July 22, 2010
1)I have no sympathy for the adoptive parents, child trafficking and kidnapping has been going on for years in regard to international adoption, if they were so desperate for somebody else s child that they didn’t want to acknowledge that then that’s their fault
2)I somehow think that if a large number of white western middle class kids had been fraudulently removed from their families the perpetrators (i.e the adoption agency) would have gone to prison for a very long time
July 20, 2010
I don’t talk about my feelings around adoption much off line, when I do its only to very close friends who I trust and who I know understand where I’m coming from. Online? I talk about it loads and the way people react to it is…odd. people get so angry, circling the wagons type angry, protect the status quo at all costs type angry that anger frightens me, even online, It has an edge to it. A “we will do anything to shut you up” edge. It’s that anger that people use to tell me I’m crazy, illogical, irrational, stupid, evil, because of the way I think about adoption. This is often people who have nothing to do with adoption and as well as finding it frightening I find it really perplexing.
At first I thought it was just the adoption issue that was making them angry but critiquing adoption also entails on some level a critique of the nuclear family and it seems that people really, really can’t cope with that
we have been fed the lie that the way white middle class westerners do family, two parents and one or more children pretty much in isolation is the best, the healthiest, often the only way to do family, that other ways of doing family are wrong, immoral, unenlightened. From where I’m standing this is actually a terrible way to do family, with the best will in the world two adults bringing up one or more children on their own is going to cause unnecessary, unhealthy stress. Family the way we do it or the way we are supposed to do it doesn’t work. It creates incredibly dysfunctional people who then go on to create and raise more dysfunctional people
yet people are so invested in this damaging dysfunctional way of running society that it doesn’t occur to them ever that their might be other options and they get really angry about how I “want babies to be abandoned or to grow up in abusive environments” etc etc. and if you say “well there are other options” they invariably reply with “no there aren’t” or “well what are they then?” as if you are lying. Things people have said to me include
Yeah exactly! WHAT DO THEY DO WITH ALL THE KIDS? force parents who don’t want them to take care of them? what if their parent’s are dead? HOW IS IT EVEN AN ISSUE?
of all, it’s just plain fucking delusional to think that we will ever live in a world where adoption is not needed. JFC, there are just some situations where there are no other options
So please tell me! If you are 100% anti-adoption, where will the abused children go? Or if their parents died, and there are no family members that can take them (financial reasons, emotional reasons, whatever).Tell me, what then?
It just totally startles me that people cant take one step sideways out of the box to think about the other options , see that families are not just made up of parents and children but cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, all who could support the parents in bringing up the children and if things are really desperate take the children into their homes while the parents sort their lives out. That people have friends and neighbours who could also support them.
In fact if there was Less emphasis on how this peculiar insular nuclear family ideal was the right way to do things and more acknowledgment that its okay for family and friends to take part in raising a child a lot less children would need to be taken from their parents in the first place because the reduction of stress and the presence of other nurturers would massively reduce incidences of abuse and neglect, and would cushion the effects of poverty
April 1, 2010
I was sent a link by the creator of this awesome website: Prymface
has support and information for and about teen mothers.
March 24, 2010
A social workers plea to potentialy adoptive parents explains that adoptive parenting is hard work.
But these issues became “too much for the family to handle,” so they send their daughter back into the child welfare system. Let me tell you something here: Adopting a child is not adopting a pet. A child is not a puppy from a rescue shelter and you take it home to see how it adapts to your environment or if it bites the other puppies or kitties and if the situation doesn’t work out, you can just take it back. When you adopt a child, that child becomes yours. That child is a part of your family. You can’t just “return” a child like a Wal-Mart purchase or a puppy that chewed the leg of your grandmother’s rocking chair.
If you had two biological children and one of them started displaying violence, threatening the life of their other biological sibling, constantly running away, or destroying your house, you would be hard pressed to convince me that you would disown your child and terminate your legal parental rights as their biological parent. You might remove the child from the other children and take the child to a more secure, structured environment like a residential treatment facility to address their mental health issues, and keep the other family members safe. But I highly doubt that you would give your child up and turn them over to the child welfare system.
