Promiscuous Tart

yeah, me too. but i bet you knew that already.

Judging by the photo at least you are a very slim promiscuous tart.

Will read.

Thanks for sharing, Suz.

I think we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

Here’s what I thought was an excellent comment on the Jezebel story:

Jesus–you have a baby too early or too late or with too few resources to give it a middle-class white bread life: You’re selfish.
You abort: You’re selfish.
You have one kid: You’re selfish.
You have more than two kids: You’re selfish.
You place a child up for adoption: You’re selfish.
Um. Is there anything short of immaculate conception that a woman can choose that is unselfish?

Both articles rubbed me the wrong way. The Newsweek article starts off with the writer talking about how she has so much love for her babies she would die for them; it must be so hard to “choose” to give a baby a better life via the miracle of adoption. Oh sure, she writes that she might give the kids to her parents if she couldn’t raise them, but surely she doesn’t believe that’s the same as adoption by strangers. We’ve heard that one before in so many forms, but it always translates to: “you did a great thing by giving up your baby, but I COULD NEVER do it”.

The Jezebel writer agrees with the Newsweek article stating, “…destigmatizing adoption might make practical improvements in the lives of both birth mothers and prospective adoptive parents” but she never tells us how their lives will be improved. One can assume that destigmatizing adoption would improve the lives of prospective adopters because the supply of infants would increase. I fail to see how this improves the lives of birth mothers. Perhaps it’s in the last paragraph where she writes,

“girls and women are supposed to look and act sexy in every area of life, from before puberty until death. But if the sexy sex they’re supposed to be ever courting (but maybe not actually having) leads to pregnancy, they suddenly can do no right. This is one of society’s biggest injustices, and one that a greater acceptance of adoption might begin to remedy.”

Is she arguing that we should be accepting of adoption because it might solve the dilemma of a highly sexualized society that shuns those who find themselves pregnant? That adoption equals free and easy sex for all, no need to worry about pregnancy because the miracle of adoption erases all contraceptive mistakes? As a “birth mother” I see little here that would have improved my life. What would have improved my life would have been a lack of shamimg (which she clearly supports) coupled with a tangible system to help me keep my baby, not a system designed for the sole purpose of giving him to someone else.

Both writers are irritating in their willful disregard of the privilege and elitism on which adoption is built. The assumption is that women love their babies but give them up because they can’t provide for them. Do they bother to ask why can’t they provide for a baby? Do they consider the economic and social bias against single mothers? No, they just agree that, gee, it’s a really hard thing to do, but if you have limited means adoption is okay since there are so many people who want to adopt. I’m very disturbed by feminists who argue that a woman who can’t provide for her baby (i.e. young/single/poor) should give it to someone in a better position (old/married/rich). Disempowered women as breeders for the upper class – not my kind of feminism. I could write an entire book on how adoption with all of its secrets, falsified birth certificates, birth mother hunting, and financial excesses is little more than class-driven exploitation of women.

On a final note, neither article addresses the biological and emotional effects of separation on both mother and baby. There is enough research on mother-infant bonding both pre-and post- natal that any exclusion of this research in a discussion about adoption makes the writer seem ill-informed at best.