. Say you find a few voices in the wilderness. Say you find the blogs of first parents or some of the keep your baby sites. Now imagine the weight of the people who say that if you place you will be heroic, loving, unselfish, good versus the few small voices who say, “You will also be unbearably sad.”
Considering the way the cards are stacked I can’t condemn any woman who looks back and says, “I wish I had done it differently.” I do believe we are responsible for our choices but I also appreciate how the world sometimes (often) impacts our choices in ways we didn’t expect.
We women get trashed in our reproductive lives: having babies too late to make them without assistance; having them too young; having them with the wrong men; having them and putting them in daycare; having them and spoiling them by staying home; and having them but then giving them up. Yowza. A girl can’t win for trying.
It looks to me like first motherhood is a journey and some women end up in different places — happier or sadder or guiltier or more content. Like anything else, people have to make sense of their own lives and every woman who placed or lost a child through adoption is going to have a different story to tell. But I do know that this industry that gifted me my daughter doesn’t work in a fair and honest manner. I know that. Domestic infant adoption is about getting babies to us — like the lady said, we have the babies. And in that newspaper article, we also have the right to all the tears. Now that’s just getting greedy.
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American Family » Love is sometimes a Battlefield.
American Family takes the time to expand on her education post and it’s worth checking out. See, if I were to debate A about our differing educational values and only came at it from a “But Alfie Kohn says…” I’d be missing his point. Yes, you can concentrate the discussion down to “what way works best?” but at a certain point A might say, “But I’m Chinese.” And I might respond with, “And I’m not.” And then we’d be at a cultural impasse. My choice to reject academic pressure has a different resonance for me than it does for Chinese A.
You know how Jane Brown infamously said that internationally adoptive parents are a fifth best choice? (And I’ll assume that domestic transcultural adoptive parents are a fourth best choice.)
The first, she believes, is for
children to remain with their birthparents; second-best is for a child to be
adopted by, or remain with, a member of the extended family; third-best is to
be raised by people of the same race in the country of one’s birth, and
fourth-best is to be raised by members of the same race outside the country of
one’s birth.
(quoted from The Pain of Adoption)
What she’s talking about are the levels of adoption loss — the loss of a biological connection and then the loss of a cultural connection. If we adopt transracially/transculturally, our children become biracial/bicultural regardless of their biological roots. Both Twice the Rice and A Birth Project wrote about this recently (click the links). (American Family also just wrote about this in her infamous and hilarious Emergency Code Whitey entry.)
My goal isn’t to do “as good a job” at nurturing Madison’s black self as a black parent could because that would be an impossible goal. I can’t understand the nuances of black culture the way I could if I had grown up there. I can read about them, I can visit them (as an observer, as a tourist) but I can’t live them. Like American Family respecting A’s core values about education as a cultural issue even if philosophically they are not hers. When they discuss/debate what to do for M (their daughter), her acknowledgment that this is a cultural divide will benefit the both of them because it explains what’s at the root of his argument and it also explains why it’s not at the root of hers.
It’s kind of the same thing when people say that doing a white child’s hair is as difficult or as important as doing a black child’s hair. No, it isn’t. Even if the two children have the exact same hair texture, if one child has pink skin and one has brown, the state of their hair has different cultural connotations. There’s an extra layer to the discussion. We can exchange hair tips, talk conditioner, and trade beads and baubles but when we send our kids out into the world, they bear a different weight in their curls.
There are a lot of challenges in being a transcultural parent (and I include bio parents who are transculturally parenting — especially if they do not have a co-parent who reps the culture of the child) and for me, one is trying to make sense of when my values are more or less important than the values of the child’s birth culture. So between my two kids, I have very different discussions in my head. Like I never ever ever considered sending Noah to a Christian preschool or an academically-oriented preschool but I would send Madison to a Christian, academically-oriented preschool provided that she wasn’t a minority child there. (I’m still holding out for preschool because I haven’t found one yet where she won’t be a minority child. I’ve found daycares but not preschools — except for one that’s about 45 minutes away. Ack.)
The way I figure it, Madison doesn’t just need African American peers and role models, she also needs an introduction to African American culture in an intimate, care-giving way. This includes an understanding of the importance of Christianity as a cultural value and also an understanding of the expectations that black adults have for black children. I know that we’re less strict than is the wide cultural expectation for black children, (which is to say that I’m not turning my generalization into assumptions about individuals) and in a preschool where she is being taught by black teachers, she’s going to get that. That’s about giving her access, which gives her choice.
When I think about a strict, less play-based preschool and the potential “harm” of that, I have to weight that against the potential benefits for each of my kids. For Noah, there isn’t a whole lot of benefit in going against our family values about preschool but for Madison, there is. It’s the same thing as parenting for temperment (making the decision to, say, go to Boston and leave the toddler when I’d never have left her brother) — different kids need different things.
What we fifth and fourth best choice parents have to do is give our kids access to choice. That doesn’t mean that every white parent with a Chinese child has to sign said child up for math camp or that every white parent of an African American child has to send that child to mostly black preschool. But it does mean that considering those things is part of what we need to do as we think about how to give our kids access. I mean, I can’t teach Madison to code-switch no matter how many Langston Hughes books, Fugees CDs or black baby dolls are in our house. Hopefully preschool will be part of giving her access to her options. Likewise, math camp and Chinese school may offer opportunity M and her sibling-to-be.
