Statistically Impossible

The Bonds that Sever: The Birth/Adoptive Parent Connection

2012-02-12T09:15:00.001-05:00

The new trend in the adoption world is to view birthparents and adoptive parents as equal and opposite. They are, after all, on the opposite sides of the table when it comes to adoption. One group gains a child. The other loses a child.

But there are significant similarities in the experience of adoptive parents and first parents. Most prevalent is the common experience of pain. That, however, is skimming the surface. Surprising to many is the cause for that pain is also similar; the existential loss that happens before one can approach adoption. The easy connection is to say couples who struggle with infertility have experienced the loss of a child as the birth parents will upon relinquishing parental rights. This is the simplest, most concrete, connection to make. If the experience beneath the factual events is examined, the parallels show themselves clearly, and with ferocity.

The loss found with infertility extends beyond miscarriage. People who struggle with infertility that never successfully concieve can experience just as potent a loss as those who have lost a child that could not be carried to term. That may not always be the case, but it is possible. But what can link the experience of a family, one that has never had the possibility of biological parenthood, to the experience of a first family about to place their child forever in the care of strangers?

Possibility.

The loss of possibility is powerful. It ignores the lines drawn between "us" and "them". It excludes literal experience and context. The loss of possibility is among the worst we can know. Without hope for our future there is little cause to continue caring for ourselves or others beyond stubbornness, and a refusal to give up in the face of certain defeat.

This is what links the experience of first parents and adoptive parents. Each has encountered their hopes for the future, and each has watched them crumble. No matter what the cause of their decision, first parents leave their desires for their future lives the moment they consider adoption (or the moment an inopportune pregnancy is discovered). No one wants to be a birth parent. No one dreams of growing up to place their children in the care of another family. Similarly, no one day dreams about fertility treatments, years of medical frustration and struggle, only to learn the effort is lost. In this arena, too, adoptive and birth parents are linked.

No one wants to be betrayed by their body.

First and adoptive parents also experience similar alienation. The pain in our lives alone makes many around us uncomfortable. The literal source of our pain often makes us pariah. People tend to get very uncomfortable when sexuality, fertility, pregnancy, or birth enter their consciousness through anything other than rose tinted romanticism. To talk about hard realities and trouble in any of these arenas is taboo. In some contexts it may be considered acceptable, but typically only for a short period of time. Effectively, if adoptive or birth parents are given support, it usually expires within a few months. It usually isn't around long enough to get through one pregnancy, let alone the years of struggle and waiting adoptive parents often experience.

But the moment the adoption takes place the experiences diverge significantly. First families typically use the adoption process as a means of reclaiming control of their lives' direction. The birthparents, particularly birthmothers, are in the driver's seat each step of the way until the child to be adopted in placed with the adoptive parents. Even so the impending dates of an expected delivery range and court dates often feel like a slow march to execution. Yes, placing the child is something that has the promise of giving the first parents another shot at creating the lives they want. But there is no promise the lives they want are possible, nor that society will allow someone "like them" to have a good life anymore.

The adoptive family, however, has most of their dread front loaded. The court dates, while nerve racking, are steps toward finalizing a process that gives new hope and possibility. Adoptive parents' pain is redeemed through adoption. The first parents are condemned by it. These two families converge at a point in their lives, though they are on very different trajectories. That, anyway, is the promise of adoption.

The actual experience to follow may or may not live up to any of those promises. Adoptive families can be surprised to encounter significant bias, even disdain and mistrust, for how they built their families. First parents are often surprised at how their experience can become a lightning rod for similar stories. Suddenly the auto-mechanic, the guy bagging groceries, the woman waiting at the bus stop, all have stories about adoption that connect with, and share sympathy for, the first family experience.

But that isn't what it feels like. The promises and realities of adoption often don't agree. The attitudes each member of the adoption community has about others in their midst are often rather misinformed. We have a lot more in common than we give credit for, even if the order of those experiences differs.

A brief visit from Reality

2012-02-10T17:18:00.000-05:00

Several times over the past couple of months I've had the chance to visit, talk, laugh, and play with my son.

Each of the visits has been significantly different from the others. One visit included Athena and her nuclear family (mom, dad, and brother). One was just Athena and me. The visit right before Christmas was a special one. It was just me, Prof Plum, Ms Scarlet, and little Festus. Athena was buried under school work at the time and couldn't shake free any time during the crunch of final's week.

I was disappointed she couldn't join me, but as soon as Festus waved "hello" as I entered the kitchen that disappeared. There was a lot of conversation, both between the adults and with Festus. He had just gotten a substantially bigger vocabulary and was all too happy to show it off. Though, at two and a half, it still takes some work to understand what he's saying. Doubly so when he zigs into Spanish and zags back into English mid-thought. All those years studying Latin are showing their worth.

But the real joy of that visit came near the end. We had already eaten and were winding down. I sat on the floor in the living room, knowing that Festus was soon to enjoy his bedtime stories. To my surprise he picked up a book, walked straight toward me, turned, and sat in my lap. He held up the book cuing me to take it from him. Ms Scarlet asked "do you want him to read you your bedtime story?" Again, to my surprise and delight he replied with a clearly audible "yes".

That was the first time my son clearly and demonstrably chose me to do something with him. I had butterflies. My heart leapt to my throat. The only time I can remember that kind of giddy feeling, the disbelief at the joy I encountered, was when I met Athena. In that moment, all doubt that my son knows and loves me disappeared.

That's something I don't talk about much, but it had been a lingering worry. Did my son actually recognize me? Was he starting to know who I am, or see me as someone important, or at least worthwhile? Silly questions to ask of a relationship with a toddler, perhaps, but they were asked nonetheless. And they were answered;

"yes".

*****

2012-01-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

This blog has gone black intentionally. It is temporary, if you take action. It may be permanent if you don't.

Read Here

Open Adoption Roundtable Discussion #33: What did you learn about Open Adoption in 2011?

2011-12-30T17:19:00.004-05:00

A straightforward prompt for the end of the year:

What did you learn about open adoption in 2011?

*****************************************************

I don't have it all worked out. I don't know where this adoption process is going. And I'm not afraid. That's just how relationships go. We never know where they're headed, and in truth, I think I'm glad of that.

First Family Blogs: The Ultimate Downer - OR - Why We Don't Post Recipes

2011-12-10T13:10:00.002-05:00

There are several long planks of ash cutting through the middle of my living room. Soon they'll be re-purposed from their current duty (making oblong rectangular depressions in the carpet) to become a lovely new set of book shelves. That probably won't happen today, as I've been rung out at work and need a day to truly rest. Sunday can't serve that purpose as I'm back to work in the evening, so Saturday it is. Later on tonight I may treat myself to making some black rice encrusted salmon and sweet potatoes for dinner. I expect the results to be delicious.

*********************************

Break.

*********************************

You may find yourself wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Why did I make this sudden departure from my normal style of writing? What on Earth do my book shelves have to do with adoption? The answer is only one thing; they allow me to illustrate a point.

It is common among adoption related bloggers to fall into one of two camps:

1) Adoptive Parents

2)Everyone Else

I don't have anything against adoptive parent bloggers. In fact I love the chance I had to learn more about adoption by reading the stories of these families as I first encountered the idea of open adoption. There is, however, a noticeable divide in the style of authorship between the aforementioned groups. (Please prepare yourself for some broad generalizations. These are made will full awareness that they are such, and have significant exceptions. For the sake of simplicity of thought and syntax I'll leave all the caveats here) A unique culture has developed around adoption related blogging. As with any culture it has its own customs and social mores. Among these are what subjects are acceptable for writers of different backgrounds to address.

So far it seems to me that adoptive parents are given license to discuss all aspects of their lives except those that may make casual readers squeamish. Discussing infertility, the difficulty in connecting with first families, grief of lost possibility (to be discussed at greater length later), and especially anything related to anger, resent, or failure is strictly off limits for regular discussion. I don't doubt for an instant there are other aspects of experience that are missing from that list. Unfortunately my bias is limiting my understanding to the aforementioned topics.

First parents appear to be cast in an opposite role, with two subsections and an uncomfortable grey area. First parents are expected to write only about adoption. Their lives beyond the placement of their children is taboo. We don't want to know. It's uncomfortable to think about how dis/similar the first parent is to the casual reader. The birth parent is given the opportunity to speak of pain, grief, anguish, loss, and resent. All the negative aspects of human experience are covered here. Aristotle would be proud. But then there are the subsections. Happy first parents versus unhappy first parents. The chasm between these two groups is nigh unbridgeable. Fortunately that doesn't keep everyone from trying. Unfortunately the aspects of the adoption experience highlighted by these two groups directly affects their esteem. Put briefly, the happy birth parent discusses adoption as a difficult but wonderful thing. The unhappy birth parent describes adoption as a difficult, often horrible, victimizing, arrogant and/or naive course. Again, these are very broad generalizations, but if you can bear with it I promise I'll get to the point soon. The happy birth parent is expected to say nothing negative about the adoptive family. The unhappy first parent is expected to have nothing positive to say about the adoption process. They're all angels, or it's all evil. That's very limiting for such an impact-full and emotionally complex experience. There are a few who speak to the middle experience, but often they are ostracized for failure to adhere to one role of the other.

Then we look at Adoptee writers, who likely have the most limited role of all in the online adoption discussion. I honestly feel terrible about how little voice adoptees have been given in the way we talk and think about adoption. Rather than being given, I think it may be fairer to say adoptees have had their voice ignored and censored. Therefore it makes some sense that the anticipated response from adoptees is one of rage, intense loss, and abandonment. There are adoptee writers speaking about the positive aspects of their placement, but they are difficult to find. (In truth, this is the experience about which I know the least. I admit that is in large part because I have found few adoptees online I can relate to in a manner I find mutually honoring. I say this not to villify, but to allow my bias to be known. It isnt' right, and I'm trying. Please try to be patient with me)

Why is any of this worth mentioning? Look at the subscribed readership of adoptive family, first parent, and adoptee blogs. The numbers overwhelming indicate who the public wants to support and is willing to think about. Adoptive parents are clearly taking the majority, often by a full degree of magnitude. But then again, can we blame the public? After all, would Wordless Wednesday be so appealing if we didn't have pictures like this to enjoy?

What would we see if first parents started participating in Wordless Wednesday, while remaining true to their prescribed role?

It's a far less appealing idea. Few, if any, of us would willingly seek an opportunity to pry into such moments. But what about adoptees discussing the pain they experience?

Or maybe

So clearly we're looking for something that makes us feel good when we read adoptive parent blogs, not truth. We're looking to feel sensitive and enlightened when we read first parent blogs. And we're probably looking to feel morally indignant and righteous when we read adoptee blogs.

But if the reader is willing to be honest with her/himself and allow the full experience of the writer to be only and exactly what it is, then we can start a real conversation. That's what this is about; coloring outside the lines. Adoptees can be happy. Adoptive parents can be pissed off and exasperated. First parents can be well put together and brilliant cooks. Shocking, but true. Stay tuned for a sweet potato muffin recipe.

I'm the Evil that Babies Want

2011-12-03T14:55:00.002-05:00

Some people claim that any first parent who willingly places his/her child for adoption has either been manipulated/brainwashed, or is a morally degenerate monster. I tend to be described as the latter. I find it funny that the same people who describe me as monstrous, cold, unfeeling, evil, unbelievably self-centered, and so forth are the same people who tell me "all [my] baby wants is [me]".

Apparently babies have a strong desire for their parents to be evil. Or is this a sequence game? If I were to raise my child rather than place him for adoption, I'm no longer evil, cold, monstrous, or unfeeling. After all the only criteria I meet for those descriptors is being a first father. Right?

So I have to ask when exactly a first parent takes on the attribute of being inherently flawed as a human being? Was it before adoption? If so the suggestion is the child ought (what a terrible word) to be raised by a terrible person. If the fatal flaw in character is acquired, then when? When meeting a social worker? Maybe it happens when the pen makes contact with the paper relinquishing parental rights. That must be it. So I was undesirable as a parent when I was an unwed working class father, but now I'm an ideal parent because I'm a sociopath.

************************************

The above post can also be read as: Aaaargh!

Unpleasant Truths

2011-11-30T13:01:00.002-05:00

A growing number of people have been telling me I don't exist.

As hilarious as that sounds, I find the experience to be frustrating. Often it is angering. It isn't the statement itself that upsets me. It is the assumption behind the statement. Carte blanche statements carry weight only because the person making them believes, truly and fully believes, that s/he know me better than I do. I find this infuriating. Allow me a brief indulgence as an attempt to avoid future confusion.

I do not want to parent.

Now that is said, I assure that I really do exist. It is uncomfortable to encounter others whose experiences and ideals diverge significantly from our own. People often respond with fear, anger, or disbelief if the incongruity is severe enough. That does not, however, make other people monsters. Nor does it make them nonexistent. If I were a linguistically creative individual I might try to invent a new word to describe these sort of beings. Fortunately I don't have to, as we already have one very suitable.

Different.

As scary as it may be, difference is more than just skin tone, the music we listen to, or even the political pundits we favor. Our differences can run so deeply as to effect the way we perceive, sort, and give meaning to our experiences in the world. Much more important than just knowing how thoroughly different we can be is knowing that's okay. Let me say that again.

We're different. It's okay.

What I find terribly humorous (here I display my gallows sense of humor) is how the differences that draw the most vitriol are typically the ones least scrutinized. When something one considers to be a given the shock is much greater when that assumption is challenged. A good example of this in modern western society is gender identity. For the overwhelming majority of westerners gender breaks down as follows:

Penis = Man

Vagina = Woman

Most don't give it much thought and leave their understanding of gender at that equation. When confronted by a person who identifies as gender queer most people are either confused or threatened. What's so hard about gender? See the equation above, problem solved, right? Wrong. More often than not the person who has grappled with the question at hand will have a much more nuanced, and often more sensitive, understanding of the concept being investigated. If gender is more than genitalia we have to ask what it means to be a wo/man. An invitation is given to deeply probe our understanding of ourselves, others around us, and the world at large. It is a daunting journey, but I feel a worthwhile one.

Deeply questioning status quo belief structures and patterns is something I feel all people can benefit from. It helps us develop our imagination as we try to understand how these beliefs shape not only ourselves and our understanding, but indeed how they shape and change the world around us. For my part, I'm tired of accusations about the moral quality of a person who thought and worked his/her way through a difficult question to better understand him/herself. Especially so when the accusations are nothing more than echoing the simplistic beliefs, like penis = man. In my experience the accusations become particularly base and hateful when sexuality gets involved. Whether we like it or not, that inevitably links to procreation. When procreation gets involved in the conversation things quickly get out of hand, just as when discussing sex. Instead of having a well thought out idea or a notion that needs more questioning, the conversation degenerates into "good" versus "bad" and "selfless" versus "evil". Frankly I'm tired of being told I'm evil because I'm honest about myself.

I genuinely believe that if hopeful future parents (inclusively, all future parents) were asked as frequently, judgmentally, or invasively about their plans to parent as I have been about my desire not to parent these conversations would go differently.

Take a few minutes and ask yourself; do you know what it means to be a woman, what constitutes woman-ness? No, making babies is not an acceptable answer. Dig deeper. Ask harder.

Do you know why you want to parent? Not why society wants you to parent, not why evolution wants you to parent. Do you know why you want to parent? Have you ever asked?

Trying to be Human 101: Assigned Reading - Splendid Doormats

2011-11-26T22:54:00.003-05:00

To avoid any confusion, please be aware the following is not my work. All that is written below is the work of James Gritter, author and social worker.

An excerpt from Lifegivers: Framing the Birthparent Experience.

Splendid Doormats

      Far more important than these alienating dynamics, however, casting birthparents as saints creates an expectation that they will be continuously and indiscriminately selfless.Enter the no-self birthparent, the adoption participant devoid of substance. This prospect is so serious that we need to explore it in detail.
    We are not quite sure what to make of saints - we see so few of them - but mostly we feel pretty good about them. We like having them around because they offer proof that positive forces are still at work in our struggling world. More to the point, we enjoy their company because they are reliably selfless. Sure, they may disturb us a little with their sterling examples, and they may inspire a few pangs of guilt about our comparative shortcomings, but we usually consider them harmless. Their consistency and reliability leads us to the conclusion that they are safe. Since saints are oriented to the needs of others and place little or no emphasis on their own needs, we are confident they won't make trouble. To our delight, saintly persons can be counted on to forgive any mistreatment they might encounter, a marvelous quality that means we do not have to worry about offending them.
      The notion of the mature, selfless, giving, thoughtful birthparent is an appealing trap. Each of these pleasant words can carry the subtle message, "She'll make no demands." This high-minded talk of selflessness may be well intended, but we must be careful about issuing anyone an invitation to be extraordinary, for, as we have seen, there is usually a price to pay for choosing a course that is out of the norm. In this instance, the praise of maturity can serve as an invitation for the birthparent to stifle her thoughts and feelings. It can be an alluring invitation to self-discounting. It is one thing for a birthmother to make a careful decision to curb her self-interest so the interests of her child can be advanced, but another thing altogether to be admired into a status that presumes continuous sacrifice.

Trying to be Human 101: Dignity

2011-11-21T19:34:00.004-05:00

"I always thought of dignity at being similar to ego" Athena said. We were talking about a series of posts I have lined up, and one of them relied heavily upon one's understanding of the word dignity. It was then I realized how important relative context will be. Before we proceed to the real meat and potatoes awaiting we must first be certain everyone knows what I mean when I speak of "inherent dignity".

The dictionary reference above has a variety of meanings but none of them quite capture my thinking. All the definitions refer to rank, merit, and relative position as governed by outside forces. What I wish to discuss, however, is dignity inherent to being human.

I believe all humans are born with dignity. The best definition I can come up with is something like this:

Dignity is the inalienable, intrinsic worth of a human. That dignity is deserving of appreciation, recognition, and admiration. The worthiness of a human cannot be measured against another as all are of equal value. Neither can this worthiness be diminished by actions of the individual, nor actions taken against the individual. Respecting the dignity of others also means recognizing that the worth, value, honor, merit, moral/ethical standing, and importance of those around us do not hinge on our opinion.

To borrow a Taoist perspective, nothing a person does can ever make them less "person". They will always have person-ness, just as a tree will always have tree-ness and a squirrel will always have squirrel-ness. The essence of being isn't contingent on qualifying value assessments. The same is true of human dignity. A human, in fact all humans, will always have human dignity. It may be ignored, abused, and taken for granted, but never removed, and never diminished.

None of this means that people don't try to reduce, damage, and destroy the worthiness of those around them. In fact, seeing worth as both intrinsic and indestructible appears to place me in a minority. Of course some will play devil's advocate and ask questions like "did Adolph Hitler have intrinsic worth?" or "was Genghis Khan worthy of admiration as a human?" My answer is a resounding "yes". I have no praise for these men based upon their actions nor the choices they made in their lives. Let's face fact; Vladimir the Impaler was a decidedly cruel and twisted individual. But none of them could shake their humanity. It is possible to simultaneously have worth and make evil choices that debase one's ability to see the worth of those around them. Did you note how I phrased that? Evil choices, not evil people. People cannot be evil. People are people. Sometimes they do horrible things to one another. That fact makes me both angry and sad.

For those of you who give any traction to the judeo-christian perspective, let me give one last little tid-bit to act as an example:

The good Samaritan. Most of us have heard the story. Most of us were told it meant to treat people the way you want them to treat you. That completely misses the point of the story. Let me break it down. First off, we start with the man who was beaten and stripped, robbed, and left by the side of the road. There are very important connotations to the man being unconscious, bleeding, and mostly naked. He can't speak to identify himself. His clothing can't indicate his nationality. He's bleeding, and may be dead, which would make anyone who touched him (should he be dead) unclean and require ritual cleansing according to Levitical law. The road where he was left is, in fact, less a road and more like a small path on the face of a cliff with a precipitous plunge down to a river at the side. So we have a couple guys from the local temple that pass by, humorously, on the "other side of the road". Eventually it's the Samaritan who takes pity on the man. The gent from Samaria picks up him, takes him into town to an inn, cares for him, and then pays to have the locals care for him until he's healed.

Here's where everything we thought we knew goes to hell.

The Samaritans were, at the time the parable was told, at war with the Jewish nation. There were several occasions when the Samaritans scattered human remains in the courtyard of the Jewish temples, intentionally desecrating them. Here's the fantastic part. This story was told to answer a question from a local Pharisee (Jewish holy/political figures at the time). There was significant controversy at the time about what the "neighbor" in "love your neighbor as yourself" meant. A lot of people thought "neighbor" only applied to fellow Jews. Some of the more radical people of the time believed it meant everyone. So in asking, "who is my neighbor" the response is this story about an enemy of the state being the only person to show concern for a fellow human. So, who is my neighbor? Who am I to love as completely as I love myself? My worst enemy. The person I hate and fear the most.

In modern day terms it's like telling a staunch militaristic, socially conservative, family in the United States to love Al Qaeda militants.

Why am I bothering to mention any of this here? You guessed right. The person you fear, loath, and hate the most has just as much dignity as you do.

The Open Adoption Interview Project 2011: Mrs R tells all

2011-11-17T19:08:00.002-05:00

I had the opportunity to participate in the Open Adoption Interview Project this year, and was surprised to discover that one of the 124 participants had specifically requested to interview a birthfather. The unusual woman in question is the host of R House. We had the chance to exchange a few e-mails and get to know one another a bit. I suspect, indeed I hope, this exchange will continue. It appears we both have more questions on our minds that we could wedge in to this first interview. Presented here, transcript style, is the interview for your reading pleasure.

For more of the interviews, please visit the list.

**********************************************************************

Care to introduce yourself to the readers? Tell us a little about yourself, your family, and how long you've been involved in adoption.

My name is Lindsey. I go by Mrs. R on my blog sometimes, not all the time. I am married to a therapist. I have two toddler boys who were both adopted domestically as infants. We are very close with their maternal birth families. We have met and dined with birth grandparents with and without the birth mothers. We have been in their homes, celebrated holidays together, gone on vacation with a few, had them come and stay with us for several days and have a strong texting relationship. :) We are friends with some on Facebook. I send update packages every month to all the birth moms and a package a couple times a year to the birth grandparents. We were recently reunited with our oldest son's birth father through Facebook and we have gotten to know some of his extended family. It makes my heart happy. Another birth father has told us that he is not ready to have a relationship with us but we told him the door is always open.

