I have recently found myself in a bit of a conundrum; how do I pull two seemingly disparate passions of mine into one cohesive, integral whole?
My first passion is midwifery, breastfeeding and co-sleeping/sleep sharing. After I gave birth to my first child, which ended in an emergency C-section, I determined that I wouldn't go into another pregnancy, labor and delivery as blindly as I did the first. Because adoption was a serious consideration for my first child, I willfully under-educated myself as to what labor and delivery would be like. I reasoned that women had been having babies for longer than recorded history, so mine will know what to do when the time came. While I still believe this, I didn't realize at the time that my handicap was the fact that I didn't have a community of women who could give me the knowledge of what to expect, and how to help my body do what it needed to do. My ignorance caused me to shoot myself in the foot, as ignorance usually will.
When I became pregnant with my second child, I knew I wanted to nurse, and I knew I wanted to have this baby naturally. For me, one step naturally lead to another. I contacted my local Le Leche League leader and found that she had just finished her training as a Husband Coached Childbirth (also known as The Bradley Method for Dr. Bradley, the techniques progenitor) instructor and was seeking clients for her first class. I attended a LLL meeting when I was about 6 months pregnant with my daughter and had my eyes open for the first time. I was an immediate convert to the beautiful ways of breastfeeding and gently welcoming a child into the world.
And what a world it is! I credit The Bradley Method for giving my children the best possible entrance into the world, and Le Leche League for supporting breastfeeding exclusively. While I see breastfeeding as being the best nutrition for a human child (how many babies do YOU see crawling up to a COW to nurse?), studies have show the importance of mother's milk, and the necessary touching that accompanies nursing, for the vital growth and development of the infant brain. While I would never call my daughter developmentally delayed, she is behind the curve as far as her peers go in her academic pursuits. I shudder and cringe to think what may have happened had I been a lazy mother and just propped a bottle in my daughter's mouth and left her in her car seat to feed. (A sight which enraged me even before becoming pregnant.)
I learned from Darlene and the Le Leche League that it's ok to sleep with your child; you're more in tune with your child and their needs. While it takes a little time to coordinate, eventually mother and child can learn to nurse laying down, and eventually sleep through night time nursing. For the first 6 weeks of my daughter's life, I woke up to her needs to nurse, but we practiced nursing laying down. Finally it just clicked and we began to happily sleep through night time feedings. That's not to say she didn't breastfeed at night; she did. We just became so in tune with each other, that it became second nature to maneuver ourselves into just the right position that falling back asleep was the next logical step.
Call me smug, but I always laugh to myself when I hear new parents complain about the night time feedings. If they only knew how hard they were making it on themselves, they would become fans of nursing and sleep sharing fairly quickly, I think.
However, it was during the pregnancy of my youngest child that I finally figured out "what I wanted to do when I grew up" (I was 28, by the way). I wanted to become a midwife. I wanted to share with other women, expectant mothers, the joy and wonder of bringing a child into the world under her own power, free of hospitals, law suit phobic doctors, and people who thought labor and delivery were medical diseases to be managed instead of natural processes to be celebrated.
My second passion, as anyone already familiar with my blog will know, is the Adoptee Rights Movement and the Family Preservation Movement. Just read the post prior to this one and I think my positions are fairly clear, and I don't necessarily need to enumerate them again.
Maybe someone reading this will automatically jump to where I did only today, and if you do, bravo, you're smarter than I am (no, for once, I'm NOT being sarcastic). However, the marriage of these two passions seemed like an unlikely pairing in my head for a while. Then, during a musing of "if I knew then what I know now", I came upon the solution to my problem. One of the biggest reasons I caved to the pressure to give my first son up for adoption was financial. Neither my adoptive parents, nor my boyfriend's parents were willing to help out financially with raising our son. Both sets of parents had, independent of each other, the same reply, "We've raised our children and we're not interested in raising anymore". My boyfriend was the only one working between the two of us at that point, and we didn't have the money for formula, diapers, a crib, changing table, etc, et al. All the traditional accoutrements found in a nursery were beyond our financial capability. No one ever said to me before my son was born that I could save a great deal of money with simply breastfeeding him. No one told me that I could share sleep with my son, negating the need for a crib. No one told me that cloth diapers could save me expenses over disposable diapers. Those simple things could have saved us thousands of dollars and put us in a better position to keep our son. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have inflicted the primal wound on my first son.
NO ONE TOLD ME.
As to how I utilize this knowledge, this new marriage of my passions, I have yet to fully figure out. I suppose my first step will be posting this blog. I'll go from there as to how I can bring these strange companions in my head to a useful, helpful way. Ultimately, I suppose I would like to help young, financially challenged women to see these alternatives that no one else is willing to tell them about. If I can help just one person keep their child then I'll know that all the pain and sacrifice I've lived through isn't in vain.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Young, Poor and Pregnant; Reasons to Relinquish?
