Judy tagged me for the Anti-Racist Parent Meme, which was a bit hard -- but how could I not do it? The questions are great, and she called me one of her homeys, which honors me.
1. I am:
Norwegian, German, Irish, and English.
2. My kid is/kids are:
Little Bun is Norwegian, German, Irish, English, Italian and Welsh.
Miss I is Kembata (ET).
3. I first started thinking more about race, culture, and identity when:
To be honest, it’s probably all too familiar. It was when I was in kindergarten and I wanted a black doll and a family member in an older generation said that was not to be – white mommas had white daddies who had white children. But my parents gave me the doll, and in that place and that moment that was revolutionary. Would that it had not been.
Because I lived in a rural white community as a young child, I had few preconceived notions about anybody but rural white people. This combined with my parents’ 60's idealism was strangely protective -- and too much so perhaps -- against racism but also against awareness of race and culture.
My thoughts on race, culture and identity complexified in college as my world opened up, and it became clear the way they are tied to class and material concerns, but it was still largely academic in the way that whiteness allows.
Little Bun was fortunate to be born into our world of that moment -- a racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse working class neighborhood wherein a little blonde boy was in the minority and his playmates would speak Spanish. But it was the planning for Miss I's arrival a couple years out that made us become practical. I wish now we really claimed our position as "anti-racist parents" when we had just one white child.
4. People think my name is:
African American. In New York, when I first met people, they would say “Oh, I thought you’d be black.” They say the same to dh, as we share his last name. This expectation seems almost inexplicable here, where the name is quite common among black and white people. (Here I share the last name with one of my best friends, who is indeed black).
5. The family tradition I most want to pass on is:
Loving people you don’t have to love. The boundaries of our family have never been defined genetically, or in any other traditional way, and this has led to an unwieldy network of extended relations that I wouldn’t have any other way.
6. The family tradition I least want to pass on is:
Multiple Neuroses, but I suspect that this is what I will pass on most.
7. My child’s first word in English was:
Little Bun: Momma, followed shortly by “ball” and “I do it,” but these all followed his word below.
Miss I: “HiMomma,” on the telephone, from Ethiopia. “No,” to Daddy, in Ethiopia.
8. My child’s first non-English word was:
Little Bun: “Agua.” At two, he would give up this word, along with other Spanish words, insisting that because he did not hear them in our new city, they were “baby talk.”
Miss I: I don’t know. I know she said “Machina” and “Ishi” (it’s okay, which she repeated to herself for reassurance until she was sure it really was). Aye-yuh (either an endearment or “I see you,” “I’ve found you”).
9. The non-English word/phrase most used in my home is:
Ishi, ishi (it’s okay). The AmharEnglish combination with most uses is the following: “Ca ca or keum (stop) the po-po.” It’s now our life’s motto here at Chez Bloom and we like to spread the philosophy.
10. One thing I love about being a parent is:
The surprise. I think of myself as someone who hates surprises (no surprise parties, thank you – please tell me what you’ve gotten me for Christmas so I won’t wonder, no spontaneous trips) but my children are all of these things in the best possible way.
11. One thing I hate about being a parent is:
That I am ultimately not in control, though this is also the most beautiful thing. In my moments of clarity I am aware that I am blessed to watch the unfolding of these extraordinary little lives, which will become big lives that will take journeys I could never have imagined.
12. To me, being an anti-racist parent means:
My daughter likes to play “Matchy Match,” which she also calls the “Compare Game,” identifying things that are the same according to mostly random qualities. This is something that comes out of preschool card matching games and Memory, I’m sure, but it took a turn that should not have seemed unusual yet took me by surprise anyway. She looked at her skin. “I brown. No, I no brown. You no brown, I no brown. You pink, I pink. We ‘matchy match.’” Then she thought for a moment and frowned, “I brown,” she said. Then she flipped her palms up, and gestured for me to do the same. “Matchy Match!” she screamed happily.
I was nonplussed, part of me felt defeated by her strong desire for matchy-match. But being an anti-racist parent means to me striking a balance between matchy-match and difference, surrounding my children with a community full of vibrant difference, and recognizing that the rights of all people are dependent on the protection of those rights for others – in short, teaching my children that all of our interests are intertwined without resorting to a color-blind and a too naïve universality.
I tagged Erin, and she accepted the challenge. Check out her thoughtful responses -- and great stories about being the mother of two amazing little boys, at Holding Still.
Showing posts with label adoption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adoption. Show all posts
Monday, August 06, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
I hate the thought of my daughter searching, says an aparent.
I hate the thought that she would have to. So I hope we succeed.
Mia and Theresa bring to our attention the ongoing discussion in CT regarding open recods. This editorial in the Hartford Courant repeats every misguided notion about the relationship between open records and reunion, birthparent desire for privacy and, apparently, adoptee's increased potential for stalking compared with the general population. It also promotes the idea that a voluntary registry will solve the problem, yet there are two problems with this. The first is practical: many people are not informed of the necessity for registering. The second is principle: utilization of a registry does nothing to acknowledge this information as a right.
I haven't posted a comment there yet - adoptees and natural mothers have done a fantastic job presenting the case and critiquing the editorial and I don't want my position as adoptive mother to somehow usurp their rightful roles as complainants or step on anyone's toes in any other way. Yet aparents, our voices are lacking in these debates and discussions, and fair or no (no), we have the potential to be a powerful lobby for our children's and their adult counterparts' rights.
***
I'm thinking of reading Marianne Novy's Reading Adoption and wondered if anyone had or would like to join me.
I hate the thought that she would have to. So I hope we succeed.
Mia and Theresa bring to our attention the ongoing discussion in CT regarding open recods. This editorial in the Hartford Courant repeats every misguided notion about the relationship between open records and reunion, birthparent desire for privacy and, apparently, adoptee's increased potential for stalking compared with the general population. It also promotes the idea that a voluntary registry will solve the problem, yet there are two problems with this. The first is practical: many people are not informed of the necessity for registering. The second is principle: utilization of a registry does nothing to acknowledge this information as a right.
I haven't posted a comment there yet - adoptees and natural mothers have done a fantastic job presenting the case and critiquing the editorial and I don't want my position as adoptive mother to somehow usurp their rightful roles as complainants or step on anyone's toes in any other way. Yet aparents, our voices are lacking in these debates and discussions, and fair or no (no), we have the potential to be a powerful lobby for our children's and their adult counterparts' rights.
***
I'm thinking of reading Marianne Novy's Reading Adoption and wondered if anyone had or would like to join me.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Adoption and Second Chances (repeat)
Don't you hate summer reruns?
Recent visitors have been looking for these posts, so I've copied them here for ease. I should put the frequently searched posts in the sidebar, but I'm not as good at that as the rest of you smarties:
March, 2007:
When I went into preterm labor at 23 weeks, people actually told me that “it’s God’s will” and that “God’s will will be done.” Supposedly these things were meant to be reassuring, but they were horrifying. Why on earth or in heaven would Anyone will preterm labor/preterm birth? Wasn’t it, rather, a condition of a broken world that some wombs are broken? (I’ve written about this before).
But if I'm completely honest I do like the idea that it's "meant to be" when it’s convenient. Had I been perfectly healthy I wouldn’t have planned a pregnancy while dh and I were in school. But because I wasn’t, I did -- and I cannot imagine my life without my son. In that sense, then, it feels “meant to be,” even as I am aware that I choose to believe that it was meant to be in order to protect myself (however unsuccessfully) from the painful realization that it might have been otherwise.
Adoption makes us (re)consider the already problematic use of the phrase “meant to be.” Why was it meant to be that my daughter would tragically lose her first mother? Why is it meant to be that African women die at an unimaginable rate from preventable infectious diseases, during childbirth, from AIDS? How could she have possibly been “meant to” lose her mother in order for me to parent her?
That she suffered so much loss, that Africa suffered so much loss, is a product of the sin built in the system, not by preordination. But that once she incurred those losses she came to be mine? If I accept that THIS was “meant to be” then it covers over all the anxious “what ifs?!” like what if my social worker had turned her paperwork in on time? What if it had been later? What if we had chosen a different agency? or What if her family had chosen a different care center?
