You obliquely mention it, but issues of questionable paternity that have always existed within some families. Is it more acceptable to lie in those circumstances?
Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell is an interesting film exploring this subject.
I don’t think so, but at least then I can understand it more. With questionable paternity the mother is often lying to the father as well, and may have reasons to do so that go beyond a misguided attempt to spare the feelings of the child (or your own feelings). Not that I think it’s great to lie to someone and tell them that they are the biological father of a child in order to accomplish some end, just that I see it as having potentially a very different motivation.
The part about “false paternity” that strikes me is that people say things like “A isn’t B’s real father.” I think we’d be raising all of our kids, adopted or not, better if they grew up thinking, “real father… what do you mean real?”
It’s a major reason this group has a much higher than average rate of depression and suicide.
One thing I admired about Steve Jobs is that he got angry whenever an interviewer or anyone else used language implying that the people who raised him weren’t his “real” parents or suggested he was “abandoned at birth.” He always knew exactly who his parents were (though he was admittedly an asshole about taking responsibility for his own first daughter).
When speaking about his biological parents he simply said: “They were my sperm and egg bank. That’s not harsh, it’s just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more.”
That works!
But he was wrong. They weren’t just a sperm and egg bank: they were his real parents too, and he got his brains, his medical issues, and his personality from them.
Insulting either set of parents is equally damaging. Yes, adoptees are encouraged in this society to say negative things about where they came from – you should see what they say as adults about how they internalized the idea that their first set of parents were bad people and therefore at some core level they were too – but the more we learn, the more we know that everyone carries a genetic blueprint inside them that affects a lot more than just their eye color or tendency for male pattern baldness.
We have millions of people in this country with 3 or 4 or even more parents. That’s just how it is. None of the parents are less real than any of the others.
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I was just on a consumer DNA site and read a post I knew I had to reproduce here. It is semi-public in that one can enter the site and read as a guest but text doesn’t show up in Google searches so I’ll blank out anything too identifying:
In October of last year I made the discovery that my father was NOT my biological parent, thanks to (DNA testing company). My parents had been wrongly advised by the fertility clinic they used to keep my origins a secret. Fast forward to me at age 33 making this discovery after my "adoptive" father has passed away. It was a few months after his death that my rabid love of genealogy led me to this heartbreaking reality. As time has passed I feel so much grief. I not only lost my father to death but also my heritage and the feelings of connection through our DNA. It was all stripped away. I had to leave the DAR because adoptees can't be in the organization which made me feel terrible. I had been researching my family history for well over a decade and grew to love my ancestors so much. I am in the process of trying to piece my family tree together with distant cousins and some 3rd cousins which gives me hope..(edit)..Anyway I have been crying a lot over this. Learning this was even harder then losing my dad to death. I have now lost my identity. It feels as though the ground has been ripped out from under me and I am still struggling to stand. I don't think anyone realizes what being the result of a donor can do to your sense of self. It feels like a real betrayal. I also feel sad that my parents thought they were doing the right thing but in reality it was not at all. Thanks for listening.
Hopefully no one will respond that this person didn’t love her parents enough.
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Are you aware of studies comparing rates of depression and/or anger among those raised knowing they were adopted, and those who discovered their adoption at a late age? I’m sure there’s a spectrum, but it’s also true that people like Steve Jobs and Colin Kaepernick seemed to harbour real resentment against their biological parents (and it doesn’t matter if this is because they’ve internalized ‘wrong’ cultural values).
Hey, if he had said he felt the same for his father as he does for a stranger on a bus, I might. But that’s very much not what he said. But let me ask you: when you counsel people who are considering adoption, do you tell them that they might as well be adopting a stranger on a bus, and that if they can’t love a random stranger they probably couldn’t love an adopted child?
If it ends up being covered by the NHS, I imagine that some of Her Majesty’s taxpayers might say that they are in a position to judge.
There’s at least an argument to be made that infertility treatment in general is elective, and it is certainly the case that this nucleus-transfer mitochondrial replacement arrangement isn’t going to ring in any cheaper than a conventional donor egg based IVF run.
I find most of the ‘ethical’ arguments against the procedure to be rather frivolous; but I’d be harder pressed to defend its medical necessity in the face of other things you could be focusing on.
People want their own DNA in their children, if they can. They are likely to keep trying, and possibly spawning a defective offspring with lifetime healthcare demands. Better invest a bit more up front and save the ongoing costs later.
The penny-pinching checkbook mentality can be pretty costly in long-term.
Perhaps this just makes me an awful person; but I’d be inclined to start at ‘tragic’; but move toward ‘reckless negligence, quite possibly homicide’, if somebody keeps dooming additional children to the same genetic disease(unless some peculiarity of the situation or defect of medical advice prevented them from realizing the risk they were taking).
Again, specifically excluding people who had no way of knowing that there was a problem, I’m just not sure why knowingly subjecting a child to serious or lethal medical problems would be ethically or legally distinguishable from, say, leaving them in a closed car on a warm day or any of the other things that we classify as neglect, abuse, or infanticide depending on how badly they turn out.