Recently I added my first Dad to my Facebook friends list and he's been privy to some of my not so thought through status updates. However, in discussing this with him and my fiance, I have discovered that many of those status updates are merely topic sentences for blogs that I want to start, even if I'm not quite aware of that yet. I think I also need some of the feedback from my Facebook friends that these updates provide in order to clarify my own thoughts on the things I "say".
However, both my first Dad and fiance urged me to make disclaimer statements at the beginning of my "topic sentence" status updates and post the blog link in order to be able to view the entirety of my thought process. While I can't guarantee I'll remember to do that every time, it will be something I will strive for in the future.
Below is the status update that began this discussion.
"As I continue to read The Primal Wound one thing becomes blatantly, brutally obvious to me; it should be a crime to force, coerce, manipulate, cajole, or in anyway separate a child from their mother unless that parent is proven unfit. And it should be severely punishable should a person or persons be found guilty of this act. Adoption has got to be the most unnatural thing one human being can do to another in the name of a child's best interest."
In defense of my first Dad, he isn't a part of the Adoptees Rights Movements, or the Family Preservation Movements and is only just now beginning to be aware of it at all because of his avid interest in me, his daughter. Some things that perhaps might have been obvious to those of my Facebook friends who are intimately involved and aware of my positions wouldn't need any sort of disclaimer, but one of the things that my first Dad brought to my attention is that there may be people who, like him, have no point of reference and could find my statements very confusing.
Some of the salient points I should have clarified sooner are these:
I want to address these points now.
When I refer to "a person or persons" I was in fact referring to attorneys or agencies whose sole purpose is the making of money from adoption. I never said adoption should be illegal, but that force and coercion and manipulation in order to obtain a baby for an adopting couple should be illegal. Informed consent is required for every single medical procedure we have; a doctor is obligated by law to give all the information about said procedure and the alternatives to the patient, yet there is nothing in place to keep an attorney or an agency from outright lying to a woman who is considering adoption and to me, that is plain wrong. While placing a child for adoption isn't technically a medical procedure, it is a life altering event for the surrendering mother, the child and the adopting parents. To be less than fully informed is, in my opinion, a criminal act. In the system we have today, adoption is a money making industry, motivated by greed, not good will, on the part of the vast majority of agencies and attorneys. It's not in the agencies or attorneys best interest to give a woman who is considering adoption all the information that is available on the repercussions of adoption on all members of the triad. Those people understand that should a woman be given this information, she will likely chose another option for her child, and they can kiss the money goodbye.
As for teen parents, their youth should not make them automatically unfit. I believe we need a movement in this country to keep the children of these teens at least within the biological family, should a teen mother and/or teen father prove unable to care for the child. Placing a baby with strangers doesn't help the child, no matter how loving, caring and attentive those strangers may be.
Some simple definitions of an unfit parent would include neglect, abuse (physical, emotional, mental), drug abuse. There are other definitions of "unfit", of course, but, that would be up to a judge to determine, using the law as precedent.
Financial abuse is a trickier situation, generally speaking. There are millions of children in this country alone who don't have health insurance. I'm ambivalent about this being an abusive situation; one, because we do have access to emergency rooms that by law must treat patients who seek treatment (and should the child need to be admitted to the hospital, there are financial alternatives that most hospitals offer for payment, either through medicare or payment plans), and two, because for things like immunizations there are free clinics in just about every community that a parent can take their child to. It was stated in a conference on adoption at the White House in the early 1900's that poverty is NOT an adequate reason to remove children from their families. Another thing to consider for financial "abuse" are that there are a great many community, private outreach programs designed to assist poorer families.
As for who is a better parent, according to The Primal Wound (and frankly, common sense) there are natural processes that a woman goes through during a pregnancy that does enable her to be the best parent to her child. Societal pressures are the factors from keeping that woman from fulfilling the imperative nature has provided. An adoptive mother hasn't gone through the 9 months of pregnancy that will make her uniquely able to care for that child. Can prospective adoptive parents provide a more financially stable environment? Perhaps, but as I stated earlier, I don't believe that poverty is a sufficient reason to take a child from it's mother. And that mother and child do not necessarily have to rely on tax payer money in order to survive.