I have been personally involved since 2007.

You mention in your blog struggling with why you can't participate with the Lord in creation. Has your faith, or your faith community, imparted any feelings about infertility or adoption that were hurdles for you? On the flip side, has there been anything related to your faith/faith community that made you feel parenting through adoption was somehow less worthy than parenting a child you conceived?

Yes and no. I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are kind of notorious for having large families because we are taught that children and families are a gift and a miracle. When I was little, I loved to listen to my mom tell us how much she loved us and that we were her most important work. It's empowering to feel that you are someone's prized work and joy. I am very lucky to have been raised in that environment. I grew up thinking that, just like my mom, my children would be my most important work. When we were diagnosed as a couple with being sterile, that dream took on a new shape. It would be a harder dream to reach and sometimes, it felt impossible. Meanwhile, we hear talks and quotes from Church leaders saying things like, “It is a crowning privilege of a husband and wife who are able to bear children, to provide mortal bodies for these spirit children of God.” (Source.) For a barren woman, these kinds of things are hard to hear even though they are true. It's hard to realize that a crowning privilege of being a human being is being able to create life ...and for whatever reason, that is not something that my husband and I will get to participate in.

That said, I've never once felt like raising my children who happen to be adopted was any less noble. I may not have have the privilege of creating their bodies, but I do have the privilege of teaching them and loving them and helping them have an appreciation for life. As someone who cannot create biological children, I think I am even more sensitive to how much of a literal miracle it is that I GET TO be a mom. It wasn't a right for me. It wasn't easy. It came at great heartbreak and sacrifice by their birth families. I am reminded of that every day.

Your family presently consists of you, your husband, your two children, and open relationship with three of your children's birth parents (both mom's and one dad, with an open invitation to dad #2) with the strong possibility of adding a third child to the mix (with first family relationships TBA). First off, do I have this right? Secondly, can you speak to your desire for a larger family? Do you have a target for how many kids you'd like to raise? Have you ever had misgivings about continuing to adopt? If no, allow me to confront you with a new query - many people call very loudly for adoption reform related to coercing mothers to place their children. This can create a morally/ethically ambiguous area for adoptive parents. How do you see the relationship between this ambiguity and adopting multiple children?

You got our family dynamic down right. In reality, I cannot believe that there have been two (and possibly three) women who have chosen to have a child, break their own hearts and place that baby with us. When I think about it long enough, I seriously am shocked that adoptions ever happen. We worked with an agency in our first adoption and had an adoption profile through their website. Our oldest son's birth mother found us through that site, we flew out to meet her and her family, we loved each other, she placed with us 6 weeks later. Our youngest son's birth mother is actually a dear family friend of about a decade. She confided in my brother-in-law that she was expecting and wasn't ready to marry the father but wanted her son to have a mom and a dad that were married. Several months later, she told my brother-in-law that it was too bad that my husband and I weren't hoping to adopt again because she wanted to place with our family. He told her that he would call us and we said that we would love to get to know her better if she'd like. We met again (under new circumstances, obviously) talked to her dad, flew out to visit her mom, her and her family and in the end--she did chose to place with us. With this third little that we are hoping to add to our family in the new year, the expectant mom has been a blog reader of mine for quite some time. We flew out to visit her, had a fantastic time and fell in love with her spunky personality and huge heart. She is a great example of fortitude in the face of hardship.

My point is that we only sought after adoption, so to speak, with our first son. In the other two situations, their birth moms sought after us.

Do I have a specific number of children that I want to have in my home? No, I don't. Would we love to welcome more children in our home? Yes! If we felt good about it, the expectant parents felt good about us and it all worked out.

As for reform, I am not a bandwagoner. In order for me to join a movement, I have got to feel the personal fire for it. As for coercion in adoption, I don't have very much experience with it. I am sure that it happens, I feel that it is horribly wrong, but I just don't have the experience necessary to call for reform and know what I am talking about. I will leave that to those that do know what they are talking about.

I am, however, passionate about open adoption and adoptive parents keeping their promises. That is a movement that I can get behind and do advocate for.

Why did you ask to be paired with a birthfather for the interview project? Give as much or as little depth as you wish.

I wanted to interview a birth father mostly because I don't know much about the birth fathers of my children. They have each chosen the level of their involvement (or lack thereof) and although I remind them several times a year that we are open to building more of a relationship ("Let me email you some photos." "I have a video that we made of our summer vacation that I would love to send you." "We would love to meet up for dinner in the near future." "I have a holiday package with some drawing from your son that I would love to send to you."), I have yet to experience any interest. For me, this is devastating. I guess I just wanted to learn a little more about what it would be like to have a birth father that chooses to remain in contact. It is something I am not really educated in.

**********************************************************************

Thanks to Lindsey for her openness and honesty. If you are curious you can see my side of the interview here.

Adoption Interview Project

2011-11-17T12:19:00.002-05:00

The Adoption Interview Project goes live today. I had the chance to interview an adoptive mother, which I'll post later today. Unfortunately I am unable to do so any earlier than 6:00pm E.S.T. Being trapped at work is seriously cutting in to my writing time.

In the meantime you can see my side of the interview here, generously hosted by Mrs R.

If you want to read more from the other participants of the interview project check the list here.

Balancing the Personal Checkbook

2011-11-11T12:41:00.002-05:00

"How many of us actually live for peace? May we have a show of hands?"

~Victor Wooten

The quote above helps me be mindful of the potential discord between my stated priorities, my actions, and my thought patterns. Essentially I reinterpret the question to mean "am I living as one?" The focus on integrity this brings forward lends me a clearer mind to assess myself and my life. A key component I've been reviewing lately is my personal quality, especially in relationships.

What do I actually bring to the table in a relationship? For that matter, what can anyone bring to bear in a relationship? At first blush most people believe they are high quality material for friendship. Few people will self describe as a crappy, selfish, duplicitous, or obnoxious friend. Yet we all have encountered people who we experience as being crappy, selfish, duplicitous, and obnoxious friends. My suspicion is these traits come to the fore when there is a schism between how we think, what we want, how we think we can get it, and the reality we are in. That's why I think it's important to engage in ruthlessly honest self evaluation. If my priorities and my behavior don't agree with one another I'm duplicitous. If I want to be the center of attention, the life of the party, but don't have the polished social skills to successfully navigate that experience, I'm obnoxious. If I'm dissatisfied with a relationship but unwilling to end it or put in the effort to change it, I'm both duplicitous and selfish.

But then we take a look at the positives. What can we bring to a relationship that is good? As best I can tell the big three are compassion, integrity, and resources. We put energy into relationships that are important to us. We care for the people in those relationships and want them to feel happy. Internal/External harmony helps us direct our care and energy outward to the vital relationships in our lives.

What happens when one of those aspects is missing? What does is mean for a person's relationships if s/he is compassionate, sharing of resources, but dishonest? That person may be described as a lovely human, but is not trustworthy and therefore not dependable. The person with resources to share and integrity may very well ignore the needs of those around them. For want of compassion that person would likely be described as cold hearted, or at least distant. And now we come to the real rub, and the reason this was worth writing about at all on a blog about adoption:

Compassion and integrity without resources. What good are compassion and integrity if the person in question hasn't the resources necessary to effect change in the lives around him/her? Is harmony with impotence, care with utter exhaustion, worth offering? This is just one of the questions birth parents everywhere ask themselves. It's an important question to ask, and one I think more people should address. It has far reaching implications. But before anyone says the resources are necessary for worth, like a car engine needs gasoline, think about how severely segmented the population is in terms of financial, emotional, relational, spiritual, and time resources. But, before anyone says love is all you need, think about the emotional toll taken on a person trying to support another who doesn't have enough resources to care for him/herself, let alone invest in a relationship. Children struggle with this all the time when caring for elderly family members who cannot care for themselves. Is it right to start that struggle when the child is fifteen? What about nine? Or four?

There is no clear cut answer here. Every person's situation is different. But I think a hard look at what we really have, and what we truly lack, may significantly change the way we relate to one another.

The Magic Number

2011-11-03T13:04:00.003-04:00

I'm often tempted to stop writing all together. I often feel I don't have much left to say. Naturally I haven't said everything there is that can be said about adoption, first families, male roles in adoption, et cetera. There will always be more to add, just as there are new birth fathers every day. The story doesn't stop until humanity does.

But one can encounter a point of diminishing returns. After a while it seems there is only so much I have left to say. Other men have their own stories to tell, their own perspectives to help illuminate the shadowy corridors wherein first fathers so often disappear. When I stop these men will continue the good fight and keep talking about their experiences. The torch will be passed.

Except that it won't. When I stop writing, no one is writing. When I stop telling my story, sharing my perspective, silence is left, ignorance flourishes.

What's a man to do but continue to slog forward?

As you've probably noticed, I'm participating in the 2011 Adoption Interview Project. I have learned from Heather, the wonderful woman organizing it, that I'm the only birthfather participating. There are over 120 bloggers signed up. That's where I found the inspiration to continue, to take this a bit more seriously again. That's where I came across the magic number.

0.83%

Among a community built around open adoption, sharing our stories, finding commonality, and demystifying adoption I represent 0.83% of the Adoption Interview participants. Taken to a larger context it gets downright silly. To the best of my knowledge I am one of two English speaking birthfathers to have publicly written about that experience. As far as I know I'm the only one keeping an (admittedly sporadic) active blog. Let's be generous and only look at the USA. If I am, in fact, the only English first father blogger in the United states, that means I'm one in approximately 512 million.

0.00000000319% of the population.

Keep in mind that there is a birthfather for every child placed in an adoption.

There were 57,466 adoptions in the United States in 2009 that involved public agencies. That number does not reflect private adoption agencies nor adoptions that took place without agency aid.

Let us assume that some of these children are born to the same men, and also that some men's children are not accounted for in that number. For the sake of argument let's call it 55,000 babies were born to new birthfathers in 2009. I have a hunch that's a very low number, but I'm hedging my bets here to avoid sounding inflammatory. If this math actually works out it leaves me with one question, a question that only gets more staggering the longer I think about it:

Where are the other 54,999 men of 2009? Where are the 55,000 men from 2010? Where are the half million men from the early 2000s?

Over the course of generations we're looking at the strong possibility of several million birthfathers in America. I know I'm not the only one.

Right?

Open Adoption Roundtable Discussion #30: When Was The First Time You Heard About Open Adoption?

2011-10-28T08:04:00.002-04:00

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be listed at Open Adoption Bloggers to participate or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points--please feel free to adapt or expand on them.

Athena and I were sitting in the drab grey office of the woman who would soon be our life-line. I had spent the last few minutes nodding as Athena explained our situation. She's pregnant. We know I'm the father. We're not going to parent. We need help.

The social worker we were talking with at Catholic Social Services was receptive, supportive, but surprisingly upbeat. It struck me as odd at the time, though it makes perfect sense now. She wasn't strident about it. Just positive. What I know now is that she had a positive attitude in general, but in that specific instance she knew there were people sitting in front of her who were dedicated to making the best choices they could for their child. She later shared that her immediate sense of confidence in our decision making process was rather rare.

"Have you thought about open adoption?" she asked.

Athena and I looked to one another for guidance, hoping one of us knew what she was talking about.

"To be honest, I have no idea what you're talking about".

Three books, half a dozen printed articles, and several more meetings later we had a good idea of what open adoption could be about. I read my way through Jim Gritter's books and avidly avoided reading the male-hostile works of other authors. A realization began to dawn in my mind. If my son knows me from the beginning of his life, along with his adoptive father, it won't be weird to him. That will be his baseline for "normal". With this realization came day dreams of teaching my son how to build bookshelves, giving gifts at Christmas, high school graduation, his first pocket knife, and a camping trip with him as a young adult. Then came two days of crying.

The guilt and shame of considering placing my son for adoption was assuaged primarily by remembering that it could be okay for him. Even if I felt awful about it, he might not. In the end I felt it was the best chance we had. Two years later we're still here. The world didn't end when Festus was placed with his parents. I can still be happy with surprising frequency. Athena and I are now, ostensibly, a bullet-proof couple. One quick question changed our lives. It let us proceed in good conscience to a choice that may have been too frightening to accept otherwise. But that question was much more than what it appeared to be on the surface.

"Have you thought about open adoption" means "have you thought about the industrialized west's social moores about familial bonds," and "have you considered restructuring the way you understand love?"

Have you deconstructed your priorities, super-imposed a new set of parameters regarding acceptable behavior, and tried to see if any of your goals and priorities can still fit?

Have you questioned the fundamental meaning of being a man or woman?

Have you considered confronting every person you know with a choice you're making that will result in loud, intense, and unpredictable judgements about your worth as a person?

Have you considered seeing your child grow up, really seeing it first hand, and knowing you're a part of that?

Have you considered giving you child a chance to have a genuine connection with his/her lineage?

Have you considered loving your child so much the scrutiny you'll be under doesn't matter?

Bundled up in that question are so many others implicit to the process that I can't list them all. But I answered them. Each and every one. I wish fewer people had to make the choice about whether or not to place their child in adoption. I wish more people in those situations actually had choice. I also wish more people, outside of adoption, answered these questions. The stigma of adoption falls apart when these questions are given the weight of reality. Giving our full consideration of these questions can't help but open our eyes to our prejudices and naivete. Once we see them we can begin work on ridding ourselves of them.

I wish more people would consider open adoption.

I give up on Texas

2011-09-20T12:46:00.002-04:00

EVIL

That's all I could think as I listened to the radio on my commute to work. The story was about Texas cutting funding for women's health clinic by 66%. These clinics provide women with general health screenings, physical exams, PAP smears, and birth control. They do not, however, provide abortions. That's because there is both a state and federal mandate that facilities providing abortions shall not receive federal funds. So why is the budget for these health facilities being cut?

Because they are willing to refer women to clinics that do perform abortions. The willingness to provide information at the request of the patient is enough to be considered an enemy to the evangelical supported socially conservative movement in Texas.

Spared from the budget cuts are clinics that refuse to refer patients to abortion providers and do not provide PAP smears. On the other hand they do offer "abstinence education" at these emergency pregnancy clinics. Thankfully the existence of emergency pregnancy clinics in Texas is well assured. The proposed budget cuts are projected to lead to an additional 20,000 unplanned pregnancies next year. One of the counselors at such a clinic was quoted as being "very sad" that only "2% of these women [in unplanned pregnancies] choose adoption".

Here's where I'm screaming curses at the top of my lungs in my head. The clinics in question don't facilitate adoptions. They don't make placements, nor arrange meetings of adoptive families with first families. At no point are they directly involved in the adoption process. No wonder they're sad that only 2% of women dealing with unplanned pregnancies choose adoption. No wonder they don't mind that there are enough children born in Texas to unprepared parents to fill 175 kindergarten classrooms. Thank goodness there will be another 20,000 children born into duress each year.

I'm not particulary concerned with where anyone stands on the issue of abortion. There are good arguments to be found on all sides as well as terrible and poorly thought out arguments. The issue at hand here is access to healthcare and birth control. The Texas legislature is trying to make this sound like they're preventing federal (tax) dollars from being used to fund abortions. There's a simple problem with that argument: tax dollars aren't being used for that purpose now! Instead what's happening is the people who are most vulnerable are being hung out to dry. Young women are being denied the basic right to plan when they are prepared to parent. But it gets worse.

The women who are being denied this right are those who have had to rely on assistance to have that right. In short, the people who can least afford an unplanned pregnancy will be those most likely to encounter one. Why? Socially conservative "abstinence only" dogma.

What about the money? Won't this save the state a lot of money by not paying for all those health care tests and medication? Unfortunately no, it won't. Instead the cost will be seen in emergency rooms where treatment averages ten times what preventative care does. Remember the clinics losing funding don't only provide reproductive health care. They also provide diabetes screenings, PAP smears, cholesterol levels, STD checks, and physical exams. So instead of saving money by eliminating access to these tests Texas is actually digging a bigger financial hole for itself in the future when the people who rely upon these clinics become seriously ill and unable to pay hospital bills.

In addition to all of this is one question left ringing in my mind: who would ever wish for another person to experience the pain and loss of an adoption? How can someone justify forcing that decision on people with so few resources they can't afford birth control? If $30 a month for birth control, or $15 a month for condoms is more than they can afford how the hell can anyone think parenting is a viable choice for those women?

Shame on you, Rick Perry. This isn't the real face of social conservatism. This is fucking evil.

Letter from the Trenches: Coming to terms with the war on poverty OR Birthday Wishes for my Son

2011-09-08T13:43:00.002-04:00

As some of you may recall, I had a difficult time with Festus' first birthday. We've now passed his second birthday with a much different reaction. I've been quite happy thinking about Festus getting older and becoming more independent. On our last visit he and I played for about an hour and it was wonderful. None of the soul crushing existential crises nor ennui I have feared was present. Instead he was an energetic little boy, nearly two years old, who laughed and giggled with surprising regularity.

I now look forward to the next visit and the chance to celebrate his birthday with him this month. Athena will ill during that last visit which should make this one a nice chance to catch up and see how much he's talking now.

Indeed the only sadness I contend with now doesn't have much to do with Festus, though it does reflect new light upon the choice to place him with his parents for adoption. It has been a slow dawning realization that his placement was not made only of willful choice, but also of necessity. Despite my desire to believe the opposite I now see that I did not have the resources to raise him had I chosen to do so. Even though I am setting the bar for my personal standards of financial well being I can see that Athena and I simply don't have the resources to achieve solvency. Further, that isn't just financial resources.

I have returned to work after yet another four months of seasonal leave. Already I don't want to be there. I won't get into gory details. Instead I'll say that the environment in which I work engenders distrust, waste, frustration, and disillusion. It seems I return each day to work with a little less than I had the day before. Yet I make just enough money that I can't manage to keep a savings account going. In short, I have no cushion for attempting a transition that seems desperately needed. I could attempt to make the transition anyway and hope all works out for the best, but I there are people depending on me for their health and financial stability. This is the trap of poverty and responsibility.

What I hope for Festus is that he doesn't have to deal with this sort of trap. I hope that by placing him with Prof Plum and Ms Scarlet that he will never have the deficit of resources that so many people in the USA now contend with. I wish him happiness, health, and the freedom to truly do whatever compels him in this world. And teddy bears and trucks, of course. He is, after all, only two years old!

Thanks, but I'll pass

2011-07-28T11:50:00.002-04:00

The first time this came up I was hoping that ignoring it would make it go away. The internet had other ideas. It's funny that this should be coming up now given the nature of my previous post.

Over the past year I've been given a couple of blogger awards. You probably haven't noticed because I didn't do anything about it. I'm not ungrateful. Far from it. But there are two dynamics at play that make it difficult for me to know how to handle these. The first is that I'm pretty terrible and dealing with praise in most forms. The second is that I can't escape the feeling that there is a culture that goes with these awards, and I don't think it's for me.

I set out to write this blog to put a voice and a face to the birthfather experience. My hope was that other birthfathers or prospective birthfathers might find it and get some idea of what another man experienced. When I was entering the adoption process with Athena no one could tell me what to expect, what emotions are normal, what fears are likely false, what fears are likely true, and help me understand how it might affect my relationships with my family, my friends, and Athena. There was no information available. There was no pool of data to draw from. I wanted to give voice to that experience so someone out there might find this blog and get an idea of what another man felt. In truth this blog isn't about my voice. It's about documenting a voice. It's about creating the hard record necessary for empirical study, about putting enough facts out there that someday someone can start to piece things together to help other men. There's a birthfather for every birthmother but in western society we have hardly any research done to understand these thousands of men or their experiences. My hope is that someday this blog will be found and used as one more point of data to draw correlations to understand the what happens to men in adoption. The personal details I share here are so you can better understand my biases and how they effect my experience.

So, you see, this blog really isn't about me. It's about everyone else. When I receive an award it doesn't really feel right to put it up and tell everyone what a typical Friday night looks like for me. I appreciate the gesture and especially the thought behind it. But, regretfully, I must abstain from participation. I know a lot of blog awards have stipulations that one answer certain questions or divulge some basic information that otherwise wouldn't be brought up. If you're curious about that sort of thing feel free to ask me directly and I'll be happy to respond. But I don't feel that these belong as a formal part of this blog. Thanks for your consideration, and your appreciation.

On Why I Disappear

2011-07-25T14:27:00.004-04:00

a·so·cial
/eɪˈsoʊʃəl/ [ey-soh-shuhl]

–adjective
1. not sociable or gregarious; withdrawn from society.
2. indifferent to or averse to conforming to conventional standards of behavior.
3. inconsiderate of others; selfish; egocentric.

*my proof reader is MIA. Please forgive anything that doesn't make sense*

Last night I went to dinner with a cousin I've not seen in five or six years, along with my eldest brother (I'm the youngest of three) and Athena. During the conversation we had while walking to the restaurant my cousin asked me to define the difference between asocial and antisocial. For my money the good folks at dictionary.com pretty much nailed it. I would, however, assert that the tertiary definition for asocial befits antisocial more aptly. But, with that small aside, it seems a fitting banner to fly as my colours.

This is a question I field with some regularity. I'm rather accustomed addressing the discrepancies between indifference and intolerance. Indifference and aggression are opposed forces. Love and hate, on a continuum of passion, are on the same end of the spectrum. Indifference, dispassion, and lack of interest are on the opposite.

Why am I asked about this and why am I bothering to tell you? Because I self identify as asocial. I am largely indifferent to the social mores and conventions that make up the minutia of daily interaction. I find them to be irrelevant to the quality of my relationships. More importantly, however, is the notion conveyed in definition #1 above - withdrawal from society. I am pretty withdrawn. I have a few good friends. I can make conversation and often do so to set others at ease around me. Why bother if I disregard conventional social protocols I as claim? Because it makes my life easier. Things go better when people like me. It's the same reason that sociopaths can choose to function in society without constantly breaking laws and crushing the dreams of those around them. Because, in the long run, it's easier that way. More grease for the gears to get what you want. So this begs the question "what does 'I am' want?"

More or less to be left alone with the few high quality relationships I have. Most people are unaware of the fact that the best way to be left alone is to be the one to make contact first. There is an expectation, are here at least, that the person to engage is also the person who must disengage. If I bump into a neigher and they greet me, opening with small talk, and I disengage from that interaction before they do I'm probably going to be viewed as antisocial or some version of jerk. If I initiate the exchange then excuse myself (as if that phrase weren't telling enough) to leave, I'll likely be seen as a friendly chap who happened to be needed elsewhere. I recognize the mores and regulations. I just don't like them. The key is learning which ones to use that allow you to run roughshod over dozens of others.

