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Opening Up International Adoption
With the internet, globalization, and a growing sense that "openness" in adoption is healthier , more internationally adopted children are developing relationships with their birth families.
In the current issue of Newsweek, one mom writes about how she reluctantly permitted her teen daughters, adopted five years ago when they were 10 and 13, to see their birth grandparents. What she learned was that the relationships with the grandparents didn't take away their love for their adoptive mom, and it brought them some peace.
The essay was quite moving, and I don't think anyone reading it would have any doubt that this mom did the right thing. These kids had long memoires of their grandmother, who had raised them through much of their childhood. The grandmother had made it clear that she wanted to have contact, too.
But the question I, and many other adoptive parents, face is far more complicated: Should you try to initiate a relationship with birth parents whom your child never knew? Birth parents who may or may not have any interest in knowing their biological child?
In A Love Like No Other, a book published last year, I wrote about how my husband and I wrestled with that decision once we learned that it might be possible to track down our younger daughter's birth parents. We ultimately decided to go ahead and search for lots of reason.
But having reviewed the research on open adoption, I'm not convinced that openness is always better for kids; being exposed to birth parents who are living on the margins can be enormously disruptive and troubling. After decades of denying adopted kids the right to know that they were even adopted, I worry that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.
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The Truth About Sperm/Egg Donor Babies
Should sperm or egg donor babies be told about their origins? It's fascinating to me that so many of the articles that explore this question tend to look at it from the parents' point of view. How will it make the father feel if his children, and perhaps their friends, learn that he was infertile? How will the dad's relationship with his children be impacted?
Most of the articles, like this USA Today piece, make the point that we can learn from adoption experience; many kids weren't told they were adopted 30 or 40 years ago and suffered a huge trauma when they discovered the truth. But the fact is, babies have been conceived with donor sperm since post-WW II. And many of them didn't learn about their origins until they were well into adulthood. How did that affect them? What about the ones who were never told?
My guess is there is quite a bit of research to draw upon, which parents of egg or sperm donor babies today could use to make an informed decision as to whether to tell, and if so, how and how much.
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More Myths about Adoption and Angelina Jolie
Just read a Telegraph article linked in blogging baby, which was filled with all kinds of ridiculous speculation about the problems Angelina Jolie's kids might face now that she has a bio daughter.
What really amused me was how these experts claim it's unusual to have a bio child first, then adopt. They suggested that people normally have bio children after adopting because they've more "relaxed."
Where do I start?
1. The assumption is that the only reason people adopt is because they can't "have their own." Are they oblivious to the parade of celebs--Mia Farrow, Stephen Spielberg, Michelle Pfeiffer,etc--who have adopted after having many bio kids? As long as we're trafficking in generalizations and anecdotes: Virtually every writer I know who has bio/adopted kids adopted after having bio kids.
2. The idea that adoption is just a last resort for the desperately infertile is so dated. I wrote a magazine article about how more families had bio and adopted kids, and I found the reasons people adopt are myriad.
3. Ask any infertile person to list irritating comments he/she heard, and I'm sure on the top would be, "Just relax, and you'll get pregnant." First, it's sort of blaming the victim (if you weren't so uptight, you'd have a baby.) Second, it just not true. Yes, some people who suffered from infertility have gotten pregnant after adopting, but they are very notable because of their rarity.
4. The notion that bio and adopted sibilings have less harmonious or loving relationships just isn't borne out by research.
Or by what many of us in "blended families" see in our own lives.
Well, I guess this is proof that journalistic standards aren't any higher in England...
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A Dose of Reality
Today I read yet another article (this time in USA Today) offering advice to young college grads. It was a variation of the advice that many of the celebs and pols have offered in their recent (highly paid) commencement speeches:
Follow your bliss; don't worry; enjoy the journey.
I can't believe that young women are still being fed this dishonest nonsense. Why are we continuing to sell them this notion that women and men are on a level playing field? Wouldn't it be better if they were told the hard truths? Such as:
"You will probably earn less than the man sitting at the next desk-unless you learn to advocate for yourself and become a strong negotiator."
and...
"Becoming a mother is an incredible, life-altering experience, but if you take off several years, you'll probably derail your career and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars that you'll never recoup."
I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't follow their dreams, but let's temper those dreams with a bit of reality.
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The Pressure to Volunteer
Recently, I was introduced to a mom who ran the PTO after-school enrichment program at my daughter's school. I asked a few polite questions about this volunteer position, and before I knew it, I heard myself offering explanations for why I wasn't volunteering to do this job next year.
"I'm working," I said, knowing that I sounded defensive. "I really just don't have any time."
It was and is true. Like so many working mothers, I have lists for my lists; trying to keep up with my work AND not drop the ball on my kids' lives is a daily challenge for me.
Yet, the truth is, even if I did have MORE time, I probably would not spend it typing up the course offerings in legos, yoga, and basketball and calling the parents to notify them when classes were cancelled.
And why should parent involvement be necessary, anyway? Why is it that schools today--especially schools in middle and upper middle class districts--require so many parent volunteers? When I was growing up, my mother--who was a full-time homemaker--was not expected to shelve books in the library or serve pizza on Fridays, let alone administer any school programs. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing her, or really any of my parents' friends in the schools, except in the audience for the once-a-year class play or as a chaperone for the occasional class trip.
So what's changed? Is it that we, middle and upper middle class parents, feel compelled to offer all of these extras that simply weren't deemed necessary 30 years ago? Simply a case of raised expectations in an affluent, and increasingly competitive, culture?
Probably, but I can't help but think there is something else at work too, that as more mothers are in the workforce, our definition of what kids "need" has been ratcheted up. I'm not just blaming reactionary forces (ie: your not a "good mother" unless you constantly provide for your kids), though I think that's a factor too. It could be that as working mothers, we try to alleviate our guilt and prove ourselves worthy by taking personal days or curtailing our careers so that we can serve pizza on Fridays.
By the way, I came up with a solution that I thought was a very good one for this after school program. Why not, I suggested, just charge $10 more per class and use that money to hire a someone to run the program?
But when I suggested this to the mom, she was dismissive. Enrollment would go down, she said, and besides, she thought that would be hard to trust someone who wasn't a mom in the school district. But wouldn't there be at least a few at-home moms who would be thrilled to make an extra $1000 to run a program at their kids' school? Stumble It!
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