Additionally, our society has a tendency to view a young pregnant woman in a static position. They see her as forever being young, immature and unable to provide for her offspring. This is an incredibly narrow view point, very limiting, imposing a certain set of criteria upon that person that common sense must dictate as purely illogical. One of the primary reasons why many prospective adoptive parents want an infant is because we know that babies grow incredibly fast, and are soon out of infancy. Humans grow. They grow up, get older, wiser, more mature. Of course not everyone does, however, telling a young, financially challenged woman that she cannot care for her child because of these very transitory situations in life is to risk creating in that person a mind set that, as soon as she signs the papers, becomes reality instead of only a possibility. Youth and poverty are not permanent. But when a woman is coerced into handing her child over to an eager, infertile couple, society has stated that woman will forever be a child, incapable of taking care of her child, establishing a destructive pattern of behavior in her that will keep a part of her forever that age when she relinquished, and even sadder, can cause so much damage as to compel the young woman to sabotage any efforts or attempts at creating a better life for herself.
Additionally, as the child grows, he or she can inevitably experience these exact same situations. Where the birth mother was unworthy to parent, the child was unworthy to be parented by their biological family. When one feels unworthy, there is no desire to better oneself. It can turn into a self perpetuating cycle to the point where the child turns into a birth parent themselves.
We regularly prosecute people for coercion, manipulation and force when these methods deprive another of health, happiness and well being; however, when done in the name of "the best interest of the child" we excuse the behavior, even if studies have shown time and again that adoption isn't always in the best interest of the child. Its criminal to leave a child in the hands of a parent who is patently unfit. Why then is it encouraged to take a child from a fit parent simply because of transitory situations in life?
However, both my first Dad and fiance urged me to make disclaimer statements at the beginning of my "topic sentence" status updates and post the blog link in order to be able to view the entirety of my thought process. While I can't guarantee I'll remember to do that every time, it will be something I will strive for in the future.
Below is the status update that began this discussion.
"As I continue to read The Primal Wound one thing becomes blatantly, brutally obvious to me; it should be a crime to force, coerce, manipulate, cajole, or in anyway separate a child from their mother unless that parent is proven unfit. And it should be severely punishable should a person or persons be found guilty of this act. Adoption has got to be the most unnatural thing one human being can do to another in the name of a child's best interest."
In defense of my first Dad, he isn't a part of the Adoptees Rights Movements, or the Family Preservation Movements and is only just now beginning to be aware of it at all because of his avid interest in me, his daughter. Some things that perhaps might have been obvious to those of my Facebook friends who are intimately involved and aware of my positions wouldn't need any sort of disclaimer, but one of the things that my first Dad brought to my attention is that there may be people who, like him, have no point of reference and could find my statements very confusing.
Some of the salient points I should have clarified sooner are these:
- Who exactly "a person or persons" are.
- The legal status of adoption.
- What constitutes an unfit parent.
I want to address these points now.
When I refer to "a person or persons" I was in fact referring to attorneys or agencies whose sole purpose is the making of money from adoption. I never said adoption should be illegal, but that force and coercion and manipulation in order to obtain a baby for an adopting couple should be illegal. Informed consent is required for every single medical procedure we have; a doctor is obligated by law to give all the information about said procedure and the alternatives to the patient, yet there is nothing in place to keep an attorney or an agency from outright lying to a woman who is considering adoption and to me, that is plain wrong. While placing a child for adoption isn't technically a medical procedure, it is a life altering event for the surrendering mother, the child and the adopting parents. To be less than fully informed is, in my opinion, a criminal act. In the system we have today, adoption is a money making industry, motivated by greed, not good will, on the part of the vast majority of agencies and attorneys. It's not in the agencies or attorneys best interest to give a woman who is considering adoption all the information that is available on the repercussions of adoption on all members of the triad. Those people understand that should a woman be given this information, she will likely chose another option for her child, and they can kiss the money goodbye.
As for teen parents, their youth should not make them automatically unfit. I believe we need a movement in this country to keep the children of these teens at least within the biological family, should a teen mother and/or teen father prove unable to care for the child. Placing a baby with strangers doesn't help the child, no matter how loving, caring and attentive those strangers may be.
Some simple definitions of an unfit parent would include neglect, abuse (physical, emotional, mental), drug abuse. There are other definitions of "unfit", of course, but, that would be up to a judge to determine, using the law as precedent.
Financial abuse is a trickier situation, generally speaking. There are millions of children in this country alone who don't have health insurance. I'm ambivalent about this being an abusive situation; one, because we do have access to emergency rooms that by law must treat patients who seek treatment (and should the child need to be admitted to the hospital, there are financial alternatives that most hospitals offer for payment, either through medicare or payment plans), and two, because for things like immunizations there are free clinics in just about every community that a parent can take their child to. It was stated in a conference on adoption at the White House in the early 1900's that poverty is NOT an adequate reason to remove children from their families. Another thing to consider for financial "abuse" are that there are a great many community, private outreach programs designed to assist poorer families.