But why is it meant to be for a young woman to be discouraged from parenting her child alone? Why is a young woman meant to give birth to a child she can’t (or thinks she can’t) parent? How could she possibly have been “meant to” lose her child? Yet once it’s happened, it’s no wonder why adoptive parents would choose to assert that their child’s placement in their family was “meant to be” – it makes it liveable, and it prevents us from imagining the unimaginable -- that it could have been another way, that we could have lived our lives without this child that seems so necessary for the family to live and breathe. But it also makes a place for the child; it makes shape out of the chaos.
Once an adult, their child (my child) will rightly realize the flaws in this assertion, the emptiness of its promise that everything that happens to her will be okay, that every occurrence is providential rather than accidental . . .
I’ve been prompted to write recently about my ranking as the fifth best parenting option for my child (in theory) in response to posts by Sster and Thirdmom, but in those postings I’ve tried to make it clear that my daughter was never and would never be second choice. I’ve done so because all along I’ve wondered if she’d feel this way, on some level (particularly if I can accept that I wasn't the first choice for her).
Paula O., brilliant adoptee and adoptive mom and beautiful soul, says this is so, and you must read this post.
One defense against my daughter's potential hypothetical assertion that she was “second best,” is that I did have another viable option. I could have had another high risk pregnancy. Would having a healthy pregnancy have been my first choice? I honestly don't know. It just wasn't a live option. Adoption was our first choice for our second child.
There are several problems with this defense. The first is that it does nothing to change how a child will perceive things, how that child-perception will remain in the adult as an unnamed insecurity.
What if a parent had preferred adoption, if a bio child or an attemt at a bio child had not preceeded the adoption? Would this help? Saying "Adoption was our first choice” (as I wrote below, I read this frequently now in adoption postings, and I'm not sure if it is a disclaimer, as in "I can't speak to infertility and adoption," or if it is the parents' belief that their child will experience adoption differently as a result) puts a child in a lonely place and in the position of having to accept the parents’ ethic that led them first to adoption as best in order to legitimate their choice (whether this is a progressive politic or an evangelical Christian ethic) or having to allow it to ring hollow. It also functions as an unintended criticism of parents who adopted after infertility, some of whom are the most introspective, articulate and authoritative adoptive parents for reform.
But the other problem is more confounding and far more important:
No matter what I do, or what we assert, it may well be that my daughter will feel (someday, sometimes, but I hope not most days or most times) that she was second choice for our family. (She has the good fortune of having enough information to know definitively that her first parents had no choice -- if only all adoptees had so much information). But perhaps she’ll return, consciously or unconsciously, to that moment when we went for a consultation about a pregnancy, or to the fact that we did have a biological child first.
Maybe I’m hoping that by focusing on adoption’s wrongs, by laying its weaknesses bare, I’ll be saving her some of that effort, and some of that pain. Maybe I'm hoping it'll just help me support her effort.
For being the family we’ve always wanted to be, adoption was our best chance. And for having the family she needs, it was hers, too.
Ranking, for file (or In a Perfect World?)
I commented on ThirdMom 's "Unranked" that I'd post my response here:
I thought that I posted in a more complete way about the notion of transracial/transcultural adoption as fifth-best already, but a search of my archives proves otherwise -- there's only the briefest reference in reaction to Madonna's adoption of David from Malawi (To be honest I'd almost forgotten about Madonna, until someone asked for the first time if my daughter was from "Madonna's son's country" rather than "Angelina's daughter's").
The idea isn't my own. I tried googling the original author, but I haven't been able to find her. Someone might know of her, or might find her with the following information: she's a therapist who tours (toured) with a show geared toward helping transracial/transcultural adoptees access feelings about difference at their young age. She's also an adoptive mom.
I read of her notion that transracial/transcultural adoptions were the fifth best option for children in the abstract when we had just begun our process of transracial (but not yet international) adoption. To be honest, I was offended, and I was defensive. We'd read the books! We lived in a diverse neighborhood! We knew other multiracial families (via adoption). We were academics! And already excellent parents! Surely we weren't the fifth best option. And adoption creates beautiful, and beautifully diverse, families. How could that even be second best?
When I was less defensive, and really ready to hear what she meant, I was also ready to understand what might matter to my child -- that each of these moves among the "ranks" indicates a profound loss, that each loss should be imagined as preventable when we make personal and national decisions regarding adoption ethics and reform. (The Hague attempts to address some of this, though the success of this -- and not merely increased delays in attachment -- will take time and smarter people than me to examine).
I can say definitively that my daughter isn't second-best to me. That we are a multiracial family isn't second choice to me in anyway.* But the key here is that I had a choice, and she didn't, her first parents didn't, Ethiopia didn't. So someday if she feels that in the abstract transracial/transcultural adoption is not preferable to other choices, I'll get it. I hope that she's equipped through her childhood to feel that our family is at least as good as traditional families -- but that's less a matter of argument than it is parenting.
The theoretical "rank" list, then, is as follows:
1st Natural families
2nd Kinship care
3rd Same race, same country adoption
4th Different race, same country adoption
5th Different race, different country
I can say to her that I can see why, but that I still think in the specificity of each family, we see first-rank beauty and profound joy. (But I won't go so far as to say that that's all that matters, because it isn't).
Recent visitors have been looking for these posts, so I've copied them here for ease. I should put the frequently searched posts in the sidebar, but I'm not as good at that as the rest of you smarties:
March, 2007:
When I went into preterm labor at 23 weeks, people actually told me that “it’s God’s will” and that “God’s will will be done.” Supposedly these things were meant to be reassuring, but they were horrifying. Why on earth or in heaven would Anyone will preterm labor/preterm birth? Wasn’t it, rather, a condition of a broken world that some wombs are broken? (I’ve written about this before).
But if I'm completely honest I do like the idea that it's "meant to be" when it’s convenient. Had I been perfectly healthy I wouldn’t have planned a pregnancy while dh and I were in school. But because I wasn’t, I did -- and I cannot imagine my life without my son. In that sense, then, it feels “meant to be,” even as I am aware that I choose to believe that it was meant to be in order to protect myself (however unsuccessfully) from the painful realization that it might have been otherwise.
Adoption makes us (re)consider the already problematic use of the phrase “meant to be.” Why was it meant to be that my daughter would tragically lose her first mother? Why is it meant to be that African women die at an unimaginable rate from preventable infectious diseases, during childbirth, from AIDS? How could she have possibly been “meant to” lose her mother in order for me to parent her?
That she suffered so much loss, that Africa suffered so much loss, is a product of the sin built in the system, not by preordination. But that once she incurred those losses she came to be mine? If I accept that THIS was “meant to be” then it covers over all the anxious “what ifs?!” like what if my social worker had turned her paperwork in on time? What if it had been later? What if we had chosen a different agency? or What if her family had chosen a different care center?
But why is it meant to be for a young woman to be discouraged from parenting her child alone? Why is a young woman meant to give birth to a child she can’t (or thinks she can’t) parent? How could she possibly have been “meant to” lose her child? Yet once it’s happened, it’s no wonder why adoptive parents would choose to assert that their child’s placement in their family was “meant to be” – it makes it liveable, and it prevents us from imagining the unimaginable -- that it could have been another way, that we could have lived our lives without this child that seems so necessary for the family to live and breathe. But it also makes a place for the child; it makes shape out of the chaos.
Once an adult, their child (my child) will rightly realize the flaws in this assertion, the emptiness of its promise that everything that happens to her will be okay, that every occurrence is providential rather than accidental . . .
I’ve been prompted to write recently about my ranking as the fifth best parenting option for my child (in theory) in response to posts by Sster and Thirdmom, but in those postings I’ve tried to make it clear that my daughter was never and would never be second choice. I’ve done so because all along I’ve wondered if she’d feel this way, on some level (particularly if I can accept that I wasn't the first choice for her).
Paula O., brilliant adoptee and adoptive mom and beautiful soul, says this is so, and you must read this post.
One defense against my daughter's potential hypothetical assertion that she was “second best,” is that I did have another viable option. I could have had another high risk pregnancy. Would having a healthy pregnancy have been my first choice? I honestly don't know. It just wasn't a live option. Adoption was our first choice for our second child.
There are several problems with this defense. The first is that it does nothing to change how a child will perceive things, how that child-perception will remain in the adult as an unnamed insecurity.
