Reprinted from Mama #6, January 2007

THE OTHER MOTHER

Like hundreds of other bloggers and opinion writers, I’m about to address something that really, I’m sure you don’t care about. At least superficially.

Recently madonna got tons of grief for skipping the legal adoption process in Malawi, Africa, and choosing a 13-month old baby from an orphanage in exchange for millions of dollars in orphanage building funds. Whatever, I really don’t care about madonna. I didn’t in 1986 and I still don’t, 20 years later. I’m too hip-deep in sleep deprivation with my very own babe to wonder how she’s gonna raise this next one. However, what interests me about this adoption is that she is doing something other moms get praise for - adopting young children and babies from terribly impoverished countries. You know, legally taking a baby out of its home, country, and culture of origin because we all agree that a wealthy white woman has waaaay more right to raise that child than the child’s family of origin.

There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? That’s the worst of what I have to say, I think. Hang in there, it may just become hella fun!

Wealthy women have been adopting strangers’ babies for decades in the Western “civilized” world, but it has become popular and fun only recently. I remember when it was still new to see older white parents with babies from China or Guatemala. Now I see them from many, many countries: India, Kazakhstan, Russia, etc. And always the response is that the parents are doing their good deed, taking babies from horrible situations and giving them loving, caring homes. And a new family. Babies don’t have a culture, they argue; if you get them young enough, they only remember your own culture, and only bond to you.

Right.

What about all that in utero bonding? What about the orphanages themselves - the other children, the care givers, the doctors, the visiting relatives, and maybe the parent not too far away but unable to afford to or otherwise unable to provide care for their child(ren)? Does anyone remember how Native children were taken from their homes on the reservations with accusations of unfit homes and given to well-off white families in this country? How many children will be removed from their families and cultures because their parents are unable to afford to care for them? What about all those parents or family members who take their child to the orphanage believing they will eventually have more money to care for their child only to have some wealthy white woman from the US or the UK adopt them because she is the better mother, right?

Consumerism. Babies as objects to be placed.

Adopting is not a humanitarian act; it is fundamentally an act of selfishness. Adoptive parents who are honest with themselves about their intentions will see this as true, as difficult as it is to hear. You want a baby? You can get one if you have the bucks, the time, and the ability to travel. And it’s way faster than adopting a baby here in the US.

Is anyone considering the rights of the adoptees? What it might be like to lose your birth culture, your birth family, your language, your name?

Domestically or internationally, wanting someone else’s baby is strange. I don’t care if you have the intentions of a saint, it is not natural to want the baby of a stranger. That’s right! I think adoption is a terrible symptom of our consumer society - babies are “wanted” or “unwanted”, given to adults in homes that are fundamentally better than others because those parents are better able to provide for those babies’ material needs. And the infant bond? The lifelong effects of separating a baby from its natural mother? Minimally important.

Criticizing the effects of adoption on adoptees is so taboo I bet that you have already remembered how outraged you are supposed to feel by now:
but don’t all children need loving homes?
but what about the connection you feel with that baby before you bring them home and adopt them?
Are you saying we should just give some stranger our money and not remove the child from an unsafe environment?
And my favorite: What if your mother had aborted you? Aren’t you glad she carried you to term and gave you to someone else who could take care of you??? You ungrateful wretch!

That’s right. I have violated the silent adoptee creed: do not question adoption or that means you are ungrateful, the cardinal sin of all adoptees. Don’t question, just accept that adoption is a beautiful way to create a family, and any dissent is strictly verboten. Because -check this out - if adoption isn’t all it’s supposed ot be, that means that the only solution western society has to eliminating or reducing abortions in this country isn’t that rosy after all, and maybe not as good as the anti-abortion crowd would like to believe. And that means that the real solution may be way more complicated than the placement into stranger’s homes. It may actually involve more emphasis on the maternal bond, or in society stepping up and really supporting moms in need no matter what. That is, if people think abortion is a form of birth control [yes, I’ve heard this] and evil, why do we then separate that new baby from its home - from breastfeeding, from attachment, from its parents.

Now before you accuse me of oversimplifying this large, complicated issue, I will admit that there are definitely times babies and children need another home, that there are times no family members can take care of a child in need, that children do indeed deserve loving, attached homes and parents. In fact, I am not against all adoption. I am, however, committed to remind you all that adoption means forever separating a child from its source - her language, her culture, her mother, her father, her extended family, her sense of belonging, and with babies, her only sense of security.

We can take what we want when we want. We can make the rules about who can take babies and why. We can separate children from their medical history, their culture, their likeness. Now we need to take some steps back from our own imperialist notions of entitlement and wonder, How do we make it right?

And making it right is always hella fun.