Here It Comes….

I’ve decided to NaNoBloPo again this year, but I’ll be dialing back the snark to use a set of prompts from Lost Daughters. I’m sure some snark will sneak through, though; I don’t know how to get through November without it.

Already it begins:

My name is Snurchin and I’m adopted, thanks to a “birthmother” who had very little choice in the matter.

How slimy can you get, “not-for-profit” adoption agencies? National Adoption Day was (like everything else about adoption) supposed to be about finding homes for children who need them, not convincing mothers their children will be better off without them.

More KidLit for Grown-Ups

This snippet from a press release hit my email box this morning: While going through the adoption process, Anderson found a lot of books that talked about adoption but were told from the perspective of the child and the adopting parents. “There was nothing from the birth mother’s point of view,” Anderson says.

Well, I thought, there are actually several such books, but another non-AP perspective, I told myself, is always nice. The article’s title? Author’s adoption experience spurs children’s book.

Wait, what? Chil…? A first mother wrote a children’s book called Inside My Heart: A Tender Story of Adoption? No way. Snif snif: Damnit, I hate the smell of appropriation in the morning. Smells like horseshit.

Sure enough, an adoptive mom has written a heartwarming book for little children about why they were given up from a perspective that is not her own to use at all. Of course, this is often done in fiction. If Ms. Anderson wrote a children’s book from the perspective of a child or a bunny or a choo-choo train, I wouldn’t care a fig, because this would not hurt any bunnies or trains or, if it were written right, any children. This book, I suspect, will hurt children.

What gives Hilary Anderson the right to a first mother’s perspective? She’s benefited from the misfortune of three such women: My story comes from my interaction with the birth mothers of our three children. I want them to know what a gift they have given me and how blessed I feel.

Because women who give their kids up don’t think they’ve given up much of anything? Am I the only one who read that implication there just now? These women know they gave up something precious. They know you feel blessed. I imagine they’re a little perplexed that you chose to express your gratitude to them by writing a children’s book, though, seeing as how they are adults. I mean, this is a book you wrote to be read to children, isn’t it? So you’re thanking them by giving someone else a present. “Um…you’re welcome?”

As a young child, I suspect I would have been hurt by this book. I would have been, and was, hurt by anyone and anything that told me my first  mother gave me up because she loved me. (I can’t help but suspect a book called Inside my Heart will make this claim. I have another reason to believe so, of which more soon.) To be read something that purported to use my mother’s voice to tell me she gave me up because she loved me would have frozen my blood and cracked my heart in two. But these things don’t show on the outside, so Mommy would have gone right on reading the beautiful story of the beautiful woman who beautifully gave up her beautiful baby so it could have a beautifuller home than she could give.

I suspect the book uses the old “because she loved you” trope because the review tells us Anderson doesn’t like the term “giving up a baby” […]. No, I’ll just bet she doesn’t. I’ll bet she sleeps better at night knowing those women willingly made those babies just for her, that they never once thought of keeping them, that they are not sad at all. She knows these things, and that’s what qualifies her to write a children’s book for her own satisfaction and profit using their voices. (Truly: the entitlement of this woman. Imagine noticing no first mothers have written books for children about giving them away. Imagine deciding not that this is probably for the best because it would confuse a child to read such a book, but that this is a void you, a non-first mother must fill. I mean, really? Really, Lady?!)

My evidence that it’s for grown-ups? The way children will react to being read Inside My Heart is never mentioned. (Shouldn’t a children’s book press release contain a phrase like “Your children will…”?) The ages the book is appropriate for are never mentioned. There’s not much here about the content of the book at all, and the closest the release comes to mentioning an audience for it is when it describes the book as a quick read as a bedtime story.

Just a short little something to bludgeon your children’s psyches with before tucking them in to sleep.

It isn’t for children at all, of course. It, like the wonderful book about adoption that never mentions adoption, is for adoptive parents. After reading it they, like Ms. Anderson, will feel much better about raising children someone else gave birth to and then, yes, gave up.

Nyah, nyah!

What the Hell (second Sunday Secret for 14 October 1012)?

That just ruined my Sunday morning. (Hell, it drove me back to blogging.)

Seriously, why was this sent in and posted? So some poor man will see his birthday, look at the photo and think “My god, I have five siblings! I must get in touch wi…Oh.”

Because he can’t, can he?