What if a parent had preferred adoption, if a bio child or an attemt at a bio child had not preceeded the adoption? Would this help? Saying "Adoption was our first choice” (as I wrote below, I read this frequently now in adoption postings, and I'm not sure if it is a disclaimer, as in "I can't speak to infertility and adoption," or if it is the parents' belief that their child will experience adoption differently as a result) puts a child in a lonely place and in the position of having to accept the parents’ ethic that led them first to adoption as best in order to legitimate their choice (whether this is a progressive politic or an evangelical Christian ethic) or having to allow it to ring hollow. It also functions as an unintended criticism of parents who adopted after infertility, some of whom are the most introspective, articulate and authoritative adoptive parents for reform.
But the other problem is more confounding and far more important:
No matter what I do, or what we assert, it may well be that my daughter will feel (someday, sometimes, but I hope not most days or most times) that she was second choice for our family. (She has the good fortune of having enough information to know definitively that her first parents had no choice -- if only all adoptees had so much information). But perhaps she’ll return, consciously or unconsciously, to that moment when we went for a consultation about a pregnancy, or to the fact that we did have a biological child first.
Maybe I’m hoping that by focusing on adoption’s wrongs, by laying its weaknesses bare, I’ll be saving her some of that effort, and some of that pain. Maybe I'm hoping it'll just help me support her effort.
For being the family we’ve always wanted to be, adoption was our best chance. And for having the family she needs, it was hers, too.
Ranking, for file (or In a Perfect World?)
I commented on ThirdMom 's "Unranked" that I'd post my response here:
I thought that I posted in a more complete way about the notion of transracial/transcultural adoption as fifth-best already, but a search of my archives proves otherwise -- there's only the briefest reference in reaction to Madonna's adoption of David from Malawi (To be honest I'd almost forgotten about Madonna, until someone asked for the first time if my daughter was from "Madonna's son's country" rather than "Angelina's daughter's").
The idea isn't my own. I tried googling the original author, but I haven't been able to find her. Someone might know of her, or might find her with the following information: she's a therapist who tours (toured) with a show geared toward helping transracial/transcultural adoptees access feelings about difference at their young age. She's also an adoptive mom.
I read of her notion that transracial/transcultural adoptions were the fifth best option for children in the abstract when we had just begun our process of transracial (but not yet international) adoption. To be honest, I was offended, and I was defensive. We'd read the books! We lived in a diverse neighborhood! We knew other multiracial families (via adoption). We were academics! And already excellent parents! Surely we weren't the fifth best option. And adoption creates beautiful, and beautifully diverse, families. How could that even be second best?
When I was less defensive, and really ready to hear what she meant, I was also ready to understand what might matter to my child -- that each of these moves among the "ranks" indicates a profound loss, that each loss should be imagined as preventable when we make personal and national decisions regarding adoption ethics and reform. (The Hague attempts to address some of this, though the success of this -- and not merely increased delays in attachment -- will take time and smarter people than me to examine).
I can say definitively that my daughter isn't second-best to me. That we are a multiracial family isn't second choice to me in anyway.* But the key here is that I had a choice, and she didn't, her first parents didn't, Ethiopia didn't. So someday if she feels that in the abstract transracial/transcultural adoption is not preferable to other choices, I'll get it. I hope that she's equipped through her childhood to feel that our family is at least as good as traditional families -- but that's less a matter of argument than it is parenting.
The theoretical "rank" list, then, is as follows:
1st Natural families
2nd Kinship care
3rd Same race, same country adoption
4th Different race, same country adoption
5th Different race, different country
I can say to her that I can see why, but that I still think in the specificity of each family, we see first-rank beauty and profound joy. (But I won't go so far as to say that that's all that matters, because it isn't).
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Living in Paradox/Reverie
One more reason why Nicole is fantastic. Read it first, please. Then:
If someone else were to tease apart relinquishment and adoption, it would be really easy to break it down like this:
relinquishment: bad, loss
adoption: good, gain
And it would be satisfying as an aparent to say, yes, that's exactly it. My daughter's loss of her first mother had nothing to do with our adoption, so while her loss is sad our gain is tremendously happy and move on.
But that's not what Nicole is saying. It's far too complicated for that, she's far too honest. (Sorry -- I know we could all use an easy solution). What she says, instead, is that we've all got to learn to live with paradox, with the copresence of seemingly antithetical thoughts, emotions, truths at the same time. Some possible paradoxes: I love my aparents and am glad they raised me and I wish I had never lost my first family. I love my daughter's aparents and can acknowledge their capabilities as parents but I hate that I am not raising my child and believe that n.families are best suited to raising their children. Or my own: I love that I have my daughter in my life and I hate that she lost her first family. Or another of mine: We hope for another child and we hate the conditions that would make that possible. Notice that the operator is "and," conjoining the A and B of each sentence. It is not as if the bad is displaced by the good, or that the moments are divisible as we'd wish. They are always interpenetrating.
Joy's response does not contradict Nicole, but seeks to make clear that that too easy dichotomy at the top of my post is untenable. Joy's adoption analogy, presented less gracefully: She could live abroad, she could love living abroad, but she'd always be an expat -- forever. Her life with her son shows her the difference.
I see what she is saying, too, and yet I think we're all in some ways always in exile from one another's innermost being and that biological relationships only seem to offer a way to bridge that divide. What I mean is this: I think it's too easy to believe that I have a natural way with my son, some magical access to his emotional life, that we have understandings that are rooted in biology -- that I will never have with my daughter. In some ways this might be true: I "get" his obsessiveness immediately, without even having to speak about it (or do I map my childhood anxieties onto his unique ones?) I get that sparkle in his eye just before he makes trouble because it "runs in our family" (but my daughter "glimmers" too!) After a dangerous pregnancy and near-disasterous delivery, his history is marked in and on my body, and mine runs through his. My daughter's body is marked by a different history, its tracings in her inherited beauty and her round belly, now full with toddlerhood but still bearing the marks of early hunger. She is uprooted and also cultivated. Both/and, her being not alien but hybrid.
In the end, both my son and my daughter are beyond my comprehension, though I have infinite empathy for both. Their possibilities extend beyond what I can behold, what I can even imagine. That's both the sadness and supreme beauty of loving someone else, in particular of parenting, in afamilies or nfamilies. Just families. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm one of few who thinks like that, which I had thought was a given, who loves the mystery and enjoys the unfolding.
If someone else were to tease apart relinquishment and adoption, it would be really easy to break it down like this:
relinquishment: bad, loss
adoption: good, gain
And it would be satisfying as an aparent to say, yes, that's exactly it. My daughter's loss of her first mother had nothing to do with our adoption, so while her loss is sad our gain is tremendously happy and move on.
But that's not what Nicole is saying. It's far too complicated for that, she's far too honest. (Sorry -- I know we could all use an easy solution). What she says, instead, is that we've all got to learn to live with paradox, with the copresence of seemingly antithetical thoughts, emotions, truths at the same time. Some possible paradoxes: I love my aparents and am glad they raised me and I wish I had never lost my first family. I love my daughter's aparents and can acknowledge their capabilities as parents but I hate that I am not raising my child and believe that n.families are best suited to raising their children. Or my own: I love that I have my daughter in my life and I hate that she lost her first family. Or another of mine: We hope for another child and we hate the conditions that would make that possible. Notice that the operator is "and," conjoining the A and B of each sentence. It is not as if the bad is displaced by the good, or that the moments are divisible as we'd wish. They are always interpenetrating.
Joy's response does not contradict Nicole, but seeks to make clear that that too easy dichotomy at the top of my post is untenable. Joy's adoption analogy, presented less gracefully: She could live abroad, she could love living abroad, but she'd always be an expat -- forever. Her life with her son shows her the difference.
I see what she is saying, too, and yet I think we're all in some ways always in exile from one another's innermost being and that biological relationships only seem to offer a way to bridge that divide. What I mean is this: I think it's too easy to believe that I have a natural way with my son, some magical access to his emotional life, that we have understandings that are rooted in biology -- that I will never have with my daughter. In some ways this might be true: I "get" his obsessiveness immediately, without even having to speak about it (or do I map my childhood anxieties onto his unique ones?) I get that sparkle in his eye just before he makes trouble because it "runs in our family" (but my daughter "glimmers" too!) After a dangerous pregnancy and near-disasterous delivery, his history is marked in and on my body, and mine runs through his. My daughter's body is marked by a different history, its tracings in her inherited beauty and her round belly, now full with toddlerhood but still bearing the marks of early hunger. She is uprooted and also cultivated. Both/and, her being not alien but hybrid.