As for who is a better parent, according to The Primal Wound (and frankly, common sense) there are natural processes that a woman goes through during a pregnancy that does enable her to be the best parent to her child. Societal pressures are the factors from keeping that woman from fulfilling the imperative nature has provided. An adoptive mother hasn't gone through the 9 months of pregnancy that will make her uniquely able to care for that child. Can prospective adoptive parents provide a more financially stable environment? Perhaps, but as I stated earlier, I don't believe that poverty is a sufficient reason to take a child from it's mother. And that mother and child do not necessarily have to rely on tax payer money in order to survive.
Additionally, our society has a tendency to view a young pregnant woman in a static position. They see her as forever being young, immature and unable to provide for her offspring. This is an incredibly narrow view point, very limiting, imposing a certain set of criteria upon that person that common sense must dictate as purely illogical. One of the primary reasons why many prospective adoptive parents want an infant is because we know that babies grow incredibly fast, and are soon out of infancy. Humans grow. They grow up, get older, wiser, more mature. Of course not everyone does, however, telling a young, financially challenged woman that she cannot care for her child because of these very transitory situations in life is to risk creating in that person a mind set that, as soon as she signs the papers, becomes reality instead of only a possibility. Youth and poverty are not permanent. But when a woman is coerced into handing her child over to an eager, infertile couple, society has stated that woman will forever be a child, incapable of taking care of her child, establishing a destructive pattern of behavior in her that will keep a part of her forever that age when she relinquished, and even sadder, can cause so much damage as to compel the young woman to sabotage any efforts or attempts at creating a better life for herself.
Additionally, as the child grows, he or she can inevitably experience these exact same situations. Where the birth mother was unworthy to parent, the child was unworthy to be parented by their biological family. When one feels unworthy, there is no desire to better oneself. It can turn into a self perpetuating cycle to the point where the child turns into a birth parent themselves.
We regularly prosecute people for coercion, manipulation and force when these methods deprive another of health, happiness and well being; however, when done in the name of "the best interest of the child" we excuse the behavior, even if studies have shown time and again that adoption isn't always in the best interest of the child. Its criminal to leave a child in the hands of a parent who is patently unfit. Why then is it encouraged to take a child from a fit parent simply because of transitory situations in life?
Thursday, February 4, 2010
My First Encounter With an Angry Adoptive Parent
On January 1, 2010 I posted in my status update on Facebook this statement:
"Warning: this status update could be construed as offensive. To all those infertile couples out there who think adoption is a good solution, did you maybe consider that God made you infertile ON PURPOSE?!? Maybe you're not MEANT to parent?!?"
A month later, February 1, 2010, I received in my inbox on Facebook the following private message. My reply is below. I have yet to receive an answering message in return. Please note that the names of the letter writer and his wife are deleted out by my choice to protect their privacy, since they privately messaged me. While I understand that simply posting this to my blog may seem contrary to the spirit of privacy the letter writer intended, I feel that the points she makes and I rebut should be made public in order to help all in the Adoption Triad understand the difficulties in communication on all three sides of the triangle.
"you don't know me but I am Xxxxx' wife. I feel since you are putting your feelings out in a public forum that I can do the same, but a little more tastefully than you.
We respect anyone for having passion about what they believe in but we are very offended about your comment regarding people who can't have children naturally not being meant to have a child, through adoption either. I am unable to have children but i don't believe God would want me to let that get in the way of sharing our good values, morals and unending amount of love to a child who needs it. Anyone can give birth to a child but it doesn't earn then the right to be called a parent....you earn that title.
Xxxxx is the greatest father to our adopted son and I can't imagine our son missing out on that just to stay with his abusive, gang member, drug using birth mother who us tax paying citizens are paying for because she is in jail.
We feel very sad for you. you sound like a very bitter person with lots of issues and maybe you need to take some of your own advise, when you made the idiotic statement about God not giving some people the ability to have children because you are not meant to have have children.....well did you ever stop to think that maybe God doesn't want your birth parents to know you or that maybe you don't deserve to know them!
just putting our feelings out there also."
My Response:
"Dear Mrs. Xxxxxxxx,
I appreciate that my comment was offensive, generally speaking. I was venting some of my feelings in as safe a public forum for me as possible. My comment was not directly aimed AT you. The anger you sense in me is from the community at large believing that simply because a woman is poor and/or young that she will make a bad mother. Being poor and being young are not crimes, nor are they permanent situations in life. This country has a love affair with adoption that sickens me because of the sense of entitlement many prospective adoptive parents feel concerning young and poor pregnant women. There is a broad paint brush sweeping type attitude that if you are either of these things, then automatically you should not, cannot mother your child; and to me, that is plain wrong.
