Newsgroups: misc.kids


From article <92092.093213SASMKW@vm.sas.com>, by <SASMKW@vm.sas.com>:
>> I am a 32 year old female who needs to undergo a tuboplasty in order
>> to have children and I'm scared.  Right now, I have less than a 1%

I sympathise greatly with the original poster and find Eric Green's
reply very unpleasant (see my comments below).  I know nothing of
tuboplasty.  However, I went through 5 years of infertility (I could
get pregnant, with difficulty, just could not sustain the pregnancy).
The end result was a full-term stillbirth of our son.  We had started
investigating adoption before I got pregnant the last time.  After his
death, we actually did adopt an infant girl.  We did considered, but
rejected, the idea of adopting an older child.  With this background,
I would like to rebut what Eric said.

elg@usl.edu (Eric Green) replied:

> No word here about tuboplasty. Not an area in which I have any
> personal interest. But: There are many children out there. Many who
> have been bounced from foster home to foster home for years while
> searching for an adoptive parent. Many aren't "picked" because of
> "learning disabilities" or emotional difficulties caused by the
> turmoil in their lives.

It is also often possible to adopt an infant.  In California, we found
it relatively strainght-forward.
 
> If your desire is to help a young person grow into a mature
> well-adjusted human being, well...

This is very seldom the ONLY reason for wanting to become a parent.
I do feel concerned with people who become parents and do NOT have
this objective because I am concerned for the well-being of the child.
However, most people who become parents have this as objective as well
as SEVERAL OTHER THINGS, one of which might be to biologically create a
child.  The two desires are NOT contradictory and no child is harmed
just because the parents WANTED to biologically create a baby.  Each
person has a right to decide what is important to them.

> If, on the other hand, you are more enamored of the biological
> symbolism of your ova and your husband's sperm creating a product
> which is undeniably yours, rather than upon the actual product and
> process of raising children...

This shows a great lack of understanding of the emotions involved for
a woman in getting pregnant.  You might just as well tell a person
who has been paralized and now needs a wheel chair: "If you are more
enamored of the symbolism of using your own legs, rather than the
things you can accomplish ..."  We live in a society in which it is
NORMAL (i.e. a vast majority of people can) to use one's legs and to
conceive and birth a child.  When anyone faces the possibility of not
being able to do these things, it is a VERY REAL and VERY SIGNIFICANT
GRIEF over a real loss in that person's life.  I would very much applaud
a paralized person for fighting against that paralysis and trying to get
as much use of their legs as possible.  As much as a paralyzed person
CAN do, there are things that they CANNOT do.  If they have lived their
life to date with the expectation of doing those things, they have some
real grief in the loss.  They also have a right to work to overcome the
problems that prevent them from doing what they had planned.  Sometimes
they can overcome, sometimes not.  A lot depends on how invested
emotionally they were in doing the thing that they now find impossible.

Still, 7 years later, I feel grief over not being able to birth a child.
I worked hard at the grief and was able to separate those feeling from
my desire to parent a child, i.e. "help a young person grow into a mature
well-adjusted human being".  This allowed me to become a parent without
contaminating my relationship with my (adopted) daughter.  I take a lot
of joy in her, but that joy and satisfaction does not eliminate or make
up for the grief.  I grieve for what I always thought I someday would
do and now, late in life, find that I cannot.  I grieve for the children
I MIGHT have had to love; loving one does not make up for not being able
to love others.  Eric's comments seem to dismiss the depth, validity, and
significance of a woman's desire to conceive and birth a child.  Not all
woman feel this desire to birth a child, but many do.  Reasonable people
will respect the feelings of those who do.
 
> Personally, I suspect that most people who consider adoption but not
> adoption of an older child are looking for a "blank slate" for them to
> create the child that they want. An older child is undeniably an
> individual. Now, most misc.kid'ers know that how the kid turns out is
> a lot different from the dream kid in your head (:-)), but raising the
> child from birth gives you the illusion that you are in control of
> this kid, that you can assert absolute power over who he will be and
> how he will become. With an older child, you cannot have that
> illusion. I suspect that this is very threatening to those who want
> children for reasons other than helping a child grow to be whatever he
> or she can be. 

We were not looking for a "blank slate".  We did not have pre-conceived
ideas about the person our babies (our dead son OR our adopted daughter)
would become.  Our daughter is a very different person from what I would
have envisioned before her birth.  My vision would have been affected by
what I had seen in life to then.  But I am very happy with who she is and
consciously work to let her develop as she wants.  However, as you
correctly point out, older children up for adoption usually (a friend who
adopted a child after the parents died in a car wreck is an exception)
have problems OVER AND ABOVE those normally encountered as you raise a
child.  We made a decision to adopt an infant because we did not feel as
confident in handling these extreme emotional problems.  With an infant,
both of you (parent and child) get to grow the relationship slowly
together.  You get to adjust to one aspect of the child's personality at
a time, as that personality unfolds.  There is not traumatic, difficult
crunch to adjust to a complex personality all at once.  Different people
would react to this problem differently.  Each is entitled to their
decision without ridicule.

Karla Perdue                 The opinions expressed are strictly my
Mountain View, CA            own and not those of Hewlett-Packard.