In the end, both my son and my daughter are beyond my comprehension, though I have infinite empathy for both. Their possibilities extend beyond what I can behold, what I can even imagine. That's both the sadness and supreme beauty of loving someone else, in particular of parenting, in afamilies or nfamilies. Just families. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm one of few who thinks like that, which I had thought was a given, who loves the mystery and enjoys the unfolding.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Evelyn Bennett
For all our talk about adoption reform, what constitutes adequate counseling and instruction on the long-term consequences of placement for mother and child, appropriate contexts for consent to placement, the value of kinship care, and the NEED of an aparent to be able to say in truth to their adopted child that it couldn't have been another way,
we have an obligation to get educated about Evelyn Bennett's case. OriginsUSA is demanding her return to her grandparents and her mother. You can hear Evelyn's grandmother and Stephanie's lawyer on about the first half of the adoption show.
(My own sure-to-be-unpopular opinion is that the second-half discussion of the agency's ethics and their placement of children from foster care and disruptions with Sandy undercuts the strength of the first half of the show. Placement for disrupted children is a very important service to children, and far too much of the latter discussion is speculative.)
The most recent Seriouslyjustme post speaks to adopting parents in a way everyone needs to hear: Yes, we know what it is like to want a child. But we also want to be able to face that child as an adult and say "It couldn't have been another way."
we have an obligation to get educated about Evelyn Bennett's case. OriginsUSA is demanding her return to her grandparents and her mother. You can hear Evelyn's grandmother and Stephanie's lawyer on about the first half of the adoption show.
(My own sure-to-be-unpopular opinion is that the second-half discussion of the agency's ethics and their placement of children from foster care and disruptions with Sandy undercuts the strength of the first half of the show. Placement for disrupted children is a very important service to children, and far too much of the latter discussion is speculative.)
The most recent Seriouslyjustme post speaks to adopting parents in a way everyone needs to hear: Yes, we know what it is like to want a child. But we also want to be able to face that child as an adult and say "It couldn't have been another way."
Thursday, April 12, 2007
On Grieving
Nicole's most recent posts are heartbreaking. As an aparent, I have no advice to offer her when she asks how to live with (the possibility of) unrequited love for her daughter, with whom she is in an open relationship. She responds (rightly) to us well-meaning amoms who offer advice, particularly like "Give it time" and "let her grow into it" and reassurances like "She does love you" thusly: "Easy for you to say." That doesn't do anything for this moment. And there are no guarantees.
She's right.
"I need to know HOW to let this go," she insists.
This reminds me a little of a discussion on Mia's awhile ago, and of how I imagine my daughter might feel someday, with a loss and sorrow intangible and normally uncommunicated. I've never been in any of their positions, but in having suffered other kinds of losses, I just don't think there is a HOW _or_ a letting go, rather than a being in followed by a living with.
When our daughter came home, some might have said that she was too young to really grieve. But they would be wrong. When she cried inconsolably, she was not only feeling grief, but she was grieving. It was something she had to do before she could begin to really attach to us. And I don't believe for a minute that it's over forever. She will feel her loss and sorrow sometimes, and other times she'll have to do the work of grieving. If only there was a way to do that work for someone, I would do it for her. Or if there was a short-cut to teach . . . But there isn't.
Little Bun just asked me about a particular loss. He wanted to know how "[I] make it" so that I don't cry everyday about that loss. And I was stunned into silence. "Time" is one answer, but it isn't true. Time alone does not heal. The truth is, I don't know. First I think of grieving as an act, not a feeling. Then I remember that the end-game of grieving as an act is not the elimination of the pain but the integrating of that pain into the full, rich experiences of life. How do I do that? Unsuccessfully. (But any measure of success at it comes from prayer, meditation, and my husband, my children.)
She's right.
"I need to know HOW to let this go," she insists.
This reminds me a little of a discussion on Mia's awhile ago, and of how I imagine my daughter might feel someday, with a loss and sorrow intangible and normally uncommunicated. I've never been in any of their positions, but in having suffered other kinds of losses, I just don't think there is a HOW _or_ a letting go, rather than a being in followed by a living with.
When our daughter came home, some might have said that she was too young to really grieve. But they would be wrong. When she cried inconsolably, she was not only feeling grief, but she was grieving. It was something she had to do before she could begin to really attach to us. And I don't believe for a minute that it's over forever. She will feel her loss and sorrow sometimes, and other times she'll have to do the work of grieving. If only there was a way to do that work for someone, I would do it for her. Or if there was a short-cut to teach . . . But there isn't.
Little Bun just asked me about a particular loss. He wanted to know how "[I] make it" so that I don't cry everyday about that loss. And I was stunned into silence. "Time" is one answer, but it isn't true. Time alone does not heal. The truth is, I don't know. First I think of grieving as an act, not a feeling. Then I remember that the end-game of grieving as an act is not the elimination of the pain but the integrating of that pain into the full, rich experiences of life. How do I do that? Unsuccessfully. (But any measure of success at it comes from prayer, meditation, and my husband, my children.)
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
If you don't think closed records are that big of a problem yet, read here to be properly outraged about efforts to unseal information in one state. And if you haven't done so already, stick around and catch up on her story. Of course she's Ungrateful.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Easy for me to say?
Sometimes I don't say the things that need to be said because I feel like someone could respond "That's easy for you to say." But sometimes I should say those things anyway.
I've been thinking about this since I posted about the reforms necessary for domestic infant adoption, as only a start to overhauling the whole process, the whole paradigm. Rob, and other readers coming for my opinion, had every right to think, "But she doesn't know. She didn't adopt domestically. It's so easy to judge," every right to think that international adoption is even more flawed and far less ethical (lots of people do) and so not to listen to what I had to say. I appreciate that that didn't seem to be the case, but that that possibility exists does hold me back.
I'm thinking about it more now in relationship to Mia's efforts to restore the rights of adoptees to be able to obtain an unaltered birth certificate. I feel unqualified to say "D*mn right she deserves that!" and that all adoptees do, because my daughter doesn't have it either and because we didn't adopt domestically.
Miss I was born in a rural area that didn't register her birth. Her birth was first registered for the purposes of her adoption, long after she was born. But fortunately for her, for the truth, it has a little asterisk that points to us as adoptive parents. And we got to retain that certificate when we applied for a US one. We've already applied for international intermediary services, trying to make contact with extended family. (I've shared a bit about all of this earlier). It is moving far too slowly for my comfort, as things can change, people can be lost and with them, her history. When they are a little older, when we know more, we will go, and we will grab onto any little bit of her story, her history that we can, any contact we can make so someday she won't have to search.
Why should anyone have to search? Why shouldn't they know who their first parents are? Why shouldn't they have contact, and a relationship to the extent that they choose?
But this is easy for me to say, from continents away. Easy for me to say because in our case it may be impossible. Easy for me to say because it doesn't pertain to me.
Yet maybe we are the people who should be saying it. As parents who believe that it is a basic right and deep need to know, maybe we'd be the best advocates.
Easy for me to say, maybe, but not so easy to explain.
I've been thinking about this since I posted about the reforms necessary for domestic infant adoption, as only a start to overhauling the whole process, the whole paradigm. Rob, and other readers coming for my opinion, had every right to think, "But she doesn't know. She didn't adopt domestically. It's so easy to judge," every right to think that international adoption is even more flawed and far less ethical (lots of people do) and so not to listen to what I had to say. I appreciate that that didn't seem to be the case, but that that possibility exists does hold me back.
I'm thinking about it more now in relationship to Mia's efforts to restore the rights of adoptees to be able to obtain an unaltered birth certificate. I feel unqualified to say "D*mn right she deserves that!" and that all adoptees do, because my daughter doesn't have it either and because we didn't adopt domestically.
