About a month ago I read an article titled Please Don't Erase Birth Parents From the Adoption Narrative. After reading this article I used the phrase "gave up" in talking to my daughter about her son that she placed for adoption four years ago. He was four months old at the time and she felt this was the best thing for him. She has an open adoption with his parents. She's friends with the mother on Facebook, talks to him, gets picture updates, the whole nine-yards.
Here is my issue, first I am adopted, and second I believe giving birth to a child no more makes you a parent than turning eighteen makes you an adult. I understand that my views are not PC or popular. However, I am the type of person that is not swayed by popular opinion, and while this may sound harsh I won't placate someone to stroke their ego or make them feel better about a choice they clearly made.
As an adopted child I always knew I was adopted, my adoption was private and I have my adoption papers with my birth-mother's name on them. I found her in 1992 when I was pregnant with my third child and within the last four years I have found more historical information regarding my Italian/Cajun French heritage.
In the course of my fifty-one years I have met other adoptees and have heard their stories. Most who were adopted in the late 60's, early 70's have always known they were adopted. It was never a secret and their parents have a lot of gratitude and love for the woman who loved her child more than herself and gave her baby to a couple creating a family.
My issue with this article is simple, what does the biological mother, who claimed she wanted to give her child a better life, something she believed for whatever reason she could not provide at the time or in the future, be known for?
As the woman who gave a self-less gift, assisting to create a family for a couple who couldn't on their own.
OR . . . . .
As the MOM?
There is only one answer . . .
Biologically a birth mother will always be a "mother." Biology can't be erased, but biology is just blood and DNA. Yes, the child may have the same eyes, smile, or hair color, but what makes the child a person is what the parents, who are raising him/her, pour into them, not whether they have any physical similarities.
I know this first hand. I was not raised in a big Italian family, taught to cook Italian food, or heard the stories about my grt. grandparents coming to America from Bologna, Italy. I was raised in a Navy family. We moved around. I went to two different high schools, one in California and the other in Florida. Went hunting with my cousins, and grandparents. Lived in suburban America. That's my history not looking like my birth mother, or biological siblings. If you looked at a picture (see below) of myself, my brother and my parents (my husband is in the cowboy hat) you'd never guess that we are not biologically related. God's great at assisting in that area.
For me, it feels as though biological mothers want some badge for their chest, to be acknowledged for the self-less act they made in choosing to give a better life to the baby they physically gave birth to. When you give a gift that's what it is, a gift. No credit, or reward is expected. It can't be considered a self-less act if a pat on the back or constant acknowledgement is needed or required. My belief will always be that my birth mother gave my parents a self-less gift out of love for me, not herself.
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