Ramblings on reproductive rights

When China recently changed its guidelines governing foreign adoption, it generated a lot of discussion in the U.S., the primary adoption destination for abandoned Chinese babies. China will no longer accept as adoptive parents those who are single, overweight, have been treated for depression, are over the age of 50, married less than two years, or divorced and remarried for less than five years.  There's plenty of speculation on what's really driving these changes but the official line out of China is that they're meant to protect the children and speed up the adoption process for "well qualified" parents.

In the U.S., the newspaper I read in Virginia tracked the story of a middle class couple as they went through a foreign adoption. I was expecting a heartwarming story when I began following the series. Early on, there was nothing noteworthy about the couple except for the fact that they were adopting three older children at once (biological siblings), from Russia or a former Soviet Bloc nation (I don't remember precisely).  A reporter followed them through the process and continued to cover the story even after the children entered their home.

Shortly after the children arrived, it became clear this couple might be dealing with some real mental health issues. The woman was clearly obsessive-compulsive, having every MINUTE of EVERY DAY planned down precisely for herself and every member of the family. She had an elaborate system to keep everyone on her extremely detailed schedule. I think it even involved bells. She also had an equally rigid plan for "how their life was going to be" long term.

The children had only been with the family a short time when the husband, the breadwinner, unexpectedly quit his well paying job because HE wanted to stay home with the kids too. This was not in HER plan and the tensions in the story were palpable. The family quickly fell into extreme financial hardships, and when the series of stories ended, they were selling their very nice home and preparing to move to Florida to look for work. They did not have any contacts there or any specific leads; they were going there because they'd once been to Disneyworld and it seemed like a good place to live.

In that last story before the move, the woman was carefully digging up one or more jars from her backyard where she'd buried the "remains" of her miscarriages.  Oy.  Can anyone envision a happy ending to this? Do these people sound rational and stable to you? Is this a good home for those kids? Who decides?

When single Angelina Jolie adopts children from Cambodia and Ethiopia, the public deems her mature, unselfish, and saintly--a GOOD parent. With an Oscar on her shelf, no one worries about her past mental health issues, addictions, history of cutting, or bizarre behaviors. When Madonna and her husband, who already have two children, seek to adopt a child from Malawi, she is deemed selfish, egotistical, and BAD.  She's adopting the wrong way for the wrong reasons.

When the UK restricted access to fertility treatments provided by their National Health Service with the intent of putting  limited resources toward the cases most likely to yield successful pregnancies, there was quite a lot of outrage as many couples saw their chances of having a child evaporate because of their age.

And yet when a 60-something-year-old woman receives extensive medical treatments and gives birth to a child, few people applaud. The words "unnatural," "selfish," "ridiculous" enter into the conversation. There's a sense that something has gone WRONG in the world. It is socially acceptable for old men to conceive children with their young wives, but old women are scorned when they have children.

So who draws the line and where do we draw it? When are we too old to be considered good parents? When are we too fat? Which health issues are acceptable and which ones are not? Who has the best marriage? Who offers the best home, the best future, the best prospects to a child?

When placing orphans, everyone looks at the parents and tries to evaluate what will be best for the child. Yet it appears that more often than not, who gets or doesn't get fertility treatments has nothing to do with what will be best for a child but whether the parents have the money to pay for the treatment. So many people and so much money controls this corner of the reproductive universe while the rest of it runs out of control.

Day after day, biological children are born for many reasons and no reason at all. They arrive wanted and unwanted to married and unmarried parents; rich, poor, and middle class; healthy and unhealthy; happily married or not. Good circumstances, bad circumstances, and all the grey area in between. It's all left to chance. Biological kids get what they get in life, and only when things go terribly wrong does anyone intervene. Parents have lots of rights regarding their kids. Kids have very few rights regarding their parents.

The only common thread in this whole rambling discourse? EVERYONE believes they have a right to have a child if they want one.

But do they?

