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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Didn't Salon used to publish articles like this all the time? Now it seems not so much, but I found this so touching and sweet, and not whiny at all. I had my first child at 17, and raised her alone. I always had a job and we had a decent place to live, but I was not the person I could have been had I not had a child at this age, and so was not the greatest parent. I would be lying to say that it never occurred to me how much better or easier her life might have been if I had given her up for adoption. She is a wonderful girl and we now have a great relationship, but I have often thought that she deserved better, but it was not something I could imagine doing, let alone actually do. There are some things you know you are capable of, and this was just not something I could do, and I have sometimes thought it was selfish of me. But what a great article.
Laurel, you must be very unhappy with your own life to judge others so harshly. Adoption for good or ill is different in almost every case. It's a complex issue, one you apparently are not able to grasp, but you do get the attention don't you?
...how interesting that the foregoing letters all talk about the "birth mother" and "adoptive mother/parents" but unless I read too quickly, none mention the "birth/biological father." As several high-profile court cases have shown us, he is not necessarily an unknown part of this whole equation.
Laurel is 100% right --- blood is very important, and nothing that anyone wishes about it can make that fact go away.
30 is too old to *start* trying to get pregnant. Fertility peaks in the late teens and begins to decline at age 27. If you have less than 100% normal fertility (and it's impossible to know for sure if you do) then it is a GAMBLE to start trying at 30!
The prudent age, if women were willing to grow up and realize the biological realities, would be between age 18 and age 27. Assuming that you want to at least finish college, we can say between 22 and 27 . . . that is a five year window! Maybe you'll be lucky and be fertile until you're 35 or older, but if you want to take that risk then you also run the risk of raising a child that isn't yours and never will be.
Adoption is noble, but it isn't the same as blood family. So your biological family sucks, and you love your adoptive family? Well, all that means is that your *real* family isn't too great, and these people who are babysitting you are realllllly nice.
Hmmmm, let's review: I started trying to get pregnant when I got married. I got married when I met a man I could build a life with and who would make a good father to my children. Now, I am married to a wonderful man and am mother to the loveliest, funniest, smartest little girl in the world. When I didn't get pregnant and my husband and I decided to adopt, I got a lot of support. The most supportive people? The ones who'd been adopted themselves. And isn't that interesting?
One of the posters asked whether or not people would have a problem if the woman had chosen to give her bi-racial child to a black couple, instead of the white family she ultimately decided on. My inclination is that they wouldn't. Because black people are steeped in a mainstream culture that is, for all intents and purposes, white, a bi-racial child raised in a black family would most likely have just as much access to white culture as anyone else in this country. The reverse, however, is not true. Those who are oppressed are expected, even forced, to be familiar with their rulers' ways, while those at the top of the hierarchy can rest comfortably in their artificial homogeneity. Call it the "oppressed people's burden," if you will.
My daughter is a product of an open adoption; she's 7. She's busy right now packing up a box of her too-small clothes for her sister, who is not a part of our family. But she is a part of my daughter's family, and will be for long after I'm gone. I'm glad to be able to give her this experience.
If this sounds a little too weird for some, well, sorry. I don't view it as any different than gaining a child through divorce or remarriage. Are these people's familes of a different sort than "regular" families? The fact is all families are composed of groups of people who may or may not be related genetically. The relations of a spouse are your relations too, or so I would hope. In our family we have sets of people who are effectively in-laws: mine, my wife's, and my daughter's.
It's clearly tempting for some people to use this a platform to display their wit. It just looks like prejudice when it's on paper.
Megbon, I am very happy for you that it is working out and that you got a good outcome. You're a better person than me, because I would not be able to emotionally bond with a child who had a whole other family in constant contact.
My comment about thirty being a risky age to start trying was not directed at you specifically, but the general female half of the population. I think it's a common misconception (no pun intended, ack that looks awful!) among young women that fertility doesn't begin to decline until 35, and so I see a lot of women stuck not having kids because they start too late, based on faulty info.
JohnnieGirl, I didn't go through open adoption for my daughter. My daughter was born in Russia. My main point is that there's no recipe for family. Whether it's through childbirth, open adoption, international adoption, step children, no children, whatever... family is whatever you make it. It's limiting and unfair (and trust me when I say this: especially unfair to the child who was adopted) to cast a taint of illegitimacy of a family because it wasn't created through "blood."
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
