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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I'm glad you're willing and eager to start a family by the time you're 25. But you said that you had never met a mother who regretted having her children. I suspect you haven't talked to them long enough. Of course, mothers love their children and once born, it becomes almost impossible to imagine life without them. However, I have known several women who will admit that although they love their kids they wish they had waited or had fewer kids. (This from someone with four.) It's completely unfair to expect a normal, loving mother to admit that she regrets having her kids.
And the truth of it is that if you can't give birth to a baby, most women in their 30s or 40s can adopt. Ask those adoptive mothers if they would trade their children for "biological" offspring. I doubt any would. Do they regret not having the experience of having a biological child? Sure. Just like I regret that my milk never came in and I was unable to breastfeed. It's not the central theme of my life, though.
It is true that if you don't have a kid before 30, your chances go way down, and quickly. On the other hand if you had a child pre-30, your fertility doesn't go down as quickly, and you can probably still have kids in your 40's. The issue with women unable to get pregnant in their 30's and 40's usually only applies to first time mothers.
Also if you don't have kids, your odds for all kinds of nasty cancers just keeps going up - so you might not live long enough for those kids you adopted in your late 30's or early 40's after all - because when their in high school or just starting to send you the college bill, you'll be in your 60's unable to retire or perhaps suffering from cancer.
So have kids early, and suffer financially (studies show a permant loss to your life time earnings) and impact your careers, or preferred level of education. Or have kids late, risk not being able to have kids, increase your cancer risk, and any kids you have (natural or adopted) you have to think about the impact of your death on them, or bearing the cost of finishing high school/college and delaying your retirement. Either way sucks - that's life , so go with what ever makes you comfortable.
After all welcome to USA - where the mother is always wrong, no matter what choice she makes, when to have kids, stay at home - working mom, displine methods, private schools vs public schools, how many kids to have .......
Having fewer menstrual cycles does decrease a woman's chance of getting breast cancer. Pregnancy reduces the number of menstruations cycles, but so does early menopause, or using Seasonale (or taking birth control pills in such a way that one only has a period four times a year). I'd also like to see the study on which you base your statement that having a kid before thirty somehow keeps one fertile.
I am 60. My birth mother was 20 when I was born, and my adoptive mother 30 when she took me home 5 days later. My adoptive mother could not carry babies to term and my birthmother had had a one-night fling with a Coast Guardsman outside the USO. She and my birth father were both married which made me, in 1945, a bastard. When I met my birthmother 30 years ago, she said I could have been an abortion. (Yes, although they were illegal, one could get an abortion in 1945.) But she decided to give me up for adoption. She opted to be asleep and refused to hold or see me.
My adoptive mother was over-protective and expected me to be perfect. It was the least I could do after being "saved" from being raised by a slut. Being adopted was hard for me and was an important issue for most of my life.
I became pro-active while I was pregnant with my second child and came to believe that it is an adoptee's right to meet his birth parents regardless of how they feel. We didn't have a choice in the matter and through our birthparent's indescretion, they surrender the right to say no to us. I was discrete and I didn't threaten but I did persist and I finally met my birthmother. Oh, how nice it would have been to even have been able to write to her through those long years.
Those so-called pro-lifers who offer pregnant women adoption as the perfect answer to their problem, haven't a clue. Open adoption is just as hard. The two mothers have to work hard to establish how their child will see them in their lives.
Adoption works most of the time, but everyone involved has to work at it.
Our daughter from a multi-race open adoption just started college; she's 19 and is going to school in the town where her birthmother and family live.
They are going through a rough time right now and our shared daughter is doing her wash there and learning what she can do, and what she can't do to help. It's a great lesson and it will do her at least as much good as her freshman courses.
A lot of our early experiences sound a great deal like Dawn's; I could dig out the story I wrote for Mothering (they rejected it for not being positive enough) and it would sound like hers. It's not ever going to be normal, this shared relationship, because we're breaking new ground. But it's good for us all.
The daughter calls me "Mom" and she calls her birthmom "Mom" and we both had to get used to it.
Open adoption is like getting married: you have one really important person to love and cherish, and a big family of relatives to get used to and to learn to love -- our joint family gathers several times a year for holidays and birthdays and recreation. We've gotten used to each other much as in-laws do.
Sharing Lin made me learn to be generous and kind, and to love without being jealous and possessive of her. It was often hard. I will be grateful my whole life that I had my daughter and her mother and family to teach me this.
Every parent needs to know how keep loving while letting go. I am just lucky enough to have an open adoption to put it in my face.
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Salon headlines in your mailbox
