Who Is My Mother ?

It is a complicated world we live in. For many children, one of those complicated things is defining who their mother is. For decades, since adoption became fashionable, this can be a hard question for a child to answer. Other children are challenged for other reasons. When I first told my youngest son his conception story that involves an egg donor, he asked me if she was his mother. I did my best to explain in age appropriate terms. At some point, in discussing this reality of my sons’ existence, the older one asked if he was supposed to be grateful. We answered, no but we are. When we did 23 and Me and the egg donor was identified as their mother, my youngest son lamented he did not have my genes. Sometimes reality is complicated.

For an adoptee, this can be a confusing question, especially when the child is very young and the only mother they know is the one that is present with them. In this modern age, some children have two mothers or in the case of two fathers, may have been born by surrogate. It is not an easy question for a lot of children to answer. With divorce being such a common occurrence, many children end up with step mothers.

As the source of nurturing, comforting, sustaining and unconditional love, it is no wonder a child will love their mother. Yet, for many children defining who the mother is can be confusing.

Even though every human being truly has only one mother, for many children with non-traditional forms of “Mom”, they should NOT have to correct an erroneous identification and say a primary caregiver is not their mom. This puts the child in too difficult of a situation. An adult can make it even more confusing for the child by trying to be accurately correct.

With big feelings what’s best is to validate and reflect the child’s feelings, and be a safe person for them to share their thoughts and feelings with. If you are not the woman who actually carried and birthed that child but are the one who is there for them in that role, day after day, let the child decide what they should call you and deal with the reality that their life is complex.

You Can Just Adopt

The world already has enough people. More and more, deciding to remain childless is an option people are choosing deliberately. My husband and I don’t even know whether our sons will ever marry and/or have any children. There will never be pressure from us in that regard.

The decision to have children occurs within a pronatalist social context. When I was a senior in high school in 1972, I knew I was going to continue getting advanced education, work full time, get married and have children. No wonder I failed. Some women may excel at the SuperWoman effort but I did not. I never got a degree, I ended up divorced and financially unable to provide for my child. But I have had to work at some kind of revenue producing effort all of my life.

Why do those that cannot have their own children think that domestic infant adoption is another way to build their family? I suppose because it has been promoted as a good thing and socially acceptable for decades now – at least as far back as the 1930s.

Our culture views parenting as an essential part of achieving fulfillment, happiness, and meaning in life, and as a marker of successful adulthood. When my husband told me that he wanted to be a father afterall (after 10 years of being grateful I had been there and done that and no pressure on him), I was a bit shocked and it was not an easy path for us. I am still grateful medical science had a way to make it possible, even if it involved some non-traditional sacrifice on my part. Having children did deepen and expand upon our relationship as a couple, making us a family. As we are aging without any other family nearby, we are grateful our children may be there for us.

Remaining childless by choice (AKA childfree) is still an outlying path, a move that raises questions and is met with prejudice and even moral outrage. This is particularly true for women, whose gender identity and social value have long been tied to fertility and motherhood. Thus, women who decide to not have children are commonly viewed unfavorably.

Though I now see the problems and emotional fallout of adopting children, I also do recognize that a mature person can love any child genuinely. It is not necessarily a selfish motive or ego stoking decision. Children are easy to love for most well balanced and emotionally healthy persons. Sadly, there are people who are not that and should not have children. Personally, I respect any mature person who knows themselves well enough to know they shouldn’t take on the responsibility of raising a child. There should be no negative perceptions from anyone else towards those who make such a choice.

What’s In A Name ?

It may be true that a name is only that – a name – and not the person. Of all the suggestions for reform in the process of adoption, I can clearly see that changing a child’s name at the time of adoption is wrong. It is taking from the child their true identity.

Now, it does happen, as it did happen with my youngest sister’s son that the true father was not who was named on the birth certificate. I do know she was able to coerce the poor man, who had some financial means, to pay a great deal of the costs of her developing an adoption plan for her son. She gave him this man’s last name at birth and named that man on the birth certificate as his father.

It came to pass as this young man began to mature that he became interested in knowing more about his actual father. DNA testing seemed to indicate that who had been named could not possibly be who fathered him. A search for the true father began.

At first I believed that my sister simply did not know for certain who the father was and so chose the one most like to be financially supportive of her effort to provide for her baby. It turns out that with the revelation of the true father, my sister actually did know. Maybe, since this man was a colleague of our father’s and since my sister was devoted to our father, she simply did not want our father to know . . .

