Adoption Colored Glasses Redux

Just a quickie. Does anyone see a woman and baby “cuddling close” here?

“Spotted: Jillian Michaels and Lukensia Cuddle Close”

Anyone?

What Is This I Don’t Even.

So a gay couple (male) in New Zealand New South Wales* had a “surrogate” carry their (whose?) baby for them, and the “surrogate,” who is also referred to in the article as the “birth mother,” agreed to have her name left off the birth certificate so the child can be the legal (or, in Adopto-speak, the Actual Factual) but impossible offspring of two men, because growing up Frankenstein’s Fucking Creature is (you guessed it!) in the best interests of the child.

Wait, what? But that can’t be…It can’t, right?

Look, a person cannot come into existence without a woman’s genetic contribution. To me, “surrogate” means a woman who agrees to carry in her womb for nine months the product of someone else’s sperm and another someone else’s egg. In this case, whose egg? Whose sperm? Whose? Surrogacy aside, who is this kid’s mother, who is this kid’s father, and how will s/he ever know?

S/he won’t.

“Stop asking such questions. WE had you made to order for US and you are OURS and that is all you need to know.  It was in OUR your best interests, so shut up!”

That poor kid. S/he may well have the two best, most loving dads in the Universe, but s/he’ll never know where s/he came from. And it’s no sad accident: s/he was created that way to order, on purpose. And this is  not a crime against the child but A Landmark, because in an ideal world we would all be decanted and taught via conditioning which questions to ask and which ones never, ever, ever to ask at the risk of losing our parents’ love, assuming we still had parents, because what does that word even mean anymore?

Again, I think gay marriage and gay parenting are fine. I also think no one has a desire to parent that should be allowed to negate the parented’s need to know who they are and where they come from.

I mean, holy shit. Ho. Lee. SHIT.

*Thanks, Lauri Lee.

Shut Up, Charlize Theron!

Having written a letter that made Mommy and Daddy so pwoud of oo when you were eight years old does not add to your virtue as a woman, a mother, or a person.

I had “an awareness of adoption” when I was eight years old too (betcher ass I did!). And so did many non-adopted people because, as it’s always being pointed out to us, millions and millions of American are what the industry so cutely calls “affected by adoption,” meaning they know someone who is adopted. A great many of those Americans are eight years old, or younger. Big flippin’ whoop.

It may well be different in South Africa, but I’m still annoyed.

I don’t understand people’s obsession with celebrities in the first place. I’ll never understand the national obsession with celebrity adoptions, and I’ll certainly never understand the celebrities’ willingness to let their children (adopted or otherwise) be discussed and photographed.

If there was one thing that made me want to die as a kid, it was hearing someone else discuss my adoption–my very personal story–as if I weren’t there. And that didn’t happen very often, because my parents did not do that and did not encourage anyone else to do that. They were under no delusions that they had “rescued” me, because you don’t wait eighteen months to rescue someone who really needs rescuing. They waited for eighteen months because, even back then, there were an awful lot of people applying for each healthy white newborn.

But screw that: Ms. Theron went on Ellen to tell the world all about HER and HER adoption story. My thoughts:

1) Of course it Feels Right for Charlize Theron to get what she wants. Who cares?

2) That’s a cute little terrier with its nose right in the baby’s face, but there’s a reason it’s this dog we see and not her other one. Another article notes that Ms. Theron told Ellen she adopted two dogs in December shortly before 9-day-old Jackson joined the family.

Guess what breed the other dog is? Yep, it’s a pit bull. A pit bull she hardly knows because she just got it is “helping raise the baby.” I know some people claim pits are “nanny dogs,” but the fact is they are responsible for a great many very serious bites,  a significant number of which have involved children and/or deaths and/or dismemberments. If I knew I were expecting a baby to join my household, I’d probably hold off on acquiring any pet until I knew what the baby’s personality was like. I certainly wouldn’t get a pit bull when I could instead get a dog of any number of breeds without a reputation for seriously injuring, sometimes killing humans of all ages. It seems to me to be an incredibly stupid risk to take.