January 18, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Comments

[Elisabeth]

Lots of fodder for one's thoughts in this post. Interestingly, my boyfriend (who was abandoned by his father before he was a year old, and then raised by his mother and a rather abusive stepfather) and I were discussing horror stories having to do with adopted children who had turned out to be nightmare kids. We both had quite a few to share, but I also remembered that many of my students who are great kids were adopted by very loving parents.

You once wrote a remarkable essay about parenting being some sort of extreme sport, in which everything is a crapshoot. Bringing someone to life into this world is exactly that. Couples who appear very stable and extremely well-suited for becoming parents may disintegrate within a few years, thus creating a very unstable and disturbing environment in which their kids have to grow up (this description kind of reflects my own marriage - we had miscellaneous problems with my daughter when I was still living with my husband, and they all naturally faded away once we separated.)

Conversely, a single mother who had a child at age 14 or 16 (although the stacks are kind of loaded against a successful parenting story) may end up turning her life around and be a great parent (I recently read, I can't remember where, such a story about the woman who was recently appointed Chief of Police for Washington, D.C.).

So, yeah, it is way beyond complicated. I still think that people should be able to decide to be parents, either naturally, with the assistance of a fertility treatment (sufficiently covered by their health insurance), or via adoption. And reproductive rights should also go the other way - a woman should be able to decide if she wants to continue her pregnancy or not (I do have philosophical problems with late-term abortion, however, having been born 2 1/2 months early myself.)

That story from the Virginia newspaper that you relate sounds very disturbing.

And the whole thing about society's attitude towards older women vs. older men who have children is very strange, indeed. This is making me think about writing something about what is deemed "natural" and what is not.

[V-Grrrl]

Elisabeth,

I remember one of those heart-wrenching cases of biological parents trying to get back a child that had been given up for adoption and had lived with its adoptive parents for years. The heartache and arguments over who the child belonged to were so upsetting to follow, and in the end, the biological parents succeeded in getting the child back.The worst part? They divorced within a year or two of winning the court battle so the child was once again being shuffled around.

[Lynn]

You write about some very important topics here. As an adoptive parent with one child from China and one from the U.S. I read those articles with great interest and often anxiety. Through the whole process of filling out the paperwork for both adoptions the social worker made it clear that her job is to find a home for a child, not a child for us - that she represented the child, not really us. That makes sense to me.

I was sorry to see some of the changes that China is making now - they've had a quota on singles adopting for a while but now they've eliminated that option. Some of the most wonderful parents I've met in the local group with children from China have been single moms. And even though China is making these changes because so many people are petitioning to adopt the children, not all the children are being adopted. There are still children left in the orphanages. I think they'd be better off with a single parent than left in the orphanage. One group that does a wonderful job of helping out the orphans who are still there is Half the Sky.

The story of the birth parents coming back and claiming the child is so distressful to me - I can't imagine how it's in the best interest of the child to be uprooted from everything they've known, not because the adoptive parents are doing something wrong but because the birth parents changed their minds... I was lucky enough to meet my son's birth mom and think she's amazing young woman. I know she was always thinking of what was best for the baby.

And that article you read about in the newspaper in VA - WOW those parents were scary. If Child Protective Services isn't following up on that article they don't deserve their title!

[Rory]

This is such a tough question, V.

"Rights" is one thing, "Good Sense" is quite another, and who's going to say how sensible someone is? And would they be right? Sheesh, there's loads more questions than answers.

But it is the miseries when you read heart-breaking stories.

[V-Grrrl]

The weird thing about the newspaper story is how early on in the process, the couple seemed so "normal." Nothing seemed amiss and I admired them for taking on three kids so that the siblings could stay together. If I remember correctly, the kids had been abused and one had a significant hearing loss. This couple was happy and willing to them a home. But as the story unfolded, I could almost sense the reporter's struggle to keep the story accurate and fair when it took such a strange and unexpected turn.