That is my kindest interpretation. What I do know is at about 6 months, although she had relinquished her son to an adoptive couple shortly after his birth, she sent a photo after birth and a letter to the real father informing him. So it cannot be said that she did not know. What’s really unforgivable is that the true father DID want to raise his son and his wife was supportive of bringing that baby into their lives. They planned to fight for custody of the child and so informed my sister.

Then the cruelest thing happened on Father’s Day, my sister called the true father to inform him that the baby and his adoptive parents had been killed in a car accident ending all attempts to seek custody.

This young man is a fine person and given what I know about my sister’s life after giving birth to him, I’m glad she didn’t raise him. The first adoptive father left the family due to having an affair. Eventually, the mother remarried and my nephew thought so much of the man, he had his surname changed yet again to match the new father.

Also, what amazes me is that in my own adoptee father’s life, his mother had to put her abusive alcoholic husband out. Therefore, when my dad was already 8 years old, he was adopted a second time by the new husband. My paternal adoptive grandfather was a good man and he stayed with my Granny until death did them part.

Absentee Motherhood

I understand how it feels for a mother to live each day without their child. Though I never legally relinquished custody of my daughter, financial pressures forced me to look for another way to support us. I understand how my maternal grandmother felt when she was desperately seeking a way to support herself and my mom and how her best efforts failed in the end.

It is interesting how familial patterns can pass down through the generations. In my case, I took a leap of faith that I could drive an 18-wheel truck. I didn’t know whether or not I would succeed and so, took my daughter to her paternal grandmother for care. Though the court granted me custody in the uncontested divorce from her father, he also refused to pay me any child support. I was not about to spend my life in court fighting him for it and so, I looked for another way.

What I thought was temporary, just as my grandmother had thought she was only leaving my mom temporarily, turned out to be permanent for both of us. My grandmother lost my mom due to pressures from Georgia Tann to surrender her. Miss Tann had a repeat, paying customer who was growing impatient to have her specifications for a baby sister fulfilled.

In my case, I was able to drive that 18-wheel truck. My ex-husband remarried a woman with a child and together they had another child, a yours-mine-and-ours family. So that when my time on the road ended, it made no sense to take my daughter from a family life as I would have still been a struggling single mom. Fortunately, my daughter and I remain close at heart, though not long ago she admitted to me there were times that being separated were not happy ones for her.

In the mid-1970s, there were no role models for absentee mothers. I have resolved some of my difficult feelings of having failed my daughter but not all of them. At least, I was able to have sporadic contact with her growing up and continue to have a relationship with her in adulthood. Mothers who have lost their children to adoption do not always have as good of an outcome. Even so, I have empathy for the difficult decisions each of them had to make.

In Order By What’s Best

I grew up with this televised image of the “perfect” family. Though it never did represent what most families actually are.

My original grandmothers BOTH lost their moms at a young age. My maternal grandmother at age 11 and my paternal grandmother at 3 mos. They were both raised by their fathers in the early 1900s. In the 1930s, each of them conceived children by men who were at least 20 years older than them. Each of them lost their child to adoption.

My mom’s adoptive family looked the most like the one above. My adoptive grandmother bought her Jack and Jill from Georgia Tann. My dad’s adoptive family was mostly the influence of my Granny, who adopted two sons from the Salvation Army and then divorced her husband, who was an alcoholic and abusive – not only towards her but towards her sons. My dad was re-adopted at the age of 8 by the next husband, who I knew as my grandfather.

Those adopted children were my parents, who met in high school. We had 3 girls in our family. I was the oldest. My first marriage ended in divorce. Eventually, my ex-husband and his second wife were raising my daughter because financially – I was unable to support us and he was unwilling to pay me child support.

In our modern times, we recognize many diverse family units. Because the roles for fathers were changing when I had my daughter, I believed that mothers and fathers were interchangeable if divorce was the reality for the family unit. I no longer believe mothers are dispensable.

And though I grew up with adoption as simply a fact of life and had no opinion about it other than acceptance – that it was just the way things were – I now see things differently. I have educated myself by exposure to current day adult adoptees and the sadness and regret of original mothers who gave up their child for adoption.

An intact family unit is what I believe is the best environment for a child. Two parents allow for one parent to buffer or moderate the other. The next best is a single parent – mother preferred, father the next best.

For TRUE orphans who’s parents are dead, never should they have their identity, name at birth or original birth certificate changed to make it appear that other parents gave birth to them. Society should also more fully support family preservation.

This is how I roll now. I doubt it will change but I am certain I won’t go back to what I believed – before I knew “better”.

The Emptiness And Inadequacy Of Not Being Enough

I feel very sad this morning. Many women who give up children for adoption did so because in whatever way they did not feel like they were enough. Strong enough, wise enough, financially sound enough. It doesn’t help that often this is a true and honest assessment of one’s condition.

