That’s One Big Powerful Mother Dude!

I want to know who she is and where she is, that big powerful mother who keeps convincing the legislators of this continent that we first mothers want to hide from our children, you know, the ones we gave birth to.

I don’t get it.

The studies say that’s not true. Something like 90% of birth parents want to be found. And among the small percentage of those who say they don’t, 50% change their mind within a year of being contacted.

Anecdotal evidence from the other mothers says that ‘s not true. Mothers want to be found or went searching and have found.

The blogosphere says that’s not true too. Everybody out here seems to be talking about how we can get them to open things up.

But somehow, this mighty mother still convinces law-makers that adoption records cannot be completely open because she made a deal, a contract, with the kind folks who counselled her to relinquish her baby and by god, she doesn’t care about the rest of us mothers and adoptees, she wants that contract upheld.

Now despite being a “troubled and misguided” young lady who went out and got herself pregnant, some where along the way I managed to get a law degree. And one of the things I learned while getting a law degree is what constitutes a contract. By any definition I know, there was no contract that guaranteed confidentiality between mothers and anybody. It’s not in the adoption papers that were signed. As I like to say, it was not a promise made but a punishment imposed. Any suggestion that there were negotiations going on, mother to adoption agency, is laughable.

But that’s not relevant the big powerful mother says because, silly you, it wasn’t a contract,contract, as in legal contract; it was a social contract.

A social contract? What’s that?

According to Wikipedia:

The term social contract describes a broad class of republican theories whose subjects are implied agreements by which people form nations and maintain a social order. Such social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government and/or other authority in order to receive or jointly preserve social order.

Well we must be on the right track here because Wikipedia is talking about giving up rights. So, just like they taught me in law school, I have to ask, “How are you defining rights? How are you defining social order? What is the social order that wants preserving? Who are the people who want to receive this social order?”

Now from everything I read, it’s not the mothers and it’s not the adoptees who want to receive or preserve this social order. I think we are the people who are supposed to give up the rights, as Wikipedia says, to preserve everyone else’s social order.

Do you think it just might be the adoptive parents who want to preserve this social order?

Here’s an excerpt from “How Adoption in America Grew Secret…” an article by Professor E. J. Samuels of the Baltimore School of Law that appeared in The Washington Post. Professor Samuels seems to think it might be the adoptive parents too.

Legal adoption in America only came into being starting in the second half of the 19th century, and at first all adoption records were open to the public. When they began to be closed, it was only to the general public, and the intent was to protect adoptees from public scrutiny of the circumstances of their birth. Later, as states began to close records to the parties themselves, they did so not to provide lifelong anonymity for birth mothers, but the other way around — to protect adoptive families from possible interference or harassment by birth parents.

Her phrase “to protect adoptive families” is an interesting one because as I read some of the opinions that were expressed in my own jurisdiction with respect to opening adoptive records, it is not just the current adoptive parents who must be protected but also the future, the potential, adoptive parents.

And what are the future adoptive parents to be protected from…the fact that the mother might want to know her child. That’s one thing but there is something else.

Adoptive parents because they believe a lot of the myths about adoption are worried that if mothers are not guaranteed confidentiality, they will not relinquish their children for adoption. The supply line which is already getting tight might dry up further.

Do you think some of these letters arguing promised confidentiality may not be from mothers. Maybe they are from adoptive parents, current and future.

Or maybe I’m all wrong and there is one big powerful mother out there who has the ear of government. If I could just find her and talk to her, I would tell her not to be afraid. For one thing, coming out of the great void is wonderful. For another, there’s no point. They can pass or refuse to change all the laws they want – we’ll still find each other. Many of us already have.

They only control one of the doorways to information. How does that old saying go about somebody closing a door and opening a window?

Hasn’t the UN said something about every child having the right to know and be raised by its own parents.

Peace

UM

Oprah’s Favorite Things

I was cruising around itunes the other day and came across Kathy Griffin’s best selling comedy album, For Your Consideration. I listened to a short clip about Oprah. Kathy says she loves Oprah, watches her everyday, but basically thinks she is full of it. I don’t feel as strongly as she does. I watch Oprah on occasion when the subject matter of the show interests me and, I think she does some good things in the world. She and I share a few struggles. But, one show that she does regularly makes me cringe. (Well the show on surrogate mothers in India made me cringe too, as did Oprah’s remark that it was a show about “Women helping women.” but that is another topic for another day.)

The show that always makes me cringe is Oprah’s Favorite Things. Judging by the audiece reaction when they find out they are at the favorite things show, I may be in the minority here. They go nuts. Their eyes light up. They shout and scream. They oooh and awe as each new piece of merchandise is brought out onto the stage. It is this display that really bothers me. I find it – to resort to a very old fashioned word – unseemly. It smells of greed. It smells of a culture based on who can acquire the most stuff. A shallow culture, some might say. A manifestation of the problem right there on your screen, some might say.

