Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Adoption Anger

I’m struggling through adoption anger right now. My issue is predominantly around being unable to articulate why I’m so angry.


I’ve been seeing little things that set me off. The most recent was a blog of moms who are angry a birthmother chose to parent her child. Really? Angry that someone who had been moving in sync with a life, attached, inside for 40 weeks had second, third, 500th thoughts?

My anger is fragmented around things like my own situation and how I can’t define my own opinions about whether or not being raised around or by those with my DNA would have mattered. Perhaps that’s it. I no longer know how I feel about nature versus nurture and walk back and forth all the time. The idea of adding to our family not just the modernized old fashioned way, but through adoption is no longer a romantic notion- its one full of research showing how many adoption agencies pray on unsure mothers and use social class as a wedge of coercion.

I want my black and white feelings back. I want to be able to sympathize with blogs of mothers who after years of infertility are going the adoption route. I want to be able to leave supportive comments as they struggle with the process. I want to be excited when I get a call from my wife excitedly sharing that a friend of hers knows of an agency actively placing with lesbian couples. I want to stop hearing my mother say “you would have been aborted”, every time I think of home. I want to stop hearing my mother say “he’s cute, but not as cute as his cousin”, because my son doesn’t look like her family.

Someone please tell me the murkiness and echoes go away.

Great Expectations

Janet and I have been talking a lot lately about our expectations of William as he grows into adulthood. Part of me always feels bad for having expectations. I know intellectually my son is his own being, meant to create his own path and ultimate destination- so perhaps, instead of phrasing them "our expectations of William", I should call them "traits we desperately hope we can impart to him". In that spirit:


Traits we desperately hope we can impart to him

1. Fearlessness- If something scares him, we want him to know how to address the fear, dissect it, and conquer it.

2. Protection- He should have an unshakable sense of right and wrong in the treatment of others. He should stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

3. Respect- He should know how to behave towards others, always keeping the golden rule in mind.

4. Self sufficiency- He should know how to do “stuff” and when he doesn’t, he should know how to locate resources to figure whatever out.