But all of this is irrelevant without intention. Why withdraw? What's the real point? Many assume I must be a pretty angry person who hates humanity. Others believe I'm poorly socialized and uncomfortable around new people. Most people think I "just need to loosen up" (this falls into the 'if you'd just be more like me it would be great, because then you'd be like me" camp). All of these ideas are off the mark. The reason I withdraw and minimize the breadth of contact is simple and pretty obvious for those who know me.

People make me sad.

When I speak with people and see the habits formed, the coping mechanisms they're flogging themselves with, I become both frustrated and sad. People are better than this. Basic tenants - integrated self is better than a compartmentalized self, seeking inner quite is more nurturing than insatiable lust for intensity, skilled thinking results in more effective problem solving than raw emotion - seem to be largely ignored or forgotten. I want better than that for the people I meet. I want them to be well and joyful. I want them to be unshakable and compassionate. I know they can be, but the potential seems dormant so often.

I feel compassion for humanity. I genuinely do. That is precisely why I pull back. By my nature I am a very sensitive person. Like many other sensitive people that applies not only to my emotional spectrum but also to sensory data (which could be another post entirely). Like being overloaded by the advertisements, noise, and smells of Time Square, so too does a party full of people scream and throb emotionally. The empathetic weight of each person added together becomes too much to bear. There are a couple options for how to deal with this.

The first is to "put on blinders", effectively to filter what information you respond to. That's a necessary skill to develop, but it has a downside. Filtering is a useful skill to have for making unexpected situations tolerable. Filtering of compassion, however, means deeming some people "human" and others "less human". I can't divorce experiencing empathy for some people and not others as a value judgment. For my taste judging whether or not a person is human enough to merit compassion isn't a practice I'm willing to take up. In my life compassion is an expression of respect and I'm even less willing to make a habit of regularly disrespecting people.

The second option is to minimize stimulation. If Time Square is overwhelming don't be there. If parties are depressing, stop going. Try having a cup of tea or a beer with a friend instead. The key is matching environment to temperament. The first step to avoid fatigue is to reduce demand. By withdrawing I don't have to compromise my ethic related to compassion/respect and I avert compassion fatigue (see also). There are a limited number of times per week I can say "it's about respect" and "every relationship is individual and must be treated as such" before I get exhausted and depressed. So I stop putting myself in situations where it is likely to come up. Blog-land is a big draw on my resources. I get a lot out of it but there are times when life in my immediate surroundings asks too much for me to stay engaged here. That's why I disappear.

I don't want this to end on a down note, so let me make it clear that I'm sticking around. I just wanted to take this moment to explain my hot/cold relationship with posting new content. The other reason I'm posting this diatribe, and why I believe it belongs in the consciousness of the Open Adoption community, is because socialization, compassion, respect, and cyclic communication are all issues front and center in every open adoption whether we realize it or not. Open adoptions are about relationships. Specifically I think it's important to note that there are varying degrees of sensitivity to emotional trauma (inherent in an adoption) and habits of communication. For those of you who don't quite get what I mean when I'm talking about sensitivity let me give you an illustration:

Imagine every human being is a microphone. Each microphone has a different degree of sensitivity to sound. Put eight mics around a table and drop a pin, listen to the playback, and there are eight different volumes (this is referred to as "gain" in music circles). So each mic is receiving the same sound but experiences that sound at a different volume. A microphone that has very high gain is best suited to very quiet environments where it can pick up on the sounds of breath, insects crawling, or a low whisper. A microphone with low gain will be better suited to being onstage at a rock concert. If you take the high gain mic to the rock concert it will feedback, "clip", distort the sound, and be damaged.

In a very real way, to the highly sensitive person, everyone around her/him is yelling at all times. It is deafening. But unlike hearing damage emotional sensitivity never attenuates to the new level. It is the same deafening pain every time.

If any of this resonates (please pardon the pun) with you, or think you may know someone for whom this may be true please know there are resources available. There are two books linked at the bottom; one that has been invaluable for me as I learn to respect and care for myself as a sensitive person. The other gives valuable insight to other styles of communication and cognitive function. Very helpful when trying to navigate what can seem a world of people who "don't get it." Also consider reading more about compassion fatigue and understanding how to care for those that care for you. Thanks for sticking with me. This is a tricky subject and one rarely brought up.

Be gentle with each other out there. It can be a tough world.

Open Adoption Roundtable Discussion #28: Questions from a Closed-Era Adoptee

2011-07-20T14:48:00.003-04:00

The O.A.R. is a continuing discussion among bloggers about Open Adoption. It's a chance for people from any background to ask honest questions, often difficult ones, and get honest answers. It has been going on for some time, but, if you want to see other questions and answers there is a log available.

**********************************************************************************

Here's the preamble, courtesy of Heather:

This round is a smidge different--time for some cross-blog pollination! Lori of Write Mind Open Heart, an adoptive parent in two open adoptions, has up at her blog a set of eleven questions about open adoption which were posed to her by JoAnne, an adult adoptee in a closed adoption. There are some questions there about the role adoption professionals played arranging contact in your adoptions and how you understand the legal weight of any open adoption agreements you may have.

**********************************************************************************

1. Can the adoptive parents really go back on their word after the adoption has been finalized and do whatever they please in regard to updates and pictures?

Yes, at any time. This is one of the most terrifying facts of adoption for first families. That's the difference between fostering and adopting. When signing the paperwork to place a child for adoption the first family loses all legal standing regarding the child. There are no caveats.

2. Who is the go-between for communication with most Open Adoptions: the case worker, the placing agency, or the lawyer handling the adoption?

I must not understand this question. I pray I don't understand this question. The best I can tease out of the way this is worded is who hands the documents back and forth, who makes the calls to update the families, et cetera? I'm fundamentally confused if this is the idea behind this question. I'll answer as best I can.

No one. When initially working out the placement of Festus we were working with Catholic Social Services. The social workers there helped us through the legal process and gave us a lot of good resources (books and the like) for dealing with what was happening emotionally. As for communication between Prof Plum, Ms Scarlet, Athena, and me there was no go between. After Athena and I read the profile Prof Plum and Ms Scarlet put together we decided we'd like to meet. After that meeting all contact between families was done by the families. We called, texted, and e-mailed one another. We still do. The "agency" inquired once or twice how things were going after we placed Festus with his new family. They were brief phone calls and the reminder that we could come in for some counseling for the next six months if we needed it.

3. What are the advantages and disadvantages for each of the above contact persons?

Not Applicable

4. How can case workers be involved in Open Adoption as well if DHS are already so understaffed and the budgets are maxed out for the thousands of forgotten children lost in the system?

I'm feeling a bit cagey at the moment so forgive me if this seems hostile. That's not my intent, but I do find this question frustrating. What I'm seeing here, effectively, is the question "why work on making open adoptions healthy when so many kids have it so bad in foster/temporary care?" Because one kid in a bad home is one too many. It's true that there are thousands of children in horrible circumstances. It's terrible to think of what these children deal with every day and worse to feel powerless to change it. It's also true that the difference between an open adoption that works and one that closes, ruins relationships, and shatters lives may be a two hour conversation with a counselor. An adoption that closes hurts more than the adults involved. It hurts the child in very real and lasting ways. In terms of hours invested open adoptions are a drop in the bucket. Others' experience may be different, but that is my understanding from the professional social workers I know.

5. Is there an incentive such as money for the adoption agency to be still involved indirectly and indefinitely for an Open Adoption? Does it cost the prospective adoptive parents more money upfront for it to be an open adoption?

I do not know of any agency that remains engaged, in perpetuity, in an adoption. It is possible they exist, but I am unaware of them. Many agencies that work toward open adoptions also have post-placement care for the birth mothers. This is often reflected in the fees assessed for prospective adoptive parents. In much the same way that fair trade goods cost more than plantation and sweat shop produced goods, so too does the cost of ethical adoption rise. If one is promised an adopted child for $2,000 something is terribly wrong. Similarly if the agency makes no mention of the first parents, or they sound too good to be true but you can't contact them, hit the brakes and do some research. A good non-profit agency will be willing, if not happy, to disclose where the money comes from and where it goes.

6. If the contract is legally binding, what happens to the adoptive parents if they don’t follow through? Is there really any legal recourse for both parties that are clearly spelled out?

No. There is no protection. There is no contract. There is no recourse. Instead, there is trust. An open adoption functions solely on the basis of trust. From there a relationship grows which, hopefully, will include mutual respect, honor, and affection. An open adoption doesn't promise anything. What it does is provide an opportunity. Through open adoption there is the opportunity for relationship.

7. What deters the birth parents from coming to your house unannounced?

Why would I show up to someone's house unannounced? Is it a terrible problem for a friend to arrive unannounced to your home? Or is the assumption that we are pariah? Again, this is about relationships. If people are showing up to your house unannounced with frequency and it troubles you ask them to stop. If they don't it may be time to reassess the relationship and how best to express boundaries.

8. Do you know if there are any court cases where it’s obvious that there are loopholes in Open Adoption that need to be addressed?

There aren't legal loopholes in open adoptions. There are giant gaping swathes of nothing. No contracts, no laws, no recourse, no promises. Open adoptions do not open the doors for birth families to suddenly change their minds and fight for custody. Actually, there are fewer occurrences of contested custody and reversed decisions among those participating in open adoptions than closed ones.

9. Just like there are issues with closed adoptions and we have the outspoken activists’, etc., are there any Open Adoption opponents or vice versa that are working to be the voice for the birth mothers as well as the adoptive children and their best interests?

There are some significant advocates for open adoption out there. Among them are authors Mary Martin Mason and James (Jim) L Gritter. There's a significant number of bloggers actively engaged in open adoptions. These people remind me of Muhandis Ghandi's quote "be the change you wish to see in the world." They live advocacy because their lives are normal.

10. When is the adoptee old enough to choose if they want contact or not? What if they are the ones who want to break off ties with the bio parents?

This decision lies squarely with the adoptive family. The question is no different for adoptees than any other child deciding they don't want to have contact with a member of her/his extended family.

11. Are there any support groups/legal aids for birth mothers where they can get honest answers with their concerns for open adoptions?

We had a lot of success getting support through Catholic Social Services. There were quite a few support mechanisms for adoptive and birth families. Rather, for birth mothers. It is unfortunate but true that there is a disquieting lack of support and services aimed at birth fathers. Many of the support groups for birth mothers also accept birth fathers, but the culture of these groups often pushes men away.

From my own experience, I attended several support group meetings for birth parents. It was actually a group of first mothers, who the social worker felt it necessary to ask if they would be comfortable if a man were to attend. Instead of engaging in productive relational/emotional work I instead spent the entire time fielding and dodging questions about why the men in these womens' lives behaved the way they did. Instead of bringing the voice of a man I was expected to be the voice of every man. I went twice. Later I attended the agency's BirthMother's Day celebration. Upon learning there would be no BirthFather's Day celebration I disengaged from that community entirely.

O.A.R. Seven "Ignorant" Questions

2011-04-22T22:31:00.002-04:00

Better late than never. This has been sitting as a post to be finished for quite some time. It seems there's been something of a fire lit under me today so I thought I'd finish it off and post it. For your reading pleasure, my answers to seven questions asked of the Open Adoption Roundtable bloggers.

1. If open adoption is so great, why do so many people suck at it? By this I mean, not honouring commitments, closing the adoption, telling the other family they’re not “doing this thing” correctly or playing the “for the sake of the child” card?

There is a very simple reason some people suck at open adoption: integrity. To function an Open Adoption requires a lot of integrity on everyone's part. The biggest expression of that, in my experience so far, is in the form of honesty. Many people aren't very skilled at being honest, be with with others or with themselves. When entering an extra-familial open adoption the participants must decide whether or not to trust each other. Let me say that again. In the average open adoption all people involved make the decision to trust one another or make the decision not to trust one another. It is a willful decision. There simply isn't enough time in most open adoptions to build enough trust. A leap of faith is being made by everyone involved. The only other option is a disingenuous foundation that, if continued, will doom the relationship.

2. From the standpoint of first parents, open adoption sounds like something that could prolong suffering. Could this suffering potentially outweigh the good of knowing where your child is? Who helps the first parent?

I'll answer the last part of this question first. Who helps the first parent? The typical answer is a sad one. No one. In broad terms most first parents are taken for granted and very often taken advantage of. Help doesn't come easily and rarely comes willingly. The stigma of adoption alone is enough to drive most would-be supporters away. For those interested in sticking around most disengage after a few months. The intensity of the pre-adoption is experience is difficult to believe, even for those who have already been through it. Agencies and support groups exist to provide resources for some, but these are often the exclusive domain of first mothers and very frequently only available when still pregnant. Post adoption support services are very, very rare.

The truth is an open adoption can prolong confusion and suffering when roles and boundaries become muddled. The confusion of developing what role "first parent" is going to take in a first parent's life can be profound and emotionally paralyzing. When handled well the cost is greatly outweighed by the benefits. A first father can know with certainty that his child is happy. A first mother can see her son or daughter smile, laugh, and play. The knowledge, rather than the guess, that the decision to place for adoption was a good one that resulted in healthy relationships is the best aid I can imagine for the healing process a first parent goes through. In my case confusion, hurt, fear, and ambivalence disappear when my son smiles and waves at me.

3. I’m guessing kids are not hung up on how many relatives they have. Tell me that the thing that hangs up the public all the time about open adoption and other unconventional relationships—two mommies, two daddies, three, four, parents—is the least of your worries because it seems to me it is.

As a first parent, even considering adoption marks one with a bigger stigma than being part of a non-traditional family. After being told, in as many words, that I am evil I no longer put much stock in the general population's opinion of status quo.

4. Do you ever feel like you should give this child back? Does the thought ever seize you totally as you watch your child with her bio-family: “ooops?” (OR for f-parents: Do you ever feel as though you need to take this child back? That nothing is stopping you beside an agreement that feels false? Does that feeling go away?)

I have never had the feelings you describe here. I have mourned that I made the decision I did. I have mourned the loss of my worldview, self definition, perceived control of my life, and many other aspects of living as part of the adoption process. I have mourned that I was in a position that made those losses and decisions necessary. I have never wished to take my son from his mother and father. They are his parents. There is no grey area there. Athena and I are his first family, and here I'll explain why I use that term. We cared for Festus with every resource we could pour into his well being and development for as long as we could. For eight months (we discovered Athena was pregnant at four weeks) our lives revolved entirely around making him the healthiest and happiest baby we could. We continue in that commitment, as his first family, but we are not his primary family. We cared for him first chronologically, and we cared for him with absolutely everything we could. At the end of those eight months, after his birth, we were absolutely desolate. There were no resources left. Professor Plum and Ms Scarlet's arrival at the birth center was, in part, like the cavalry riding over the hill to win the day.

5. How do children ever cope with knowing they could not be kept? When they see their natural parents having more kids, what do they think? Who helps the child in this situation? Both sets of parents?

There are too many assumptions in this question for me to take it entirely seriously. Instead I'll point out the assumptions being made and why they should be called into question. First is the notion that a child must cope with being placed in a loving, well resourced household. Plenty of people I know are adopted and many more raised by their grandparents without significant thought on how hard it is to live in a world where poverty can effect people's lives. When was the last time you lamented the fact that you're so poor you had to work for a living? Is it terribly tragic, or simply your life?

Do first families continue on to have more children? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It shouldn't be assumed that the first family will go on to have more children and the choice to place for adoption was a question money or emotional retardation alone. Pardon my cursing, but frankly birth parent's aren't universally the emotionally stunted fuck ups we're portrayed to be in daytime television. Frequently they're simply victims of statistics. A sexually healthy relationship between two adults commonly results in sex between two and three times a week for people in their late teens to mid twenties. If it's a committed relationship that will result in roughly 130 couplings per year. A condom with 99% efficacy means there's a statistically supportable argument that couple has had one child and is gestating a second within one year's time. It is improbable, but statistically viable.

6. Can you say comfortably that some surrendering mothers could not cope with an open adoption or do you think that it should always be the standard?

As in question number one it's all a question of the individuals involved. There is no standard open adoption. That's why it can work. The experience being discussed here is so intense and personal it must reflect the individuals and have the ability to grow as they do. If anything I believe the very idea of a "standard adoption" should be abolished. We're talking about families being created. Each and every one needs to be understood and handled as a unique case with singular needs.

7. Is there ever a reason (aside from extreme/illegal behaviours) to close an adoption totally?

This question reminds of why I hate it when people ask me if there is ever a justifiable reason to take a human life. Of course there is. I'm truly excellent at creating the worst case scenario which can justify all sorts of behavior. I think of it as something of a chess game I play against myself. A sort of testing of ethical waterproofing so to speak. Is it worth talking about what these factors may be? In my opinion, not really. I can come up with good reasons for Professor Plum and Ms Scarlett to cut off all contact with me until I'm blue in the face but it won't mean anything. It would all be conjecture and fantasy with no actual substance. Drugs, sex, lies, theft, mental/emotional/spiritual abuse, and wearing the wrong colour neck tie are all immaterial until they carry the weight of a real life situation with all the intricacies and realities therein.

Hind Sight Projection

2011-04-22T13:11:00.002-04:00

Nothing for months, then two in one day? Shocking, I know. Sometimes there are things more important than eating at lunch. Rarely, but sometimes true.

It's often tempting to try to understand another person's experiences by superimposing our own emotional realities as a template over the factual events in the other person's life. It's a pretty functional model for how children first begin developing sympathy. I've written about it before but it merits a quick refresher before moving on to today's subject. Effectively;

In a situation like X, I thought and felt Y. Person 1, therefore, most likely also feels Y when in a situation similar to X.

Most people do this and many never develop cognitive/emotional integration beyond this point. That's unfortunate as this model only works when there is a truly analogous connection between the experiences. Often there is not. This is particularly true in the sphere of adoption. The experiences of the birthfamily, adoptive family, and the adoptee (the traditional view of the "Triad" in adoption) are connected. However in terms of discrete experiences they are very different. Among the commonalities are loss, isolation, ambivalence, anger, and fear. The thought processes that drive these emotional experiences, however, diverge significantly. It is important to recognize the difference between similar emotions and understanding the full depth of the experience related to it. If we get too stuck on the idea of really understanding everyone we actually disrespect the people we are trying to become closer to. All too often a person's experience is simplified in order to fit our schema, our understanding and intimacy becomes forced rather than resonant, and the person's emotions are disregarded where they disagree with our own. That's the nature of the beast with the type of sympathy response illustrated above. Most often there's no malice involved and ulterior motives don't enter the equation. The same method is, however, sometimes used as a tactic intentionally when one is trying to have a more emotionally intimate relationship than the other participant wishes to offer. In cases where this is intentional it is unacceptable. Pushing for intimacy isn't a viable route for a healthy relationship. Were we to shift gears from emotional intimacy to physical intimacy the reason becomes exceedingly clear. At best, pushing for physical intimacy when the other person doesn't want it makes one a serious jerk, and at worst a rapist.

It's okay to ask for more intimacy in a relationship. That's how many good relationships continue to grow. One person asks for more intimacy to deepen the connection of the relationship. The other person agrees and may behave, or "open up", in ways that are uncomfortable but consensual. A relationship where each person takes on the role of calling the other to deeper intimacy is a real winner. Each person grows in the relationship and step by step the relationship becomes more robust. Begging, needing, forcing, or pushing for intimacy typically means one person is doing too much work, and that expectations need to be adjusted. It's possible the relationship in question is quite healthy. It's equally possible everyone in the relationship is quite healthy. Somewhere, however, there is(are) an expectation(s) that corresponds to an internal emotional reality that is not a reflection of the relationship in question.

It is quite possible that the relationship needn't change or be addressed. Very often to find satisfaction in a relationship what we need do is redefine the terms of satisfaction. It's the relationship equivalent of training oneself out of needing what one wants, and instead wanting what one has.

The Prodigal Rants Again

2011-04-22T12:35:00.002-04:00

I'm to visit my son tomorrow. It will be the first visit in quite a while. Last month Athena and I were both ill and desperately needed time to recover. Our previous visit had been near the beginning of the month. This visit, obviously near the end of the month, marks the end of nearly three months without visitation. In short, it's been too long. When last we were to see Festus he had developed a vocabulary of about eight words. I don't know what I'll encounter when I see him tomorrow. The truth is this visit has been filling me with some dread.

My son is talking. He is able to communicate. Quickly he'll be developing the ability to create complex ideas and in just a few short years he'll be regularly delving into abstraction. I shudder at this. I haven't had the chance to be proud as I haven't seen it yet. Had you asked me a year ago how I'd feel about this I'd have been happy and delighted to finally be able to communicate with him in ways that I can understand. Now I am terrified of two monosyllables; "why", and "no".

"Why". Why did Athena and I place him into the only home he knows? Why didn't we parent him? Why do we feel the way we do about children and, thus, him? These are all questions that I've answered theoretically to myself and many, many other people. But they have a different ring when I can see the face and hear the voice that they matter to the most.

"No". No, you don't have the right to be in my life anymore. No I will not accept a relationship with you. I don't believe your answers to my questions. They aren't good enough. They don't make enough sense. They hurt me too much. You have hurt me too much. I know I'm putting words into his mouth. I know he may not say some, or possibly any of these things to me or Athena. But I am very good at playing the "Worst Case Scenario" game. In most of my worst imaginings the apocalypse is a welcome reprieve.

The real point is that I now see that I will actually have to face what my son has to say about his experience. Again, theoretically I have done this and made my peace with it. But as any parent, birth-, adoptive-, step-, foster-, grand-, or traditional, can attest children have a way of jarring you despite your best plans and preparations. This is often a good thing. Children are excellent at living in their present experience and frequently call us to do the same. Frankly many adults, myself especially, can use all the help we can get in that regard. But there are still times when that notion is rather terrifying. My hope is that tomorrow I will be in the present instead of worrying about some dreadful confrontation with my son that may never occur. I hope he can help pull me into the present, so when I hear him speak for the first time, he is all I hear.

Off Sides

2011-01-04T18:41:00.002-05:00

In reading another blog today I suddenly became very weary. I am tired of exposing myself to hate. I typically try to be tolerant of experiences I don't understand and preserve the space necessary for those whose ideas disagree with mine, even if they do so violently. But I am so very tired of experiencing others' hate. What touched me off today was a post that referenced several studies in the psychological community focusing on trauma and/or adoption. This particular post was vehemently against the language used in the abstracts of these studies and dissertations. Unfortunately the studies hadn't actually been read by the author so full critique was unavailable. However, when the phrase "wet our appetite" came up I realized my patience was about to run out.

