this woman’s work

Someone who worked for This American Life came by Open Adoption Support looking to hook up with someone for a story. This was our exchange (somewhat edited for length):

(more…)

I changed servers and it’s down and out. Argh! I’ve got promotional stuff going on next week so it needs to be fixed by then!

But enough about work. Because I’m caught up on work, which means I’m sitting here updating my blog and tonight I’m finally getting my long overdue hair cut in part because of that promotional stuff I’ve got going on.

The kids are out at park day and I’m glad Brett was able to get ‘em there even though I’m sad to miss it. I’m also missing out on hosting our small Thursday potluck but then again, I’ll like getting my hair done and I do need to edit something tonight that I finished about ten minutes ago. (If I look at it now I’ll think it’s perfect and I’ll be wrong so I’m letting it marinate.)

So! There’s this essay I want to write. I’ve been thinking about it since last fall because as you all know, I’m a slow writer except when it’s marketing stuff and then I’m super-speedy. I guess it’s better than the other way around because lemme tell you, marketing pays much better than personal essays.

The essay that I’ve been thinking about for months and months would also conveniently be a book chapter so I’m seeing this as a two birds one stone thing. One of the reasons I want to write it is because it’d be a personal essay that wouldn’t actually share anything PERSONAL  so I think it would be fun/challenging to try to do that.

I want to write about Pennie’s reasons for placing Madison without ever actually talking about Pennie’s reasons for placing Madison since it’s nobody’s business except hers and Madison’s. Instead I want to talk about how we (i.e., me and the reader) can ever really know and also about the fluidity of “knowing” so that Pennie’s reasons can’t be simplified but instead are an inadequate way to describe a huge complex personal decision with the context of a huge complex cultural creation. I want to show that the decision to place Madison — like any life-changing decision — is fluid and our understanding of “why” changes as we change. (Why did I marry Brett? There are a million reasons and every year I look at that decision and see new nuances and outside/inside influences that I didn’t see before.) I also want to use the essay as an exploration of the statistics and as way to talk about stereotypes and realities of birth motherhood as a way to say, “It doesn’t matter why Pennie placed personally but it does matter why women place culturally.” I want to use it as a way to challenge ideas about adoption and first motherhood and also make Pennie more visible to the reader as a whole person with rights and responsibilities without ever actually giving any of her story away. I want to answer people’s question “why?” in a satisfactory but open-ended way that has them understanding why without ever really knowing the answer.

Hopefully that kinda sorta makes sense.

I’m just at the wandering around wondering stage on this. What I have down here is as much as I have down anywhere (mostly scrawled notes) but that’s how I work so I’m stuck with it.

Attention people dropping by who haven’t read my blog. On this blog you will not find support for the following myths:

1. Adoptive parents aren’t more privileged — they’re just more deserving.
2.  First parents are by definition irresponsible.
3. Women who are too young, too old, too poor, or too single make bad parents.
4. There is no such thing as adoption loss.
5. The adoption industry is just, fair and equitable.

Got it? Comments that argue any of this will go through (I don’t moderate anything but spam and once I deleted some guy who had some ugly things to say about Jewish people) but you’re wasting your time if you think you’re going to be changing any minds.

I left this in response to an ignorant comment (scroll down at your own risk): Privilege is “a special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all.” My privilege as an adoptive parent is unearned. I am not better than my daughter’s first mother; I am luckier.

If we had to “earn” babies based on the rules (as Andrea, the commenter, describes these socially constructed ideals) I would not have any. I had sex very young, fairly often, with a number of different men before I met my husband. I didn’t happen to get pregnant until after I was married but only because my birth control (when I used it) didn’t fail. Sheer luck. I was less responsible that my daughter’s first mother and frankly quite a bit sluttier. The difference? She is more fertile. It’s damn unfair that her reproductive life is open to censure when she was more responsible and more discerning than I was. Lucky me, I get to hang the “good woman” sign around my neck because people mistakenly believe that I earned her baby. Listen, that homestudy ain’t all that hard to pass. What — some fingerprinting? A doctor’s approval? Signed checks?

I didn’t work harder; I got luckier. LUCKIER. That’s it. (My infertility saved my ass because seriously — ask my mother. I was sleeping around.)

You can’t look at any woman who had an unexpected pregnancy and assume ANYTHING about her or her behavior except that at some point she had sex. You cannot assume she did it willingly. You cannot assume she did it unprotected. Besides which, so what if she did? It doesn’t say a damn thing about her ability to parent.

Let’s play fair on this blog. I will promise not to lump every adoptive parent in with the predatory pedophiles who use adoption as their own means of procuring children and commenters like misguided Andrea can promise to quit making out like any woman who placed a child got the grief that she deserves.