Miss I was born in a rural area that didn't register her birth. Her birth was first registered for the purposes of her adoption, long after she was born. But fortunately for her, for the truth, it has a little asterisk that points to us as adoptive parents. And we got to retain that certificate when we applied for a US one. We've already applied for international intermediary services, trying to make contact with extended family. (I've shared a bit about all of this earlier). It is moving far too slowly for my comfort, as things can change, people can be lost and with them, her history. When they are a little older, when we know more, we will go, and we will grab onto any little bit of her story, her history that we can, any contact we can make so someday she won't have to search.
Why should anyone have to search? Why shouldn't they know who their first parents are? Why shouldn't they have contact, and a relationship to the extent that they choose?
But this is easy for me to say, from continents away. Easy for me to say because in our case it may be impossible. Easy for me to say because it doesn't pertain to me.
Yet maybe we are the people who should be saying it. As parents who believe that it is a basic right and deep need to know, maybe we'd be the best advocates.
Easy for me to say, maybe, but not so easy to explain.
Two Mothers
I am sending you to Paula's again for a beautiful post about honoring and remembering both of her mothers, knowing and loving her by loving them. Paula is a voice for both progress and peace, and I admire her so very much.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Don't Ask (don't tell)
Tonight at dinner our server asked, quite abruptly, "Was she adopted?"
"No she was not," little bun answered before dh or I could respond. "She grew in Momma's womb." (he accompanied this with gestures to the appropriate region). I'm not sure what to make of his response, other that that he is exhausted by how different we are to other people, however much she calls him "my brotha" from sun-up to sundown.
"No she was not," little bun answered before dh or I could respond. "She grew in Momma's womb." (he accompanied this with gestures to the appropriate region). I'm not sure what to make of his response, other that that he is exhausted by how different we are to other people, however much she calls him "my brotha" from sun-up to sundown.
Monday, March 19, 2007
The Burning Building Test II
On Mia's blog, Rob writes:
Abebech: the burning building test is interesting, but how does one make that determination? Should it really be the PAPs duty to assist the natural family with their decision? Talk about a conflict of interest!
I don't see it as a conflict of interests, but as a painful conflict of desires: to parent a child (soon) after perhaps years of waiting and hoping, and to be sure that we are becoming parents in the most ethical way possible.If a prospective adoptive parent is to be involved before the termination of parental rights, then I do believe that she takes on a responsibility to ask questions --"Has anyone helped you try to make a parenting plan first?" -- and tell truths -- "The pain of your loss may never go away" and "You might be able to parent." Setting the expectant mother aside, I would have owed it to my child to have treated her mother with whatever kindness, honesty and integrity I am able to bring to my relationship with my child. But I cannot set the expectant mother aside.
In my view, PAPs (especially infertile couples) should have nothing to do with a natural family’s decision.
On this we may agree. Maybe paparents should only become a consideration (profiles, dvds, meetings) after the decision to place is firmly made. In most cases, I do not believe that the decision can be firmly made until (well) after delivery. One option, then, is for paparents to have no contact with expectant mothers until then. I am not convinced that the advantages of a relationship established during pregnancy outweigh the general costs of a system that encourages "matching" and adds the emotional pressure of the knowledge that a mother might disappoint a pafamily.
But come to think of it, here, I think I understand the entitlement issue better…
This is one of the best possible outcomes of the discussion at Mia's.
When we met with a mother who selected us, my only intention was to get to know her and to show her that we were going to be amazing parents to her child. I never thought about the “burning building.” She never made me feel that I needed to.
Perhaps it wasn't relevant in your case -- I don't know the circumstances.But let's talk about a hypothetical match for, say, me. I imagine that a woman would see paparents as the unlikeliest sources of encouragement to parent, and so would not seek that. She hasn't heard it yet (probably) from her counselor, sw'er, family -- why should she expect it from me, a woman who waited for years for the chance to parent another child? But does that mean that I shouldn't offer it? I do know aparents who at the very least asked, "Are you sure?" despite their very real fears that she might say "No, I'm not," and that their hopes would be dashed again. Those who haven't gone through the adoption process may not recognize that question as an act of emotional bravery, but I do.
But we can't not do it just because it's hard, or because she hasn't asked us to: Can the obligation to remind me to behave in an ethical manner toward a person fall to that person?
The first real problem with the "burning building" approach is that it is an IMAGINARY one, invented to help us set our limits. I doubt that we can objectively determine what constitutes a burning building in advance. I can say subjectively that single parenting in an economically fragile circumstance doesn't really cut it for me -- I know lots of wonderful people who have done it -- but if there are additional factors, a woman might decide that from her subjective position it does. Better for me to be more conservative about what it might take to place than risk pressuring a woman into relinquishing a child she could have parented.
The second is that it risks paternalism. My planning to sit down and say "Parent! You really should, you know," was very m/paternalistic and perhaps even a bit condescending, as if I in my ten years greater wisdom knew in my heart of hearts something she did not. But better risk that offense, don't you think, than the offense of omission?
Back to the issue, how many potential adoptions did you refuse based upon this test before you found the woman in the burning building?
I'm not sure why the number is the issue. Quite frankly, we didn't give it that long.We started out by telling our sw'er that we were only interested in post-birth scenarios, in emergency placements. However, we were contacted about a few situations by our agency and another. In one case we told our sw'er that if we were to meet the woman we would have said "Parent! You can do this!" Perhaps someone told her her building wasn't burning, or perhaps they helped her put the fire out, or perhaps she found reserves she didn't know she had. In another case we declined to meet; she chose to place. In another, the building was (quite objectively) burning, and I hope someone has helped her put it out. She chose to parent, and I think about that momma and little boy often.
Over time, we realized we didn't want to find a woman in a burning building. We adopted the most beautiful toddler girl in the world nine months ago, and are confronted often enough with ethical questions about international adoption (including waiting children):
Doesn't that just encourage the problems to continue/feed into the system?
Isn't it cultural genocide? The new imperialism?
Isn't it an abuse of power/a demonstration of (white) western privilege?
Didn't you take her away from her country, her culture, her family for your own gain?
Do you think you're a rock star?
(H*ll, yeah, to the last)
Don't worry. Here at newflower, we know we're not immune from critique. And we know it stings like anything. But we're trying to make some good use of it.
The Burning Building Test
I mentioned the "burning building test" on Mia's blog.
Here's another time I wrote about it, far too simplistically as I read it now.
Rob asked good questions about its application, and about whether prospective adoptive parents have a moral obligation to discourage women from placing their children for adoption.
I'll respond more completely later, but for now, I'll say yes. Yes we really do.
But I'd like to hear what first mothers and adoptees think.
Here's another time I wrote about it, far too simplistically as I read it now.
Rob asked good questions about its application, and about whether prospective adoptive parents have a moral obligation to discourage women from placing their children for adoption.
I'll respond more completely later, but for now, I'll say yes. Yes we really do.
But I'd like to hear what first mothers and adoptees think.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Monday, March 05, 2007
Second Choices and Best Chances
I held onto this too long, saving it in draft until it wasn't really worth saving. I waited 'til the moment passed. Still, it clarifies some of what I was thinking, and it points you to a really great blog (you can just skip to the link if you like) . . .
When I went into preterm labor at 23 weeks, people actually told me that “it’s God’s will” and that “God’s will will be done.” Supposedly these things were meant to be reassuring, but they were horrifying. Why on earth or in heaven would Anyone will preterm labor/preterm birth? Wasn’t it, rather, a condition of a broken world that some wombs are broken? (I’ve written about this before).
When I went into preterm labor at 23 weeks, people actually told me that “it’s God’s will” and that “God’s will will be done.” Supposedly these things were meant to be reassuring, but they were horrifying. Why on earth or in heaven would Anyone will preterm labor/preterm birth? Wasn’t it, rather, a condition of a broken world that some wombs are broken? (I’ve written about this before).
But if I'm completely honest I do like the idea that it's "meant to be" when it’s convenient. Had I been perfectly healthy I wouldn’t have planned a pregnancy while dh and I were in school. But because I wasn’t, I did -- and I cannot imagine my life without my son. In that sense, then, it feels “meant to be,” even as I am aware that I choose to believe that it was meant to be in order to protect myself (however unsuccessfully) from the painful realization that it might have been otherwise.
Adoption makes us (re)consider the already problematic use of the phrase “meant to be.” Why was it meant to be that my daughter would tragically lose her first mother? Why is it meant to be that African women die at an unimaginable rate from preventable infectious diseases, during childbirth, from AIDS? How could she have possibly been “meant to” lose her mother in order for me to parent her?