Ask Suze Ormand. When she is on Oprah, she says “Americans are going broke buying things they don’t need to impress people they don’t know.” This show feeds right into that. No doubt the companies who provided the merchandise are happy. Getting mentioned on Oprah has got to generate more than a few sales as any publisher will tell you. And you know if I were in the audience, I not sure I wouldn’t just pile the stuff up under my seat along with everyone else and take it home but boy when I watch that Oprah’s favorite things show it makes me feel uneasy, uncomfortable and I have to turn it off. It is not a very attractive display.

I picture those who are not too happy with America right now pointing to this show and saying, “You see, we are right. Look at these people.”

I think I heard Oprah say recently that she wanted to stop doing that kind of show but her staff talked her into it again. Oprah, as a wise woman once said “Listen to your gut.”

Peace

UM

Korean Adoptees-the archeology of Adoption

From the Adoptions News

From the AHL Foundation

Archaeology of Adoption August 27 – September 24, 2008

Gallery Korea, Korean Cultural Service

460 Park Avenue @57th ST, New York, NY

Opening Reception with the Artists: Wednesday, September 3, 6-8pm

The AHL Foundation – a not-for- profit arts foundation – presents Archaeology of Adoption, an Exhibition of Korean Adoptee Artists.

AHL attempts to focus on artists who deal with relatively relegated issues through their experience as Korean adoptees. This exhibition addresses the issue of adoption, something the artists have taken for granted, and shares it with audiences who may not have thought about it.

Moreover, adoption, in itself, jeopardizes all the social constructs on memory, nostalgia, and on what composes a family. The artists in this exhibition raise questions such as how one can trace something that they never experienced or whether nostalgia for a specific place could be strong to those who had spent a very short time there.

The issue of adoption has been marginalized in the postcolonial and identity political discourse. Identity as a Korean adoptee is on the border of established racial, national, and cultural boundaries. Artists in this exhibition challenge all kinds of accepted notions that we take for granted and also, never give up.

Furthermore, the artists tackle what can be called blind spots in discussing the issue of adoption.

Maya Weimer interviews Korean birth mothers, who abandoned their own children, transforming it into video work with images while the identities of the women are hidden.

Jane Jin Kaisen explores the way adoption has conveyed Orientalism as Asian babies were regarded as the exotic Other.

Jung Woo Lim, a director, made a documentary film of an adoptee, following his travel to Korea in order to meet his birth family.

Jette Hye Jin Mortensen shows a mock documentary, where she juxtaposes archival images of the Danish composer Carl Nielsen with those of her great grandfather.

Other adoptee artists challenge all the established notions including identity and nationality.

Marcel Proust said “Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”

AHL Foundation tries to make an opportunity for the public to encounter a new experience through this

exhibition, and an opportunity for the adoptee artists to communicate their messages and experiences with the public.

They request your support in providing this opportunity to the artists of this exhibition. Your participation and sponsorship would be greatly appreciated.

The names of donors, regardless of the amount, will be printed inside the Exhibition Catalogue. (the catalogue dead line is July 30,2008).

If you want to donate, here are the coordinates :

AHL Foundation, Inc.

545 Asharoken Ave.

Northport, NY 11768

Not all adoption all the time

It is a beautiful day here, high above the river. The wind is strong and the waves are crashing over the breakwater. The trees below me are bending and bowing. The sun is shining.  It is, as I said, a beautiful glorious day.  A day on which you are happy to be alive.

I have been reading recently that some of the adoptees are getting tired. Tired of having to be well behaved and perfect and please everybody. I can empathize with that.  Where are you in all of it? Because really the first person you have to please is yourself. Many of us have learned the hard way what happens when to thine own self one is not true.  I get tired of it all too sometimes.

But even when I’m tired, I think it’s good that all the voices are being heard.  Two-thirds of us, and I hesitate to say, the two thirds who were affected the most by adoption, were never heard from at all for a very long time.  God bless the internet, it has its downsides but my aren’t we talking now in a way we have NEVER talked before.  The conversation was one-sided for way too long.

Peace

UM

A-moms current and potentential

There has been lots of discussion about posts on other blogs from two women, one an unhappy adoptive parent and one a potential adoptive parent. These two women have been incredibly honest one stating that adoption is not her first choice and the second saying that she regrets adopting two children because it appears she finds the demands of motherhood overwhelming.

Too me this does nothing more than indicate that adoptive parents are human. So what’s the matter with that. The problem is they are not sold that way. Sold to whom? To those being told that surrendering their child to adoption is the best option for them and the child because there is a perfect home waiting. A home with perfect people. This is ludicrous of course because there are no perfect people. No one can make any such guarantee.