This has become something of a MomBlog so that's going to be its new official unofficial title.
Our situation is unique. I know that. But to think my feelings about adoption are invalid because of that is unfair and naive.
Nutshell: Our daughter is adopted. Her birth mother is my niece. They are and will have a relationship of sorts. Her birth father moved and started his own family. While we kept the doors open, we haven't heard from him in quite some time and the last two letters sent with the intention of keeping him updated have been returned unknown.
TV, movies, Reader's Digest, and various news articles have always addressed the situation of adoption and they have sometimes tried to be fair, sometimes been 'sensational', and often annoy me in some ways. It's not their fault. It is not their responsibility to be a moral guide or good example.
Last night we watched the Pilot of Once Upon A Time [SPOILERS] At one point, the woman whom we know will end up being wicked witch says (to birth mother who has recently been found by adopted son) a speech about how she is the one who was there to change diapers, stay up nights, feed him, clothe him, etc. It's a truth we adoptive parents feel; the strain of being a parent that a non-parent can imagine, but never quite understand. The problem I had is that I know this woman will end up being the evil step mother figure. Birth mom is nice, sweet, child of lovely, innocent Snow White.
It just bugs me in a way I can't put into exact words today. I think it's because of the stories where the adopted/foster child thinks of the person who took them in as the evil not-really-my-mom way and surely the person who gave up the child was under such duress that giving up the child was their only choice or maybe they weren't given the choice. Well, I know I come off as the mean one. Why? Because I am the disciplinarian. Birth Mom comes into the picture after the child has learned to be a wonderful person and gets to play with Birth Mom. She doesn't have to criticize or hurt the child's feelings because Adoptive Mom has already done that job. Let's keep that in mind.
Today, I saw a description for a movie that will probably be nothing like it's described, but just reading the description and watching the first two minutes sent me right to this blog to get out these feelings.
It explains that a boy's parents fight the adoptive parents for custody of a young boy. In the first two minutes, you see a man arrested as his pregnant abused wife looks on, crying. Seven years later, he's out of prison, the two are cleaned up and ready to start over.
I can only assume this is why they go after the boy, but you know what? They have no right. Let me repeat. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT.
She voluntarily gave up the child in this particular story, see, and it's my opinion that we need to stop thinking in this world in terms of the birth parents giving up a child because things suck, but when they clean up, they can just fix it.
I can't help but ask why we don't think in terms of it being a permanent situation. If you give up your child for adoption, you are giving it a better home; in theory the one you would like to give it if you could, but you can't. HANDS CLEAN. It is a good thing you have done and you are done now. I realize those ties don't just dissolve and your feelings don't go away the minute you sign the adoption papers, but people die and you lose them. You cannot have them back. When an adoption is finalized, the child lives, it's true, but you cannot have them back.
I once saw a guy on the news complaining that Utah has one of the hardest adoption policies. Granted, I felt bad for this guy because his child was given up without his permission. I still don't care, though. Utah is not the hardest for birth parents, imo, it's just the most protective for the REAL PARENTS. The ones who have been raising the child. Utah takes 6 months after birth to finalize. That's just about long enough for a parent to become too attached to a child to give it up without it being as much of a heartache to them as it was to the birth parent who gave up the child in the first place. Why on earth should the adoptive parents' heart be less important than the one who hasn't been the child's parents for the last 6 months?
The one who changed the diapers and stayed up nights are now the parents. I think we should, as a society, see it as that. They are the parents and the birth parents no longer enter into the decisions. I know adoptive parents live that way because they have to for their own sanity, but stories in the paper and this world constantly undermine that. They don't want to discard the feelings of the birth parents, but you have given genetics and a womb. THAT IS ALL. I don't mean to demean the importance of that great task, but getting pregnant and making a baby is not a miracle, it's base instinct. Monkeys do it, okay? Brine shrimp do it. What a birth parent did is not nearly as miraculous as the parent who took the child into their home and their heart and raised it as their own. Adoptive parents aren't "saving" the child. They are just being parents, but we know from stories and experience that it takes a special kind of person to treat a child who is not biologically their own as their own.
Examples: step families, foster families, etc. In so many cases, a parent cannot quite treat the other kids as well as they treat their own. Therefore, it is the minority of adoptive parents who are good enough to raise the kid. Babies are made and born with little help from the parent (when something like miscarriage goes wrong, is it not often blamed on something the parent had no control over?), therefore that part is NOT the miracle. Being the actual parent is the miracle. Why is this discounted? Why must we cater to the person who gave up the child? I appreciate the birth mother more than can ever be expressed, but I also know in my heart that I am the mother. The real mother. The only mother.
I am more attached to my child than the birth mother is. Maybe she doesn't think so, but I know that to be true. A huge part of coming to terms with giving up the child is what's in your heart. If your heart cannot let go, neither should you. Meanwhile, if you think you can train you heart to know better, then let go and let the adoptive parents drop the adjective and be, simply, THE PARENTS