More Positive Adoption Language?

It’s not kidnapping, it’s non-consensual adoption.

The article says “[t]he results of a government inquiry may reunite them with their children.”

Hm. I wonder what the odds of that are? I don’t see Sierra Leone on the list ….Oh, wait, nobody intends to send the kids home, just to maybe let them  “meet” or “re-establish contact” with their parents. Color me surprised.

Shut Up, Jillian Michaels!

Shut up shut up shut up.

“Motherhood changes your DNA.”

NO IT DOES NOT shut up shut up shut up. Would we find it heartwarming if she said motherhood turns you purple? No, we’d call her delusional and feel insulted she expected us to believe such hogwash.

(I thought I had read something recently about pregnancy changing a woman’s DNA, but I can’t find it again.)

A Thing (or two) I Must Not Do Again

I posted some content on the FB page, on a thread about Torry Hansen having to pony up the dough, that was not about me. It was a list of some of the problems my a’parents had with me and with my a’sib–without saying who did what, because I thought that would preserve privacy. My point was that the two of us gave our parents a lot of shit and they chose non-Torry Hansen methods of dealing with it (as did, I’m pretty sure, every other AP ever).

I know better than that. The only story I have any right to tell is my own. When someone jumped all over that list assuming I had done All The Things and telling me what an ungrateful lunatic I am, my immediate reaction was to specify who did what things and to share how my a’parents had chosen to handle it. In other words, my urge was to defend myself at the expense of the family’s  privacy. I’m ashamed of that.

I’m also ashamed of being nasty and abusive right back. So several comments were bahleted (half of them  mine).

Yes, I’m ungrateful. Yes, kids do come with certain “outs” (emancipation, adoption disruption). There is still no excuse for what Torry Hansen did.

The Case for Transracial Adoption

There isn’t one. (Hadja going for a second there, didn’t I?)

Someone recently brought the existence of Dr. Rita Simon and her book (title above) to my attention. Dr. Simon claims to be an expert on the history of women’s rights. How on earth can one study the history of women’s rights and think adoption is OK? Women’s rights to raise their children were (and are being) taken away from them. At least half of all adopted people are women, and many of us have no legal right to our own identities. How can you know this and be a supporter of adoption? At least I don’t see her calling herself a feminist.

Needless to say, I won’t be reading Dr. Simon’s (“and her collaborators'”) book. I don’t have to! My spike-ic powers allow me to sum up the entire 150 pages in four (*five?) sentences:

1) I want a kid and I don’t care what color it is.

2) Children will die if I or someone like me doesn’t get them.

3) Race is not a problem for white people, so it won’t be a problem for my child.

4) Those People don’t adopt their own kind anyway.

Scott Simon was sure, until corrected, that Chinese people are not allowed to adopt other Chinese people. People who want to adopt African American children are forever pointing out that African Americans don’t adopt. They do adopt, and they adopt the children of people outside their families, just not in the numbers white people do. In the first place, they’re a minority. In the second pace, they live in a white world. Perhaps they don’t feel as entitled to the kids. Perhaps it’s tougher for them to pass home studies. Imagine the average person’s reaction to a white single mother versus a black one, for example.

I read an article awhile back (can’t find it) about what happens when African Americans adopt white children. It said what happens is that white adults are constantly sidling up to these kids in public and quietly asking “Are you OK?” or “Can I help you?”–fearing the kids have been abducted. (…They’re your what?)

I mean, I know the white parents of kids of other races get a lot of stupid questions, but how often are they suspected of kidnapping?

Until we really do treat everyone equally, less-privileged races will adopt in smaller numbers simply because adoption is for the privileged. Glomming up all those rainbow kids for yourself is not enlightened and it’s not the answer; it’s a Band-Aid, and oh look! you get to benefit from it! Ergo, it is Good…not.

*The author (“and collaborators”) may also pause to point out that any child of any other race would benefit from growing up in a white USAian household, but most people seem to think that part goes without saying.