So why not couple this with offering an alternative pathway to a healthy offspring? Instead of inflicting further misery on people just because the genetic shuffle dealt them a lousy hand? In the ballpark of medical procedures it is not even So Much Extra Expensive.
First, I don’t counsel prospective adoptive parents, I consult for a medical clinic in a major hospital that specializes in international adoptions. The families start coming as soon as they get back in the country, so it’s already a done deal.
But yes, it is important for prospective adoptive parents to understand that any child they get will consider them to be strangers at first, because they are. They are not getting someone who has spent 9 months listening to their voice and heartbeat prior to being born. They have to meet for the first time and get to know each other in a way that biological families never have to do.
No one in this thread is saying that if you’re not biologically related to both parents then you’ll be strangers to them even after decades of living together as a family. NO ONE.
Then what exactly is the point of saying: “Choose any random stranger on the bus - could you love them like family, as either their parent OR their child?”
If the analogy is inherently flawed, why make it?
A stranger to a baby or infant is very different than a stranger to a fully formed and developed adult on a bus. And I think you’re vastly understating the extent to which biological children and parents have to get accustomed to each other, especially in the increasing number of non-traditional families.
I don’t think it’s insulting to refer to someone as a sperm or egg donor if that was the extent of their contribution to a child’s life. Unless you think there’s something inherently shameful about being a sperm or egg donor.
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Well, it’s bad for you or I to speak badly of someone else’s birth parents, but if that’s Steve Jobs’ experience of his genetic parents, I think that’s his experience to share. What else could he think of people who he never met, who he knew nothing about? By saying they were just a sperm and egg bank, he is clearly saying he got his genetic material from them.
I will admit to being unaware of what DAR is supposed to stand for here. But if I was part of an organization that kicked someone out when they found out they were adopted, I would immediately leave that organization myself.
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Was it this DAR?
The organization Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a person involved in United States’ independence. A non-profit group, they work to promote historic preservation, education and patriotism.
It would suck to be kicked out of an organisation because you aren’t a direct descendent after all, but it does seem like a much milder form of neo-nazis finding out that they’re part Jewish. I don’t have too much time for any organisation whose membership is based on lineage (marginalised groups excluded). Families are some of the most lineage-based organisations around, and they can deal with adoptee membership without too much trouble.
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“Daughters of the American Revolution”. You have to be a descendant of someone suitably involved in the revolutionary war in order to be eligible for consideration(there are other…somewhat more subjective…potential requirements as well). Adoptees are fine, if their biological parents are of suitable lineage; but the lineage status of adoptive parents is not transferred to adopted children. In this case, apparently kiddo was spawned by parents of simply inadequate revolutionary stock; but adopted by a family of more patriotic descent.
I couldn’t give you the slightest idea of why you’d want to belong to such a club, because I don’t have one; but some people seem to have a thing for developing affective attachments to the stories of dead people they might have some genes in common with, so it’s a thing.
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Without knowing DAR, I had assumed that was what was meant (“I had to leave because I was adopted” = “I had to leave because my birth parents didn’t quality me”) since the alternative (“Fuck off adoptees”) would be far too bizarre. I guess I’m betraying my own personal biases when I say that I would never be a member of a group that allowed me membership purely based on who my biological parents were. I’m sure some people are into that. I mean, the quotation was from someone who had a strong professed interest in genealogy, so I could see how such a group would be more appealing.
I guess the reality is that I would never join such an organization in the first place than that I would leave when an adoptee found out they were no longer qualified. Above I said that people don’t want to be told that sometimes adopted children can tell they “don’t fit in” because it raises the ugly feeling that we are basically racist. A group that wants or does not want me as a member because of my lineage gives me that same gut feeling.
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Yes, that DAR. And let me tell you, it is particularly sweet when I get to be one of the people telling someone from Stormfront who did DNA testing to prove how Aryan they are that in fact they’re part Jewish. Seriously, it’s a great pick-me-up:
You’ve got to take your amusements where you can.
As to how Steve Jobs chooses to refer to people he has never met – the grandparents of his children, which may mean nothing to him but as I’ve said there’s an entire industry built up around helping the grandchildren who DO in fact care – what I can’t seem to get across here is that the socialization in this country is so strong that there’s no way to say he or any other ADC (thanks, Shaddack!) is truly making a choice when they publicly diminish their original family members to a purely animalistic/bodily-part connection. It’s one of the highly approved ways to show how much you love and are grateful to your “real” family. Conversely, it’s much more likely to be a personal “choice” to say the exact opposite: that despite not raising him, they are part of who he is. Notice that is actually a true statement, yet it’s radical to say. Try putting it in a thread populated by members of the adoption triad and see what sort of response you get, versus stating what he said. It’s eye-opening when you recognize the extent of the prejudice. Once you do, you can’t ignore it anymore.