But why is it meant to be for a young woman to be discouraged from parenting her child alone? Why is a young woman meant to give birth to a child she can’t (or thinks she can’t) parent? How could she possibly have been “meant to” lose her child? Yet once it’s happened, it’s no wonder why adoptive parents would choose to assert that their child’s placement in their family was “meant to be” – it makes it liveable, and it prevents us from imagining the unimaginable -- that it could have been another way, that we could have lived our lives without this child that seems so necessary for the family to live and breathe.
Once an adult, their child (my child) will rightly realize the flaws in this assertion, the emptiness of its promise that everything that happens to her will be okay, that every occurrence is providential rather than accidental . . .
I’ve been prompted to write recently about my ranking as the fifth best parenting option for my child (in theory) in response to posts by Sster and Thirdmom, but in those postings I’ve tried to make it clear that my daughter was never and would never be second choice. I’ve done so because all along I’ve wondered if she’d feel this way, on some level (particularly if I can accept that I wasn't the first choice for her).
One defense against my daughter's potential hypothetical assertion that she was “second best,” is that I did have another viable option. I could have had another high risk pregnancy. Would having a healthy pregnancy have been my first choice? I honestly don't know. It just wasn't a live option. Adoption was our first choice for our second child.
There are several problems with this defense. The first is that it does nothing to change how a child will perceive things, how that child-perception will remain in the adult as an unnamed insecurity.
What if a parent had preferred adoption, if a bio child or an attemt at a bio child had not preceeded the adoption? Would this help? Saying "Adoption was our first choice” (as I wrote below, I read this frequently now in adoption postings, and I'm not sure if it is a disclaimer, as in "I can't speak to infertility and adoption," or if it is the parents' belief that their child will experience adoption differently as a result) puts a child in a lonely place and in the position of having to accept the parents’ ethic that led them first to adoption as best in order to legitimate their choice (whether this is a progressive politic or an evangelical Christian ethic) or having to allow it to ring hollow. It also functions as an unintended criticism of parents who adopted after infertility, some of whom are the most introspective, articulate and authoritative adoptive parents for reform.
But the other problem is more confounding and far more important:
No matter what I do, or what we assert, it may well be that my daughter will feel (someday, sometimes, but I hope not most days or most times) that she was second choice for our family. (She has the good fortune of having enough information to know definitively that her first parents had no choice -- if only all adoptees had so much information). But perhaps she’ll return, consciously or unconsciously, to that moment when we went for a consultation about a pregnancy, or to the fact that we did have a biological child first.
Maybe I’m hoping that by focusing on adoption’s wrongs, by laying its weaknesses bare, I’ll be saving her some of that effort, and some of that pain. Maybe I'm hoping it'll just help me support her effort.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Ranking, for file (or In a Perfect World?)
I commented on ThirdMom 's "Unranked" that I'd post my response here:
I thought that I posted in a more complete way about the notion of transracial/transcultural adoption as fifth-best already, but a search of my archives proves otherwise -- there's only the briefest reference in reaction to Madonna's adoption of David from Malawi (To be honest I'd almost forgotten about Madonna, until someone asked for the first time if my daughter was from "Madonna's son's country" rather than "Angelina's daughter's").
The idea isn't my own. I tried googling the original author, but I haven't been able to find her. Someone might know of her, or might find her with the following information: she's a therapist who tours (toured) with a show geared toward helping transracial/transcultural adoptees access feelings about difference at their young age. She's also an adoptive mom.
I read of her notion that transracial/transcultural adoptions were the fifth best option for children in the abstract when we had just begun our process of transracial (but not yet international) adoption. To be honest, I was offended, and I was defensive. We'd read the books! We lived in a diverse neighborhood! We knew other multiracial families (via adoption). We were academics! And already excellent parents! Surely we weren't the fifth best option. And adoption creates beautiful, and beautifully diverse, families. How could that even be second best?
When I was less defensive, and really ready to hear what she meant, I was also ready to understand what might matter to my child -- that each of these moves among the "ranks" indicates a profound loss, that each loss should be imagined as preventable when we make personal and national decisions regarding adoption ethics and reform. (The Hague attempts to address some of this, though the success of this -- and not merely increased delays in attachment -- will take time and smarter people than me to examine).
I can say definitively that my daughter isn't second-best to me. That we are a multiracial family isn't second choice to me in anyway.* But the key here is that I had a choice, and she didn't, her first parents didn't, Ethiopia didn't. So someday if she feels that in the abstract transracial/transcultural adoption is not preferable to other choices, I'll get it. I hope that she's equipped through her childhood to feel that our family is at least as good as traditional families -- but that's less a matter of argument than it is parenting.
The theoretical "rank" list, then, is as follows:
1st Natural families
2nd Kinship care
3rd Same race, same country adoption
4th Different race, same country adoption
5th Different race, different country
I can say to her that I can see why, but that I still think in the specificity of each family, we see first-rank beauty and profound joy. (But I won't go so far as to say that that's all that matters, because it isn't).
This points to another matter for debate:
Are conventional families/genetic families/natural families in the scheme above, really natural or are they naturalized? Particularly in late capitalism and beyond (is there a beyond?) it is so necessary for us to ask ourselves these questions about all relations -- natural or naturalized associations? The Stevens article Shannon and Sster write of wants, at base, for us to question our assumption that families of genetic tie are "natural" and not elective (hence naturalized).
As a critique of culture, I can see the value(s): A defense of the nontraditional family on the grounds that the biological nuclear family is no more natural and an argument that no protections be granted the second that are not granted the first. Better to my mind (but then why not cut to this chase?), she argues that with national health care (among other things), we wouldn't need those further protections (or to deny those protections -- I think one of the principle reasons states are denying same sex partnership full legal status is because it would cost money, and that in fact if it would be tenable, the government would roll back benefits extended to married heterosexual couples as they don't fit current economic circumstances).
But these arguments do not need to be made through a denial of "genetic privilege" (which I find increasingly less privileged given the multiplicity of family forms and the decline of the two heterosexual parent + bio children in the same household form). I do believe what science tells us about genetics and temperament (while also acknowledging that yes, mathematically, there is very little distinguishing any of us encoded in our dna). I believe, more importantly, that it isn't a cultural misunderstanding or a mistaken belief in a biological "origin" that leads adoptees to search for some of their histories in their natural parents: in the tilt of their heads, or the way they fold their hands, in their eyes, or their very beautiful, black, full eyelashes.
To me those connections are natural, not naturalized, and an argument to de-naturalize seems to come from a place of insecurity. In order for us to be a real family, we do not have to deny the "natural" in natural family. To me, as much as this does not serve my personal interests, in a more "perfect world" (which we also must recognize as theoretical) these relations would be less- rather than more elective. At the same time, as I have said, I do believe that love is a choice, that we choose to love, and that we renew this choice everyday. That it is by choice doesn't make it any less real. Knowing that it is by choice gives us more freedom and power and wonderfully paradoxically makes it permanent, and perfects it.
*Lately I've been reading posts and board messages that imply that differences in perceptions of adoption, the adoption process (including financing), and willingness to consider alternatives relate to fertility, as in, "Well, this doesn't speak for me, as adoption was our first choice . . ." and while sometimes it clarifies the author's writing-position, I'm really uncomfortable with the implications for our conversations and for adoptees, burdened alternately by their families "choosing" them and parents' infertility or worse, burdened simultaneously by them. How on earth do we begin to address that?
I thought that I posted in a more complete way about the notion of transracial/transcultural adoption as fifth-best already, but a search of my archives proves otherwise -- there's only the briefest reference in reaction to Madonna's adoption of David from Malawi (To be honest I'd almost forgotten about Madonna, until someone asked for the first time if my daughter was from "Madonna's son's country" rather than "Angelina's daughter's").
The idea isn't my own. I tried googling the original author, but I haven't been able to find her. Someone might know of her, or might find her with the following information: she's a therapist who tours (toured) with a show geared toward helping transracial/transcultural adoptees access feelings about difference at their young age. She's also an adoptive mom.