That phrase has very specific connotations. To wet one's appetite is to prepare for a meal. A meal implies nourishment. In the context of this article the appetite to be sated was outrage. The implication that rage is nourishing is troubling but points a finger at a very unsettling truth.

Rage is pleasant.

Hate is satisfying.

The emotional catharsis they provide assuages the difficulty of the normal daily grind. It's pure Aristotle. I just wish more people were willing to look the horror in the eye and admit that the person they loathe and fear the most is very much like them. It saddens and frustrates me to see how closed people are to one another. Do we really believe ourselves to be opaque? Can I honestly believe that I have nothing in common with the person who calls me evil?

No. I don't believe we are so far removed as that. I am not inscrutable. America's obsession with "reality television" is proof of our desire to be known and understood. It is also proof of our desire to place barriers between ourselves and "the spectacle" that allows us to experience fear, loathing, and righteousness in a confined context without repercussions.

I am weary. Humanity has the chance to be amazing and beautiful. Yet so often that is disfigured.

Congratulations. . . I'm sorry.

2010-12-13T00:14:00.004-05:00

I wonder how it is that the word "congratulations" has become the go to sentiment for a person who has just given birth. In many circumstances it makes sense. When speaking to a member of a first family it is among the most painful and infuriating words in the English language. For more thoughts related to this word and the subtext it can carry, see my ramblings here.

I remember being congratulated by a few people when sharing the news that Athena was pregnant. Apparently those people didn't bother to read my body language or look at my face when sharing the news. Everything about me said "despair". Yet the congratulations continued. Each time it was like a stab in the gut. Every iteration like another blow to a nail pinning me to a board. "Congratulations" meant "you should be grateful". Saying congratulations meant this should be good news and I don't have the right to have mixed feelings.

The next time a person you know gives birth think a little about what you really want to say to that person before speaking up. If that person is in a difficult situation "good luck" may be the better choice. "I'm sorry" can even be appropriate. "Congratulations" doesn't fit every situation. Think a little longer before speaking. Or speak a little less frequently. It will give you a chance to listen more carefully to what others sound like when saying such things. "Congratulations" can be the salt in a wound.

"Congratulations" could mean "fuck you".

Drama. . . no, really.

2010-12-01T15:18:00.002-05:00

I've occasionally grumbled about work here. It has continued to take up the vast majority of my time of late. Four weeks of over time later I'm dragging myself along trying to see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's rather difficult to convince myself the light is more than a cruel jerk with a Mag-Light but time will tell.

Much Ado About Nothing is the show I've been working on. The set is enormous. The drawings have been out of scale. I'm exhausted most of the time. The load in has kept us running ragged for three days straight. They've turned it into a musical. There simply isn't a silver lining on this cloud.

In any case that's my lame excuse for not keeping up with the blog. Athena and I have been trying to get a visit in with MS Scarlet, Prof Plum, and Festus for three weeks running. We weren't able to see each other at all through November. Our previous visit was relatively early in October so it's been almost two months since we've seen them. I'm expecting Festus to be applying for grad schools by the time I see him next. It's been a long time. More info on the cause for delays later. Mostly illness related on our part.

To those who have given me awards, thanks. I'll try to do something about that soon. For those who don't know I've been given the "Cherry On Top Award". . . twice. It's actually quite endearing. In any case I'm now back on the clock and must return to the stage.

Kherosine Suit - Inviting Flames

2010-11-03T22:36:00.003-04:00

Adoption is a traumatic experience for many people. Adoptees and first families tend to bear the brunt of the painful experiences that result directly from the adoption process (adoptive families often have their pain front loaded in dealing with infertility, child loss, et cetera). Amongst some there appears to be a trend toward self diagnosis in the aftermath of adoptions that didn't meet the needs of one or more parties involved. The specific diagnosis I've encountered is P.T.S.D. or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for those unfamiliar with the acronym. This self diagnosis is often used to explain the severity of one's reactions when they seem inappropriate or to steer those considering adoption away from that possibility. It is tempting to say that it is used as a "Get out of Jail Free" card but that isn't entirely fair.

There are many people for whom the adoption experience has been terribly traumatic. It's important to recognize this truth. I still agree with Jim Gritter's notion that pain is at the heart of every adoption decision. It is possible that there are some who have been so traumatized by the pain of adoption that P.T.S.D. is a viable diagnosis.

Unfortunately I think the trend for self diagnosis has diminished the likelihood that these genuine cases are taken seriously. But this isn't the case for P.T.S.D. alone. Self diagnosed depression, A.D.H.D., bipolar, even sociopathy diminishes the gravity of the reality these diagnosise carry. This is especially the case when the claimed mental health condition is used inappropriately to justify otherwise unacceptable behavior. The didactic tale of the boy who cried wolf applies, very tidily, here.

Here I step onto my soapbox.

Mental health difficulties are serious conditions. They deserve to be taken seriously. Just as a person who claims to be diabetic eating a cake, I can't take seriously a person who claims P.T.S.D. that isn't in ongoing therapy. If one takes mental health seriously it isn't a justification for poor behavior. On the contrary it holds that person to a higher degree of accountability. To claim to have P.T.S.D., whether diagnosed by a professional or not, means taking ownership of that experience and the responsibility for recognizing it. If one accepts a diagnosis there is an implicit acceptance of responsibility for taking every reasonable step to ensure the condition in question doesn't unduly effect others.

If I am depressed I am responsible for taking steps to mitigate how that effects my other relationships. That doesn't mean keeping it a secret so no one feels poorly for me. Instead it means finding the help I need to establish coping strategies so my depression cannot get out of control and begin damaging others. Similarly if I suffer from P.T.S.D. I must also accept the responsibility of taking every step possible to normalize my relationships and interactions with others.

So what's the point of all this? Well, the short nasty version is if you have P.T.S.D. and know it you don't get to take it out on other people. No matter who the person is, what s/he thinks, says, or does. Acknowledging trauma prohibits one lashing out from that trauma. To say otherwise is to spit in the eye of every person who has ever struggled with any mental health disorder.

In Response

Silence in the Absence of Conflict

2010-11-03T13:02:00.002-04:00

I've been ignoring life in Blog-land for some time as other concerns have taken priority. Those concerns, not surprising to anyone, are my finances. This is bitter-sweet news because it points directly to something very important.

Life as a birth father has become normal life.

Or perhaps I should say this; life after the adoption of a child can feel just as normal as life before the adoption of a child.

In recent months I've been focusing a lot of attention to getting my financial affairs in order, developing plans for some cottage industry style enterprises, strengthening my relationships with my family, and continuing to support Athena as she prepares to re-enter school in yet another step toward her eventual career goals. Athena and I have continued to visit Festus, Prof Plum, and Ms Scarlet. All of those relationships continue to grow. The funny part is that I haven't been thinking about those relationships as much recently as I had the year previous. That's actually very important as it indicates that I'm not working as hard to have those relationships feel successful. At this point they typically feel successful without much effort. It seems stress doesn't enter that sphere unless there are other complicating factors. There have, in fact, been complicating factors but they were handled with compassion, open communication, a bit of mutual confusion, and in the end worked out smoothly. It's really nice to feel like my friendships with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum are a source of stress relief.

There have been several visits with them that I haven't related here. That has a lot to do with going nuts at work. More than that, however, is a loss of urgency in those visits, conversations, and connections. After more than a year it feels like the foundation for real relationships have been laid and we now get to enjoy some of that hard work. As life continues there also continue to be new complications. I've come to the conclusion that if one waits for life to "calm down" before considering it normal s/he will be waiting until death. That said, I think we've hit as close to "normal" as we're going to get. It feels good. It feels like we've found the light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn't a train after all. All four of us were putting a lot of faith in that faint glimmer. The days when I forget how hard it had been are the days I feel like I'm holding a winning lottery ticket.

It's tempting to say that I've found a good life after adoption but that isn't accurate at all. The growth I had to do getting into adoption in the first place is largely responsible for where I am now. I have found a good life in adoption.

In Response

2010-09-23T19:54:00.002-04:00

I had fully intended to post a long, well thought out response to a comment on my post about Child Centered Adoption when, through a mishap in my order of operations, I lost the two pages I'd written. As a result I'll rewrite what I can remember in the short, short, reductum abusrdum version:

"We do want to speak for the voice of the child and I appreciate you pointing out that we can't do that because we're still ourselves. This doesn't seem so bad, it seems as though you are referencing a bad experience where that was the case."

To begin I'll be speaking only about this behavior as it relates to adoption. I find the tendency to speak on behalf of children who are not yet born dangerous, often abusive, and inherently disrespectful.

The notion that this behavior is disrespectful seems, to me, to be a no-brainer. Speaking on behalf of another person without that person's express permission simply isn't okay. Since we're talking about unborn children we hit a tough spot. Often the argument is made that "if [we] don't speak for the child who will?" That's a fair argument but it has a very simple answer. One that most people using this approach don't want to hear. The people who get to speak for an unborn child are that child's biological parents. It's very simple. Legally speaking there is no grey area here. Ethically speaking there is marginal grey area at best. So the rights, intentions, and moral standing of the biological parents are called into question with little or no justification other than the belief the child would want it that way. This also disrespects the child by assuming authority to speak to the experience of a person in a situation we cannot understand. It's a claim to authority with no right.

That's where we encounter the abusive tendencies of this approach. Speaking on behalf of an unborn child to that child's parent is, almost universally, a tactic used to manipulate the decision making process of that parent. This tactic is inherently intrusive as it inserts the manipulator into an emotionally charged relationship with the future parent. The emotional intensity of this interaction is often forced upon pregnant women by total strangers. This is a near textbook definition of emotional abuse and closely mirrors many of the emotional realities of sexual assault. This behavior is NOT okay. The only people who have the right to speak about the realities of an unplanned pregnancy are those directly involved. Input from anyone else is a gift given to those who are invited. No one has the right to tell a mother or father what his/her child would want.

It is the presumption of rights following the presumption of truth that makes this dangerous. Because the manipulator believes s/he is correct that grants him/her the right to dispense "the truth" however s/he sees fit. I could get into the neurophysiology of how this is extremely dangerous but that will take a bit more time than I think it's worth. If you want me to expound more on how I believe neurophysiology relates to this let me know and I'll post an addition later. Because those involved with an unplanned pregnancy are, by default, emotionally strained they are easier to manipulate than a person whose resources are bountiful. Real lives are being affected by total strangers because they don't have the emotional resources to fend off emotional manipulation. But there's more. This behavior is dangerous for the people using it too. Each time a person uses this tactic successfully (that is achieves his/her desired end) the experience and world view of that person is being affirmed. Unfortunately the world view that is getting the affirmation includes the assumption that the person is right and can understand the experience of another human so fully as to direct their behavior more successfully than the human her/himself. This understanding of others, I believe, is dehumanizing. For my money anything that cheapens the dignity and worth of one human cheapens us all. No person is more valuable than any other and no one opinion is better than another. All opinions have equal dignity. Not all opinions have equal information. Rarely do many opinions express equal respect. Differing opinions and experiences never need disrespect or malign one another. Quality and quantity of information is paramount in these discussions. Speaking on behalf of another person is inherently an opinion, not a fact. It is dangerous to rely on this tactic for everyone involved because an opinion based upon emotion cannot be discredited. Because statements made this way cannot be discredited, their information cannot be rebuffed, they seek to force others to make decisions based solely on emotion. It is effectively the equivalent of going to a debate wearing ear plugs and screaming "la la la la la" until anyone who disagrees has left. It makes for a very shallow understanding of the world and the people in it. I believe that is disrespectful to all of reality.

I think humans are very cool and deserve to be known as fully as possible. I can't know you if I spend all my time telling you "you're doing it wrong."

Light at the end of the tunnel and the long, dark tea time of the soul

2010-09-20T22:29:00.002-04:00

Klaxons going off in my brain told me something was terribly, terribly wrong. Was it my return to work after four months of leave? Was it my relationship with Athena? Perhaps my diet, exercise, or lack of meditation. I felt ill. Deeply ill like something in my soul had died and was rotting away what was left. An important piece of who I am was gone and I couldn't remember what it was anymore. My worst nightmare was being realized. I was losing myself bit by bit but was only cognizant enough to recognize the loss. I couldn't do anything to curb it.

For four days I felt this way. Every evening, when I grew tired and ready to sleep, I would begin to panic in the throws of this loss. For a week the feeling lingered just potent enough to be recognized. I fought the loss as hard as I could. I fought everything. The sadness, the isolation, wouldn't beat me. I would win. Eventually Athena asked me "why are you trying so hard? What are you fighting so hard?" It became clear I was fighting against my grief. I wasn't allowing my experience to happen. The next day I took several long, slow breaths before beginning my day of work. "I will let myself be sad today. Today can be miserable. I can be a wreck and still be okay. I can break down and have a shitty day today." The day proceeded normally. Melancholy coloured the morning but my sense of relief took over the rest of the day. I was sad, but I was okay.

Two days previous I visited my son. Athena and her family were there to celebrate Festus' birthday. It was a grand day, though there were several culinary SNAFU's. The planned meal was fajitas. Athena doesn't tolerate wheat very well so we planned to make some spelt tortillas to bring with us. Ms Scarlet requested that we make enough for everyone. That meant making a triple batch. Additionally a second side dish was requested. We racked our brains trying to figure out what we could make in addition to the tortillas that wouldn't kill us. We decided on a batch of polenta with a random black bean and tomato topping I faked my way through. It was necessary to make something in the slow cooker as tortillas are incredibly labor intensive. I figured it would take around three hours of cooking time to make the 30+ I'd made dough for. After the first three failed utterly I realized something had gone wrong and another plan needed to come together. Something in the dough wasn't right and none of the tortillas were cooking correctly. Off to Meijer (for those not in the Great Lakes region, Meijer is a local antecedent to Wal-Mart, but a little less evil) for corn tortillas. While there I picked up a two bottles of my current favorite cheap Rose. It's a nice Spanish Grenache dry Rose. Very tasty. Back in the car and *ZOOM* we're off to see Prof Plum and Ms Scarlet.

The visit was wonderful. All the angst I'd been feeling for days melted away watching Festus crawl and stand. Hooting and chirping, squeeking and grunting were delightfully fascinating. We played and he laughed. I flipped him upside down and ate his stomach. He squeeled and giggled. Dinner was delicious and I, once again, had a great conversation with Prof Plum by the grill doing "guy stuff." We often talk about how funny it is that we talk about and bond over classic machismo items like his gas grill. Does recognizing it as silly make it less effective? We didn't bother thinking too hard on it and instead moved on to talking about theatre, college life (his two elder sons are both in college now, and I relate a bit working at a college), and my recent wisdom tooth debacle. Dinner was lovely. The wine was good and the pie was out of this world!

Eventually we all said our goodnights and headed to our cars. I felt much better than I had in days. My emotional keel had been evened and the mental weather looked clear to the horizon. The following day was a different story. Two more days of significant turmoil left me feeling as though I'd been tied to the whipping pole and left as an example to others. My eventual realization and emotional honesty was what I had needed all along.

The one year anniversary of an adoption can be a very difficult one. Strangely I'd imagined that Athena would have a difficult experience and I'd be the one supporting her. That fits my typical self image. I am the one who supports people. I don't ask for help because others need that help more. I was very surprised when Athena seemed unmoved by the gravity of the anniversary yet I was tossed like a skiff in a typhoon. I had been trying so hard to be okay. The hurt was so opaque to me that I couldn't see it was there. All my effort went into closing my eyes to reality. I suffered needlessly a great deal because of it. It was a very humbling experience. I don't have all the answers and even the little lessons that have been pounded into me again and again still get screwed up.

I have held onto many regrets in my life. I like to think I'm doing a good job of letting those go. When I was younger I often thought of my life as nothing more than a litany of regrets. If I could have gone back and lived differently I'd have changed everything. I wanted a different life. I wanted a different me. Countless hours and thousands of dollars in therapy have helped me work out the difference between things that have hurt me and myself. It sounds strange now to say that I confused the two. I can recognize the difference now. More importantly I know the difference between acknowledging pain and submitting to regret. When I look at Athena or Festus I no longer think of what I wish I could change. Instead I think of what I will do tomorrow. I have regretted many things. I have even regretted my decision to place Festus for adoption. But I have no regret for meeting and knowing my son. I don't regret the changes I went through nor the growth I had to push forward in making his adoption plan. I love my son very much. He is my best teacher. He tells me to keep looking to tomorrow when today sucks. He lets me love today even if yesterday was horrible. I can have a great morning and a terrible afternoon and that's okay. My son loves me. I love him. I don't want a different past. I want today.

An interesting line of questions

2010-09-08T23:32:00.004-04:00

Normally I try to keep my responses to comments within the comments section. This time, however, there were some questions raised that I think deserve more thorough review than that allows. Further more I believe the ideas raised are worth bringing out for general consideration. The comment in question was this:

"OK So I'm a bit diffident about writing this but you did ask what I think, right? I read this post a few hours ago and I can't stop thinking about it. It has left me very troubled. You usually seem so resolved about your decision to continue the pregnancy and place Festus. But this post suggests otherwise. You are usually very positive about the whole thing, but in this post you describe the day Festus was born as the most painful and traumatic day of her life. Does it have to be that the moment an unwanted pregnancy results in the birth of a child that it has to be so negative? You say that if you had parented Festus's happiness would have been sacrificed (that's if I've understood you correctly). I guess what is troubling me is--and I pick this up from Lia's and Lisa's posts also--that no matter which way you turn, there is just doom and gloom all around. If you keep the baby you're miserable, if you place the child for adoption you're miserable. Why carry through the pregnancy then? I hope I'm not crossing any line(s) by making these remarks and asking these questions."

There is a lot here. First I'd like to address the implied question about my resolve to continue the pregnancy and place Festus. Effectively the question is "why do it if it's really this hard?" That comes again in the notion of doom and gloom following everyone involved in adoption. Why carry the pregnancy to term? Wouldn't abortion be easier?

In the interest of full disclosure I must first say that I don't abide by the right to life movement. I honestly don't care when a fetus becomes a person, when memory or pain receptors develop, et cetera. Some people make the decision to terminate pregnancies. Some people make the decision to raise children conceived in unplanned pregnancies. Some people choose to place those children for adoption. Some people choose dumpsters. These are facts. Most people reading this will be troubled by at least two of the aforementioned choices.

Would abortion be easier? Perhaps for some it is. For many it is not. For some it is unthinkable. For a few (I pray very few) it is a practical form of birth control. I believe anyone being emotionally honest about the gravity of an unplanned pregnancy will recognize that abortion has life long consequences just as significant as adoption. They are very different experiences but each has significant impact upon the men and women involved. For Athena and me abortion was not easier than adoption. There are a couple reasons for that specific to our experiences. Athena's father is an adoptee in a closed adoption. Her personal values inclined her toward adoption should it appear viable (i.e. would there be enough support?). Additionally full term pregnancy would have huge ramifications for her health*. But at the heart of it there was something that didn't feel right about termination to either of us. I think of it like this;

To an adult who has never smoked tobacco and never really wanted to smoking doesn't really make sense.

To a former tobacco user smoking doesn't really make sense any more. But, when the chips are down, the ex-smoker gets it. The ex-smoker understands the feeling of needing a cigarette.

I think in some ways abortion either "makes sense" to you or it doesn't. There can be plenty of moral and ethical arguments but when things get bad, tension goes up, and people get scared it's as simple as gut instinct. It works or it doesn't.

I'll admit that initially abortion made more sense to me than adoption. It took education and some soul searching on my part to understand termination wasn't the best choice for us to make. I can see how abortion can make sense. Understanding it doesn't make it the best choice by default. It just means I can see there from here.

And that leads me to the last bit I wanted to address. Doom and gloom. This is similar to my understanding of abortion. It makes sense or it doesn't. Education can open our minds and experience can shape our understanding in very impressive ways but not until those have a chance to outweigh our initial impulse. Many people have a native understanding of how something extremely painful can still be good. Some people see pain and, understandably, assume it should be avoided. When it comes to a hot stove this works brilliantly. With an unplanned pregnancy, however, it breaks down. The truth is that an unplanned pregnancy doesn't present a person with the choices 1) parent and be miserable, 2) place for adoption and be miserable, or 3) abort. The order of operations is out of whack in that summary. In my experience it looks more like this:

1) Discover unplanned pregnancy - be miserable

2) Learn about the choices available - all choices allow for misery to continue

3) Make a decision - begin processing the specific brand of misery ascribed to that decision

There is no getting away without pain. There is no "easy" option just as there is no easy life. The gloom and misery in my previous post illustrates the pain I keep speaking of in adoptions. The pain is inherent in the process. If I stop dealing with this pain it's only because I've started lying to myself. It gets better and obviously there are days that are harder and days that are easier. The pain of adoption remains just as the pain of never seeing the face of an aborted child and the pain of dreams dashed and plans sacrificed to parent. The doom and gloom the commenter asked about is not the exclusive property of first families or those involved in adoptions. The gloom is recognition of a world view that is no longer valid. The doom is fear that we have lost ourselves as we lost our former worlds. If we do well we come out the other side wiser and more patient. Unfortunately both of those traits are hard won through adversity. But that peaks through in what may be the least publicized piece of adoption. Triumph. Victory. Satisfaction.

Placing Festus for adoption was very difficult. There isn't anything in my life I am so proud of as how Athena and I went about that decision. We poured everything we were into doing pregnancy, labor, adoption, and continuing relationships right. We made it. We made it through and are better for it. We did right by our son and ourselves. That's the funny thing. Going through with an adoption plan feels like moving valleys and tearing down mountains. It isn't until afterward that you look back and realize you've moved valleys and torn down mountains. "Impossible" becomes rather petty after that.

I can deal with pain, because this is the pain that comes with integrity.

* Athena was, in point of fact, slowly losing her battle with Crohn's disease. When we moved into our apartment she was too ill to work and often too weak to do anything more strenuous than read. I am not exaggerating to say Festus saved her life. Were it not for him it is quite possible she would have died by now.

Anniversaries

2010-09-05T18:29:00.002-04:00

This post, for lack of a better term, has more in common with a journal entry than its counterparts. If this interests you please read on. If not perhaps this forward saved you a bit of time.

