AUTHOR: M. DATE: 9:11:00 PM ----- BODY:
In case anyone's managed to miss it, there's a firestorm going on this week over at A Little Pregnant about adoption, infertility, and - you guessed it - birth parents. Julie wrote a great post about her fears of entering into an adoption process and not getting picked because June and Ward Cleaver were a more perfect family. Fair enough (and really fucking funny. Please go read it if you haven't already). But the 90 or so comments about her post range from sweet and supportive to broad sweeping generalizations that insult lots of people who ain't got no bidness being insulted. I admit I joined the fray, but I've still got some stuff to get out and, well, Julie's blog, as much as I love it, is not my soapbox. I'll use my own, thank you. So here are a few comments I felt the need to deal with in my own little corner. #1 - The Insane Social Worker.
Whenever one of my fertile family or friends tells me to give up my infertility treatments and adopt, I remember the adoption seminar I went to with my husband. The social worker, who had been an adoption coordinator with Lutheran Social Services for about fifteen years, said that... birth mothers are not necessarily the most responsible people in the world, or "they wouldn't be in this position to begin with." ... She had personally had to deal with two birth mothers that would only place their babies with adoptive parents who had horses... Birth mothers aren't necessarily looking for the best parents: they may also be looking for what was missing from their own childhoods.
Where do I start? Of course there are birth parents who are "irresponsible" and looking to replace what they didn't have in their childhoods! So am I! And so are you, I'm guessing. But she's kidding herself when she says that that's why someone is "in this position." Does she have any idea how many people have babies (with apologies to those out there who have struggled with infertility) because - oops! - they're pregnant! (Last time I checked the number of pregnancies that were accidental was about 50%). Not incidentally, the woman who wrote this comment shared that after this session she and her husband decided not to pursue adoption because the worker made them feel like they were not young and hot and rich enough to get "picked". I can't even imagine what working with this social worker did to the birth parents who came to her agency. The fact that she was recounting the story about the horses says a whole lot. I don't want to pretend I know what it's like to try to choose a family that will raise my baby, but I can imagine I would want to find a family that would have similar values. If horses are included in those values, there you have it. #2 - Huh?
We wanted a baby, like most first-time parents, and knew there were more than enough families waiting in line for domestic (read: white) babies in the U.S.
Okay, true - there's no shortage of people in the U.S. who want to adopt white babies. But there's also a reason for the popularity (at different times) of countries like Romania and Russia, where the children generally look Caucasian. Everyone's gotta make the decision that works for them. But the implication that people adopt domestically because they want white babies really threw me. Certain people who shall remain nameless have, at weak moments, begged us to adopt from an Asian country instead of adopting an African-American or biracial baby. That says a whole hell of a lot about the state of racism in this country, and it's not pretty regardless of where you stand on the skin-color spectrum. #3 - The "Damaged Goods" System of Babies and Economics
Don't even put yourself on the same plane as that Savage guy. and did you see what a baby he got? The son of a gutter punk, with fetal alcohol syndrome. I'm so glad the poor baby is getting far better parents than his bio parents, but please... a baby like that you can probably get without competing with all the other worthy couples.
Again: huh? For the record, Dan Savage's son, whose birthmom did call herself a gutter-punk (in a very different spirit as it's used here), did not have FAS. And since people have already jumped all over this woman, I won't even get into what else is offensive about her statement, except this: comments like these speak to one of my biggest fears of becoming an adoptive parent. It's the idea that people who adopt are doing a good thing for the world, that babies who are adopted wouldn't have a chance otherwise because clearly their birth parents are so messed up. This is offensive to me on so many levels. There's the whole "baby like that" bit, of course (which Cubbie Girl answered more articulately than I ever could). And maybe I'm being paranoid, but I feel like she's also saying that it makes sense that, in their case, "a baby like that" was placed with a gay family. And if you think I'm being paranoid, check out Florida's decision to allow two gay men take in and love a whole houseful of HIV-positive foster children but refuse to allow them to adopt these very children. There's that whole concept of adoptive parents "rescuing" a baby ("aren't you sweet, I could never do that".) And of course the other side of that coin is that the birth parents are people the baby needed to be rescued from. As I've learned more and more about open adoption and have started to hear more perspectives from birth moms, this way of thinking becomes nothing short of terrifying. I don't want my kid to hear anyone say or imply that he or she - or his or her birth parents - is a throwback, or damaged goods. It's contrary to everything I would want for my kid. Buttons pushed? And how. (And please check out the post about all of this over at Vindauga. She's a bit more sane in her response.) Now if you'll excuse me, someone else is waiting for this soapbox.
-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Anonymous Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:9:41 PM COMMENT-BODY:brilliant. -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger susan COMMENT-DATE:9:56 PM COMMENT-BODY:Ditto. I was thinking about responding on Julie's blog, but couldn't figure out where to begin, and thought I should write about it on my own space, but couldn't figure out where to begin there either. You've done it well here.

I just don't understand how some people can disassociate birth families from the children they have adopted, or are dreaming about adopting. -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Anonymous Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:10:49 PM COMMENT-BODY:I am really happy to read this post. Thanks, Marisa. -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Anonymous Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:11:54 PM COMMENT-BODY:You thought all the exact same stuff I did. That whole thing about the social worker saying all this stuff didn't ring true to me. If it was true that social worker should be fired. It really doesn't make sense on any level. Would an agency really let an employee chase off potential clients?

So glad to have found your voice! -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger Shirky COMMENT-DATE:9:32 AM COMMENT-BODY:That social worker sounded insane. Even our non-encouraging sw said that we would get chosen, eventually.

and horses: our social worker also told us about one couple who was matched because their letter had a photo of them riding horses! Maybe it's some kind of social worker urban legend. -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Anonymous Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:12:21 PM COMMENT-BODY:thank you. i commented at julie's site, but it didn't take away the heaviness i feel at the all of the generalizations about birth parents in those comments. your blog and vindauga's have helped some. you can stay on that soapbox, by the way. no one's telling you to get off. -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Anonymous Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:2:57 PM COMMENT-BODY:Wow. Great post. -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger Kristin @ Intrepid Murmurings COMMENT-DATE:11:42 AM COMMENT-BODY:Great thoughts. Thank you! -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger CJ COMMENT-DATE:10:53 PM COMMENT-BODY:Clap, clap, clap!!

(From an adoptive mother to two.) -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger Adria COMMENT-DATE:7:49 PM COMMENT-BODY:Love your post. Thanks for putting it out there. --------