Letters to the Editor
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sickening
Why does nobody find the blind desperate desire to have a child signalling a wish to complicate one´s personal chances in life? This poor husband - how can he stand living with someone having such obsessions.
Why is not going into therapy the natural choice for the lady in question?
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You made a legitimate tough call!
I read your account and am touched by it. I am also touched that you managed to make the right decision. Life hands you lemons all the time. You made a simple choice not to willingly buy into one of life's lemons. I don't mean the child, but the situation. A child is a huge emotional and physical investment and a special child is unique. Better that she has a chance to be appreciated as a special needs child. In the meantime, you can get yourself on track and decide what you really need. From your account, you are so in love with the idea of a child, you aren't seeing clearly except you managed to redeem yourself. If you are willing to wait, it is likely that you will eventually have a child of your own. In the meantime, there is no need to beat yourself up over it. Enjoy life and let nature take its natural course for a while. Relax about having a child and you will be more likely to have one sooner. I have lived this out before and was blessed not once, but three times.
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has anyone read the book Expecting Adam?
It's not a perfect book but it kind of reminded me of part of this story. The author recounts her pregnancy and she and her husband are harvard professors who have a lot of prejudice against low IQ people...until they have this exquisite child with down's syndrome.
I just get uneasy with people who are into designer children...I'm not saying that the author of this article is one of them...although maybe she is. I just think that you never know what the special needs of your kid are going to be. Some kids might have bipolar or mental health issues that don't show up until later--people can get brain damage from car accidents or falling in the shower. You just don't know what needs a human being is going to show up with until they show up, especially when it's a child.
I don't mean to sound naive about the issue. My younger brother was born with hydrocephalus and we were told he would be brain damaged and delayed. It took him longer to learn how to talk/walk/read. I guess you could say he was delayed. But you wouldn't know it now. By about age six he had "caught up" so to speak. He had an inner-drive to compete from an early age and he just recently completed a marathon, he owns his own house, has a child, a wife, and works at a nice neighborhood luxury supermarket in management. If he were any brighter we might have had to make him sip lead paint.
I'm just saying that sometimes in universities especially to be careful about the idea that IQ is a fix-all. I've known high IQ people who were emotionally crippled as children...and I've known low-IQ children and adults (my best friend's mother adopted disabled children when I was growing up) who were as emotionally "designer" as children could be.
And sometimes specialists deliver the news as if they know, when in fact any human child is a series of guesses. If the author feels bad about what happened, maybe she should keep her heart open because the human soul is complicated, even in children. The child that is born to her won't provide the easy option of opting out if it isn't perfect, so she should prepare her heart to try to love and accept the child as it is.
I guess I'm probably stating the obvious.
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Another Road
This piece reminded me of a similar story, with a different outcome, that ran in the New York Times awhile back.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/fashion/13love.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
I hope that little girl in India finds a family like this one.
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misselizabennett
Gross opened herself up for the good and the bad when she chose to publicize what even she acknowledges as a very complicated choice. If she (or you) expected all high-fives and pats on the back for airing her personal life on the internet, then she - and you - are sadly naive on a little thing called *difference of opinion*.
I, personally, am stupified as to why she wanted to share with us anyway. Now that I know she has written at least one other "tell-all", I feel she much just like the attention - both positive and negative. There goes any sympathy she might have gotten from me for this article.
What has been the most informative to me have been the letters clarifying how easy it is to adopt in this country. Now when I am introduced to a couple with a foreign child, I won't hesitate to ask why they did not adopt a needy American child. We have lots of brown babies, in all shades, that need loving homes. Think globall, act locally.
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to anon - adopting "brown babies" in US
Now when I am introduced to a couple with a foreign child, I won't hesitate to ask why they did not adopt a needy American child.,
We'll probably ask you the same thing right back. Why don't you adopt a needy American child from foster care? Please explain why you've made the choices that you have made in your life. Don't leave out any personal details, either. We have a right to know!
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I have adopted and I think the author is a narcissistic jerk
My husband and I adopted a Vietnamese baby boy at the end of the war. He was a year old and had many health problems but he did recover wonderfully and quickly. In his adolescent years he began showing signs of mental illness which increased as time went on. He took his own life at 25, eight years ago.
My son was a wonderful giving child and a fine, kind, and loving young man. We love him so much and each day we miss him terribly.
I have nothing but impatience for the author of this article. I understand her withdrawing from the adoption and feeling inadequate to the task of caring for a special needs child. But her attitude now seems to me self-indulgent and attention seeking. She comes across as both silly and shallow.
My advice to her is to stop indulging her thoughts of the rejected little girl. These thoughts do not help the child at all. It is not about you any more, Ms. Gross.