I find I'm having a difficult day today. The emotional unrest began last night. The difficulty began in truth one year and nine months ago.

Yesterday Athena and I went into town to purchase some chocolate I'll be sending in a "thank you" package and a stuffed animal for Festus. Yesterday was Festus' first birthday. I kept wondering that day if we should do something to commemorate the significance of this anniversary. I asked Athena for her thoughts. She preferred the day go unmarked. It wasn't until we went to bed that night after a very tiring day that I began to feel uneasy. Something felt amiss. I didn't know how to put it. I felt as though I should have done something to recognize and signify my experience of what happened one year ago on that day. After talking about it for 15 minutes or so I came to the conclusion that the more honest approach was to allow ambivalence to have its place. I didn't need a name for this feeling because I had never had it before. I didn't need to know what it was so long as I listened and knew where it came from.

Today, through a curious coincidence, I found myself once again driving to the home of Athena's parents on the same road that lead to the birthcenter. The light was different but so much was the same. The colors of the trees and the blooming wildflowers on the side of the road were all the same. I remembered what happened exactly 366 days earlier. I remembered the crying. I remembered the screaming. I remembered the smell of blood, a face of terror, and the deepest throbbing ache in my heart I will ever know. I remember visiting my father in the waiting room. I remember how surprised and relieved I was that someone in my family actually came. I remember equal surprise when he refused to see his first grandchild. I remember carrying Athena with her father to the car. I remember carrying her into the house with him again. I remember the look on Ms Scarlet's face when we first introduced her to Festus. Prof Plum wore a big, toothy grin. We drank champagne out of paper cups. Two hours later, weary beyond anything I could imagine, I lay Athena down on an air mattress in her parent's den. We lay together and cried. Eventually we fell asleep.

I am very happy for my son's first birthday. I am glad to know how much his mom and dad love him. I am very sad that one year ago Athena had the most painful and traumatizing experience of her life. I mourn the father that I am not. There is still a part of me that doesn't believe I made the "right" choice. A part of me believes that I should have chosen to parent without regard to the happiness of my son.

My elder brother, E. once asked me "why are you doing this to your family? Why are you putting us through this?" I explained that I couldn't lie to myself, and I couldn't accept how removed from the rest of the family I would become were either of my brothers to parent my son. The idea of the cliche "older brother to the rescue" on a scale this large would mean not looking my family in the face again. It would mean leaving them behind. E. responded that I wouldn't be the screw up. "You'd be the hero of this family." That's the funny part of it. After making the decisions that I did my family can now look at them and say it would have been heroic to ask a brother to parent my son. It would seem so altruistic to save them from the experience they've now had. But had they not experienced it, would I still be considered a hero for making the same choice? Had I never placed Festus with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum would anyone in my family consider placing within the family heroic? I honestly don't think so. Had I placed within the family I suspect that parenting Festus would then appear to be the more appropriate choice. Had I chosen to parent marrying Athena would appear to be the better choice. For each step taken deeper into the comfort zone of my family there is always going to be another step deeper they want. In this situation perfect didn't feel good enough. So instead of the perfect choice I tried to make the choice that would give us a chance at being family again. I don't know if I did a very good job of that. I tried my best but it may not have been enough. I allowed my family to hurt. My hope was they could then recognize my pain as well. More so I knew protecting my family from the truth of my experience would hurt me exponentially more than their responses to pain.

I'm sad today. My family relationships are difficult at best. I see my son once a month but know he will never look to me for comfort. I'll not be one he runs to. Is this better than the alternatives that were available to me at the time? I think so. But even the best life hurts. The happiest people cry. Today is just a bad day.

Quote of the Day/Shameless Filler

2010-08-24T18:33:00.002-04:00

"All I can say with certainty is that my husband and I love Pie with everything we are and want the best for her. Pie's birthparents love her with everything they are and want the best for her. We'll figure out the rest as we go."

This, for me, is the very essence of adoptions that can work. Courtesy of Sara when she commented here on a previous post. I wanted to bring that to everyone's attention.There are a lot of people who are hurt terribly by adoption. Namely those people are everyone ever involved in an adoption. I've said for years that the happiest life is not the best life. It's only been recently that I've understood that to be a half truth. The concept I wanted to address was comfort, not happiness. The most comfortable life is certainly not the best life. After all I've never known a person to say "I'm so terribly comfortable and well resourced, I think it's time for some seriously difficult personal growth." For years I've struggled to make this idea a positive statement instead of a negative one. If the most comfortable life isn't the best one, what is the best? I didn't know. Slowly dawning on me is an idea. This may be the foolish idealism of youth, and I fully expect to look back on this and laugh, but I think I have an idea of the best driving principle for life. I've toyed with honesty, respect, integrity, compassion, awareness, education, and even self-sacrifice. The conclusion I've come to is all of these fall short. The only complete picture appears when all of these are combined into an understanding of love. Love requires that I respect. It urges me to understand and educate. Love insists upon honesty and integrity. Love lets me sacrifice my ego. The best life is love.

In totally unrelated news I'm feeling much better! The doctors took the stint out today and I only have one day of antibiotics left. I took myself off the pain meds earlier this week. Detox was horrible. I had become dependant. Thank goodness I'd only been taking them exactly as prescribed for a little less than two weeks. I went home and immediately ate a bowl full of steamed carrots. I felt like a new man. Eating a bowl of spaghetti afterward made me feel even better! I can't believe how hungry I've been! Hopefully in a few days I'll be able to return to work. Unfortunately my job is very physically demanding so that may take a little while longer than I'd like.

Thoughts on Child Centered Adoption

2010-08-22T10:10:00.002-04:00

***I'm still on medication. Please forgive me if this post derails or doesn't make sense. Please point out mistakes or areas that need clarification. I don't want you to ignore my mistakes. I want you to help me make them better***

In discussing the "right-ness" or "wrong-ness" of adoption I've discovered a trend. People tend to speak directly for children when children cannot speak. It's not uncommon to hear people say things like "your baby wants to be raised by you," or "all a baby wants is to be loved." In the former I'm paraphrasing statements I've heard from people who are pro-parenting/anti-adoption and the latter pro-adoption/anti-parenting depending on your person taste for terminology. I take serious issue with this proclivity even though I don't doubt that I've been guilty of it myself. These statements are troubling because of the processes one must go through to make them.

At first glance it looks a lot like compassion. To speak for the child one places him/herself in the child's position and attempt to understand the fullness of that experience. From that exercise s/he then speaks from that experience on behalf of the child. The ability to put oneself in "the other guy's shoes" is fundamental to compassion. That exercise has many practical applications and generally keeps humans from treating one another poorly. Unfortunately in the adoption related debates I've encountered that is this tool has been turned around. Instead of compassion it is used to fan the flames of conviction. This may be due to the strength of the emotional experiences encountered when applying this tool to adoption.

Most people, in my experience, involved in adoption debate have been involved in an adoption plan. The parties involved are typically a member of a first family, adult adoptees, current or prospective adoptive parents, and on rarely adoption workers. In these situations everyone has an experience to bring to the table. On the part of first families those experiences are, uniformly, emotionally intense and often traumatic. On the part of adoptive families the experience is often one of great joy muddled with the pain of infertility and loss. Very often both sides of the adoption equation have lost children yet that commonality is rarely discussed. That is something I wish to address, but not now.

After all, the point of this post was discussing child centered adoption, right? So where's the child in all of this? Well that's precisely the problem. Adults are jumping through a lot of mental hoops trying to understand the experience of the child in order to speak for their experience. Bringing their own experiences into the process of imagining the experience for the adoptee adults have amplified reactions. Before the adult can attempt understanding the adoptee experience s/he is typically overwhelmed by his/her own emotional experience. That's when people start speaking for themselves through the voice of the child. That is not only disrespectful to the adoptee experience. It disallows for adoptee experiences that differ from the adult's perceived experience. I consider that malicious behavior.

There's another level to this. The question of how a person does compassion is important. I described the exercise of "putting yourself in the other guy's shoes" as fundamental to compassion. It is a necessary step. Compassion doesn't stop there. That's how we teach compassion to children. An adult requires an adult understanding of compassion. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" isn't what I'm talking about. The real point is abstraction. Early compassion says I know your experience and I will behave how I wish others had behaved toward me. Abstract compassion says I don't know your experience and will behave with respect and kindness toward you.

Why can't I know your experience? Why must I assume I'm ignorant? Because there are billions of neurons and billions of discrete experiences that separate my experience from another person's. I can never know the full subtlety and depth of another person's emotions, thoughts, or choices. This is why I try to speak only for myself. When I do speak for others I attempt to do so in terms of probabilities (Billy probably doesn't want cockroaches in his sandwich, birth fathers probably aren't universally jerks). I do this because I believe no one has the right to speak for another in positive terms. At the very best we can make guesses but must do so with full admonition of our ignorance.

How does this apply to child centered adoption? It means in the often heated debates about whether adoption is right or wrong I put a few lingual filters in place. Let's take my paraphrases above as examples. When a first family member says "your baby wants to be raised by you," I hear "I wish I chose to parent." When I encounter the same statement from an adult adoptee I hear "I wish my first family had chosen to parent me." These are very valid statements that cut to the quick of the emotional experience they represent. There are more reasons than I can imagine for a person to have these desires and they are legitimate. Similarly "all a baby wants is to be loved" from an adoptive parent arguing against openness says to me "I wish my love is all my baby ever needs." This, too, is a legitimate desire. Wanting things and experiences, if honest about the needs they're attempting to address, is perfectly healthy. Knowing desires are often terribly unrealistic is also healthy.

I can feel my brain starting to fog over, so I'll wrap this up quickly if, perhaps, tangentially. No doubt you, the observant and critically engaged read that you are, have noted that I've not spoken to whether adoption is right or wrong here. That's intentional. I'm not concerned with whether adoption is the correct choice or a morally abhorrent choice at the moment. My concern is how we speak about adoption and how that reflects our attitudes toward each other. Adoption is polarized on many levels and I'm growing tired of seeing people turning their past injuries into weapons to further injure others. It feels like an east wing versus west wing cancer ward battle to the death. We've all been taken by surprise*. We've all been hurt by the same thing** and are in various stages of healing. A little kindness doesn't seem like so much to ask for. I suggest you be a trend setter. Tell someone that you don't understand, but you care anyway. Tell them you'll never fully know, and you love more deeply because of it.

*Whether it be unplanned pregnancy, infertility, unethical adoption workers, or even being raised by "the wrong family" and encountering stigma externally and internally everyone involved in adoption has encountered a situation in his/her life that s/he would not seek.

**Adoption hurts people. So does chemotherapy. No one wants it, even if s/he needs it.

Further Delays

2010-08-16T18:55:00.004-04:00

Last week I had oral surgery to remove all four of my wisdom teeth. This week I go back to the doctor to see about treating the thumb-sized bulge of infection in my jaw that resulted from that surgery. Life is fun.

In much more positive news I've returned to my regular work and look forward to visiting with Ms Scarlet, Prof Plum, and little Festus this week! We normally try to schedule our visits for the weekends so Athena and I can travel to their home. That usually results in long, relaxed visits. Good times. Unfortunately this month that just wasn't going to happen, so instead we're all getting together for dinner mid-week. It's not quite as fun but we are going to a really good restaurant so that's something. Hopefully I'll be able to get back on the horse soon. Thanks for your patience and support.

***Update***

This morning's appointment didn't go nearly as well as I'd hoped. Instead of a check up, more antibiotics, and a pat on the shoulder I got something else. I can now say that on my list of "things to get as surprises" surgery is rock bottom. I now have a stint in my jaw and a follow up appointment on Thursday afternoon. Until then I'm not allowed to eat anything. All liquid diet until further notice. To put the stint in the doctor basically redid the wisdom tooth removal exactly, just without a tooth there. I'm in rather an awful lot of pain at the moment. I may miss the monthly visit as a result. I'm sure I'm terribly bummed out over it, it's just that I'm in too much pain to notice anything else right now.

***Update Mark II***

The follow up appointment on Thursday didn't go well. The stint is still in. The oral surgeon was an oaf who milked my jaw without warning. That hurt. I'm still on a liquid only diet. I can't even have jell-o. I'm struggling to maintain my strength. It's been almost two weeks since I've had solid food. I'm getting weak. The doctors added another anti-biotic to my cocktail of meds. It messes with my brain chemistry a lot. I'm very tired, foggy, uncoordinated, and sometimes dizzy. It comes at random intervals. Some times I'll be fine apart from mild soreness in my jaw. The next thing I know my brain is stuck, incapable of shifting gears, as I stare into space. Athena has come to recognize these times and gently touches my arm or hand to bring me back. She's been an incredible trooper through all of this. She's been taking care of me so long it is starting to show on her health as well. Next appointment is Tuesday afternoon. I'm having the surgeon take the stint out regardless of their suggestion. I can't survive on this diet and I can't heal if I'm starving to death. Here it's worth noting a few things. I'm not allowed to consume anything that requires my jaws to move. Gelatins are out. Nothing fibrous either. Pureed vegetables, unless filtered through cheese-cloth or steel strainer, are out. The major problem with this? I'm hypoglycemic. Not just any old kind. No, no that would be too simple. I have a rare form of hypoglycemia largely unrelated to diabetes. The form I have keeps my metabolism running full tilt no matter what I'm doing. I burn as many calories sleeping as I do working. As an example, I have taken to drinking a large protein shake immediately before going to sleep. I burn through those 700 calories and awake with hunger pains about 6:00am. Doctors often recommend people with my condition set two alarm clocks. One to wake them in the morning for work and the other to wake them in the middle of the night for a meal. So my typical 5,000-6,000 calorie diet has been reduced to about 1,800 because I simply can't push the calories in fast enough. The meds make me too nauseous and tired. I hope to be well soon. I can't take much more of this.

P.S.A. - I'm out of my mind

2010-08-11T18:53:00.002-04:00

That's putting it a bit far. I had oral surgery and will be recovering all week. As a result I'm on significant pain medication (ugh, I hate this stuff) and generally distracted and managing with disjointed thinking and very, very low resources. As such there will be no posts from me this week. Additionally I ask your patience with any strangeness that may appear in any comments I put forth on your posts. Much obliged.

State Birth Father Registries: Call and Response

2010-08-06T11:09:00.003-04:00

In review: I asked you to read an article and post your replies. Thanks again to everyone who did. To those who didn't feel compelled or comfortable doing so I understand. I'd also like to know what, if anything, I can do to remove any hurdles you may encounter to sharing your experience. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any inspiration. Back to the topic at hand I'll now pick apart the article in question myself. I began writing this post last week. I delayed publishing it for a few reasons. The biggest of them was my realization that the post length was out of hand. After reviewing three paragraphs I had better than two pages. I'll attempt to be more succinct this time. With that in mind please be aware that I can't dig as deep into this article as I'd like. There will be a lot of subtle connections glossed over. If there's anything here that you find confusing, as always, please ask and I'll try to clarify my thinking. Without further ado, here we go:

In approaching this article the title interested me. I found the article by Mardie Caldwell looking for online resources and support networks for birth fathers. As I read the article I was particularly horrified by her obvious bias. In the first paragraph Mardie describes birth fathers as men who have impregnated multiple women without regard for financial or emotional support and willfully block the adoption of their children without justification. She does admit that some birth fathers are "devoted." Her definition, however, is deeply troubling. A devoted birth father, according to Mardie, is "interested in being part of an adoption plan and supporting the birth mother as she tries to make the right choices for her child." Here I must become the pedant. The birth father, in order to be devoted, must fully back the adoption decision in total deference to the birth mother. This is evident in the statement that he is "interested in being part of an adoption plan and supporting the birth mother." The implication is that he must support the birth mother's decisions to be dedicated. No mention is made of participating in the decision. Only being part of the adoption is necessary. Nor can he expect support from the birth mother. That doesn't sound like a relationship of equals to me. Furthermore the distance is imposed upon the relationship between the birth father and the child. This is evident in the author's choice of pronouns. It is the birth father's job to support the birth mother as "she tries to make the right choices for her child." The birth father is not making the decision. The child is not his.

On and on she rants about women in poverty caring for multiple children by multiple fathers. The birth fathers in this article are described in unilateral and defamatory terms. I was particularly shocked by the implications that most birth fathers are also wanted criminals incapable of entering a court without immediately being incarcerated. Later the author mentions cycles of abuse and poverty. Unfortunately poverty isn't actually addressed here. That troubles me as poverty is a significant factor in many adoption decisions. I believe it is important to remember that poverty is more than a lack of money, but rather a lack of resources of various types. Lack of time, money, energy, health, relational/emotional support are all forms of poverty that can play heavily into adoption decisions. Instead of discussing this very real problem Mardie speaks only to abuse. Sort of. Here we find one of the most disturbing intimations yet. Here's what she has to say; "[i]f a little girl sees her mother abused, then she will often be attracted to men in her life that will treat her as her mother was treated. The mothers that call us are trying to stop this cycle." Remember that this article is about birth fathers and reread that quote. She has now implied that women making adoption plans are doing so for fear of domestic violence against their children. Birth fathers are now non-monogamous, habitually unemployed, drug addicted, ego-centric, sociopathic, woman and child abusing felons. Among her other irrational claims, Mardie suggests this justification for men objecting to the adoption of their children: "When birth fathers do object to an adoption, 85% say they don’t want the child placed because it will make them look bad." I question the validity of this statistic. More than her numbers I question the point this "article" was attempting to articulate and her reasons for writing it.

Mardie calls for state birth father registries. Her suggested function for these registries is to make adoptions easier for women who's partner's stand in the way of adoption proceedings. The exact process by which this is to happen is, perhaps, the most infuriating proposition yet. Men are to sign on to the birth father registry to confirm their desire to support their child and the child's mother emotionally, financially, and legally. If the men don't sign onto the registry their paternal rights are terminated. This is a legal rat's nest. In order to have rights birth fathers must first be aware of their status as fathers. They must also sign on before the birth of their child. I am unaware of any other area in the United States' legal system where ignorance of one's rights can be used as sole legal justification for stripping those rights. Further, the author mentions no recourse or ramifications should a mother fail to inform a father of her pregnancy. But there's another issue of discrimination here. Among married couples parentage of a child is, legally, presumed to belong to the two members of the married couple. Thus married men are automatically given parental rights of their children. A state birth father registry presumes unmarried men have no parental rights. This would also apply to common law marriages and domestic partnerships. So were a couple to live together in a domestic partnership, have children, and later separate the father would be, at best, presumed a birth father who failed to sign onto the registry. Hence, in our hypothetical situation, he would have no parental, visitation, nor custody rights. The notion of a birth father registry has ramifications far beyond its intended purpose.

Reading this article landed one important point home for me. My interpretation is very simple. Mardie Caldwell's goal in this article is character assassination against birth fathers. When approached as a collegiate argumentative essay her thesis statement is "[birth fathers] refuse to sign for the adoption yet will not provide any assistance in the form of financial or emotional help." State registries aren't mentioned until the final quarter of the essay. That this rant masquerades as support for involved birth fathers is profoundly troubling.

Thank you to everyone who read the article and responded. I'm terribly sorry for putting you through such an experience. To be honest I have never encountered such open faced libel against birth fathers. However, despite her best efforts, Mardie did get something right.

"These children need to grow up with parents that love them, committed to giving them the opportunities to be all they can be in life." I can't think of a better description of a first family.

Timeline - An innacurate account off the top of my head

2010-08-04T10:28:00.002-04:00

As requested here is a rough timeline for the series of events pertinent to my adoption story. There are two important notions to keep in mind while reading this:
1) Athena still has he calendar from the year of her pregnancy. I don't have it in front of me. I may mix up a few things here and there. No promises on 100% accuracy. I'll try my best.
2) I'm posting this because a reader requested it. I really do take everyone's input seriously and respond directly. If you have an idea, question, or anything you'd like to share with/say to me I'm all ears.

About 2008 - This year I found myself living with a couple (one a good friend, the other his partner at the time) in a house 44 miles from work. Two years post college I was 25 years old. I had been hired at the university in August the previous year. Athena was living with her family and continuing to struggle with Crohn's Disease. Not a fan of major surgery and a lifetime of steroids she was attempting to control it through diet and Traditional Chinese Medicine (herbal decoctions, tinctures, and the like).

February 2008 - Athena contacted me via an art website to commission a piece. It was quite complicated, I was a bit lazy, and getting adjusted to 60 hour work weeks for the first time. It took months or working and revision.

July 2008 - Athena and I met for the first time. The intention was to hand off the piece or find all the niggling details to revise that couldn't be expressed properly over e-mail. We walked better than 12 miles talking and stayed up all night staring at each other. I was in deep smit. I also moved into my brother's empty house. He moved to LA and asked me to watch the place until he could find a renter.

August 2008 - For reasons I'll not get into, I moved out of my brother's house. Significant family strife involved.

September 2008 - Athena and I started talking about moving in with each other because we suck at being apart. The hunt begins.

November 2008 - We moved into our first apartment. I dubbed 2008 "the year of the move." It was also Athena's first move. I was old hat at changing homes and had some difficulty understanding what's so hard about it. Removed head from sphincter and attempt to be supportive.

December 2008 - Athena's health declined. Stress went up. December 27th we get the big news. Stress went up more.

January 2009 - By the end of the first week we'd told both our sets of parents. In the middle of January I decided therapy was a good idea for me and started looking for services. By the end of the month I'd found a therapist and start weekly sessions. Somewhere in there is the visit to the Pregnancy Counseling Center.

February 2009 - We'd settled on adoption and had concluded that extra-familial is the only way to go. Adoption within either of our families felt too messy to consider. I believe this was the month we found Catholic Social Services and started working with them. Lots of reading and crying ensued.

March 2009 - Ultrasound with terrible, terrible, terrible doctor. Immediately transferred care to midwives. Athena's Crohn's symptoms were dramatically reduced.

April 2009 - I was put on seasonal leave at work (annual four month lay off without the benefit of collecting unemployment. My stress about money sky rocketed). Athena and I began crafting the birthing plan. Touring the hospital was a significantly traumatizing experience which lead to the realistic fear that Athena would run away into the woods to deliver the Visitor. Alternative plans started hatching.

