Monday, January 01, 2007
Happy New Year
.
The new year is here. It has begun on a hopeful note for Rashad Head fighting to regain custody of his daughter, and on a not so happy note for Allison Quets and her twins.
While those cases are the headline-making ones, there are other issues that concern me as we say goodbye to '06 and begin '07: divisiveness.
Once upon a time, we were a triad movement - adoptive parents, adoptees and birth parents all working together for open records and to humanize adoption practices.
Now, even birthmothers are pigeonholing and dividing themselves into pre-set labeled roles. Like Christians who draw a line and mark dates as BC and AD, some mothers seem to need to divide themselves into time-defined factions based: BR and AR...before and after Roe, as if one's feelings about motherhood change over time. As if mothers at the turn of the century did not feel as maternal as mothers in the new millennium or vice versa. As if mothers who didn't even mark their days with calendars wouldn't miss a child that was born to them and never seen again...and modern mothers can do it with ease on their blackberries.
The problems that arise from using terms like "mothers of the Baby Snatch Era" is that it pits us against one another as to whose pain is worse.
It is akin to Compassionate Friends - an organization for mothers whose children have died - to sit around and argue over whether it is worse to loose an newborn infant or a teen or young adult? Is it worse to loose a loved one who has been ill, or one who dies suddenly in a car crash? Whose pain is greater? Who sug=ffers more?
Each person's pain is greatest to them. Each of us thinks, no one else could have suffered or known the pain we have known. And there is truth to that - each of our suffering is as unique and different as are snowflakes. It is DIFFERENT to lose an infant than it is to loose an older child; and it is different to have had a cesarian birth as oppose dto a vaginal delivery; and it different to have bene very young reather than older; and it is different to have bene in love with your babies father than to not have been; and it is different to have been in a maternity home or not to have been.
All of these, and many other factors, make each of oru experiences different...but none amongst us can judge whose experience was worse and more worthy of having been "wronged" and in need of some grand apology. All focusing on the differences doe sis alienate some of your sisters in pain. It makes some feel negated.
It is hard for those of us wo felt we had no choice and were pressured by mores of the 'times' and family etc to understand the DIFFERENT pressures that exist today.
When we fall into that trap, we are buying into and supporting the negative public view that "that was then" and everything is wonderful today because women get to CHOOSE adoption and choose the parents for their child, as if that makes it all better. As if that wouldn't give one yet more guilt id the parents they choose deceive them and/or turn out to be far less than the perfect parents they pretended to be.
We may no understand others' "choices" but we need to respect them and focus on the mutual pain of loss we have all experienced.
In using Roe as a dividing line, we further play into the notion that we would all have chosen abortion had we had the opportunity. Some of us may have, but clearly not all of us. It is very unhealthy for adoptees to feel that they all would have aborted had we had the opportunity and plays into the hands of right-to-lifers who seek to promote adoption and keep it sealed.
But mostly it is simply a means of maximizing victim status for a select group of mothers based on an arbitrary date and a time when more adoptions took place. By maximizing one time period, all others who lost children since are minimalized. It is equivalent to honoring the innocent victims of the Holocaust, while ignoring the innocent victims of the Irish Potatoe Famine and Darfur and Rawanda. Yes, the Holocaust was one of the largest genocides at the time, but it does not make others' deaths any less painful for their loved ones, or their torture any less painful for them.
Some look at Allsion Quets and see a sister struggling to keep her children. Others look at her and see an "older" woman who foolishly tied to conceive through artificial means. Some have liekned her to an adoptive aprents, others to a freak show. And yet, inside Allison is the same heart as inside you and I. And the breath she breathes and the tears she sheds and, yes, the ambiguity and confusion she feels as she goes back and forth over her "decision" is not unlike ours. Allsion's bonding during her pregnancy was marred by her illness. Yet, when oen adopts and bonding does not as expected and they experiences post-adoption stress disorder, no one is there pushing papers in front o them, telling them to give their child to another.
Whether you agree to embrace Allison with your support or not, we cannot afford to divide ourselves and dilute our strength, or to feed into the sterotypes that already exist. there is enough dislike for us as it is without our creating more with feelings of superiority for some of us because of a time period that gave us DIFFERENT, and SEEMINGLY less choice. No one wakes up one morning and decides "I am going to get pregnant and gibve my baby away for adoption." Today's mothers of open adoption were just as deceived as we were...differently, but every bit as much!
From the 40's to the 70's the sales pitch was maintaining a secret - no one had to know...save face (your family's more than yours).
It wasn't Roe that changed things all that much. It was feminism and The Pill! the second wave of feminism allowed girls to continue in school pregnant and began to slowly accept single-parenthood. As we moved into the 80's and 90's and the babies placed for adoption continued to dwindle the new sales pitch became the offer of "openness" - as if being allowed to chose your child;s parents was going to alleviate all of the pain and suffering past mothers who relinquished experienced.
By focusing on how much pain was suffered int he past - we fortify this misconception - "that was then" - things are different today! yes, they are different, BUT NO BETTER!! Women are still LIED to, to get them to sign!
It doesn't matter if the lie was the promise of a new life and that we'd forget - or the promise is you'll see your kid and won't feel pain. A lie is a lie, pressure is pressure and loosing your kid is loosing your kid. It hurts every bit as much today as it did in 1960's!!! Just ask Allison if she is happy with her "choice"!