I left my first husband due to issues of addiction. He honestly tried very hard, more than once, in a variety of ways to change his behavior so that his addiction was not a part of his life nor our life as a family. I tried to stick it out. Because our family’s financial resources were being poured into satisfying his addiction, I eventually believed my daughter and I would be better off if we separated from him.

I tried to handle the divorce in an enlightened way for our 3 year old daughter. Telling her that her father still loved her and I still loved her but that we would not live together as a family any more. Financially, I wasn’t able to pull it off. I wasn’t able to financially support us. I went to my mom for tiny bits of money to get by. I took on roommates to share the cost of providing shelter. None of it worked.

In desperation, I left my daughter with her paternal grandmother, who because I had to go back to work when she was only a few months old, had always cared for her. I didn’t know if I could drive a truck but I knew the money was good and if I could do it for a little while and save it up, then I could recover her and we might make it.

Often, life does not work out as we plan. Her father remarried and he took physical custody of our daughter. Her step-mother had a daughter and together my ex-husband had another daughter with this wife. My daughter had a family and I know the issues of addiction continued to weigh heavily on this family. I don’t have easy answers.

I had a reconciliation of sorts with my ex-husband not that long ago. No recriminations. Only an acknowledgment of how lucky we both are that our daughter is in our lives. She is an amazing person. In spite of all the challenges, somehow we did something right along the way and both of us would say, mostly the work of becoming amazing deserves 100% credit by our daughter.

Death Is Even Harder

Facing the death of loved ones is difficult for many people. I remember the first dead bodies that I saw as a public schoolchild. Two friends died while yet school age and my uncle died when I was a senior in high school. My young sons saw dead bodies at a very young age as their paternal grandparents died at home. We have also taken them to local visitations. It is good to view death as a natural part of life.

For the adoptee, especially while yet a child, death can trigger pre-verbal memories of abandonment. There was a first mother who gave you away to an adoption agency and then went away. The adoptive parents came and got you. Death can really drive home to an adopted child that their first mother has gone away and never came back.

Coming face to face with death can also create fears related to the adoptive parents – will they go away and never come back? There are other kinds of death – What happens then, if one of the adoptive parents does leave because they have filed for divorce ?

Under such circumstances, many families break apart and become dysfunctional. An adoptee may take this kind of loss harder than a non-adoptee would. If the result of the divorce is leaving and selling the place that was always home, this can also be harder for an adoptee – “I always thought I’d have some place I could call home and now I don’t.”

Loss is often a lifelong difficult place for an adoptee.

Adoptions I Have Known

I chose this image because I like trees and Adoption is NOT the main focus. From a perspective of balance and fairness, as it was recently pointed out to me that I might be too negative (though I don’t necessarily believe that), I thought I might comment on the adoptions that have occurred in my own family and their outcomes – briefly.

First, my mom. Her mom did not intend to lose her. I cannot view the exploitation, trap and pressure she faced as being in any way voluntary on my grandmother’s part. My mom was pure and simple – taken away – from her. Not because of any wrongdoing on my grandmother’s part. She was a good mother doing the best that she could under difficult circumstances. My mom was adopted by a banker and his socialite wife. She had many opportunities that she may not have had in her original circumstances. She was troubled at the thought she had been stolen, as she tried to understand the circumstances of her becoming adopted and was denied her own adoption file by the state of Tennessee, until they decided to open the files later on because of the scandal my mom’s adoption had been part of.

Next, my dad. His mom was unwed but she left the Salvation Army Door of Hope in Ocean Beach California with my dad. She went to some cousins who it appears were unwilling to help her. So she applied for employment with the Salvation Army and was transferred to El Paso Texas with my dad in tow. However it happened, she was convinced to give up my dad and he was adopted by the amazing woman I knew as my Granny. She survived an abusive, alcoholic husband, divorced him, found a better man and my dad therefore ended up adopted twice and got a new name when he was already 8 years old. He fully accepted his adoption and never showed any inclination to know more of the details. Sadly, he had a half-sister living 90 miles from him when he died who could have shared so much with him about what his original mother was like.

Then, a niece. My sister did not want to surrender her child to adoption but my adoptee mom convinced her that it was for the best. It was a very secretive thing within our family. I was told that my niece had died at birth and that never felt accurate in my own heart. Eventually, the truth came out, she was able to reunite with us and has been a wonderful addition to our family that we love very much. She seems to have had a good enough childhood and has become an amazing mom to her own two children.