May 2009 - Ultrasound with the awesome tech. First positive hospital experience! Midwives found in Athena's home town associated with a private birthing center. Athena and I read piles of prospective adoptive parents profiles at Catholic Social Services. After reading the 11 that fit our initial screening criteria we took three profiles home. There were two that really struck us. One that seemed too good to be true in most respects, with a couple significant reservations. One pretty damn good without much to question. One was a ringer. Just in case. I read each profile at least twice every day for the following ten days. Clawing my way away from depression I managed to celebrate my birthday.

June 2009 - We scheduled a meeting with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum. Once they're back in town we met. The significant reservations were all flipped on their heads in that conversation. Each concern became a boon. We exchange e-mails and start working out times to meet for dinner et cetera. Athena transferred prenatal care to the midwives in her home town. We became half time residents in her parents' home (practically speaking) for the check ups.

July 2009 - My brother asked that we consider him and his wife as adoptive parents. In the discussion I told him we'd already considered it and laid out our reasons for not going with intra-familial adoption.

August 2009 - We wait-wait-waited. Half way through the month I resumed work. Athena's due date was August 29th. We were praying the Visitor wouldn't show up on her birthday, the 31st.

September 2009 - The Visitor arrived! He went home with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum from the birthing center. I took a week off work to help care for Athena at her parents' house. The labor was long and difficult. Athena lost a lot of blood and was structurally unsound for some time. After a week I returned to work, leaving Athena at her parents' house to continue her recovery. On the drive home I talked with both of my brothers for three hours about why they were not parenting Festus and why asking for custody now was inappropriate and disrespectful. Athena stayed with her parents for two more weeks before returning to the apartment with me. It was one of the most difficult times in our relationship and in my life.

October 2009 - Visits with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum continued. Contact was a little weird at first, and somewhat stressful. I often felt, in the early visits, like I was going to a job interview (if I didn't dress right, impress them, make everything easy and pleasant, they'd decide I shouldn't be a part of Festus' life and cut off contact. I didn't really believe it, but that's how it felt). We confirmed that Athena's Crohn's was in full remission.

December 2009 - Athena's family joined us for a visit to Ms Scarlet, Prof Plum, and Festus for the first time.

January 2009 - I terminated treatment with my therapist.

Fast forward to the present. . .

Contact with Festus, Prof Plum, and Ms Scarlet continues and is getting better all the time. At this point I consider them friends I would enjoy spending time with regardless of an adoption agreement. My family still hasn't seen Festus. That continues to be difficult for me. Athena's health remains better today than it had been at any point since Crohn's first manifested. Her pregnancy, in a very real and literal way, saved her life.

Today Athena and I are still together, still living in our little tree house apartment (there's a bay window surrounded by trees. It's quite lovely). We're making plans for our future and long for a dishwasher.

Open Adoption Roundtable #18

2010-08-02T12:24:00.002-04:00

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be part of the Open Adoption Bloggers list to participate, or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points--feel free to adapt or expand on them.

More of the Roundtable

We each interacted with at least one professional during the adoption process (agency, lawyer, facilitator, consultant, hospital social worker, etc.). What was one thing that they did that was most supportive of open adoption? What one thing was least supportive?

Strangely I thought this would be difficult to write about until I spoke with Athena about it. In our conversation we came to realize that we didn't encounter much direct opposition. In truth we didn't encounter any direct opposition from any of the professionals we encountered. Oddly the person who was most directly supportive of adoption was also the least professional person we encountered. That was the pregnancy counseling center woman (the full account is here). But it feels like a terrible cop out to simply put up a link to an old post and say "there it is." However I can't ignore the role that woman had in my experience of Athena's pregnancy and our decision to make an adoption plan. Instead I'll take a different tack and talk about two pairs of people. The two negative experiences we had with professionals and the two most positive experiences we had.

The woman at the pregnancy center was hugely supportive of adoption. She frequently referred to it as "the bravest," "most courageous," "most loving" choice. She was also, flat out, the least supportive of us as human beings. She did, after all, threaten that Athena would die of breast cancer if she had an abortion.

The close second in "least supportive professional" category goes to the obstetric gynecologist at the hospital. The full account of this can be found here. I honestly don't know how much of her terrible bedside manner was related to our adoption plan. It's possible she's just not very good with humans. Early in the visit she mentioned there was a note in Athena's file indicating we were considering adoption. She asked us if that was correct and we confirmed it was. The reason she hits number two on the list is how she ended the appointment. For the most part it could have been brushed off as a bad doctor's appointment and left at that. Until she left the room. Just before closing the door she uttered the one word we couldn't bear to hear. "Congratulation." Here I'll quote from my earlier post because I don't think I can do justice to how I felt hearing that word right now.

" She had slipped out the door before I could react. I wanted to grab her by her highlights and pull her down to a chair. I wanted to lecture her about the gross insensitivity she'd displayed. I wanted to grab her by the head and shake it until she understood. We didn't plan this. We don't want this. We shouldn't be here! But we're dealing with it. We're being responsible. It's taking everything we have to put one foot in front of the other and survive but we're doing it! This is so hard that I lock myself in the hardware room at work to cry, but I'm still here! Every day takes everything we have but we got to this appointment. We even put up with being treated like cattle on a conveyor. We're trying so hard to do the right thing! "Congratulations." One word and it felt like every sacrifice we'd made had been spat upon. I wanted to breathe fire and melt the building down to glass. "Congratulations" meant this shouldn't be hard. It meant we shouldn't make the adoption plan. "Congratulations" meant we should choose to parent and give up everything we want for each other. "Congratulations" meant she was too busy to attempt understanding us or any situation she'd not found herself in personally. "Congratulations" meant we were too alien to matter."

Those were the bad parts.

Now that catharsis is out of the way let's move on to something sunnier. There were a lot of good experiences with professionals during the creation of our adoption plan. The single most supportive person I encountered was Julie, our adoption social worker at Catholic Social Services. Julie was incredible. She lent us every book she had to read about open adoption. Actually she was the one who introduced us to the idea of open adoption. Neither of us had heard of it before. We were still thinking of closed adoption days where we'd have to negotiate if we wanted to see our boy immediately after birth, let alone after placement! Julie consistently affirmed the difficulty of the work we were doing and reminded us over and over again that this was just a plan. We could change everything at any time. The most important thing was to be honest with ourselves and each other. There wasn't one thing she did. It was everything Julie did.

With an eye at symmetry it only seems right that I should mention another positive professional interaction. This one caught me by surprise. Athena and I went to the hospital for her ultrasound. I believe it was the six month check. We had been preparing myself for a terribly emotional experience. I wasn't sure if I could even be in the room. I promised Athena I would try. Imagine my surprise when the ultrasound tech had us both laughing within minutes of entering the room! We were there for about half an hour chatting away. That was a very important moment for me. Not only did the ultrasound give me the chance to see the Visitor in a new way, but the tech gave me the chance to see the pregnancy in a new way. In observing his approach to us I began to understand much more about the apparent dichotomy we were in. Pregnancy was funny and scary. It was lovely and terrible. It was joyous and horribly sad. It both connected us to life and isolated us. Most importantly all of this was okay. All of it was normal. The Visitor was rolling and tumbling and showing off for us for a solid twenty five minutes. The tech had taken over 100 images. He sifted through and selected the best 30, printed them for us, and headed for the door. Just before leaving he said something that surprised me. "Good luck."

Reader's Reply

2010-07-28T09:54:00.002-04:00

I decided to respond to your comments on "Under Every Freshly Turned Stone" in a new post which is separate from my own review of the article in question. For the sake of clarity I'll reply to each commenter in the order their comments were received. The writer's name links back to the comment in question.

The Mama ~ No need to worry about propriety for my sake. I'll be interested in rereading the article to look for degrading comments about women. Truth be told I only managed to read a couple sentences before making the post looking for others' feelings on it.

Sandy ~ The state registries do seem like a power grab more than anything. I didn't know such a thing existed. Thankfully I was also unaware of how difficult it can be to get a birthfather's name on a birth certificate! It may be because Athena's labor took place at a midwife birthing center instead of a hospital or because I was with her for every appointment with the social worker and signed the same reams of paper work that she did. My name went on the cert right next to hers without a problem. The notion of state registries failing as a result of trans-state adoptions is a very troubling one, nearly as troubling as their existence and their legal ramifications in the first place.

Artemis ~ Thanks for taking the time to comment. In this context "no response" is still a very useful response.

LeMira ~ I second your "first," if that makes any sense. I look forward to rereading the article now more than ever (as much as one can look forward to a nauseating experience) just because of the phrase "macho losers." Reading into what you've written I'd guess that this woman is still rooted in concrete operations (the inability to engage in abstract thought which is necessary to approach compassion from a "what's it like in their shoes" perspective [this isn't intended to be an insult nor insinuate she's dumb. Carl Jung estimated between 70% and 80% of the human population would never reach abstract cognitive operations]. Without abstraction we cannot separate reality from our own direct perception, hence her apparent inability to empathize with first-mothers/fathers). I'd also be a bit surprised (ah assumptions. . . here we go!) if there weren't an element of paternal estrangement and possibly racism involved in her hermeneutic (world-view).

Lia ~ Wow. I definitely didn't get to that part of the article. Wailing children, domestic violence, sleeping around, and total incapacity to express love? This sounds like a real piece of work. I'm sorry for sending you to such a dismissive trollop. But thanks for taking the time to respond anyway.

The reason I asked for input from everyone was to get an idea of where other readers are. It is easy to feel like I'm constantly ripping open my nerve endings and getting hyper sensitized to perceived sexism and pro - life/choice bias in adoption. Thanks again to everyone who responded and to everyone who didn't, that's okay. No worries.

Wanton Theft: Bloglove

While I have your attention, go here, here, and here. Be the supportive, wonderful people I know you to be. Read with open minds for these ladies have wonderful and very different perspectives. Leave comments of appreciation. They deserve more than they get. They deserve more than we can give.

Be gentle out there everyone. It can be a tough world out there. No need to make it any harder.

Under Every Freshly Turned Stone

2010-07-24T11:45:00.003-04:00

I came across this today. I haven't been able to read all the way through the article yet. My mind is still too foggy to write a proper response. Last night's insomnia is doing me no favors. However, I just had an interesting idea. Consider this a call to reader participation! First there are a few caveats (I know, I'm dreadfully predictable in that regard. Please bear with me)

Whether you've been reading for a while or just stopping by I'd like to hear from you. I value everyone's opinion. That includes those that disagree with my own. Please take a few minutes and participate. Anonymous commenting is available. Similarly, if you want to write something but don't want it made public, simply mark it "PRIVATE" and I'll respect your wishes.

Here's the idea. Follow the link and read the article. Then come back here and post your response in the comments section of this post. The idea here is that you get to have a fresh eye at the read without my input predisposing you to experience it one way or another. Next week I'll post my take on the article and respond to everyone who posted public comments.

I'm actually quite excited about this idea so please participate if you can. Lurkers, first timers, and everyone in between are invited.

The Sonless Father

2010-07-24T04:48:00.006-04:00

***Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. This is an insomnia inspired post and has not been proof-read. Editing and re-posting may occur by Wednesday***

Recently Athena and I visited Ms Scarlet, Prof Plum, and Festus along with Athena's immediate family. Festus wasn't too sure about that many tall people staring at him but he eventually warmed to the idea. That was almost entirely due to Ms Scarlet and Athena's dad playing with and generally distracting him. All in all it was a pretty good visit. There will be more written to recount the events of that later. I bring it up now because it was shortly after that visit that I began thinking about the terminology I use to describe my relationship with Festus.

If you've read many of the other posts on this blog you've no doubt seen me refer to him as my son. I've also referred to myself on numerous occasions as his birth/first-father. What I am wondering is how accurate these terms are. In the abstract sense what do these terms mean? Am I his father? Is he my son?

In a very real and observable way the answer is no. I am not his father. Festus doesn't live with me. I am not responsible for his rearing. He won't grow up calling me "dad" and I'll never be the person he reluctantly turns to in adolescence when things feel out of control. When establishing his individuality it won't be me he's differentiating from. That also means it's me he didn't identify with. These are facts I'm coming to terms with, sacrifices I've made. It may seem strange for this to come up given my primary reasons for choosing to place him with an adoptive family. To reiterate: since childhood I've known I did not want to parent. That knowledge, unfortunately, doesn't mean these sacrifices are without pain. Quite the opposite. They hurt a good deal. While these specific thoughts may not hurt me as much as a person who fully desired to raise his/her child I believe these circumstances do compound my sense of guilt.

Feeling guilty and selfish is something every first-parent experiences.

I've been staring at that sentence for several minutes. Attempting to continue, I've tried out a dozen different follow statements to continue the paragraph. Each time I re-read that sentence a part of me becomes paralyzed. If I open this up I don't get to close it again. I may not get to sleep tonight if I'm honest about this sense of guilt and shame. The truth is that's the deadliest part of the adoption experience for me. It's not the sacrifice, the uncertainty, nor even socially endorsed ostracism. Shame. Despite my best efforts there are still parts of me that wish I could take back the last two years. The strange thing is the degree of compartmentalization. I feel no shame or guilt at all when I see my son. I wouldn't change anything in those moments. All the shame I experience is internalized. I'm ashamed for. . . what? I don't know why. Do I wish I had made different choices? No. Do I wish I had handled Athena's pregnancy differently? Only in rare instances and those usually related to doing dishes or feeling overwhelmed. So why this sense of shame? Because secretly I feel I was intensely selfish in my decision.

I feel selfish because I didn't sacrifice myself and my life for my son. I feel shame because I believe I was selfish. My guilt is compounded because of the circumstances that lead me to place my son for adoption. I didn't do it because I could not raise him. I did it because I would not raise him. That statement is my mental flog. It is rare that it does so but when the self-flagellation takes hold it is more than cantankerous. It is sinister and ruthless. There is nothing anyone can say to me that is more dehumanizing, cruel, or torturous than what I tell myself already. This is one arena in which I feel comfortable saying I speak not only for myself but for most, if not all, first-parents.

All this because I am not a father.

But what of my son? Is he, in fact, my son at all? If I am not his father how can he be? Here is where things get strange and language shows how utterly incapable it is of accurately representing reality. Festus is my son. Just as I am not his father he is my son. It is observable, objective, and real. His hair is starting to curl like mine. There are similarities in facial structure and the build of his body. For eight months (remember, we didn't find out Athena was pregnant the moment Festus was conceived) Athena and I cared for him the best we could. I must say the best we could was damn impressive. I'm very proud of how we responded to his presence. We completely rearranged our lives to aid every aspect of Festus' development. I cannot think of a single aspect of our daily lives that did not directly revolve around care for him. At the end of those eight months I was weary beyond my bones. I hadn't anything left to give. I was completely tapped out. I gave Festus all the help I could muster and I am dedicated to continue doing so until my death.

I am not his father but he is still my son. Prof Plum is his real father. Ms Scarlet is his real mother. He is my son. He is Athena's son.

On not being a Bastard

2010-07-21T14:50:00.002-04:00

At this time I feel it's worth reminding all readers that this blog is coming from the context and experience of a birth-father. As a result the focus is on arenas in which men are the silent minority. I know women have a hard time seeking gender equality. It's not a fair world. Men have a lot of advantages, especially so in the professional world. Just as a woman has the right, indeed the obligation, the speak up when discriminated against so, too, do I.

Adoption - The Un-Manliest Enterprise, Part 1

2010-07-20T10:32:00.004-04:00

I'm going to be looking at some themes in perceived gender roles, rights of passage, and socially endorsed expression of gender roles in this post. As a result there's going to be a lot of discussion about what "society expects" and some fairly global language about pressures on men , boys, and how they should behave to affirm those identities. I won't waste everyone's time with caveats every time I say something definitive. Consider this the catch-all: every man experiences social pressures differently. This is my experience and understanding. It has been garnered not only by direct experience but also through intensive study of anthropology and meandering study of gender issues in the U.S.A. and abroad.

I've heard since early childhood that if every man could just get in touch with his feminine side all conflict would end, world peace would be declared, famine would end, total racial equality would occur overnight, border disputes would end, global warming would be reversed, and there would never be another natural disaster as long as humanity survived, which would be forever. Naturally. Okay, I made up the one about natural disasters.

Sounds pretty good. So how do we get in touch with our feminine side and get the ball rolling here? Watch Sex and the City, use hand lotion, shave obsessively, consider allowing your significant other (who is a woman, naturally) to put nail polish on you for fun, cry when you see kittens, openly love everyone by giving them lots of hugs and listening intently to everything they say, and start asking people if those pants make your butt look big. Admittedly I made up this entire paragraph. However it isn't very far from the ideas typically expressed about how a man can successfully touch femininity. The general approach seems to be something like this:

Man - Masculinity = Man + Femininity

How wonderfully convenient that it should be so simple. Unfortunately that isn't actually the case. Femininity is its own entity. I believe it is much more than the lack of masculinity. If the equation above were true that insinuates the default position for humans is feminine. Therefore masculinity only shows up what it crushes femininity to take control. Right from the premise we see this is a set up for a fight. If that's our basic understanding of gender there cannot be a constructive dialogue because oppressor and victim roles are already firmly established. More so the oppressor can do nothing corrective to the power structure short of disappearing entirely! Even more dangerous is accepts femininity as being inherently fragile. As a result the only strong sense of femininity is one that is masculinity-proof. This is a very destructive view. It also happens to be the view of many "feminists"* I've encountered.

*quotes used because I believe these women are co-opting a term to lend credence to their views

We also encounter troubling messages on the other side. I recently read a quote from a popular television show that got me thinking about this. On a crime show, the studly, troubled, masculine police officer speaks about his obligation to love and care for his children like this;

". . . it's not an obsession. It's a love. It's a connection that transcends anything and everything. I would die for my children. And there's nothing in the world that will change that. Ever."

Why would he die for his children? Is he going into battle? Does he expect their lives to be threatened by raiders in the harvest season? No. But why wouldn't it be manly for him to respond "I would sacrifice my happiness," "do even what I consider unimaginable for their benefit," or even "I will love them completely"? His statement reflected a preparation for death but not for compassion. Why is this the case? The answer is, unfortunately, a very simple one. In the western world masculinity has become associated with war, ownership, and procreation. From an evolutionary standpoint this makes some sense because it means the man will have resources, the will to defend them, and progeny to carry on the line who are likely to share those traits. In short he's got enough testosterone to keep humanity going. But this has become so overblown as to lampoon whatever biological basis may have existed. We're making fun of ourselves. It's now extended to other arenas. Mild homophobia is manly. Working with large, heavy bits of steel (preferably phallic) is manly. Listening to Country music or Classic Rock is manly, as is driving a pickup truck. Driving a sport car is compensatory manliness. These messages are all around us. All one need do is turn on the television and watch ten minutes of commercials. Oh, right, it's also manly to get skin cancer so one should never apply sunscreen and become very, very tan.

But more than any of that being masculine means ownership and procreation. Those add up to fatherhood. Being a man means being a father. Where does this put first-fathers? The primary directive of manliness has been violated. We have willingly surrendered our child. We have forsaken ownership. Our bravado is now hollow because no matter what we achieve, nor how virile we are, we could not care for our child.

Now I must transition and speak only to my own experience.

For a long time it felt like a formal declaration of inadequacy had been tattooed on my face. Everyone around me could see that I was not a real man. I was an unprepared boy playing dress up in adult clothes. It seemed something was fundamentally wrong with me that I didn't have the ability nor the desire to raise my son. Somewhere inside of me there was a horrible mutation that made me less than human. No matter what I did from here on I was not a man. I was not a father. I was a pathetic freak that would disappear from the face of the earth. Evolution made a mistake with me that it was soon to correct.

I count myself fortunate that I sought therapy as soon as Athena told me she was pregnant. Through those weekly sessions I was able to work through and unpack all the baggage I had brought into the pregnancy and develop a new definition for masculinity. It doesn't have a check list. It doesn't fight femininity tooth and claw for dominance. My masculinity is my own. No one can take it from me because no one gave it to me. It had to be built up piece by piece. Masculinity is the confidence that I am exactly who and what I am. My sense of gender is my sense of self. That is to say I cannot use gender to define who I am. First I had to know myself, then love myself, and recognize my confidence and strength. Then I could look outward to see what it means to be a man. To be a man is to be me. Just as it is to be you. Or to be a woman.

I know my femininity and masculinity because I know myself. As a culture we're getting the cart before the horse. If anyone has a genuine claim to being a man it is a birthfather. Few others have had to deconstruct and rebuild their identity as thoroughly as an honest first-father.

That's all for the moment. No doubt there will be more on this later.

Addendum in response to some questions put forth.

Reflection: Lies at the Pregnancy Center

2010-07-14T10:08:00.002-04:00

A dark gloom had cast itself over us. No one was surprised. It was early January and the winters here are as grey as they are cold: disturbingly so. It had been a few days, maybe a week, since Athena had broken the news to me. I don't remember exactly how long it was and I'm pretty sure I couldn't have told you then. Days had been melting into one another. Morning and afternoon smearing themselves over into the evening darkness. That can happen when you don't see the sun for a week. More so when what little light there is disappears at 4:30 in the afternoon. When you haven't left your apartment for days, are dehydrated, and so stressed out that the thought of washing dishes makes you burst into tears, remembering the date seems trite.

Around the corner from my parents' house there was and is a Pregnancy Counseling Center. Since neither of us had any idea what to do next Athena and I decided to head there. It was a house that had been converted into a little waiting room and a couple of offices. The girl who was interning as the receptionist was quite nice. Soft spoken and with kindness in her eyes she handed Athena some paperwork to fill out after asking what brought us there. I was amazed at how confident Athena sounded when she replied "I think I'm pregnant." The word still caught in my throat. Every time I thought it I went blank. Every time I said it I felt like it was a guillotine blade rushing down toward me. But there stood Athena, bold as life, saying "pregnant" as though it were any other word. I was amazed.

The counselor came out of her office and introduced herself. She was clearly surprised to see facial hair in the waiting room and commented on how nice it was to see a man there. She asked if we would be comfortable with the intern sitting in on our session to observe. I think we said yes, but I honestly have no memory of her presence. It's possible she did an excellent job disappearing. It's also possible that we said "no." In any case, before proceeding the counselor asked Athena to take another pregnancy test. She explained how it worked ("It doesn't matter if the line is pale, or crooked, or dark, or broken") and sent Athena off to the restroom. Once again the test showed positive in less than half the time allotted. That was a sight we'd grow accustomed to in the future. We sat in a couple chairs and the counselor closed the door to her office. She started giving us papers and flyers with information on them. She talked with us about how it's Athena's choice and she can do whatever she wants to do. I started noticing the way she was phrasing things. I grew suspicious of her reasons for being there. She asked Athena when her last period had been. Neither of us recalled exactly so the woman estimated from the earliest possible date. "So you're seven weeks pregnant."

