First, doesn't it seem this month like everyone is too busy to blog/taking a break from online stuff/missing from
Twitter? You guys, I think we finally broke the internet.
Second, yesterday morning we visited a preschool we're considering for Puppy in next year. A wonderful time was had by all and Puppy returned brimming with excitement about the school. Yesterday afternoon, Puppy peed his pants twice (super unusual for him at this stage), then climbed into Firefly's highchair and asked me to feed him Cheerios and baby food. It's like I'm living inside a freaking child development textbook. Independence--exciting--yay! Independence--scary--regress!
Third, Firefly invented her own sign for "yes." It is, hilariously, the same as the actual sign for "head," which we hadn't taught her yet. Which means we have a lot of conversations that go something like, "Firefly, would you like some more food?" "Head, head, head, head, head!"
Fourth, there was a lot of blog buzz this week about a provocative post by a first mother at a popular progressive blog:
Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-lifers' Choice for Women (language NSFW, depending on where you work). If you read it earlier, it's worth going back to read the author's addendum in which she talks about the response to her piece. (For the record, I do want to acknowledge that there exist people who identify as pro-life, but who are also strong advocates for adoption reform, including many wonderful commenters and readers here. That in no way invalidates her points; I just wanted to put it out there.)
The piece reminded me again of just how apt the mantra "the personal is political" is in adoption, specifically voluntary relinquishment and infant adoption. And here I'm not talking about the way it is sometimes waved as prop in abortion rights debates (and both sides of that debate oversimplify adoption). The experiences we have as triad members, which on their face seem so personal, so private, are often instances of broader inequality, of sexism and racism, classism and pronatalism. They tell us something about the ways we collectively assign worth. Our decisions (and options) are informed by everything from the economy to workplace structure to the status of reproductive freedom to social stigmas. Adoption is a
feminist issue, it's a matter of
reproductive choice, and it's tied up in broader issues of
social justice and
equality. The writer of that post isn't just a woman struggling with her personal history, she's a pinpoint example of how myriad social issues intersect in adoption. Each of us is.
I think framing ethical adoption as a justice issue changes the way we talk about it and expands who can join the conversation. It forces the point that anyone who claims to care about social justice needs to care about the way we practice adoption. We all have a vested interest, even those not directly involved in an adoption. Often ethical adoption--especially open adoption--is approached as a matter of compassion, with the argument that the players involved deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and as little unneccesary pain as possible. Which, yes, absolutely. I am all for compassionate adoption practices. But keeping the conversation at that individual level--even if it brings about certain needed reforms--doesn't help us address the larger social issues that surround every reliquishment and placement, whether or not we realize it.
Whether we like it or not, the choices we make along the way--especially as adoptive parents--are in some ways political statements. Not blue or red statements, but statements about the definition of family, about the value of single parenting, about the extent to which one's personal moral values should be made universal. It's not that politics should dictate our choices, nor that everyone must make the same choices. It's that we need to see how our individual choices feed into and reflect the larger social landscape. Not everyone who adopts is going to agree with me about that. But I'd argue that once we've put ourselves into the web of interpersonal transactions adoption requires--no matter how many steps removed we may be--we're either reinforcing or challenging the way things are.