Then, a nephew. This is not the same sister but my youngest sister. Understandably, adoption was the most normal thing in our family and I was close to my sister during her pregnancy. She vetted hopeful couples. Chose the best she was able to do with the information she received. Her life became complicated and unfortunate. He has been loved and his adoptive mother has always supported his desire to know his origins. He is an EMT and a firefighter and an amazing and sweet young man.

Adoption has worked out well enough in my own family. The results have produced good parents (at least for 3 out of the 4, the last one hasn’t married yet). It is what it is. We have a large extended family – extra grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins – as a result. I love them all.

Harmed By Religion

I grew up Episcopalian. I always thought of that church as do what you want Catholics. We were similar but with more freedom to choose.

My mom conceived me out of wedlock and she once admitted to me that she believed she had sinned and that baptizing me in the Episcopal Church (which was against the wishes of my dad’s Church of Christ adoptive parents because they baptize much later in life) was a way of securing my bastardized soul.

It is known generally that the Catholic Church has done a lot of bad things in its existence. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is about torturing a young woman. Then there is the burning of Joan of Arc and the Spanish Inquisition. I grew up in El Paso Texas, a heavily Catholic region of the United States and so, I have some familiarity with that religion. As a school girl we always had fish on the menu at school on Fridays because of the church.

An early adoption story is the tale of Moses. His mother Jochebed put him in a basket to spare him from being killed along with all the other Israelite baby boys. The Pharaoh’s daughter finds Moses and adopts him as her own, sparing him the fate suffered by other Hebrew boys.

For old-time Catholics, the laws of the Church took precedence over the laws of any secular government. Catholic teaching dictated that the manner in which I was conceived made me illegitimate, a bona fide bastard. Fortunately, my parents married before I was born.

Some children, like my dad, became legitimized when they were adopted by a married couple. At that time, in the 1930s and 40s, his birth certificate (and later his baptismal certificate) was altered to make him appear “as though” he had been born to his adoptive parents. The Salvation Army played a role in his becoming an adoptee.

I believe that my mom’s maternal grandfather and her paternal grandmother both played some role in her becoming an adoptee by not being willing to be supportive of my mom after her birth nor my grandparents’ marriage. I can’t know that for certain. I just feel it in my soul.

Throughout it’s history, the church has refused divorce, my dad’s adoptive parents could not be elders in the Church of Christ because of their divorces from spouses before they found one another. And I do believe churches in general continue to look down upon women who do what comes natural and have sex outside of marriage.

Validating a strong and moral family life has always been at the heart of most church teachings. I won’t argue that such a family is not a blessing. My two sons have grown up within such circumstances and thrive. I also have friends with children my children’s age who chose to be single parents. Their children thrive as well.

What seems to matter the most is that the child was truly wanted. When a child is born “accidentally”, meaning unintended, it is a hurdle to overcome but not impossible to. Love matters more than any other factor.

Lifelong Sorrow

It is clear in my mom’s adoption file that my maternal grandmother, shown above holding my mom for the very last time, never intended to surrender her. She was pressured and exploited by circumstances and the expert manipulation of that baby thief, Georgia Tann, in Memphis.

I read a statistic that said that more than 30% of women who have relinquished children never have another – either because they chose not to, or could not. There is an increased incidence of secondary infertility among natural mothers.

I know that my grandmother never had another child. I know that while her birth name was Elizabeth, my mom’s birth certificate had her name as Lizzie. I saw her sign Elizabeth to a note and a postcard she sent to Georgia Tann after losing my mom. Yet, when she died in her 60s after marrying a second husband, Lizzie is what is on her gravestone. I can’t help but believe she hoped my mom would find it someday. My mom died without fulfilling her desire to know about her original mother. I was the one to find the gravestone and sit beside it and talk with her soul.

There is no way to know why my maternal grandfather left my maternal grandmother in Memphis four months pregnant. It seems her widowed father sent her away to Virginia to have my mom and I doubt she was supposed to bring my mom back to Tennessee. It is clear my great-grandfather was unwilling to take the two of them into his home.

It appears that the only time my maternal grandmother had any communication directly with my maternal grandfather (after he left her alone and pregnant) was when he decided to go ahead and divorce her 3 years after they married and two years after my mom was born. The divorce papers also show her name formally as Elizabeth. I believe that having lost their child, my grandmother was so filled with shame, she could not face him. The divorce freed her up to remarry and not long after that he remarried. My heart is glad they didn’t die alone.

My mom’s adoption file is a constant reminder to me of what they had not done, of the courage they somehow lacked to fight back and of the child in the middle (my mom) they both lost. I come close to tears every time I revisit this story in my heart’s mind.