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.

You’ve Come A Long Way

Until very recently, a woman would not chose to be a single mother. A lot depends on her financial resources or ability to access available resources which does vary a lot. I know more than one woman who made the choice to parent without an “official” father (though every baby has a father, somehow, even if that father was a sperm donor).

From the dawn of the adoption business (and it is a business), single mothers were no longer encouraged to parent their child but instead to surrender the child to adoption. I know this was already happening as early as the 1930s. Babies ended up adopted because “Unmarried women didn’t raise their children back then.” said by one original mother after reunion.

Unmarried women were treated with contempt for doing what nature intended. I remember running up against this belief unbelievably in today’s modern times. My paternal grandfather’s step-granddaughter (he had married her grandmother as a second wife) said my grandmother was a “Scarlet” because she was unwed. In effect, she was judging my grandmother as morally deficient. I didn’t appreciate the contempt she expressed.

I suspect that my grandmother didn’t know he was married when she first started dating him but I am certain she did know by the time she knew she was pregnant.

The sad fact was – If you were unmarried and pregnant, you weren’t valued. A “Baby Daddy” was valued even less. It is interesting I only ran up against that derogatory label for a father recently at a writer’s conference.

Anyway, adoption is changing. As I explored my dad’s origins with the Salvation Army, they told me they had to shut down their unwed mother’s homes because of Roe v Wade. I’m certain that has played a role but I suspect an equal or greater role in that demise is that single moms are treated with less derision today.

Supporting Mothers and Children

It is not surprising that more women are delaying motherhood in our current time. It can be difficult to find the kind of support that gives a woman confidence in becoming a mom. In my mom’s group, we also have women who chose to have children without a spouse, having given up on finding the quality of person they felt would be a supportive parent.

After I met my husband, I told my doctor that he was the kind of person I would be willing to become a mother again with and after ten years of marriage, we made the decision to add parenthood to our life as a couple. Previously, I had a child who I still adore and found there was no support for myself as a single mother after I felt compelled to divorce her father. So, I was understandably reluctant to go into motherhood again but this time it worked out. There are always bumps along the way in any relationship but we have made it through them so far and our two sons are almost grown.

70% of all moms are working mothers. 25% are the primary breadwinner in their family. Almost half of all two parent families find both parents employed outside the home. The realities of modern life are – it is difficult to support any family on one employment option. And our society only cares about the unborn and not children once they are born when a woman has to support her family without any financial assistance from a partner. That I think is a real tragedy.

In a Pew Research Center analysis – there were 9 million mothers living with a child younger than 18 without a spouse or partner. Solo motherhood is particularly common among black mothers (56% are in this category). By comparison, 26% of Hispanic moms, 17% of white moms and 9% of Asian moms are solo parents. (Solo parenthood is far less common among fathers: 7% of dads are raising a child without a spouse or partner in the home.)

For my own self, Pro-Life would be full support for parents raising children if the available resources fall below what is adequate to provide the basic necessities. Until then, I believe we fail the morality test as a society.

Whose Perspective ?

She wonders – “Who explained adoption to my peers ?”

Her adoptive parents always told her she was chosen and special.

Yet her peers thought of her as something that someone bad had discarded.

What had their parents taught them about adoption ?

It could have been not their parents but messages about adoption
and pregnancy in the world surrounding them all.

Really great adoptive parents are NOT all an adoptee needs.

A great deal of the grief an adoptee experiences is the result of
the societal shame associated with being adopted.

It is painful to be seen as unwanted, almost aborted, and needing
to be grateful just because one has been adopted.

~ from The Declassified Adoptee

I know my mom’s adoptive parents felt likewise. They were over the moon happy with their two children – thought them brilliant and attractive. They were selected by gender and “supposed” traits (though Georgia Tann played them on that one).

Later in life, my mom had a tense relationship with her mother. She never felt as though she lived up to her mother’s expectations regarding her life and it was probably actually true. My mom got pregnant out of wedlock, therefore, she was never the debutante my grandmother probably hoped for.

Societies perspectives on women and chastity and who’s responsible (hint, it’s never the men who impregnate them) all add up to an adoptee’s whose origin story is founded in rape or incest being automatically impure. What did that baby ever do to deserve such a judgement ?