The new year is here. It has begun on a hopeful note for Rashad Head fighting to regain custody of his daughter, and on a not so happy note for Allison Quets and her twins.
While those cases are the headline-making ones, there are other issues that concern me as we say goodbye to '06 and begin '07: divisiveness.
Once upon a time, we were a triad movement - adoptive parents, adoptees and birth parents all working together for open records and to humanize adoption practices.
Now, even birthmothers are pigeonholing and dividing themselves into pre-set labeled roles. Like Christians who draw a line and mark dates as BC and AD, some mothers seem to need to divide themselves into time-defined factions based: BR and AR...before and after Roe, as if one's feelings about motherhood change over time. As if mothers at the turn of the century did not feel as maternal as mothers in the new millennium or vice versa. As if mothers who didn't even mark their days with calendars wouldn't miss a child that was born to them and never seen again...and modern mothers can do it with ease on their blackberries.
The problems that arise from using terms like "mothers of the Baby Snatch Era" is that it pits us against one another as to whose pain is worse.
It is akin to Compassionate Friends - an organization for mothers whose children have died - to sit around and argue over whether it is worse to loose an newborn infant or a teen or young adult? Is it worse to loose a loved one who has been ill, or one who dies suddenly in a car crash? Whose pain is greater? Who sug=ffers more?
Each person's pain is greatest to them. Each of us thinks, no one else could have suffered or known the pain we have known. And there is truth to that - each of our suffering is as unique and different as are snowflakes. It is DIFFERENT to lose an infant than it is to loose an older child; and it is different to have had a cesarian birth as oppose dto a vaginal delivery; and it different to have bene very young reather than older; and it is different to have bene in love with your babies father than to not have been; and it is different to have been in a maternity home or not to have been.
All of these, and many other factors, make each of oru experiences different...but none amongst us can judge whose experience was worse and more worthy of having been "wronged" and in need of some grand apology. All focusing on the differences doe sis alienate some of your sisters in pain. It makes some feel negated.
It is hard for those of us wo felt we had no choice and were pressured by mores of the 'times' and family etc to understand the DIFFERENT pressures that exist today.
When we fall into that trap, we are buying into and supporting the negative public view that "that was then" and everything is wonderful today because women get to CHOOSE adoption and choose the parents for their child, as if that makes it all better. As if that wouldn't give one yet more guilt id the parents they choose deceive them and/or turn out to be far less than the perfect parents they pretended to be.
We may no understand others' "choices" but we need to respect them and focus on the mutual pain of loss we have all experienced.
In using Roe as a dividing line, we further play into the notion that we would all have chosen abortion had we had the opportunity. Some of us may have, but clearly not all of us. It is very unhealthy for adoptees to feel that they all would have aborted had we had the opportunity and plays into the hands of right-to-lifers who seek to promote adoption and keep it sealed.
But mostly it is simply a means of maximizing victim status for a select group of mothers based on an arbitrary date and a time when more adoptions took place. By maximizing one time period, all others who lost children since are minimalized. It is equivalent to honoring the innocent victims of the Holocaust, while ignoring the innocent victims of the Irish Potatoe Famine and Darfur and Rawanda. Yes, the Holocaust was one of the largest genocides at the time, but it does not make others' deaths any less painful for their loved ones, or their torture any less painful for them.
Some look at Allsion Quets and see a sister struggling to keep her children. Others look at her and see an "older" woman who foolishly tied to conceive through artificial means. Some have liekned her to an adoptive aprents, others to a freak show. And yet, inside Allison is the same heart as inside you and I. And the breath she breathes and the tears she sheds and, yes, the ambiguity and confusion she feels as she goes back and forth over her "decision" is not unlike ours. Allsion's bonding during her pregnancy was marred by her illness. Yet, when oen adopts and bonding does not as expected and they experiences post-adoption stress disorder, no one is there pushing papers in front o them, telling them to give their child to another.
Whether you agree to embrace Allison with your support or not, we cannot afford to divide ourselves and dilute our strength, or to feed into the sterotypes that already exist. there is enough dislike for us as it is without our creating more with feelings of superiority for some of us because of a time period that gave us DIFFERENT, and SEEMINGLY less choice. No one wakes up one morning and decides "I am going to get pregnant and gibve my baby away for adoption." Today's mothers of open adoption were just as deceived as we were...differently, but every bit as much!
From the 40's to the 70's the sales pitch was maintaining a secret - no one had to know...save face (your family's more than yours).
It wasn't Roe that changed things all that much. It was feminism and The Pill! the second wave of feminism allowed girls to continue in school pregnant and began to slowly accept single-parenthood. As we moved into the 80's and 90's and the babies placed for adoption continued to dwindle the new sales pitch became the offer of "openness" - as if being allowed to chose your child;s parents was going to alleviate all of the pain and suffering past mothers who relinquished experienced.
By focusing on how much pain was suffered int he past - we fortify this misconception - "that was then" - things are different today! yes, they are different, BUT NO BETTER!! Women are still LIED to, to get them to sign!
It doesn't matter if the lie was the promise of a new life and that we'd forget - or the promise is you'll see your kid and won't feel pain. A lie is a lie, pressure is pressure and loosing your kid is loosing your kid. It hurts every bit as much today as it did in 1960's!!! Just ask Allison if she is happy with her "choice"!
# posted by Senior Mom @ 10:05 PM 
