My best friend just found out this past weekend that her son’s parents are finalizing his adoption today. Though she’s happy that her son is where he is, she’s understandably sad about the occasion too. She’s definitely experiencing the bittersweet part of being a birth mother. Since I found out about Mack’s finalization after the fact through my caseworker I didn’t have the opportunity to start processing the occasion until much later.
Last night, my best friend posted on her Facebook wall about her conflicting feelings and one of her friends made a comment that rubbed me the wrong way. In the midst of trying to be supportive she said, “It is devastating for the adoptive parents and the child pays the price by not having the family he was destined too because of a selfish act.” She made this comment in the context of talking about a couple of hopeful adoptive parents that she knows who have had placements not take place because the mother changed her mind. I’ve talked before about the general need for adoptions to be focused on the child and not the adoptive parents, and specifically about relinquishing for the happiness of the hopeful adoptive parents. But I want to talk today about the word “destiny” when it is used to describe an adoption.
I read an article last week where the author had surveyed a number of parents that became parents through adoption. Almost universally they said that they felt their child had been brought to them through destiny. My feelings are conflicted on this matter. I know that Mack’s parents feel that Mack is and was a miracle and that the match is a great one. I agree with them. I think that a lot of parents through adoption take those feelings that they have when they are finally matched and have the child they’ve desired for a long time and pile them all under the umbrella of the word “destiny.”
The problem with destiny is that it has the hazard of making the parents who relinquish their children into magical beings. I’m not saying that destiny is an evil word and that it should never be used. But I also know that no parent who relinquished is a magical being. We were simply making the best decision that we could at the time with the information we had. In some cases we were coerced into that decision. In others, we weren’t. I know I don’t live in a land of unicorns and rainbows with glitter falling instead of rain and other birth moms that I know would agree with me.
There’s a more evil side to that word too. When a mother who is considering adoption for her baby says that her baby is destined to be with the parents she’s picked, she’s making herself into a “vessel for destiny.” This is yet another coping mechanism for the decision she either feels she has to make, or if the relinquishment documents have already been signed, it’s a decision she felt she had to make and is trying to cope with the ramifications of her decision. Just like a mother who says to herself or to others as well, “I’m having their baby,” to cope with an adoption relinquishment decision, “It was destiny that my baby is with the parents I picked” is the same idea. It dehumanizes the women and allows the adoption “industry” to shove the immense sadness and grief those mothers feel under the rug of happiness for the people who become parents to those children.
I was not simply a uterus to put my daughter with her “real” parents. I put the word real in quotes in the previous sentence not because I don’t believe that Mack’s parents are her real parents, but because when mothers use that to refer to themselves or other people suggest that usage to them, they’re diminishing their own real parenthood. A set of legal documents did not make me any less my daughter’s real mother. It just added to her parentage and gave her two real mothers that love her deeply in different ways.
Again, I’m not saying that usage of the word destiny to describe adoption and its associated feelings is an evil thing. I’m just urging people to be aware when using that sort of language that there’s another side to it as well.
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Adoption, Destiny and Magical Thinking
On August 15th, 2012, the NY Times Motherlode blog posted a "http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/adoption-destiny-and-magical-thinking/
Source: http://www.musingsofthelame.com/2012/08/Adoption-Lists-destiny-adoption.html
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1 3 thoughts on the New York Times article on adoption and magical thinking
![3 thoughts on the New York Times article on adoption and magical thinking]()
How does magical thinking manifest in adoption? The New York Times Motherlode article explores the phenomenon, and I do, too.
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2 Seriously?!: Our Adoption Was Destiny...Not
![Seriously?!: Our Adoption Was Destiny...Not]()
I love this post & Harriet's (will head over to Lori's later). But... I kind of disagree - I need to go write my own post instead of these ridiculously long comments. I'm a "things happen for a reason" person. Bad stuff, good stuff, all of it. I wanted to punch anyone who said that to me while we were in the throes of grief, but that was because people are stupid and tactless not because I didn't believe in it. I agree that adoption is romanticized and it shouldn't be. But my experience with international adoption is so different from yours - we weren't "chosen" and didn't have to work at it - because there is no direct birthparent involvement in international adoption. Shit happened to us, shit happened to Miss E, choices were made, but all on a timeline where a couple from Chicago, Illinois, were matched with this particular girl in Kinshasa, DRC. That is amazing to me... that Miss E who fits our family so perfectly ended up in it. Adoption is messy and not a Disney fairy-tale and Miss E will have her own feelings about it that we will do everything we can to support. But I marvel at how we got here and am incredibly grateful to whatever led us here-- circumstances, coincidences, fate, higher power, or whatever.
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3 Meant to be or not to be? « See Theo Run
![Meant to be or not to be? « See Theo Run]()
Our adoption was “meant to be.” This statement is a perennial favorite for debate among adoption writers and bloggers. Was our adoption meant to be? Or was it in fact, a painful and pos...
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4 Family Ties: Adoption and Magical Thinking
![Family Ties: Adoption and Magical Thinking]()
Magical thinking in adoption hits a nerve with many adoptees
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5 Dear people who believe placing children for adoption and adopting children into your families is “Destiny”
![Dear people who believe placing children for adoption and adopting children into your families is “Destiny”]()
Dear people who believe placing children for adoption and adopting children into your families is “Destiny” and a “Part of God’s Plan”: This is my mother. She passed away 1.5 years after I was adop...
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6 Another Dead Mother as Proof that Adoption is God’s Will and Destiny | Forbidden Family
![Another Dead Mother as Proof that Adoption is God’s Will and Destiny | Forbidden Family]()
This post is written as a response to an article in The New York Times in which the writer addresses adoptive parents who think adoption is God’s Will, part
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7 Musings of the Lame: Life as a Birthmother: The Adoption Lists: Was It My Destiny to Become a Birthmother?
![Musings of the Lame: Life as a Birthmother: The Adoption Lists: Was It My Destiny to Become a Birthmother?]()
Most adoptive parents feel their children are meant to be theirs though God's hand or destiny.Was it my destiny to become a birthmother?
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8 Life in a Glass House: Not destiny or magical thinking...but still God.
![Life in a Glass House: Not destiny or magical thinking...but still God.]()
We don’t believe God orchestrated S. getting pregnant so WE could be parents. To think so is arrogant and unloving towards a woman whose decision was painful and difficult. But we believe God took all of our choices, hers to place, ours to adopt, and directed us to find these particular children to become part of our family.
Added by Lori Lavender Luz on Sep 17, 2012
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9 Adoption, Destiny and Magical Thinking - NYTimes.com
![Adoption, Destiny and Magical Thinking - NYTimes.com]()
This is the original article as published in the NYT.
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10 Destiny and Responsibility, mutually exclusive? « Adoption in the City
![Destiny and Responsibility, mutually exclusive? « Adoption in the City]()
Here is my view – when you stop and think about adoption it’s a little crazy, decisions that four (or less) people make impacts generations of people. The rippling effects of adoption go farther than I ever imagined, and the deepest (and very possibly sometimes negative) impacts of those decisions are to the person at the center of it all, the adoptee. Accepting responsibility for all those ripples and that intial impact to this person I love most in the world is terrifying, but not taking any responsibility and saying this was how things were meant to be for all of us seems unfair to J.
Added by Racilous on Aug 19, 2012
