"To offer a home to a child in need is a great thing, to help a family keep their child is noble." --Frequent commenter Jay Iyer’s father Dear Father, I was the greatest blessing of your life and you threw it away. You not only had a wonderful daughter, but a healthy daughter. And not only a healthy daughter, but a loving daughter. And not only a loving daughter, but a kind and caring daughter. And not only a kind and caring daughter, but an ethical one as well. And yet, you chose to give away one of life’s greatest blessings if not THE greatest blessing--a blessing that Read More
The Premise is Bullsh!t
Every separation is a link. --Simone Weil The premise from the Baby Scoop era that raising an adopted child is the same as raising a bio-child and therefore nothing more needs to be said, is bullsh!t. The premise that since the adoptive parents love the child as much as they would a bio-child means all will be well, and that the adoptive parents’ point of view is all that matters, is bullsh!t. How could raising an adopted child and raising a biological child be the same? How could anyone truly believe it didn’t matter, when knowing where one comes from is one of the most Read More
If There’s One Thing I Know
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that an unmarried parent does not make a terrible parent just because of her marital status. Sorry conservatives, you are totally wrong on that one. And as our country and even the world become more conservative I feel I must raise the alarm. We cannot go back to the idea that all that matters for a child’s best interest is that he is raised by married parents, even if they are not the child's biological parents. Of course, if we lived in an ideal world every child would be born into a stable, loving relationship and would be kept by their natural Read More
Freedom of Speech–Part 2
As I have mentioned before, I don’t believe adoptees have freedom of speech. Whenever an adopted person tries to bring up the fact that adoption is not all it's cracked to be, he or she is met with rebuttals. I analyzed several of those rebuttals in my earlier post. So now I'd like to share another rebuttal, and one that I consider the piece de resistance— “What did you want your mother to do? You were unwanted. She did what she thought was best for you by giving you up.” Aargh! Obviously, anyone who could say such a thing has been too influenced (brainwashed) by the adoption industry and Read More
De Nile is not just a river in Egypt, Part 2
We have a lot invested in this culture in the belief that anyone who adopts is a wonderful person who takes a non-blood related child into their home and treats him or her as their own (read: biological), and that the child will always be better off. But this is clearly a fairy tale, Hollywood-esque version of adoption. Giving a child up for adoption is a risky business. Although most people don't want to hear that because it implies that not everyone who adopts is an honest and trustworthy person who has the child's best interests at heart. It also implies that those charged with the Read More
De Nile is not just a river in Egypt
We've all heard that joke about the famous river in Egypt. You know, the one that goes “De Nile is not just a river in Egypt.” Well, there is so much denial in adoption, I could cry me a river. When an individual or couple adopt they must accept that the child will be very different from them. And they need to honor and cherish the child's differences and support the child being who he or she really is. So much of who we are is genetic. This is obviously the case with a person's looks, but people raised in their biological families know that there are Read More
Freedom of Speech
Do adoptees have freedom of speech? I don't think so. Whenever an adopted person tries to bring up the fact that adoption is not all it's cracked to be, he or she is met with rebuttals like, "Adoptive parents love their children just as much as biological parents do", or "You're making an assumption that the child would have had a better life if she'd been kept in her original family." Well, those things may be true. But here's a newsflash: Adoption is not about the adoptive parents love for the child. Adoption is far too difficult and complicated to be simplified in such a way. Oh, how I wish Read More
Adoption is about the Child
Shocking, isn't it? To think that adoption is about the child. One certainly wouldn't draw that conclusion from reading this article about another celebrity couple who recently adopted. The entire article is about how long the adoption process took and what a 'crazy ride' it was. Did it never occur to this couple that maybe the reason it took so long and was such a 'crazy ride' is because mothers, even unmarried mothers, aren't falling all over themselves to give their babies to strangers? Apparently not. In American culture, the mindset about adoption is so overwhelmingly from the point of Read More
A Social Experiment
My life is a social experiment. Truly. All of the decisions that were made for me about who was best to parent me, where I belonged, and even how I would feel about it, were nothing but a social experiment based on the era when I was born. A social experiment, I might add, that was based on half-truths and social prejudices rather than facts. The funny thing is, I was given up for adoption so that I could be raised in a stable two-parent family, and yet my adoptive parents divorced before I even entered the first grade. So I ended up being raised by a single mother anyway. Only this time, I Read More
All I want for Christmas…*
All I want for Christmas...is a baybee. Or so it seems in Hollywood. Every time one turns around there is another story about a Hollywood star adopting a child, thinking about adopting a child, or being touted for having adopted a child. And if it's not adoption, it's surrogacy. It's starting to look a lot like one would not be remiss to assume that the biological connection between a parent and a child is practically irrelevant among many of those with wealth and privilege. But my question is: Do these adoptions always give a child a better life or a stable two-parent family? Granted, I will Read More
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