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Johnnie Girl, is it really possible you have never met a woman who regretted having had kids?
Because I always strongly sensed my mother was one of them. But it was the fifties, and it simply was wrong not to get married in your early twenties and start a family. Eventually I understood that and forgave her; but meantime my sisters and I spent our childhoods knowing that our mother felt martyred and resentful raising us.
I'd probably have been one of those kids who fantasized she'd been adopted away from magically more wonderful parents, except I looked too much like my mom to kid myself.
No child should be burdened with miserable parents who doesn't need to be. That goes deep into the child's self-image and can never fully be dug out again. Obviously your mother made it clear to you that, difficult as it might have been, she loved being your mom. That was a great gift. Don't take it for granted.
By the way, those people who fret about the child being adopted to white parents: the piece makes it clear that the birth mother herself came from a biracial family. If we didn't have a "one-drop" approach to African ethnicity to this day, with a (seemingly) biracial mom and a white dad, that beautiful baby might be considered more white than black. One of the few things as fraught than our culture's issues about family is its issues about those arbitrary conditions we call race....
