I have learned that...
Some women do not want to parent.
Sometimes it's not a matter of money, health, opportunity, support, abuse, religion, coercion, safety, addiction, education, employment, or peer & family pressure.
Some women choose adoption in order to pursue their goals unfettered.
Some women find it a relief to make an adoption plan for their child.
Some women who are personally and situationally capable of parenting are flatly not interested in doing so.
Reality is independent of what I want to believe.
If you hurt, you hurt, If I hurt, I hurt. Neither of us has to justify our pain to the other.
There are choices I will never understand.
I believe that...
These women have as much right to make an adoption plan as a woman has to NOT make an adoption plan.
A woman (with or without means) is no more "wrong" for choosing adoption than a woman (with or without means) is "wrong" for choosing to raise her child.
These women are no more deserving than any other woman of being called "cold, callous, heartless, disturbed, sick, twisted, dysfunctional, ignorant, easily-led, weak, cruel, unnatural, or pathetic."
None of us can inhabit the heart, mind or shoes of another.
Von, who takes a lot of fire for speaking freely, is right. Collectively, we need to show more empathy, so that every voice may be heard.
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2 comments:
Hmm. Good food for thought Sally, but I'm not sure I agree. As an adoptee, I'm thinking the impact of being relinquished because you were really not wanted could be fairly powerful. At the same time, being parented by someone who really didn't want you would be pretty harsh too.
Bottom line, it would hurt an awful lot to have your parent not want you. And I think it's ok to have an opinion about folks who really don't want their childen.
Pursuing goals unfettered should still be on that list up by poverty and manipulation. The fact that the 9-5 world is made for men to get ahead keeps women who are usually the caregivers to children from getting ahead themselves with disparaging gaps in wages, employment, and education between the genders.
A woman who is willing to parent should be given the opportunity to do so. That includes helping her find childcare and schooling/employment that works around her schedule so that her goals as a mother and as a professional can be pursued.
Women should not have to give up their children or put their parenting goals second just to keep up in a man's world. This world needs to be made for everyone--not just men.
If the only women in the world who surrendered babies did so free of manipulation, with a load of choices at their feet, fully informed about their rights, the adoptee's rights and the impact of surrender...only relinquishing because they have no interest whatsoever in parenting.....
I'd have far fewer problems with adoption. That's what adoption should be for! Orphaned children, children from abusive families who cannot be rehabilitated, and children who are truly unwanted. Those are the children who need homes.
Like Michelle mentioned, it would hurt to know that my Original Mother gave me up and was just so delighted to have done so. I am not glad for her deep sadness of being a mother of loss, but at the same time, I'm glad I was wanted I because I love her and always have loved her very much.
I know many adoptees who have been rejected when pursuing reunion and have even been told by their Original Mothers that they weren't wanted then and aren't wanted now--the pain of having so much love for a mother and not being loved back or even wanted around is absolutely inexplicable for these individuals.
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