Yet, for too many people, if your child is adopted and displayed these issues, it’s a different story. There is something so sick and disturbing about that, it makes me want to vomit.
A letter to my local protesters describes the experince of working in an abortion clinic in an anti abortion culture.
8. Because of you, when I leave the clinic, I look both ways exiting the door.
9. Because of you, when I leave or arrive at the clinic, I speedily get into the false safety of the building or my vehicle.
10. Because of you, when I drive home, I check my rear view window to see if I’m being followed.
11. Our doors are a little tighter. Our windows shut harder. Our curtains drawn darker.
12. Because of you, we can’t have normal glass. We have bullet proof glass.
13. Because of you, we have panic buttons.
14. Because of you, I may get a home security system. And I live in a very nice little neighborhood with no other need for a home security system.
15. I really think I hate you.
16. I want to spit on you when I see a woman weep (who was raped by her father; or found out her wanted pregnancy has anencephaly; or who just got her lights shut off because she can’t pay any bills, let alone keep another baby; who can die for our country in battle, but is about to get court marshalled if her country finds out she’s pregnant; or who slept with the wrong guy on the wrong day and realized she really wants to finish school and make something of herself; or who might even be your daughter or sister or niece or granddaughter) after listening to you scream at her, judge her, beg her not to have an abortion. FUCK you for hurting her.
God Doesn’t Do Adoption, Part 2 is one of the best refutations of christian adoption rhetoric I’ve ever read.
So yes. Paul says “adoption” right there in the Bible. He actually uses it a couple of times, but if one examines the text as written in the original Greek, one begins to understand that Paul didn’t mean “adoption” like the modern world means “adoption. ” His original Greek word huiothesia meant something else entirely.
The original Greek word in this scripture (and the others where Paul was translated as saying “adoption”) is huiothesia, derived from the huios (“a son”) and thesis (“a placing”), so literally the placing of/as a son. (Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1985).
The “placing as a son” imagery was something Paul and his readers of Galatia would have been entirely familiar with (Mitchell, 1993; Zanker, 1988). Basically, it was a ceremony that occurred within the Roman culture in which a male child of a citizen achieved the status of manhood. Prior to the ceremony, a son was considered to have the status of a slave in his father’s house (The Story of Civilization, Vol. 3: Caesar and Christ, 1972, p. 57), even though he had the potential to inherit his father’s wealth. The “placing as a son” ceremony occurred around a boy’s teen years, when his father determined it was time for him to pass from being a child (and under the absolute power of his father) into adulthood.
March 8, 2010
This is how we need to live, need to fight, need to stand for each other
I will support any adoptee, mom or pregnant woman tat comes my way. I will help them in any way possible. I don’t care if they were born in the 40’s or yesterday. I don’t care if they are anti adoption or not.(as long as they aren’t trying to make me change my mind on my views on the subject) I don’t care if they live next door to me or in Antarctica. I will help them any way I can. I will fight the industry without sacrificing the actual people I meet along the way. I will not reinjure injured people to get something accomplished. I will not become what I hate
Read the rest at Aborted Mother
February 28, 2010
February 24, 2010
Video of the apology here
Transcript of apology here
It was hoped that these children, who were aged between three and 14, would have the chance to forge a better life overseas.
But the schemes were misguided. In too many cases vulnerable children suffered unrelenting hardship and their families left behind were devastated. They were mostly sent without the consent of their mother or father. They were cruelly lied to and told they were orphans – that their parents were dead when in fact they were still alive.
Some were separated from their brothers and sisters, never to see one another again. Names and birthdays were deliberately changed so that it would be impossible for families to reunite. Many parents did not know their children had been sent.
Mr Speaker, the former child migrants say they feel that this practice was less transportation and more deportation: a deportation of the innocents.
And yet, International adoption is still a thriving practice
February 18, 2010
February 14, 2010
The ninth carnival of feminist parenting is up over at Mothers For Women’s Lib, it looks like a particularly awesome edition!
Communities don't get built... 