That’s gotta sting.

I think I once said a certain percentage of the “secrets” on this site are mere brags, and that’s how this one feels to me. I read this postcard and the six-year-old adopted kid inside me heard the voices of those children chanting “Ha ha, look what you’ll never have!”

We already know we’re dirty little secrets. You don’t have to rub our noses in it, and I find it difficult to believe grown-ups do rub adoptees’  noses in it the way some kids did/do. So I’ll assume whoever sent this did so because s/he just found out and is angry at their parents. I’ll choose to believe s/he’s searching and can be found on SOUNDEX and all that stuff.

But shit, did this one ever hit me the wrong way.

Breaking News from Oxygen Media!

(I swear this post was news when I composed it, but in this case, late is better.)

News flash! A study commissioned by Oxygen Network to coincide with their new reality show about adoption reveals people have bold new attitudes about adoption! By “people,” naturally, I mean people who are not first mothers or adoptees. And by “bold new,” naturally, I mean same-ol’ same-ol’.

Here are some of the amazing, enlightened new attitudes they found:

People think–OK, this is crazy and nobody believed it last Tuesday, so brace yourself–people think adoption is a fine way to build a family. WOW! I mean, I grew up hearing that adoption was a fine way to construct a backyard barbecue, learn French, perform a laparatomy, anything but build a family. Shoo, that’s some freaky shit right there.

And the surprises just keep on coming: Why do women relinquish? Because they got knocked up too young, of course! “Of those surveyed, 90 percent identify teen pregnancy as the dominant reason that someone might place a child for adoption.”

It’s the next non-surprise that kills me, though: “Regardless of circumstance, the consensus is that it [adoption] gives the child a chance for a better life.”

………?!

“Regardless of circumstance.”

“Regardless of circumstance.”

You cannot move a child from one family to another “regardless of circumstance”! *

Regardless of adoptive parents who starve their children, the consensus is that adoption gives the child a chance for a better life.

Regardless of being put on a plane back to Russia, the consensus is that adoption gives the child a chance for a better life.

Regardless of the kids who are outright killed by their new parents, the consensus is that adoption gives the child a chance for a better life.

Regardless of the adoption’s being disrupted and the kid’s going into the foster care system, perhaps to age out with no means of support or career and end up in jail, the consensus is that adoption gives the child a chance for a better life.

Yup, anything is preferable to being raised by your teen slut of a mother. (And that’s not a dollop of misogyny from 1956 either; it’s a New Attitude! Feh.) No surprise, then, that “two-thirds feel the child benefits most (66 percent) [from adoption].”

Adoptees will always be insufficiently grateful to these people. These people who have little or nothing to do with adoption, yet are so enlightened about young women and the babies who must be taken from them at all costs. I’m learning a lot, aren’t you?

But what if the vessel should decide to parent the baby herself? Ninety per cent of those surveyed said it’s OK for the mother to change her mind before papers are signed–unless she’s already chosen a couple to parent her baby. In that case, only twenty-nine per cent thought it was OK, because they paid her medical bills and that bitch owes them.

You know, I’m not being fair. The study did not report that a single person said a mother couldn’t change her mind because of the money. Times really have changed! These days, nobody believes first mothers are evil selfish cows who–aaaw, shit: “More than half felt that moms place their children for adoption due to selfish reasons and are ultimately doing what’s best for themselves (53 percent males vs. 41 percent females).”

At least they admitted it. At least they admitted, in some form, that this “the best interests of the child” bullshit is bullshit.

Never forget this, women: You can’t win. If you have a kid, then you’re  mothering it wrong. If you have an abortion, you’re a selfish whore. And if you relinquish the child, you’re making a wonderful, beautiful, loving sacrifice and you’re a selfish whore.

This study falls all over itself to say people are more aware about adoption than ever, that adoption is better and more accepted and more awesome than it’s ever been…while parroting the same old crap. I’ve seen dozens of such studies come and go and they all seem to do this. They all say how wonderful and different everything is now that nobody actually says “Bad blood!” to adoptees’ faces anymore. I’m surprised they didn’t ask whether or not the APs should “tell” the child s/he’s adopted, because a **shocking number of people seem to still think it’s OK not to.

*This would probably annoy Morrison, but he’s dead.

**By “shocking number,” of course, I mean any number larger than zero, because there is no excuse for that shit.