Here's where the foley artist plays the scratching record.

I won't get into all the gory details of our sex life, but I knew that was incorrect. I knew without doubt that conception couldn't have occurred for another two weeks after that date. So I mentioned this. The counselor replied "well we go by the beginning of the previous period because that's when conception was possible." "So you're ignoring factual information in favor of rough estimates?" I thought to myself. My suspicion of this woman doubled.

More papers were handed to us with phone numbers of organizations to call to get Athena and Festus prenatal care. We were about to leave when the woman asked us "do you want to see what your baby looks like?" My first instinct was to break her jaw right then and there. "NO!" I screamed in my head. "That's not going to represent what our 'baby' looks like! You don't even know how long she's been pregnant!"

"Sure," Athena said. Clearly I wore a look of horror because Athena added "I'm curious." Out came the plastic case with models of fetuses at various stages of development. This was a tactic so brazen I couldn't even respond. I knew there wouldn't be an isolated fetus model. It was a full series. We couldn't see just one. We had to see all of them. Models for everything from one week (which, based on my research since, looked more like one month) to six months. I tried to look away. I tried not to pay attention. I knew this was manipulative horse shit and I would not be taken by it. Despite my efforts I couldn't help but see. I couldn't help notice the woman place her left hand along the edge of the plastic tray that notes the age of the fetus. I couldn't help but see her point to the "Week 11" model.

My outrage was expressed to Athena on the drive home. We looked at the paperwork the counselor gave us. Included was the dark red flyer entitled "Why aren't Women being Told?" It claimed abortion was the number one cause of breast cancer. I wanted to burn the counseling center down. "I know the study they're referencing" I said to Athena, "but this is total crap."

I thought of the college age girl I saw in the waiting room on our way out. I thought of the lies she was about to be told. She would be told that if she was pregnant her choices were delivery or death. She would be told how easy adoptions are now days. The scare tactics would be poured on by a "loving" motherly figure until the girl's mind had been made for her.

This wasn't a pregnancy counseling center. It was an anti-abortion ministry.

I don't much care where one stands on the moral issues of abortion and birthing. It doesn't matter to me when a fetus becomes a human. I do, however, care a great deal for anyone in a vulnerable position who's brave enough to ask for help. When people are lying to frightened, overwhelmed, and confused young girls and women to further their own moral agenda I consider it evil. In my book respecting human life begins with respecting humans.

Absence before absence

2010-07-02T09:53:00.004-04:00

I haven't been able to keep my promised posting schedule this week. Life has been getting the better of me lately. Athena has been sick all week. Between work, cooking, caring, and haggling with mechanics trying to get my car functional again there hasn't been much time for writing anything. Let's be honest here. There hasn't been much time for thinking. Fortunately Athena is on the mend. We'll be visiting her family this weekend and should be able to get some medicinal aid for her as well. Unfortunately there's a long weekend coming up which means less writing for a while. I'll attempt returning to a heavier writing schedule next week. There are a couple notions that have been crashing around my brain that need to be fleshed out.

Also, please check the pole at the top right of the page. I'd like some input about what you're interested in seeing here. Please take the handful of seconds necessary to respond. Whether you follow, read anonymously, or are visiting for the first time I want your opinion.
Poll is now closed.

Thanks

Open Adoption Roundtable #17

2010-06-25T12:44:00.005-04:00

More of the Roundtable

I'm new to the roundtable notion, but here goes nothing:

The question at hand, courtesy of Susiebook, is what I wouldn't like to tell the other members of my adoption triad? Or what would I rather not know about them?

Unfortunately this is just a wee bit awkward as a fellow member of my adoption triad is also a blogger. However I think I can honestly answer the question without saying everything that I'm trying to keep private. In short I'll be talking around what I'd rather they not know.

Honestly there's only one thing that comes to mind when pondering this question. I consider my family. I don't want the other triad members to know how the adoption plan and current adoption relationship effected the relationships I have with my immediate family. I won't get into the gory details in part because I don't remember enough of them to be accurate. Here's the basics:

Be sure to keep in mind this is a reductum absurdum.

My family never spent much time listening to me. It wasn't until my brothers (I'm the youngest of three) moved out of the house/state together that I had much of a voice. My parents said they never felt like they got a chance to know me before that happened. I was 17 at the time. By most accounts they were a bit late. Remembering that I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that no one believed me when I consistently affirmed my desire never to parent. Needless to say they were dumbfounded when Athena and I told them we were looking into adoption for Festus.

The following nine months were the most tumultuous of my life. Unfortunately Athena was already six weeks pregnant at that time. It wasn't the pregnancy that was difficult. It was my family. Both my brothers and parents did their best to support us through the process. That meant pretending nothing was going on. It became clear our conversations and actions weren't being taken at face value shortly after Festus was born and went home with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum. My family chose that as the appropriate time to ask why Festus hadn't been placed with one of my brothers.

I'm already getting more specific than I meant to. The point being my relationships with my family will never be the same. There has been a lot of healing in the pursuant year, but they'll never be the same. The unbridled confidence in the trust and support of my family is gone. I love them. I'm enjoying spending time with them again. They are not the comrades I thought they were. They don't "have my back" as it were.

That's what I don't want my triad to know. I don't want them to know the growth I underwent in the adoption rent me away from my family. I don't want them to know how lonely I feel. I don't want them to know the sense of hurt, disgust, and bewilderment I carry. I don't want them to know because secretly I want my triad to like my family. If my triad likes my family then maybe I got it all wrong. I want to be wrong about them. I want the last two years to be a series of misunderstandings and miscommunications gone horribly wrong. If I'm wrong they didn't hurt me and they didn't ignore me. If I'm wrong they listened to me.

More of the Roundtable

"How Could She. . ."

2010-06-25T11:25:00.002-04:00

I've heard the question "how could she do that?" more than I care to. It never fails to impress upon me how certain many people are that their ideology is the right one. Because they've never found themselves in a position to seriously consider adoption they "could never do that" and "can't imagine how a person could do something like that." I think my favorite is "something has to be wrong with you to abandon your own flesh and blood." I often overhear these things said before people know I'm a firstfather. I'm directly told these things after I've informed them.

The prejudice runs deep. So deep it's considered okay to tell someone they're inherently broken, nigh inhuman, because s/he made a difficult choice. James Gritter has once again addressed these attitudes in a book. I haven't read it myself, though it's now on the list. Fellow blogger Luna reviewed the book and answered a pair of questions about her experience here.

"As Gritter points out, the more compassionate query is what dire circumstances led to such a difficult and life altering decision (p27). Gritter suggests the question 'How could you…' may only be appropriate when posed by an adoptee. 'A question from his soul deserves an answer from hers,” he writes, even though it is “an experience for which there is no adequate language' (p31)." - shamelessly stolen from Luna.

I love that turn of phrase Gritter suggests. "What dire circumstances. . ." It cuts to the quick of things very well. Most often that's exactly the case. Pregnancy occurs surrounded by chaos and a time-limited inability to parent. But here is where the standard version and my story diverge, yet again. I could parent. I don't know how all the details would have worked out but I could have made it work. I chose not to.

My earliest memories of my projected future in childhood involved parenting. In kindergarten I imagined growing up a raising a family much like my own. In second grade I replaced my future career of psychology for my father's in the pastorate. By the age of eight I had changed my mind. I didn't want a family with children. I didn't want to raise children. I couldn't imagine being responsible for another person's life. In the years following my attitude toward parenting has changed a little but not enough to convince me that it's an endeavor I want to participate in. That's the truth of it.

I don't want to parent. I've never been able to integrate it into my sense of self despite years of being told to do so. Much like trying to talk a man into being a woman it just didn't work. It's either there or it isn't. While varying shades of grey exist I don't believe it can be significantly altered nor fabricated. That is why, for as long as my sense of self has been tied to my own experience, I have no identified as a father figure.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that Athena feels the same way. Even more so I'm lucky that both of us were being honest in discussing children before her pregnancy. Our "dire circumstances" were being in a situation neither of us wanted to be, ever.

I think that's all for today.

*******************

Disclosure:

This post is probably a bit scattered and almost certainly rather negative. Life circumstances are pushing me around a bit and my stress is on the rise. Car trouble is teaming up with low funds to make for a less than joyous week. Hopefully you'll find me in better spirits next week. Until then I hope you have a sunny and relaxing weekend. Good luck to you all and be gentle with each other. It can be a tough world. No need to make it any harder.

A Great Visit

2010-06-23T10:50:00.002-04:00

When first making the adoption plan for Festus with Ms Scarlet and Prof. Plum the question of how often to visit came up. Pretty quickly we settled on getting together once a month and an incidental contact that may happen in between was a bonus. Athena and I figured that we would want to see Ms Scarlet and Prof. Plum that often just to get a chance to have some kind of relationship with them before the actual placement. We never scheduled a regular time in the month for us to get together. We're all busy people and Prof. Plum has to travel a fair amount for his job. Similarly, in the regular school year, I have to work weekends sporadically so establishing the third Friday of every month just wasn't practical. It's worked out quite well. I don't think we've missed a month yet and the visits have continued to become more and more casual. Then came our visit at the beginning of June.

The wine, in truth, wasn't entirely to my taste. It was a little more acidic than I'm used to, which is strange for a lover of Chilean wines to say. That's the only negative thing I can say. It was a wonderful evening. Athena and I had the chance to see Festus crawl for the first time! He had been crawling for a while, we simply hadn't seen him do it before. He was very happy to show off this new accomplishment for us. Festus was quite the little showman that afternoon playing his musical instruments and grunting excitedly. For the first time in a couple months he seemed happy to spend some time interacting directly with Athena. The previous two visits he wasn't too happy about sitting with anyone who wasn't mom or dad. His coy glances made while chewing safely on Ms Scarlet's shoulder were very cute, but not as satisfying as the toothy (all four of them) grins we got this time.

But the best part was talking with Prof Plum and Ms Scarlet. There was, naturally, a fair amount of chatting about Festus and his latest fascinations. Some of the best conversation that evening, however, was about life in general. It felt less like an agreed upon child visitation and more like two couples getting together for dinner. I can report happily that we, all four of us, enjoy each others' company. Are we to the point where we call each other to make spurt of the moment plans to catch dinner? No. Do I think it's possible to get there? Yes.

It feels like the "hard work" of spending time with each other is really paying off. The awkwardness of the first getting-to-know-you conversations is melting away leaving friendship in its stead. Little by little, brick by brick, minute by minute, we're building a friendship of peers. We're building a family.

Regular Life

2010-06-21T10:29:00.002-04:00

This post is a bit of a departure. I'm going to talk a bit more about my daily experience. Normal life stuff that isn't directly connected with my son, my identity as a birthfather, nor the adoption process. If you're not interested in that I suggest skipping down past the break where I'll write a bit about my first fathers' day as a birthfather.

I can now report that the days leading up to Fathers' Day were the most difficult I had to deal with this week. That is, however, not entirely for apparent reasons. There's been a lot of tumult in my life these days. My health has been flagging for a while as I've been combating an infected wisdom tooth for a little over a month now. I haven't been able to work in that time which means no money has been coming in. Similarly I haven't been getting out of the apartment much at all so the only social contact I've had is Athena. Don't get me wrong. I love spending time with her! But it's important to see other humans too. Reading other authors' blogs has helped assuage that a bit but as we all can recognize it isn't the same as a face to face conversation with a good friend.

As a result of not getting out and seeing people, having my daily routine demolished, I've lost a sense of grounding. As Athena put it, "all the cues you normally use to tell yourself that you're fine and life is okay aren't there." Very astute of her to point that out. So I've been feeling emotionally chaotic. It is typical that when I lose a sense of routine and regular little doses of accomplishment (I just built a wall, a bike, a 30' pile of stage-ready rubble) I tend to focus on the negative and dreary side of things. That really came out this week and relates to future plans for the blog here, which is why I mention it.

I've decided that I need to get more regular into my regular life and less digital. So I'm going to be reducing my posting schedule a bit. I've been trying to get something up every day and succeeding in posting at least every other day. I'm going to be stepping to something more like two to four posts per week. There will be a new balancing act going on for me as I attempt to integrate writing regularly about adoption into my normal routines, which presently have been completely supplanted by blogging. Another change you may notice is more focus on the contemporary. So far I've written mostly about the pregnancy and a few examples of the extremely difficult experiences Athena and I had during that time. That was very cathartic. It will continue to be a regular subject but I'll be adding the contemporary experience. The adoption process was a very difficult one, but also extremely successful! Athena and I are quite happy with our decision and have great relationships with Ms Scarlet, Prof Plum, and Festus. In the future I'm going to try to present a more balanced view of what adoption actually means to my daily experience. The subjects I've written about here to date have been very important. It's not surprising to me that I chose to write about what I did. Those were some of the most troubling experiences I had during Athena's pregnancy. In a Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs sort of way it makes sense. I had to get the most pressing issues of my chest first. Now I feel better prepared to move on and proclaim there is light at the end of the tunnel. Because it is true that things get better. My life was never harder than when making an adoption plan. Similarly I've never felt better in who I am than as a birthfather.

*********************************

I was worried for several days. Not knowing how I would experience Fathers' Day was a bit nerve racking. This was my first Fathers' Day as a birthfather. I went on a tear of reading about adoption and infertility. A part of me I couldn't admit to believed that if I became well informed and well adjusted enough in my understanding of adoption I could avoid any pain Fathers' Day would bring. So I kept reading. I was digging through everything I could find on the experience of adult adoptees and the reckoning that comes with infertility. But there was something that drove me more than wanting to avoid pain this weekend. As I read page after page of anger, hurt, and confusion something kept tugging at me. There was one thought that kept popping up; "don't let him feel this way." I kept reading. I kept going again and again to these archives of rage, pain, and poisonous revulsion. If I read enough I could understand. If I understood thoroughly enough maybe I could empathize with Festus. Maybe he wouldn't have to feel this angry and hurt. If I became an expert on everything related to adoption I could rationalize and explain away every iota of hurt and confusion. Maybe if I knew enough he wouldn't have to hate me.

That was a very difficult idea for me to admit to myself. I was three days deep in my research before I was so upset that I had to look it in the face. It took a long conversation with Athena before I could bring that to the surface. But there was a big surprise in store for me later.

The next morning I awoke feeling better than I had in a week. Athena and I spent a long day relaxing and enjoying each others' company. We purchased a card for her father. Athena also bought a small journal for me to use as a wine journal for Birthfathers' Day. On Sunday morning we planned to make a day trip to her parents' house to celebrate Fathers' Day. First thing that morning I asked Athena what she wanted for breakfast. "Just eggs, I want to leave in the morning." I chose to exercise "dad's prerogative" and made pancakes too. It was a beautiful day. We drove to Athena's parents' house and hung about. We spent time stretching on the carpet, playing in the garden, getting chair massages (her mom is a massage therapist and is learning some new techniques) and eating a fantastic dinner. It was a wonderful day. All except for the drive home, which construction doubled in length.

My closing thoughts on Fathers' Day; Festus will be as he will be. He will love me as he can, and be just as surly as any other adolescent boy. He'll be frustrated by me "not getting it" both when it is and isn't appropriate. There will be many things in common with my own experience. There will also be new challenges that I have made the choice to face. I don't know what they'll be. There isn't much out there about the experience of adoptees who grow up in open adoptions. We're making it up as we go. Today, as a father of sorts, I'm okay with that.

Fathers' Day

2010-06-19T12:26:00.002-04:00

I may reflect more on my experience of Fathers' Day later. That's not what this post is about. As, no doubt, many of you are aware the Saturday before Mothers' Day has been declare (if unofficially) Birthmothers' Day, I thought I'd personally call for today to be Birthfathers' day. The Birthmothers' Day celebration this year was an exceptional event. Our local branch of Catholic Social Services did a really nice job commemorating the joy, loss, and general intensity of Birthmotherhood as reflected in the mirror of a traditional Mothers' Day celebration. It was complete with fruit cocktail and unappetizing bagels. I'd like to mark today as special for recognizing the joy, loss, and intensity of Birthfatherhood.

Honoring Birthfathers Today

Make a call. Send a text message. Write an e-mail. Post a card.

Tell a birthfather you appreciate him.

But please, don't say "congratulations" or "happy" unless you know it will be well received. This is going to be a difficult weekend for many men. I recommend the terms honor, celebrate, recognize, and appreciate instead.

A rant about relationships

2010-06-16T11:40:00.003-04:00

I promise I won't make a practice of this. I swear I'm not making a regular feature on picking apart comments read elsewhere. Unfortunately I really need to get this out of my head!

I was just poking around reading some blogs by adoptees. It's a very different lense on the adoption experience. Specifically it's one that I feel I need more of if Festus' adoption is to remain child focused, not me focused. So I'm stretching myself a bit and trying to grow. Good for me. I came across a post regarding a facebook group called "Birth Mom Missions." I haven't looked into it personally. I'm a conscientious facebook objector. In the comments section I read the following:

"My head is spinning. I just read over there that God gave Jesus to Joseph for adoption because he couldn't raise him.

God hadn't finished college yet? God was too immature to stand by Mary?"

There are so many things wrong with that statement I don't know where to start. I won't even get into the question of an omnipotent/omnipresent being who is incapable of doing something. There's just too much dumb there and I don't want to get anymore on me than there already is.

But here we have yet another example of the classic stereotypes coming out. The adoption had to happen because he was too immature to stand by his woman. Granted this is an intentionally ridiculous example. But the sentiment remains. This picks at a wound that has been on my mind a lot lately. There are a few common assumptions about why domestic adoptions happen.

1) Money. The first-family can't afford to raise a(nother) child.

2) Drugs/Domestic Abuse/Chaos. The first-family is unfit to parent.

3) Youth. The first-family is in high school or early college and they're "just too young."

4) Dad's a Jerk. The first-father won't commit to staying with the first-mother.

The money issue is often a very real one. It often ties in with reason #3. After all there aren't many people in high school or their first few years in college who are financially comfortable enough to be independent, let alone be able to care for a child. High schoolers don't make that much money. Drugs/Abuse/General Chaos is also a factor not to be underestimated. All of these factors can be very real players in making an adoption plan. As much as I hate to admit it so is #4. There are some guys out there that are just jerks. Plain and simple. It's also true that women can be jerks too. I may be a misanthrope, but I'm a misanthrope of equal opportunity. But there are many more reasons than just four that an individual or couple decide to make an adoption plan. Perhaps parenting isn't right for them. Maybe the parents are in such different places in their lives they can already see no one would be happy if they "stay together for the child." Maybe, just maybe, there are relationship that should end before a child is brought into it.

I chose my words very carefully in the description of assumption #4. The first-father won't commit to staying with the first-mother. There's often a strong emphasis on the first-father's will here. The implication is that if the first-father would "man up" and "put a ring on it" he could live out his days happily with the first-mother and their child. Because he won't commit he has made the willful decision to be unhappy in the relationship. He should decide to be happy and then the adoption would be unnecessary.

It is at this point that I feel I must remind the reader that presently over 51% of marriages in the United States end in divorce.

I don't want to see that number go up. I don't believe that a person can decide to make a relationship work. Unfortunately sometimes things just don't work out. Sometimes love isn't enough. How disappointing a story would Romeo and Juliette be if the strength of their love made their respective families resolve all their differences and they never encountered another problem so long as each of them loved the other enough? No one would buy it because we know it doesn't work that way.

I think it's time that we put away the faerie tale and have a face to face with reality. Most romantic relationships fail. Sometimes someone is at fault. Sometimes circumstances just don't work. Most of the time someone feels very hurt, betrayed, and abandoned. Whatever the reason for the end of the relationship it always results in the same conclusion; the relationship failed.

That makes the ones that work so much more valuable.

Reflection: A happy evening

2010-06-16T09:49:00.004-04:00

"I'm going to miss this," I said. The air was humid while Athena and I lay close. I didn't mind the extra warmth on an already hot evening. All my attention was in my hand and the thumping beneath it. "The Visitor" was very energetic in his exercises. I imagined him like a tiny taiko drummer playing the inside of a watermelon. I removed my hand. Athena said "he's stopped." I put my hand on another part of her round belly. Heartbeats later my hand was being kicked again in a rhythmless avalanche of excitement.

In that moment we gave him all he needed. In that moment the love and safety of cuddling on the bed was sufficient. I was in enraptured by the tiny life growing in my partner. The life that was half me, half her, and wholly its own. We could give him everything he needed then. Love and food. We had plenty of the former, and were managing to keep up on the latter. For a few evenings that spring it felt like everything was well in hand. Everything would be fine as we marinated in contentment. In those warm sunsets love was enough for everything.

For a few evenings I was the perfect father.

***Athena's Response***

Reflection: First time to the OBGYN

2010-06-15T15:59:00.004-04:00

I had asked Athena if she wanted me to join her on her first visit with the obstetric gynecologist. She said she'd appreciate the moral support. Unfortunately She couldn't see someone she knew. Before she became pregnant, Athena and I had just moved into an apartment together. I was moving across town while she was moving halfway across the state. Hence she had neither a job nor insurance. Fortunately she was able to jump through all the necessary hoops to get state aid through the a Healthy Families program.

***Tangent: To anyone that believes all state run medical care exists only for abuse and is completely ineffective I have but one retort: my son could not have received prenatal care nor even been born without it.***

It is worth mentioning that Athena has an aversion to doctors. It is, in fact, a very very strong one. She would not go so far as to turn away help that may save her life but it would be fair to say if she doesn't absolutely need a doctor she won't bother with one. This relates particularly to large medical institutions. I did mention that I work for a large university before so you may see where this is going. As we approach the giant medical complex I can see the tension in her body increasing. We make our way successfully to the gynecology waiting room and sign in. There are small children running around playing and more pregnant women than I've ever seen in one place before. As a man I've not spent much time near gynecological medicine. I imagine this may be a close facsimile to the experience of a woman in a welding shop. I'm one of two men present. Both Athena and I are rather exhausted. We have been for weeks. At this point in the pregnancy all I can see is a blackhole in my future and I am steadily walking toward it. Trying to make the best of things we chat a little and tell a joke or two. Our choice to sit with our backs to the rest of the room may not have been intentional on Athena's part, but I admit I didn't want to look at children and pregnant women to be reminded of why we were there. I hadn't taken the reality of what was happening in yet. I was still very invested in distracting myself.

