Adoption
sarahtoledo
member
Possibly hot topic: do you read anti-adoption activists?
sarahtoledo
member
in Adoption
I feel it's important to learn about as many perspectives as I can. I wondered if others have read the same kinds of things, and what you thought. I agree with some of the things I've read (the "industry" of adoption is a problem) and wish that others (the pressure exerted on some e-parents) weren't true. I don't agree, obviously, that all infant adoption is bad.
My feet and Miss Heidi the rescue mutt!
15 treatment cycles: four early m/c
Moving forward with domestic infant adoption!
Home study approved 5/13, now just waiting...
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Re: Possibly hot topic: do you read anti-adoption activists?
I do. And because of them, I really struggle with my desire to adopt. I've read all the Primal Wound theory. I've read that often, domestic infant adoption, adoption is a permanant thing for solving a temporary problem. And at the end of the day, if I wasn't pursuing domestic infant adoption ,for a variety of reasons, I'd be living child free and that's not what I want to do.
So the best I can do is to feel that I'm using an agency that is ethical, that I'm approaching the expectant parent ethically, and that I'm certain that there isn't any coercion occurring. It's the best I can do.
I get that some folks believe adoption is the thing that they regret more than anything else in their lives- both adoptees, and birth famillies--- but esp. in the victimization of birth moms- where I see other birth moms write about how all adoptions are terrible etc--- I start to think about agency and how part of feminism is about a woman's right to chose- whatever she chooses and think that while some adoptions are a hot mess and some were created through coercion etc that most women who choose to make an adoption plan have actually really considered and thought about that decision.
Maybe I'm wrong and I"m being complicit in the larger adoption industrial complex. I don't know.
At least for my situation, the "problem" I faced may have been temporary (as in, I had a child, on purpose, whom I parented only 5 years later), but no amount of assistance could have made me ready to be a parent when I was pregnant with M. Personally, I ardently disagree with any kind of all-or-nothing stance regarding adoption. Some BPs may not know of resources that could help them parent effectively; I'm certain that's true.
But, sheesh, things would have been difficult for M if his APs weren't allowed to parent him permanently. Its never that I didn't want him; I just wasn't capable of taking good care of him. And how many wounds would have resulted from that? A fair number of large ones. No one can convince me that infant adoptions should be halted altogether.
And the same with IA. Things NEED to change, and I do want to talk about that, but it isn't a good enough reason to halt every adoption.
But you know, I don't tend for follow many "anti" things very closely.
I read it when we were waiting, because I read everything adoption-related when we were waiting. It was really hard to digest. Being called a vulture and baby-purchaser, and reading about how I was going to be essentially stripping a mother of her child during her most needy time, and how we should be giving her the resources to raise the child herself if we were really thinking in the baby's best interest and not selfishly, instead of snatching her child out of her arms for our own benefit.
And then we met J's mom. And she's expressed to me on every possible occasion that this was what she wanted, that she hasn't had a moment's sadness over her decision, knowing it was the correct one, and she is forever in our debt for giving her son the life she couldn't.
I think a lot of what I read colored my expectation of how she would feel, and makes me very tentative about hurting her, in spite of everything she's said about wanting to hear how happy and in love we are with J. Being overly sympathetic probably isn't the worst thing, though.
Anyway, yes I've read it, yes it made me feel lousy, but no, it didn't change my mind about infant adoption, because every baby born to a family who isn't committed to raising that child may one day become an emotionally scarred waiting child.