While the parents seemed to be making decisions most of us wouldn't agree with, I don't think anything they were doing could be counted as neglect or abuse. Keeping the family on a very strict schedule isn't against the law unless you physcially harm someone in the process. Quitting your job to be with your kids isn't against the law either. It's just one of those situations where you raise your eyebrows and think WTH happened here? Did the stress of suddenly becoming parents send these folks off the deep end and make one become a control freak and the other ditch their career? I don't know. I often wonder what happened in the end but unless the kids were truly neglected or abused, I'm sure CPS isn't going to call.

[Mignon]

V, have you seen Casa de los Babies? I've been thinking about it often - it's a great glimpse into the crapshoot kids face, biological or otherwise. I think crazy "parents" are more likely to slip through some foreign adoption processes, and the movie focuses on a group of women waiting for their Central American children to be available, while they sit in a beautiful hotel, slowly revealing all their character flaws.

No, we don't need a license to have children, hence the two terms of GW Bush...

[Debbie]

I think its when we "draw the line" that we get into trouble. Each and every person/couple needs to be evaluated individually. And, yes, past history counts.

In the case of Madonna and Angelina, I think what people argue is that just because they have money/power/influence they got moved to the front of the line.

[wordgirl]

I've gone on record as saying that ANYONE who qualifies as a senior citizen has no business borrowing eggs and sperm in order to make their own baby. Be a mentor? Or a good grandparent? Absolutely! In certain situations, and if it's the only option, I think grandparents can take over raising their grandkids. I have no problems with 40-somethings undergoing fertility treatments of trying to adopt. But...those people have a reasonable expectation of LIVING another 25 years. A 67-year old woman (the one recently in the paper) has no such expectation. It's not right.

Aside from their restrictions on anyone older than 50 adopting a baby, I think the Chinese government is completely batshit. 10-20 years ago they were throwing baby girls out with the garbage and now they're getting all high-handed about people who are overweight or single. Crazy.

[Bice]

Very interesting post. We've all seen the horror stories of child abuse at the hands of biological parents who don't want or love their own offspring. There are so many unloved, abandoned children in the world that it seems only natural and right to place them with people who want them. Some of those people may fall short of some subjective standard yet it seems none of that really matters if you have enough money. Money seems to make all the difference when it comes to adoption. Money and celebrity will open doors (despite potentially glaring character flaws) that are slammed short to the ordinary person or couple.

[amber]

I SO agree with wordgirl!! The Chinese government IS batshit. And I think they don't want so many people coming into the (comunist, don't forget) country anymore, and seeing how poor the people are, or how poorly baby girls are cared for. (Like, say, when they are killed or "aborted" at one stop sonogram/abortion clinics when people find it is in fact a girl.If this were or had been happening to boys in mass numbers, the world would care more, I believe.)

That story you tealk about is sad, but I bet not the norm. Or maybe it is. I looked on the us adoption sight for older children not long ago, called AdoptUSKids, and a big number of them were Eastern European, who had been adopted, and then the parents ended up giving them to the state. Poor kids! Like they are dogs that didn't work out.

I think people in their fifties-- men or women-- should not be having babies. Whatever! You think a twenty year old kid wants parents in their seventies? MAYBE addoption, because, yes, older parents are better than no parents. But then, I think they should be older kids. We have so many older kids who need homes.

I believe any well qualified people, single, married, gay--whatever, should be allowed to give a child a loving home.

:)

[Ortizzle]

This is really a complicated issue, particularly since many people who are approved as adoptive parents turn out to be raving mad, and I bet a lot of people who are discriminated against on minor issues would have made great parents. The only thing that is clear to me is the age factor: it just isn't fair to the child to have parents who are pushing 90, if they live that long, when the kid is graduating from high school.

[wendy]

I think until you are a parent, it is impossible to know what type of parent you will truly be. There are no guarentees on any of this, parenting, birth or breeding.

Any body can look good on paper...or for that matter, bad on paper. Parenting is proved in the moment to moment decisions. There are no good predictors of behavior.

I think we have to have faith in a grander plan, on this one.

[Arabella]

Good, thought-provoking post.