When Xxxxx added me as a friend, I looked through his pictures, and saw the photos that were taken of the official adoption of your son, and I was happy for him, and for you and your son. It looked like a very happy day for your family. I will admit that I was under the impression that your son was biologically yours, Mrs. Xxxxxxxx, but for some reason his biological father wasn't in the picture and Xxxxx stepped in. I was unaware that you were unable to have children biologically.
I understand that not every single person who has a child, biologically speaking, is capable or fit to raise that child. I feel very badly that your son has a birth mother who is a burden on our society, but I am pleased to know that he has adoptive parents who love him, care for him, and are providing a warm and secure home. That's what ever child deserves.
That being said, not every child who grows up in an adoptive home has the benefits that you are providing for your son. I am a survivor of incest from a very early age for many years by my adoptive brother. Does incest happen in biological families? Of course, so I understand that simply because I'm adopted that doesn't make my situation unique to adoption. It is what it is.
As far as "tasteful" goes, if you read my status update saying that, you may have read the replies to it and there are many of my Facebook friends that feel the same way I do, and in fact feel even stronger about it than I. That same week I posted in my status a question about what my FB friend's general opinion was of step parents adopting their spouse's children, and got very much the same response as the original post. However, I would love to see my fiance adopt my children from another marriage because he is more of a father to my kids than the man who provided the sperm for them.
I cannot, however, agree with your belief that "you earn that title" as far as being a parent goes. My next statement will more than likely be viewed as offensive, though it is not intended as such; however, I have found that the majority of people who make that statement are adoptive parents who are insecure due to their lack of inability to biologically procreate. When I say that, these are my experiences, nothing more, nothing less. That being said, not only am I an adopted person, but I am also a birth mother. I was a mother the moment I found out I was pregnant with my first son. You wouldn't tell a woman who had a miscarriage that she was never a mother. You would sympathize with her loss, grieve with her, and offer your condolence, but you would never be so rude as to say that she was never a mother. So why is it any different than a woman who lost a child to adoption? I carried my son for over nine months in my body; I loved him, cherished him, nurtured him with my own body. I cared for him when we were in the hospital while I recovered from my c-section. I agonized over what would be the best choice for him; raising him or to place him for adoption. How are my feelings any less than yours as a mother of an adopted child? Does the fact that I was manipulated into giving my ONLY flesh and blood up for adoption mean that I wasn't a mother?
Perhaps to you it does. But to me and to literally millions of other women, it doesn't. We ARE mothers. We are mothers who LOST our children to adoption. Do we grieve any less than the mother who had a miscarriage? NO. But by societies standards and expectations, we are not allowed to grieve our loss. We are told that you should just get on with your life, you did the noble deed, you gave the gift of life. Collectively, that's a slap in the face of each one of us because you can't carry a life inside of you for that long and just walk away with no repercussions. Children are not gifts to give away.
Does this make me bitter? To some extent, it does, because giving my child to another couple to raise was the worst decision of my life. It was the best decision for my son, but on a purely selfish note, that doesn't help me one bit. I am overjoyed that my son was raised in a household that could afford two houses, vacations all over the country every year, a private school. These were things that I couldn't give my son at that time in my life. He is one of the lucky adoptees because he had these material things as well as a wealth of love. That doesn't mean that I didn't love him with all my heart, and that doesn't mean that I would have been a bad mother. I was simply a young, poor mother.
Beyond that, I'm not a bitter person, regardless of what you interpret from what you read in just my status updates. I am a very happy, passionate person who is full of love and joy and wonderment at the world around her, especially with my children that I've been blessed enough to raise.
All that aside, I have a few last things I would like to say. I would strongly urge you to research "the other side of adoption"; educate yourselves with books like "The Primal Wound", "The Girls Who Went Away", and "Not Remembered, Never Forgotten". Please take the time to find out about specific issues concerning adopted children and the trauma adoption can cause. I urge you to do this for your son's sake. He may have questions, concerns that you simply cannot be aware of unless you have educated yourself in these matters. It will strengthen the bond you and your son have. Not every child experiences adoption trauma in the same way, some may never even experience the trauma. But it would be better to aware of the possibility that it may arise, rather than be caught unawares.
I realize, for the most part, that you are simply regurgitating my words back at me due to the pain you allowed them to cause yourself, but my reply to you is that every child, every person deserves to know where they come from. They deserve to know their genetic heritage, their cultural heritage, their medical background, and the people they come from (extending beyond abusive parents to generations preceding them). So, yes, I deserve to know my birth parents. And if God didn't want me to know my birth parents, then I wouldn't have found them. But find them I did, and they love me and accept me and welcome me with open arms.
