I Want a Broken One! I Always, Always Did.

The Adopted Ones were rightly horrified recently to learn someone had found their blog using the search term “adopting an inferior child.” (This blog has gotten a horrifying search term or two as well, like “Rosie O’Donnell adoption reform,” but I digress.) I can’t imagine even coming up with this phrase, let alone typing it into a search engine. “INFERIOR”? Bad semantics. You should have said “special needs.” Then the world would love you.

I don’t know who you are, Brooklyn Decker, but I don’t love you and I think you need to shut up about adoption. From here in my tiny base camp just outside Adoptoland, it looks like you’re using the idea of purchasing someone to make you look good. Just like you say you hate showing off your body because that makes you look good–modest, not stuck-up. We get it. You’re so transparent you could be said to “have,” as Charlie Brown once put it, “a glass head.”

You then say you want a normal life being “barefoot and pregnant” (actual quote!) with kids and pets and trips to the grocery store. Do the words “special needs” contain any meaning for you? A mentally or physically handicapped child might not slot into your suburban fantasy so neatly. (Gosh, you don’t suppose that’s why there are so many of them available for adoption?)

And then you say you’ve “always wanted to do this,” and a spiky urchin’s head explodes. Why? WHY does our culture reward little girls for saying this? And why do we keep rewarding them for saying it when they’re grown? (Nobody has ever “always wanted to adopt.” Always means always. Nobody thinks about adopting when they’re four. When I was four, I was dead certain I would never get married and would make my living as a rock singer *and* a ranch hand.)

So here’s why: Women are supposed to take care of children and men, so little girls are supposed to want to grow up to take care of others. Any attempts at selfhood by women are considered selfishness. So famous women, who are being selfish by having careers, and who want to seem like better women, can claim that one day they really will be the most selfless woman in the world: one who’s good enough and loving enough to raise a child that isn’t even hers. A messed-up one yet!

(Insert cartoon of glaring hedgehog with its arms folded here.)

This is the perfect way to boost your womanliness in the eyes of the world, because you don’t have to do anything: you just have to say it.

This is not about children, special needs or otherwise: it’s about stupid, patriarchal gender roles. Brooklyn even says so when she’s talking about hating her work (because no Good Woman could enjoy swimsuit modeling). “The biggest thing is finding that balance between masculine and feminine. Because I’m such a tomboy, I hate showing off my body.”

A barefoot, pregnant, minivan-drivin’ TOMBOY. If a woman becomes famous, this is the sort of impossible thing she has to pretend she can be–or be judged. She’ll also be judged if she tries to be this thing and fails, of course. She can’t win.

“I Ro–I Mean, ‘Birth Mothers’ Rock!”

I smile smugly and say “Do you mean That Woman? I pretend to care about her an awful lot, and that makes me better than you. Did you know she wasn’t addicted to anything? I swear. That’s how I got a really *good* baby. And I’m the mother, so shut up.”

Oh look, here’s another one who could have had the whole baby but settled for its feet (see illo). She’s the mother. People ask who her kid’s mother is, but it’s her her her her her. Oh, and there was this incubator-thingy-person, and she was so awesome to  make a baby just for Sally Bacchetta. Did you mean to ask about it? um, her? Well, you should be ashamed, because “Sally B’s birth mother” is totally a human being, y’all! She might even have had prenatal care. She might not have smoked cigarettes. She might not have been addicted to anything, so shut up I did too get a healthy baby! And stop calling her the mother. I’m the mother I’m the mother I’m the mother I’m the mother I’M THE MOTHER.

Says Ms. B, I’m working for the day when “What about… the mother?” is asked out of concern for the mother who placed her child; the day when it means “How is she doing? Did she have any medical complications? Is she with people who support her? Is she at peace with her decision? Is she OK?”

But she lies. Because people who really care about women and children do what they can to keep women and their children together. I suppose it makes Ms. Sally B feel better to claim she’s  “working for” a day she never wants to arrive, but she’s fulla shit. Because the day this patriarchal, slut-shaming society truly gives a damn about women will be the day adoption ends and she quits claiming to be the Onlie Begetter. But what, Sally B wonders, if she really were a mother?

[as a girl] I wasn’t ready to be a mother, and I like to think I would have had the courage and selflessness to make an adoption plan for my baby, but I’m not sure. I’m not at all sure.

