Today?

[kyburg]

Today we go to Pasadena to talk about talking about adoption. It's a class. Seriously. Actually, what I hope this turns out to be is a roundtable discussion about how other people discuss it, where everyone gets to toss ideas in. I got the handout in the binder - yes, there is a set of codewords that are "good" and others that are "bad."

*facepalms*

"birth parent" - good
"real parent" - bad

"making an adoption plan" - good
"giving a child up for adoption" - bad

And then, I got curious - remember those twins that were adopted twice, once in San Bernardino and once in Britain? Ever wonder what happened to them?

They're still in foster care. In Britain, best that I can tell. Both biological parents have been stripped of their parental rights - in the US. What a freaking mess. The details are scarce, but were reported by a faction I hadn't know about.

I ran full-face into the anti-adoption movement.

I found this lady. Folks, this is the person I need to know how to deal with when discussing adoption. My kids are going to have to deal with people like this about their adoption. And all the "good words" aren't going to be worth two cents - "adoption aborts the mother" is the rallying cry.

You know, there are very good reasons why I truly believe that every person has the biological right to know who their parents were. Period. I have no interest in blocking that right in my own family.

I do not, however, believe that biology should override each and every single decision regarding procreation, or raising a child. It does provide the default - but so much sturm and drang comes over dealing with situations involving children when the biology doesn't provide decent care after the fact, and then what happens when you try to compensate for it (foster care, legal system, adoption) can nearly always be considered less than optimal.

You come into this as an adoptive parent, you always come into it second-best. Yeah, let's talk about adoption.

But so help me. If this is a class on white-washing the whole issue, I'm not going to sit there with my mouth shut.

Comments

[djstatick.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I lose my faith in humans when I see stuff like this...

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

I only poked around a moment or two before finding one of their 'articles' which had been apparently ganked from the Weekly World... You know, the prestigeous paper which brought you Batboy, the human/bat crossbreed.