I'm a little bit perturbed by all of the international celebrity adoptions taking place these days. I am all for people adopting and raising awareness in the media about adoptive issues. However, I always hope that it is a true desire to parent an adopted child that is driving this trend and that it's with eyes wide open to the issues and blessings that come with adoption.
I feel like with each celebrity adoption this notion of "saving a child" keeps getting reinforced in the media. I've already been on my soapbox about this topic in this blog post: http://waitingforbambino.blogspot.com/2009/05/selfishness-of-adoption.html but it really gets to me. My husband has not had the onslaught of comments as much as I have because he's a much more private person but now that he's been making our imminent adoption public he's been confronted with this notion of the "noble adopter" so much more. Of course, he always gives the pat answer of "we're the lucky ones". I wish that somehow we could change this notion. I guess we can one person at a time.
It's also frustrating because the adoption process is not easy. It's mentally, emotionally and financially taxing and I think that sometimes people loose site of this. While I'm so incredibly excited for our baby to (hopefully) join us there are so many conflicting emotions that take place inside my heart and mind each day around this process that the flippantness with which adoption can be treated in the media and society has struck a particular chord with me in my current state of angst.
I'm now stepping off the soap box and feel much better getting that off my chest and into the blogosphere (yet again). You'd thinking all that soaking in New Mexico would have calmed me down!
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Jen -
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. According to one of my adoptive parent prep books I'm reading, this is a natural stage. As we begin to really process and form our adoptive families and our "adoptive parent personality," one of the stages is heightened awareness of "adoptism."
I, too, am frustrated at the way media treats adoption, and at the same time I get incredibly annoyed that the "rich" people don't seem to have to do everything we do. That could just be my vision of it, however. Perhaps these famous moms also had to submit to humiliating testing and background checks and profiling.
Anyway, I'm right there with ya'! My dad keeps saying we're "saving" a baby. I finally had him meet with one of our social workers so she could explain that we're not saving any one. I think NOW he finally gets it!
Can't wait to hear about you being a mommy!!
I hear ya! So far we've been lucky and haven't gotten too many of those "saving" comments although there have been a few. However, S knows that once the word gets out at work there's a few women who will annoy the crap out of him with those types of comments.
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