I read of her notion that transracial/transcultural adoptions were the fifth best option for children in the abstract when we had just begun our process of transracial (but not yet international) adoption. To be honest, I was offended, and I was defensive. We'd read the books! We lived in a diverse neighborhood! We knew other multiracial families (via adoption). We were academics! And already excellent parents! Surely we weren't the fifth best option. And adoption creates beautiful, and beautifully diverse, families. How could that even be second best?
When I was less defensive, and really ready to hear what she meant, I was also ready to understand what might matter to my child -- that each of these moves among the "ranks" indicates a profound loss, that each loss should be imagined as preventable when we make personal and national decisions regarding adoption ethics and reform. (The Hague attempts to address some of this, though the success of this -- and not merely increased delays in attachment -- will take time and smarter people than me to examine).
I can say definitively that my daughter isn't second-best to me. That we are a multiracial family isn't second choice to me in anyway.* But the key here is that I had a choice, and she didn't, her first parents didn't, Ethiopia didn't. So someday if she feels that in the abstract transracial/transcultural adoption is not preferable to other choices, I'll get it. I hope that she's equipped through her childhood to feel that our family is at least as good as traditional families -- but that's less a matter of argument than it is parenting.
The theoretical "rank" list, then, is as follows:
1st Natural families
2nd Kinship care
3rd Same race, same country adoption
4th Different race, same country adoption
5th Different race, different country
I can say to her that I can see why, but that I still think in the specificity of each family, we see first-rank beauty and profound joy. (But I won't go so far as to say that that's all that matters, because it isn't).
This points to another matter for debate:
Are conventional families/genetic families/natural families in the scheme above, really natural or are they naturalized? Particularly in late capitalism and beyond (is there a beyond?) it is so necessary for us to ask ourselves these questions about all relations -- natural or naturalized associations? The Stevens article Shannon and Sster write of wants, at base, for us to question our assumption that families of genetic tie are "natural" and not elective (hence naturalized).
As a critique of culture, I can see the value(s): A defense of the nontraditional family on the grounds that the biological nuclear family is no more natural and an argument that no protections be granted the second that are not granted the first. Better to my mind (but then why not cut to this chase?), she argues that with national health care (among other things), we wouldn't need those further protections (or to deny those protections -- I think one of the principle reasons states are denying same sex partnership full legal status is because it would cost money, and that in fact if it would be tenable, the government would roll back benefits extended to married heterosexual couples as they don't fit current economic circumstances).
But these arguments do not need to be made through a denial of "genetic privilege" (which I find increasingly less privileged given the multiplicity of family forms and the decline of the two heterosexual parent + bio children in the same household form). I do believe what science tells us about genetics and temperament (while also acknowledging that yes, mathematically, there is very little distinguishing any of us encoded in our dna). I believe, more importantly, that it isn't a cultural misunderstanding or a mistaken belief in a biological "origin" that leads adoptees to search for some of their histories in their natural parents: in the tilt of their heads, or the way they fold their hands, in their eyes, or their very beautiful, black, full eyelashes.
To me those connections are natural, not naturalized, and an argument to de-naturalize seems to come from a place of insecurity. In order for us to be a real family, we do not have to deny the "natural" in natural family. To me, as much as this does not serve my personal interests, in a more "perfect world" (which we also must recognize as theoretical) these relations would be less- rather than more elective. At the same time, as I have said, I do believe that love is a choice, that we choose to love, and that we renew this choice everyday. That it is by choice doesn't make it any less real. Knowing that it is by choice gives us more freedom and power and wonderfully paradoxically makes it permanent, and perfects it.
*Lately I've been reading posts and board messages that imply that differences in perceptions of adoption, the adoption process (including financing), and willingness to consider alternatives relate to fertility, as in, "Well, this doesn't speak for me, as adoption was our first choice . . ." and while sometimes it clarifies the author's writing-position, I'm really uncomfortable with the implications for our conversations and for adoptees, burdened alternately by their families "choosing" them and parents' infertility or worse, burdened simultaneously by them. How on earth do we begin to address that?
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Six months
Today is the six month anniversary of Miss I.'s arrival to the United States.
Today is the anniversary of the day a man I hadn't seen in a week (but who had experienced a lifetime in that week) met me at the gate wearing a little girl I'd loved from afar. The day she had practiced "Hi Momma" as she waited in customs and fell asleep before she could share it. The day her Adadda had to leave her with a woman she wasn't too sure about as he got the fastest (but most needed) shower ever, and in her panic she pooped and then in greater panic pooped again mid-diaper change and then panicked that she'd done the wrong thing to someone she'd only just met. The day she decided to cling to me with everything she had in her.
Also the day I first heard her laugh.
Happy six month anniversary, Miss I-of-mine.
It feels like just yesterday we met, but like I've loved you my whole life.
Today is the anniversary of the day a man I hadn't seen in a week (but who had experienced a lifetime in that week) met me at the gate wearing a little girl I'd loved from afar. The day she had practiced "Hi Momma" as she waited in customs and fell asleep before she could share it. The day her Adadda had to leave her with a woman she wasn't too sure about as he got the fastest (but most needed) shower ever, and in her panic she pooped and then in greater panic pooped again mid-diaper change and then panicked that she'd done the wrong thing to someone she'd only just met. The day she decided to cling to me with everything she had in her.
Also the day I first heard her laugh.
Happy six month anniversary, Miss I-of-mine.
It feels like just yesterday we met, but like I've loved you my whole life.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Our Life Less Extraordinary
I've skimmed my own recent posts and realized that, by and large, they are quite normal. Amazingly and wonderfully, our family is starting to feel normal. This might be bad news for blogging, but it's really good news for us. (Though it does make me worry just a touch).
In a post prompted by the impending arrival of her (white) (biological) son and thoughts and feelings this raises regarding a potential adoption that was not to be (shortly before the snapper was conceived),Sster asks whether she had romanticized her prospective role of white mother of a black child. She writes, "I’ll put it bluntly: is this a racist reaction? Have I become romantically enamoured with difference?"
I said I didn't know. Who am I to say? This is really hard.
We first thought we'd adopt from China, only because we knew families who had done it, knew it was possible, and possibility was what we most hoped for. When we first considered domestic adoption, we were asked if we would consider children of african descent. Of course we would, after which we promptly spent days by turns being angry that there would be a difference in "desirability" of black children and all other races and worrying about whether any white parents were remotely qualified to raise black children.
So after our general adoption preparation reading (all eye opening), we threw ourselves headlong into reading and research, psychiatrists' studies of transracial adoptees, sociologists' studies of transracial adoptive moms. (Turns out I had the most in common, according to one sociologist, with white mothers of black children). We asked ourselves in what ways our environment was already supportive of a black child or children, what would have to change, and what we would be willing to do to make those necessary changes. And overall, we felt eager and also very very insecure.
Somewhere along the way we started to form a picture, maybe when ds started talking about his sister "Truckabella" or when the grandmothers mentioned their girl. Maybe sooner. One adoption preparation exercise asks the prospective parent to literalize that "picture," to sketch "her" child (the exercise was intended to help prospective parents realize that they did have these pictures, and that these pictures have consequences). I drew a brown little girl - not a baby - with long eyelashes and curly black hair.
One year later, a black little girl with long eyelashes and delightfully curly brown hair lives here. When we realized that domestic adoption was not for us, was not a good fit for our family, we knew that Ethiopia was where we'd find our little girl. Was this decision, in addition to being imperialist, also racist? No. It was what our process had prepared us for.
But I do know that this way I didn't have to let go of a picture (and every loss of a picture is a very real loss -- I' ve had to give up many in the past) -- she is in some ways what I expected and a million things I never could have guessed.
We knew she would change our life, knew she would make our family different, knew we would change her life immeasurably. We would become a minority family, and she would become the black daughter of a woman described affectionately as the "whitest woman I've ever met" once (which can't be true :) I know some the people she knows). But we would have a choice. She wouldn't. I had no romantic notions of what it would be like to be the white mother of a black child, no sense that it would make me a part of a community I would otherwise be excluded from by definition. But I knew I'd be excluding her from many -- in this case, black children raised by black mothers.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm a pessimist or a pragmatist, or because I'm ever wracked by guilt, but I know my picture of myself as the white mother of a black child wasn't romantic. Yet I also know that once we got that far in the process, I wanted this little girl
(oh how that smacks of determinism, which I avoided responding to, though let me say this -- I find our finding one another all the more miraculous because it was so improbable and contingent, not because it was "meant to be")
and while I know we'll always be different, that she'll always be different because of our choice, I like that our improbable family is starting to feel so normal.