The last thing is, I never wrote that comment/status update to offend you specifically. However, you took it personally, and directly attacked me instead of explaining your position and asking me for a clarification of mine. If you wish to continue a conversation in a civilized manner, I welcome the chance. But I will not allow myself to be directly attacked in this manner again, especially over a comment that was a very sweeping generalization in a forum that is my "safe place". I do apologize if my comment invaded your "safe place" because that was not my intention, but I do not apologize for my comment. If Xxxxx wishes to block me from his friends list, that is his prerogative, and I won't argue with it. I have fond memories of Xxxxx from high school. He was one of the few people I knew during high school that was always nice to everyone, never had a harsh word, and was fun to be around. Nothing can change my memory of him that way. But I'm a grown woman that doesn't need to hang on to old high school memories in order to fulfill my life now.
I wish your family all the happiness, blessings and joys that life can bring.
Warm Regards, "
And I signed my full name.
Due to the nature of the people who are on my list of friends on Facebook, the comments to my original status update were overwhelmingly supportive of my statement. However, I will only post my replies to my friends comments in an effort to maintain my friend's privacy. The reason I am re-posting these are to illustrate the seeming fact that the original letter writer chose not to further read, and thus making the mistake of achieving full understanding of my true position regarding the place of infertile couples in the role of adoption. On four separate occasions during the time that status update was there, not only did I state I was venting, but also that there ARE terrific adoptive parents in the world; and I posted at least twice that I was NOT specifically speaking to any one single person or couple.
comment 1)
"Even if my group of friends is a closed group, I had to say this at least once, publicly, "out loud" if you will. I really don't want to offend anyone, and I know this could be considered really, really rude, but it is honestly how I feel. I won't apologize for how I feel, but I will apologize if this hurt "your" (anyone who thought it was rude) feelings. That's not my intentions. I just felt I had to get it out."
comment 2)
"I know there are terrific adoptive parents "out there", and I completely understand their desire to have children any way they can. I just can't help but feel there's a reason why they're infertile."
comment 3)
"SVA:
I've always said: "you have to have a license to drive a car... you should have to have one to raise a child."
Me:
I won't argue that some people wouldn't benefit from that! And that there are some people who have children that just shouldn't have ever become parents. That's not my decision to make, tho. I'm just venting a bit right now."
comment 4)
"I hope you read my subsequent posts (and it looks like you and I posted at the same time, but I'll restate it here; I am mostly just venting). I KNOW it is offensive, and I DO feel sorry for people that struggle with infertility. And I DO know that there are terrific, wonderful adoptive parents out there and horrible, awful natural parents out there.
And ultimately, it isn't MY decision one way or the other. Plus, I cannot dictate to people how to live their lives. I KNOW that.
MY anger comes in where couples that want to adopt begin to take on this attitude that they're ENTITLED to someone elses child simply because that person is poor and single. And as they go along in this suffering through infertility, all they begin to see is all these horrible unwed mother's who abuse their children...and they see NOTHING ELSE.
Mostly, what I needed to do was to "vomit" this out; get it out of my system. While this wasn't a "knee jerk" reaction to those types of people, it IS the other extreme to those couples who see young, poor pregnant women as incubators.
I'm not aiming that comment to any one specific person, so I hope you can step back from this and see it in how I explained. As I said previously, I won't apologize for how I feel, but I am sorry if I hurt someone else's feelings. My intent wasn't to offend, merely to vent."
"Warning: this status update could be construed as offensive. To all those infertile couples out there who think adoption is a good solution, did you maybe consider that God made you infertile ON PURPOSE?!? Maybe you're not MEANT to parent?!?"
A month later, February 1, 2010, I received in my inbox on Facebook the following private message. My reply is below. I have yet to receive an answering message in return. Please note that the names of the letter writer and his wife are deleted out by my choice to protect their privacy, since they privately messaged me. While I understand that simply posting this to my blog may seem contrary to the spirit of privacy the letter writer intended, I feel that the points she makes and I rebut should be made public in order to help all in the Adoption Triad understand the difficulties in communication on all three sides of the triangle.
"you don't know me but I am Xxxxx' wife. I feel since you are putting your feelings out in a public forum that I can do the same, but a little more tastefully than you.
We respect anyone for having passion about what they believe in but we are very offended about your comment regarding people who can't have children naturally not being meant to have a child, through adoption either. I am unable to have children but i don't believe God would want me to let that get in the way of sharing our good values, morals and unending amount of love to a child who needs it. Anyone can give birth to a child but it doesn't earn then the right to be called a parent....you earn that title.