I’m sure, Sally B. I’d’ve kept my kid if I had to move mountains to do it, and so would you. After all, we had the resources to do so. How do I know that about you, Sally B? Because you can afford to adopt, which suggests you had at least an upper-middle class upbringing. All you’d have had to deal with as a single mother would be the shame–and it wouldn’t even have been the shame of being called a “Welfare queen,” because I’m pretty sure you’re white, too.

Almost every mother with the resources to do so keeps her child, just like you would. That’s why people like you whine about a “healthy white infant shortage.”

As for the birth mother, she’s healthy, certain, and loved by her family and friends. She’s moving forward, and she’s very OK.

Sure she is. In fact, I’m pretty sure she never wanted any silly old baby, and just went out and got herself knocked up to accommodate Ms. Sally B. After all, it was just one little baby. It didn’t affect her the way it would have you, Ms. Sally B, because let’s face it, these women are not–Waaaait, wasn’t your point supposed to be that “birth mothers” love their children like real women do? That was your point, right?

No, I don’t think it was. I think your point was that you’re tired of people asking about “the mother” when they should be asking about special, special you. Sally B., you know damned well that some of the people who ask about your kid’s mother are actually asking about her–not the baby, not you, but her. And you hate that, don’t you? You hate it so much you wrote a piece all about it, but you felt kinda bad and decided you’d better pretend this one thing isn’t all about you, which it totally is.

Very Difficult

…not impossible. It’s very difficult to kill a five-year-old by forcing him to drink vinegar, but you can do it if you try. I don’t know how I missed this one in February.

This is apparently the hardcore version of a parenting trend I wish I’d remained unaware of.

Adoption Humor from Edie Falco

“LOL! It’s so cute how my kids think everyone came from the Baby Supermarket!”

Yeah, I thought that too. And my a’bro thought being adopted meant he would have to adopt if he ever wanted kids.

When our adoptive parents found out we believed such things, they gently corrected us. They didn’t let us think such things until we were eight years old, and they sure as shit didn’t yuck it up with other grown people about how cute we were. Not Edie! She’s a Hollywood a’mom, so she A) goes along with her adopted son’s delusion and B) TELLS THE WORLD ALL ABOUT IT!

You can’t do both, Edie. Eight is old enough to read the pretty things with Mommy on the front, you know.

“I’m thinking I’m going to wait with that as long as I can, the fact that some of the ladies keep the babies for their own. We will get to that.” She then does what every other obnoxious Hollywood mom does: congratulate herself for using the a-word at home. Well, that’s great, Lady. Your kids “know they’re adopted”–but they don’t know what that means, so they do not know they’re adopted at all, and you want to keep it that way for as long as possible, perhaps to do maximum damage? I mean, is there an adoptee crit hit table? Cause you just rolled a nat. twenty.

But hang on, Edie has a lot more to say. After she tells us how different adoption is now because there’s no stigma, she declares “The second you are handed a newborn it is yours. It doesn’t matter what body it came out of. I’ve never felt more strongly about anything in my life.”

Yanno, I realize there are people who don’t want to hear this, but IT VERY MUCH MATTERS WHAT BODY YOU COME OUT OF. It can’t matter for you and not matter for adoptees. What do you think we are, Lady? Some different species? Hey, there’s another funny thing I thought growing up!

Isn’t that a RIOT? Aren’t adopted children hilarious?

Then Ms. Falco admits she “never really thought about all of the ramifications” of adoption. Aw, Honey, who does that? Who does a silly ol’ responsible thing like prepare for a new family member when you can just buy one, take it home, and hire someone to teach it to call you Mommy?

Recap: Edie Falco’s kids think all kids come, perhaps, from under cabbage leaves or in secret underground labs where they are manufactured for adoption agencies. This is not tragic, it’s hilarious.

Adoption is nothing to be ashamed of, and that is why we never speak of it even when we all join hands and circle the table chanting “Adoption, adoption, adoption is so awesome!” before every meal. This is a  perfectly harmless way to raise a child, and it entertains dinner guests.

Genetics mean nothing, so Edie Falco doesn’t worry about having helped jettison her children’s heritage while retaining her own and living in a world where almost everyone retains their own. Now that? is funny. Adopted kids–they’re little monkeys, I’m tellinya haha.

And if you have enough money, adoption is a process you can pay and wait and pray and wade through for years, somehow never really having given a single thought to exactly what it is you are doing.

Is that funny? I can’t even fucking tell anymore.