In a post prompted by the impending arrival of her (white) (biological) son and thoughts and feelings this raises regarding a potential adoption that was not to be (shortly before the snapper was conceived),Sster asks whether she had romanticized her prospective role of white mother of a black child. She writes, "I’ll put it bluntly: is this a racist reaction? Have I become romantically enamoured with difference?"
I said I didn't know. Who am I to say? This is really hard.
We first thought we'd adopt from China, only because we knew families who had done it, knew it was possible, and possibility was what we most hoped for. When we first considered domestic adoption, we were asked if we would consider children of african descent. Of course we would, after which we promptly spent days by turns being angry that there would be a difference in "desirability" of black children and all other races and worrying about whether any white parents were remotely qualified to raise black children.
So after our general adoption preparation reading (all eye opening), we threw ourselves headlong into reading and research, psychiatrists' studies of transracial adoptees, sociologists' studies of transracial adoptive moms. (Turns out I had the most in common, according to one sociologist, with white mothers of black children). We asked ourselves in what ways our environment was already supportive of a black child or children, what would have to change, and what we would be willing to do to make those necessary changes. And overall, we felt eager and also very very insecure.
Somewhere along the way we started to form a picture, maybe when ds started talking about his sister "Truckabella" or when the grandmothers mentioned their girl. Maybe sooner. One adoption preparation exercise asks the prospective parent to literalize that "picture," to sketch "her" child (the exercise was intended to help prospective parents realize that they did have these pictures, and that these pictures have consequences). I drew a brown little girl - not a baby - with long eyelashes and curly black hair.
One year later, a black little girl with long eyelashes and delightfully curly brown hair lives here. When we realized that domestic adoption was not for us, was not a good fit for our family, we knew that Ethiopia was where we'd find our little girl. Was this decision, in addition to being imperialist, also racist? No. It was what our process had prepared us for.
But I do know that this way I didn't have to let go of a picture (and every loss of a picture is a very real loss -- I' ve had to give up many in the past) -- she is in some ways what I expected and a million things I never could have guessed.
We knew she would change our life, knew she would make our family different, knew we would change her life immeasurably. We would become a minority family, and she would become the black daughter of a woman described affectionately as the "whitest woman I've ever met" once (which can't be true :) I know some the people she knows). But we would have a choice. She wouldn't. I had no romantic notions of what it would be like to be the white mother of a black child, no sense that it would make me a part of a community I would otherwise be excluded from by definition. But I knew I'd be excluding her from many -- in this case, black children raised by black mothers.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm a pessimist or a pragmatist, or because I'm ever wracked by guilt, but I know my picture of myself as the white mother of a black child wasn't romantic. Yet I also know that once we got that far in the process, I wanted this little girl
(oh how that smacks of determinism, which I avoided responding to, though let me say this -- I find our finding one another all the more miraculous because it was so improbable and contingent, not because it was "meant to be")
and while I know we'll always be different, that she'll always be different because of our choice, I like that our improbable family is starting to feel so normal.
Mia's Saving Grace is worth a read on any day: a nuanced thinker, a thoughtful writer, a very capable mom, and a woman merging two histories divided by adoption, she challenges her readers. I want to call your attention to a really important post in which she shares her experience of sharing her experience with adoptive parents, some receptive and some defensive, all with a lot to learn.
Here's just a bit of it:
Please go read the rest.
Here's just a bit of it:
"Kids should feel safe talking with their parents and not bear the weight of grown up issues upon their shoulders. Adopted kids should feel safe and comfortable verbalizing their feelings to their parents and not fear hurting the people they love. If you adopt a child it is what it is……they are ADOPTED. You can’t wave a magic wand and make them not adopted. Deal with your emotions, see a therapist if you need to but make yourself available to your child without handing them your baggage. If I could say one thing to fearful adoptive parents it would be to uncross your arms. Open them up and embrace truth.
Those of you who’s arms are open~thank you. Keep questioning, keep learning, keep growing. And don’t be surprised if your kids grow up feeling safe and secure in your presence, honored as an individual, self-assured, confident, more like a cherished daughter or son than a possession. Of course they will still have some issues. Who doesn’t have issues? But how wonderful it will be to know they will feel comfortable coming to you and talking about how they are feeling….the sign of a healthy parent/child relationship. That’s a huge payoff don’t you think?"
I think so, and I hope so.Please go read the rest.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
#3?
I was responding to Erin O's comment on a post below (and Erin, you didn't pressure me at all. Just made me think!), and I realized something. I'd implied we were on the way to number three, but we aren't, yet, I didn't think, though we struggle almost daily with whether or not we should be (many from our travel group already are!).
Sometimes I think I'm crazy for thinking about #3. (See the 90 minute tantrum, below, or the help I receive from a dear friend each week just to keep my house organized and my sanity semi-intact as dh works extra hours). But sometimes I think kind of like this
at largerfamily, written by Owlhaven in October:
"You see, I’ve been to Ethiopia. I have memories of walking through orphanages with child after child plucked at my clothes looking pleadingly upward, and raising their arms begging to be picked up.
I know deep in my soul that at this very minute there are thousands of children dying a little inside every day because they have no one to call their own. No one.
I also know how little time it takes for a former orphan to become a sassy, self-assured, much-loved member of a family. It is a miraculous and delightful metamorphasis to behold.
And here we sit, blessed beyond measure. How can I blithely say I’m done, knowing that in saying so I am shutting the door in the faces of real living children?"
She goes on to say to say that this feeling isn't about a savior complex, but the real sense that someone is missing.
Is someone missing here at Chez Bloom? Sometimes I think, given that it'll take us a good long time to process the paper and to wait, that January, at the latest June, will be the time to ca-ca or keum the po-po.
We'll never be a larger family. I don't have the temperament for it (I think I'm much too impatient, maybe a little too fragile), though God bless those who do --
but are we really done?
I don't think so.
Sometimes I think I'm crazy for thinking about #3. (See the 90 minute tantrum, below, or the help I receive from a dear friend each week just to keep my house organized and my sanity semi-intact as dh works extra hours). But sometimes I think kind of like this
at largerfamily, written by Owlhaven in October:
"You see, I’ve been to Ethiopia. I have memories of walking through orphanages with child after child plucked at my clothes looking pleadingly upward, and raising their arms begging to be picked up.
I know deep in my soul that at this very minute there are thousands of children dying a little inside every day because they have no one to call their own. No one.
I also know how little time it takes for a former orphan to become a sassy, self-assured, much-loved member of a family. It is a miraculous and delightful metamorphasis to behold.
And here we sit, blessed beyond measure. How can I blithely say I’m done, knowing that in saying so I am shutting the door in the faces of real living children?"
She goes on to say to say that this feeling isn't about a savior complex, but the real sense that someone is missing.
Is someone missing here at Chez Bloom? Sometimes I think, given that it'll take us a good long time to process the paper and to wait, that January, at the latest June, will be the time to ca-ca or keum the po-po.
We'll never be a larger family. I don't have the temperament for it (I think I'm much too impatient, maybe a little too fragile), though God bless those who do --
but are we really done?
I don't think so.
Mother of All Tantrums
If you're a long(er)-time reader, then you know that we've been struggling with tantrums since Miss I came home. Today we set a record: one and a half hours before she finally cried herself to sleep. About every twenty minutes she tried to pull herself together: "Done." Deep breath. "I done. All done," and then she would start again.
My beautiful daughter was screaming and growling.
I wanted to leave her in her room, shut the door, and take my own deep breaths. I did step out for a few moments to call my mom for advice and encouragement, but I was too fearful that she would feel abandoned to leave for long. So I sat there on the floor of her room while she screamed and growled and cried.
Readers, I am not Catholic, but I prayed to Mary.
My beautiful daughter was screaming and growling.
I wanted to leave her in her room, shut the door, and take my own deep breaths. I did step out for a few moments to call my mom for advice and encouragement, but I was too fearful that she would feel abandoned to leave for long. So I sat there on the floor of her room while she screamed and growled and cried.
Readers, I am not Catholic, but I prayed to Mary.
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