Xxxxx is the greatest father to our adopted son and I can't imagine our son missing out on that just to stay with his abusive, gang member, drug using birth mother who us tax paying citizens are paying for because she is in jail.
We feel very sad for you. you sound like a very bitter person with lots of issues and maybe you need to take some of your own advise, when you made the idiotic statement about God not giving some people the ability to have children because you are not meant to have have children.....well did you ever stop to think that maybe God doesn't want your birth parents to know you or that maybe you don't deserve to know them!
just putting our feelings out there also."
My Response:
"Dear Mrs. Xxxxxxxx,
I appreciate that my comment was offensive, generally speaking. I was venting some of my feelings in as safe a public forum for me as possible. My comment was not directly aimed AT you. The anger you sense in me is from the community at large believing that simply because a woman is poor and/or young that she will make a bad mother. Being poor and being young are not crimes, nor are they permanent situations in life. This country has a love affair with adoption that sickens me because of the sense of entitlement many prospective adoptive parents feel concerning young and poor pregnant women. There is a broad paint brush sweeping type attitude that if you are either of these things, then automatically you should not, cannot mother your child; and to me, that is plain wrong.
When Xxxxx added me as a friend, I looked through his pictures, and saw the photos that were taken of the official adoption of your son, and I was happy for him, and for you and your son. It looked like a very happy day for your family. I will admit that I was under the impression that your son was biologically yours, Mrs. Xxxxxxxx, but for some reason his biological father wasn't in the picture and Xxxxx stepped in. I was unaware that you were unable to have children biologically.
I understand that not every single person who has a child, biologically speaking, is capable or fit to raise that child. I feel very badly that your son has a birth mother who is a burden on our society, but I am pleased to know that he has adoptive parents who love him, care for him, and are providing a warm and secure home. That's what ever child deserves.
That being said, not every child who grows up in an adoptive home has the benefits that you are providing for your son. I am a survivor of incest from a very early age for many years by my adoptive brother. Does incest happen in biological families? Of course, so I understand that simply because I'm adopted that doesn't make my situation unique to adoption. It is what it is.
As far as "tasteful" goes, if you read my status update saying that, you may have read the replies to it and there are many of my Facebook friends that feel the same way I do, and in fact feel even stronger about it than I. That same week I posted in my status a question about what my FB friend's general opinion was of step parents adopting their spouse's children, and got very much the same response as the original post. However, I would love to see my fiance adopt my children from another marriage because he is more of a father to my kids than the man who provided the sperm for them.
I cannot, however, agree with your belief that "you earn that title" as far as being a parent goes. My next statement will more than likely be viewed as offensive, though it is not intended as such; however, I have found that the majority of people who make that statement are adoptive parents who are insecure due to their lack of inability to biologically procreate. When I say that, these are my experiences, nothing more, nothing less. That being said, not only am I an adopted person, but I am also a birth mother. I was a mother the moment I found out I was pregnant with my first son. You wouldn't tell a woman who had a miscarriage that she was never a mother. You would sympathize with her loss, grieve with her, and offer your condolence, but you would never be so rude as to say that she was never a mother. So why is it any different than a woman who lost a child to adoption? I carried my son for over nine months in my body; I loved him, cherished him, nurtured him with my own body. I cared for him when we were in the hospital while I recovered from my c-section. I agonized over what would be the best choice for him; raising him or to place him for adoption. How are my feelings any less than yours as a mother of an adopted child? Does the fact that I was manipulated into giving my ONLY flesh and blood up for adoption mean that I wasn't a mother?
Perhaps to you it does. But to me and to literally millions of other women, it doesn't. We ARE mothers. We are mothers who LOST our children to adoption. Do we grieve any less than the mother who had a miscarriage? NO. But by societies standards and expectations, we are not allowed to grieve our loss. We are told that you should just get on with your life, you did the noble deed, you gave the gift of life. Collectively, that's a slap in the face of each one of us because you can't carry a life inside of you for that long and just walk away with no repercussions. Children are not gifts to give away.
Does this make me bitter? To some extent, it does, because giving my child to another couple to raise was the worst decision of my life. It was the best decision for my son, but on a purely selfish note, that doesn't help me one bit. I am overjoyed that my son was raised in a household that could afford two houses, vacations all over the country every year, a private school. These were things that I couldn't give my son at that time in my life. He is one of the lucky adoptees because he had these material things as well as a wealth of love. That doesn't mean that I didn't love him with all my heart, and that doesn't mean that I would have been a bad mother. I was simply a young, poor mother.