When filling out the paperwork for her patient history Athena asked me "am I seeing a midwife, or a doctor?" I had no idea. We asked the receptionist and figured out her appointment was, by default, with a doctor. We were both very puzzled as to when this choice had been made, and why no one let Athena be the one to make it.

When her name was called Athena and I went to follow the nurse. Stopping in the hallway before getting to the examination room the nurse took Athena's blood pressure. She was hooked up to the machine (it was an automatic pressure reader) and sat in a chair. The cuff inflated, deflated, reinflated, deflated, reinflated, and gave an ornery *boop* sound before completely emptying. The nurse came back, glanced at the machine, hit a button, and walked away. Inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate, *boop*. Several minutes later the nurse came by again, realized the machine was broken, and took Athena's blood pressure manually. That time it was done in less than fifteen seconds and we were escorted into the examination room.

A few minutes late a young woman walks in who I assume must be interning. I am woefully incorrect. Our doctor introduces herself and shakes both our hands. I must now say in my defense it was not only her apparent youth that made me think her an intern. It was her footwear. Knee high boots with three inch heels do not strike me as footwear typically worn by professionals who are walking and on their feet all day. The miniskirt seemed a bit inappropriate as well. After all, as a gynecologist, who was she trying to impress? Let's face facts. She's not very likely to get a date from a pregnant women she treats, so why wear the deep V-neck sweater showing off her lack of bra? Moving on. After a little conversation and flipping through her chart the doctor mentions a note that we are making an adoption plan. "Yes, that's correct," one of us responds (curse my poor memory). "Well, let's do an ultrasound, bloodwork, and something-something." It took a moment for it to register that she meant do an ultrasound now. When the nurse wheeled in the machine and handed the doctor a wand attachment that begged for the nickname "Violator" my face made three little "o"s. At no point in this process had the doctor explained anything she said nor had she asked us if we had any questions. I'm not sure if I had ever felt as sorry for Athena as I did in that moment. A few measurements were taken, a prescription for prenatal vitamins written, and in less than fifteen minutes total the doctor had managed to confuse, violate, and insult both of us. The final twisting of the blade came with one word on her way out the door. "Congratulations."

The doctor had specifically noted earlier, directly asking us in fact, that an adoption plan was in the works. "Congratulations." She had slipped out the door before I could react. I wanted to grab her by her highlights and pull her down to a chair. I wanted to lecture her about the gross insensitivity she'd displayed. I wanted to grab her by the head and shake it until she understood. We didn't plan this. We don't want this. We shouldn't be here! But we're dealing with it. We're being responsible. It's taking everything we have to put one foot in front of the other and survive but we're doing it! This is so hard that I lock myself in the hardware room at work to cry, but I'm still here! Every day takes everything we have but we got to this appointment. We even put up with being treated like cattle on a conveyor. We're trying so hard to do the right thing! "Congratulations." One word and it felt like every sacrifice we'd made had been spat upon. I wanted to breathe fire and melt the building down to glass. "Congratulations" meant this shouldn't be hard. It meant we shouldn't make the adoption plan. "Congratulations" meant we should choose to parent and give up everything we want for each other. "Congratulations" meant she was too busy to attempt understanding us or any situation she'd not found herself in personally. "Congratulations" meant we were too alien to matter.

On the way out of the office, when scheduling her next appointment, Athena inquired with the receptionist about the midwife practice and what the differences were. After a very brief description she decided to make her next appointment with the midwives, to which the receptionist responded by winking and say "[g]ood choice." Athena had to tell me about that conversation later in the car. At the time I couldn't hear anything. The doctor's statement had thrown me into a state of semi-shock. I could tell people were saying things around me, but I couldn't understand any of it. It wasn't until I was outside of the building walking to the car that my brain hit "record" again and I was fully aware of my surroundings.

P.S.A. If you're a pregnant woman and anything written above relates to your experience, consider asking about a midwife practice. An online search for midwives in your local area often yields positive results and nurse/midwife practices are often covered by medical insurance. Give it some thought. Have a conversation. It could change your experience of pregnancy.

***Athena's Response***

As requested

2010-06-14T19:37:00.005-04:00

I recently received a comment in which a reader asked that I make my e-mail available. She shared a bit of her story with me and I felt it may be inappropriate for me to make that information visible for everyone without her permission. In response there is now a visible e-mail address on my profile that everyone can use to contact me. Just look to the right and click on that "View My Complete Profile" link. If you're not interested in doing that, here's the mangled version:

statistics(dot)lie(at)gmail(dot)com

To the young woman who wrote the comment requesting the e-mail; thank you for sharing. I kept a copy of what you wrote. If you would like to share it I would be happy to provide a post doing just that. I'll assume you would prefer to keep it private unless you contact me explaining otherwise. Please e-mail me at your earliest convenience.

The Quest Continues

2010-06-12T15:32:00.003-04:00

More links for information related to birthfathers and their stories.

http://rombergers.tripod.com/birthfather.html

This website has the best index I've seen to date of resources for birthfathers. Unfortunately the listing for the publications at tapestrybooks.com consistently leads to a fatal java script error that crashes my web browser. I've tried several times to no avail. I'm particularly miffed about this because I was quite excited when I saw this;
"Birthfathers and Their Adoption Experiences by Gary Clapton"
A book I hadn't heard of! Though it seems it can be found on google books here. It looks like there may be a section missing. But in any case I think that anyone interested in reading it who has the financial means should buy it. After all money talks and all that.

Unfortunately I've found Birthfather.org to be disappointing. The focus is definitely on birthfather legal rights and advocacy. That's very important work. However there are very few resources for post-adoption birthfathers.

In any case it seems that I've got more reading to do. I couldn't be happier about finding these today! I was worried that there may have only been one book and a handful of articles addressing the experiences, needs, and issues specific to birthfathers.

Tangentially I had a very telling experience while looking for this information today. While trying to find more information on Mr Clapton's book google had an interesting auto-correction idea for me. Instead of "Birthfathers and Their Adoption Experiences by Gary Clapton" it was suggested that I'd have better luck searching for "Birthmothers and Their Adoption Experiences by Gary Clapton." Indeed information on the birthfather experience is so rare that even when searching for the exact title and author of a book on it the search hits are so few that the engine assumes you've made a mistake. I find that to be both telling and disappointing. Any way I wanted to give a quick list of the books I've found so far. Take note that I haven't read all of these and cannot vouch for their quality. One of them has a rather scathing review, but it made my read list anyway. If nothing else I may be able to sit through it long enough to suggest others avoid it. Here's a very incomplete list:

Looks interesting if a bit clinical. I'm very excited to read this one!

Dear Birthfather by Randolph W. Severson, Ph.D - If anyone can find a copy of this please let me know! I know it's only thirteen pages long but it's very important to me to know what it has to say. I'm very interested and concerned about what information is given to young people considering adoption plans.

This is the book I mentioned having a scathing review. The author is a birthfather in a closed adoption. The reviewer's take is he is quite self obsessed and not emotionally honest. It's possible this is true as many people are self obsessed. It's also possible the reviewer didn't want to read a birthfather's story, but rather to read about birthfathers. I'll be sure to post a review once I've read it.

This is an excellent book. Athena and I read this cover to cover when making our own adoption plan and I can't recommend it strongly enough. The reading level is a bit tough. If you're not comfortable with college level reading it will be a lot of work. If you are it is the most emotionally honest and coherent book I've read on the subject.

There is one book that I read that I won't put a link to. The reason is very simple: I don't want you to read this book. "The Third Choice" was dismissive, biased, and sexist against birthfathers' experience of adoption. I felt actively dismissed and antagonized reading it. The "chapter" on birthfathers was nothing more than a short page discussing how we don't care and why we're not around anymore. Since Athena first announced her pregnancy I have, still to date, never been so offended as I was by the authors of that book. That includes the people who ask me how I could give up such a precious baby to total strangers.

Enough of that rant. I'm off to see a film with Athena. After all it's the weekend! Peace of mind and good luck to all of you. I'm pulling for you.

The Boss

2010-06-11T14:20:00.002-04:00

I had been avoiding it for at least a week, but time was running out. I waited for the screaming of the sawblade to stop before knocking on the door. "Do you have a minute?" I asked my boss as I stepped into his office. I shut the door behind me.

My coworker "M" was working with one of the workstudy kids and the painters were knocking around their shop. I had told M of Athena's pregnancy just a couple weeks after I got the news myself. No one else at work knew. It had been a secret held firmly under wraps for four months. It was imperative that the paint crew not find out! The lead painter's boundaries were so bad I could easily see her throwing me a department-wide party and subsequently begging me daily for custody of my unborn child. Fortunately my boss wasn't that kind of guy. He started out low on the totem pole in the union long before getting to an administrative position. He knew life in the trenches, respected our privacy, and cut us slack when it was needed. All in all, a really good guy to work for.

I only had a couple weeks of work left before my contract ended and I was on seasonal leave. I had to get the red tape out of the way so Athena and I could solidify the birthing plans. "Do you know the university's policy on paternity leave?" I asked. My boss' immediate response surprised me: high-five and "Congratulations." He waxed on for the next few minutes about how "it doesn't really change anything" and "it's a great ride." When there was finally a break in his train of thought long enough I reasserted my question. "Well, really though, do you know what the university's stance is?" He told me he'd look into it and get back to me as soon as he knew.

Fast forward five months. I've been back at work for two weeks and my boss still hasn't gotten any information to me. I've asked him two or three times. Finally he tells me to go see his boss about it. She is very conscientious in her word choices, only referencing my "family situation," not a pregnancy, and certainly not an adoption. She tells me that the university will allow me to use my sick leave to take care of Athena, but since the baby will be taken care of by someone else I don't qualify for paternity leave. She said she was keeping this under wraps and the higher ups didn't need to know everything about it. Apparently letting me use my sick leave was stretching the rules enough as it stood. Later that week Athena gives me the call.

I told my boss and supervisor that I'd take about a week off to make sure Athena was okay. The birthing plan we'd made had her delivering at a midwife run birthing center near her parents' house. That was a little better than an hour away from our apartment. Needless to say I was nervous. Fortunately when the call came Athena was already at her parents' house for a visit. The recovery period was difficult, but I'll get to that later.

When I returned to work "M" pulled me aside first thing in the morning. "I need to tell you about something that happened while you were away," he said. Alarms of all shapes and sizes were going off in my head. "M" tells me the story of how my boss took the news that Athena was in labor. You see, shortly before Athena gave birth my boss asked me what he should tell people when I suddenly have to leave for a week. "Tell them the truth," I said "if someone asks tell them what happened. I'm not trying to lie to anyone, but I don't want to put it on a billboard either." It seems my boss and I understood that conversation differently. As soon as he got my message (Athena went into labor around 8:30pm so I left a message on the answering machine at the shop) he immediately drove up to the other side of campus where all the other department heads were and announced "'I-am' won't be in for a while. Athena is having a baby, and they're putting it up for adoption." The responses varied from the lead painter's "oh my God what do we do?! Should we throw baby shower? Should we have cake? I don't know what to do with something like this! Why didn't anyone tell me?!" to the props guy's "It's none of our damn business and it was extremely inappropriate of you to say that! If you ask me, we don't talk about. It's his business and if he wanted us to know he'd have told us."

Awkward silences were by and large the rule upon my return. No one talked to me about the pregnancy or birth. What little small talk did happen lasted less than a minute. Glances became furtive. It felt like I was a walking bomb. After a week my boss' superior came to talk to me. She said that she didn't know if it was appropriate for her to say anything or not, but she wanted me to know that a woman in the department was an adoptive parent. She suggested that if I wanted the perspective of "the other side of the equation" I could talk to her about it. "I know it can be haunting" she added before leaving.

Since then I've been able to crack the wall of silence little by little. Talking about Festus has become like a secret handshake. When I can talk about Festus and the pregnancy the other person knows I count them as a friend. If I don't talk about him they aren't. It's taken work. Piece by piece I've been taking down the wall and letting people relax about it. The adoption isn't taboo if you're invited to talk about it. It's part of my normal daily life now. Anyone who gets to be part of that normal life is invited into the whole of it. My colleagues don't need to know how my visit last week went, but my friends are dying to know! That wasn't true seven months ago, when Festus was just two months old.

It's a lot of work to demystify an adoption but it's worth it.

A quick but important read

2010-06-10T13:53:00.005-04:00

This is an important article. It's razor thin, very quick to read. It also illustrates how similar the emotional needs of a birthfather are to a birthmother's.

Written by Mary Martin Mason

To any Randys reading this that is taking part in an adoption:

Congratulations. . . and I'm sorry.

To everyone else; good luck.

A word from our sponsor

2010-06-10T13:08:00.003-04:00

There are, no doubt, going to be some changes in the look and content of this blog over the next few weeks and months. It's a work in progress. If there are things that you would like to see here that you don't, please mention it by leaving a comment. There will be some new content coming up shortly that I'm rather excited about.

In discussing the events of the past year with Athena it came to our attention that we remember very different aspects about each event. Truly she has the sharper memory of the two of us. So I asked her to make some posts of her own to add detail and a bit more perspective to my ramblings. She decided she'd make her contributions in the "Comments" section. That way someone who wants just my perspective as a birthfather can read straight through the blog. However, someone who wants a little more detail, more factual information, and more concise writing can read Athena's take on things as well.

That's all for the moment. This concludes this Public Service Announcement.

Reflection: 1st Day, The Big News

2010-06-08T11:22:00.004-04:00

It was cold outside. I was in the no-man's-land of time between Christmas and New Year's Day. I had vacation time since Christmas eve and wouldn't return until the students came back in the first week of January. I was already a little nervous when Athena had asked me to go with her to the store to buy a pregnancy test. She wasn't feeling quite right and "had some related symptoms" that could indicate pregnancy. So we went to the drug store. All the while I told myself that we were just being thorough. The pregnancy test was just to rule out pregnancy as a possibility. This was nothing more than due diligence. We returned to our apartment and I tied back the curtain over the large window in our living room. I was inexplicably tired all of a sudden. Looking back now I know I was holding my breath. I lay down to take a nap on the futon, asking Athena to wait for me to wake up to use the pregnancy test. I wanted to be with her when she waited for the result.

Shortly after 2:00pm Athena woke me up saying she had to show me something. "I'm pregnant," she said. Time froze. My limbs went into a frenzy trying to get me vertical. I nearly fell off the futon trying to sit upright. Equal measures of panic, terror, and despair were pumping in my veins instead of blood. Every inch of my body was trying to run away from the rest. There was no where to go but I felt the need to move all the same. I honestly don't remember exactly what happened next. I held Athena. We cried. I paced. We lay down. We cried. There may have been a failed attempt to eat.

My world had burst apart into a million pieces. Every plan I'd made for my life came loose and crashed down destroying everything it touched. My world was eating itself. In the end I wasn't in a new world. There was nothing new or scary about where I found myself. There was nothing. Everything I thought I knew and understood had been replaced by the utter blank vacuum of space. I wanted to ask "how did this happen? How do I go on? How can I be a man now? How can I take responsibility? How can I make this go away? How can I get my world back?" With nothing left to interact with my mind soon fell into a repeating loop asking one question, "How?"

I wish my first response had been to tell Athena we would be okay, that I was going to stick with her, and we would find a way to make everything better. All I could do was cry.

The experience was one of utter devastation. A bomb had gone off inside me blowing apart the structure and sense of my understanding. I could barely string together a complete sentence.

The following two weeks were a blur of weeping, shaking, and distraction. Athena and I barely left the futon in our living room. The only exceptions were a visit to each of our parents, and when I returned to work. Leaving the apartment for the first time after the news, leaving Athena alone, felt like a terrible betrayal. I wanted to stay with her. At the time, Athena didn't have a job. She would be at the apartment all day by herself. I had to go to work or we couldn't pay the rent, but I felt terrible doing it.

***Athena's Response***

An introduction and a smattering of loosely jointed thoughts

2010-06-07T20:10:00.004-04:00

After wondering for some time where to begin I've come to the conclusion the only possibility is in the middle, which is where I am.

I am a birthfather. I am reviled, distrusted, and maligned. That is when I am remembered at all.

I've come to recognize this because when I look for resources, ask for help, look for someone to talk to, I find myself my living room washed up on the shore of a sea of 404 html errors and vitriol. There simply isn't information out there for us. Indeed many people are more interested in taking revenge for their past hurts or demonizing a person in a situation they don't want to experience than there are who actually want to help. It is easier to envisage a person who callously tosses out a woman and child than to imagine the struggling with an adoption decision personally. Society does this with lots of demographics to make life feel a little calmer and a little easier to predict and control. If unplanned pregnancy only happens to the promiscuous, those uneducated people that don't use birth control, the drug addicts, the poor, or the foolish then it is possible to predict. If it only happens to "those " people all one need do is not fall into any of those categories. I know this thought process too well because it used to be mine. I thought I had purged it. I thought I had grown up better than that and I couldn't be so prejudiced as that. I was well adjusted and politically correct. After all I was college educated, working in my field at a prestigious university, and was very cautious and calculating in nearly everything I did. I learned that I am one of "those" people because chance and random events can effect me just as easily as they can someone else. When that happened I went to look for help and found it lacking.

Even those who do wish to help, including professional adoption workers, have their hands tied by a dearth of information. As my partner and I began looking into adoption we read every book the social workers at Catholic Social Services had available for us. The book that we both liked the best, The Spirit of Open Adoption, by James L. Gritter, very intelligently discussed the need for more participation on the part of birthfathers and also the need for more information about there experience. Very little work has gone into understanding what the process of adoption is and means for fathers.

Unfortunately birthfathers are largely silent because they are most often presumed to be "dead-beat-dads" who walked out on the birthmother the moment she announced her pregnancy and never looked back. While that makes for excellent television it is quite far from the truth. Many birthfathers don't know of the existence of a child until the adoption plan is already underway of the placement itself has happened. Those are the cases one hears about where a birthfather comes out of the wood work to claim paternal rights and wishes to claim custody of the child. Here in lies the danger of birthfathers staying silent. What little is heard is combative and unusual. The majority remain silent and do not address the inaccuracies of the media portrayal. As a result it's assumed that all birthfathers are going to be problematic and including them in the adoption process is considered an unnecessary risk. Being pushed off to the side makes the birthfathers feel even more powerless than they already feel (and there are pages worth of material on the subject of powerlessness for men in adoption) while also denying them an opportunity to voice their feelings and concerns. So to break it down, a child is removed from a man who feels it is his duty to act as the child's protector, while simultaneously pushing the man further and further away from the process for fear he may do something irrational or reactionary. I can think of one other situation that functions on this precedent; bear baiting. A bear is stalked to its cave. The baby is removed. The bear becomes hostile as a result of its young being endangered, itself cornered, and only seeing one way out the bear attacks. In the context of adoption the bear attack is replaced with last minute litigation.

Most men don't go that route. Most birthfathers disappear quietly into the night because that's exactly what they're being asked to do! Mary Martin Mason, author of Out of the Shadows: Birth Fathers' Stories, related in an article for Adoptive Families Magazine (found courtesy of Birthmother.Com here) that "[i]n most adoption cases, everybody wants him [the birthfather] out of there. He's a legal problem. The birthfather and the birthmother may no longer be a couple. What happens is, he often exits, and everybody's glad he's exiting." However, in the same article, another advocate of adoption, Washington, D.C., adoption attorney Mark McDermott marginalizes the role of birthfathers to that of a risk to be contained. "I refer to that as the number one way to avoid contested adoptions, by treating the birthfather as a real issue on day one," said McDermott. "By treating the birthfather as a real issue." Not a real person. I don't need to be Freud to see what ideas lie behind that choice of words, nor do I need to be Jung to recognize those are not humanizing patterns of communication.

But why should any of this change? Why should I be concerned about the way we talk about birthfathers? I am concerned, not only because I am one, but because there are so many out there that society doesn't see or recognize as men who have gone through a significant hardship that merits both celebration and help in healing. After all, every successful adoption story has a birthfather, even if he never knew it happened.

I have chosen to end my silence. I choose to speak.
I am a birthfather and this is my voice.

Statistically Impossible

The Bonds that Sever: The Birth/Adoptive Parent Connection

A brief visit from Reality

****** ****** ** *******

Open Adoption Roundtable Discussion #33: What did you learn about Open Adoption in 2011?

First Family Blogs: The Ultimate Downer - OR - Why We Don't Post Recipes

I'm the Evil that Babies Want

Unpleasant Truths

Trying to be Human 101: Assigned Reading - Splendid Doormats

Trying to be Human 101: Dignity

The Open Adoption Interview Project 2011: Mrs R tells all

Adoption Interview Project

Balancing the Personal Checkbook

The Magic Number

Open Adoption Roundtable Discussion #30: When Was The First Time You Heard About Open Adoption?

I give up on Texas

Letter from the Trenches: Coming to terms with the war on poverty *OR* Birthday Wishes for my Son

Thanks, but I'll pass

On Why I Disappear

Open Adoption Roundtable Discussion #28: Questions from a Closed-Era Adoptee

O.A.R. Seven "Ignorant" Questions

Hind Sight Projection

The Prodigal Rants Again

Off Sides

Congratulations. . . I'm sorry.

Drama. . . no, really.

Kherosine Suit - Inviting Flames

Silence in the Absence of Conflict

In Response

Light at the end of the tunnel and the long, dark tea time of the soul

An interesting line of questions

Anniversaries

Quote of the Day/Shameless Filler

Thoughts on Child Centered Adoption

Further Delays

P.S.A. - I'm out of my mind

State Birth Father Registries: Call and Response

Timeline - An innacurate account off the top of my head

Open Adoption Roundtable #18

Reader's Reply

Under Every Freshly Turned Stone

The Sonless Father

On not being a Bastard

Adoption - The Un-Manliest Enterprise, Part 1

Reflection: Lies at the Pregnancy Center

Absence before absence

Open Adoption Roundtable #17

"How Could She. . ."

A Great Visit

Regular Life

Fathers' Day

A rant about relationships

Reflection: A happy evening

Reflection: First time to the OBGYN

As requested

The Quest Continues

The Boss

A quick but important read

A word from our sponsor

Reflection: 1st Day, The Big News

An introduction and a smattering of loosely jointed thoughts

*****

Letter from the Trenches: Coming to terms with the war on poverty OR Birthday Wishes for my Son