Beyond that, I'm not a bitter person, regardless of what you interpret from what you read in just my status updates. I am a very happy, passionate person who is full of love and joy and wonderment at the world around her, especially with my children that I've been blessed enough to raise.
All that aside, I have a few last things I would like to say. I would strongly urge you to research "the other side of adoption"; educate yourselves with books like "The Primal Wound", "The Girls Who Went Away", and "Not Remembered, Never Forgotten". Please take the time to find out about specific issues concerning adopted children and the trauma adoption can cause. I urge you to do this for your son's sake. He may have questions, concerns that you simply cannot be aware of unless you have educated yourself in these matters. It will strengthen the bond you and your son have. Not every child experiences adoption trauma in the same way, some may never even experience the trauma. But it would be better to aware of the possibility that it may arise, rather than be caught unawares.
I realize, for the most part, that you are simply regurgitating my words back at me due to the pain you allowed them to cause yourself, but my reply to you is that every child, every person deserves to know where they come from. They deserve to know their genetic heritage, their cultural heritage, their medical background, and the people they come from (extending beyond abusive parents to generations preceding them). So, yes, I deserve to know my birth parents. And if God didn't want me to know my birth parents, then I wouldn't have found them. But find them I did, and they love me and accept me and welcome me with open arms.
The last thing is, I never wrote that comment/status update to offend you specifically. However, you took it personally, and directly attacked me instead of explaining your position and asking me for a clarification of mine. If you wish to continue a conversation in a civilized manner, I welcome the chance. But I will not allow myself to be directly attacked in this manner again, especially over a comment that was a very sweeping generalization in a forum that is my "safe place". I do apologize if my comment invaded your "safe place" because that was not my intention, but I do not apologize for my comment. If Xxxxx wishes to block me from his friends list, that is his prerogative, and I won't argue with it. I have fond memories of Xxxxx from high school. He was one of the few people I knew during high school that was always nice to everyone, never had a harsh word, and was fun to be around. Nothing can change my memory of him that way. But I'm a grown woman that doesn't need to hang on to old high school memories in order to fulfill my life now.
I wish your family all the happiness, blessings and joys that life can bring.
Warm Regards, "
And I signed my full name.
Due to the nature of the people who are on my list of friends on Facebook, the comments to my original status update were overwhelmingly supportive of my statement. However, I will only post my replies to my friends comments in an effort to maintain my friend's privacy. The reason I am re-posting these are to illustrate the seeming fact that the original letter writer chose not to further read, and thus making the mistake of achieving full understanding of my true position regarding the place of infertile couples in the role of adoption. On four separate occasions during the time that status update was there, not only did I state I was venting, but also that there ARE terrific adoptive parents in the world; and I posted at least twice that I was NOT specifically speaking to any one single person or couple.
comment 1)
"Even if my group of friends is a closed group, I had to say this at least once, publicly, "out loud" if you will. I really don't want to offend anyone, and I know this could be considered really, really rude, but it is honestly how I feel. I won't apologize for how I feel, but I will apologize if this hurt "your" (anyone who thought it was rude) feelings. That's not my intentions. I just felt I had to get it out."
comment 2)
"I know there are terrific adoptive parents "out there", and I completely understand their desire to have children any way they can. I just can't help but feel there's a reason why they're infertile."
comment 3)
"SVA:
I've always said: "you have to have a license to drive a car... you should have to have one to raise a child."
Me:
I won't argue that some people wouldn't benefit from that! And that there are some people who have children that just shouldn't have ever become parents. That's not my decision to make, tho. I'm just venting a bit right now."
comment 4)
"I hope you read my subsequent posts (and it looks like you and I posted at the same time, but I'll restate it here; I am mostly just venting). I KNOW it is offensive, and I DO feel sorry for people that struggle with infertility. And I DO know that there are terrific, wonderful adoptive parents out there and horrible, awful natural parents out there.
And ultimately, it isn't MY decision one way or the other. Plus, I cannot dictate to people how to live their lives. I KNOW that.
MY anger comes in where couples that want to adopt begin to take on this attitude that they're ENTITLED to someone elses child simply because that person is poor and single. And as they go along in this suffering through infertility, all they begin to see is all these horrible unwed mother's who abuse their children...and they see NOTHING ELSE.
Mostly, what I needed to do was to "vomit" this out; get it out of my system. While this wasn't a "knee jerk" reaction to those types of people, it IS the other extreme to those couples who see young, poor pregnant women as incubators.
I'm not aiming that comment to any one specific person, so I hope you can step back from this and see it in how I explained. As I said previously, I won't apologize for how I feel, but I am sorry if I hurt someone else's feelings. My intent wasn't to offend, merely to vent."
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