Review: "You're Not My Real Mother!"

I should have known not to pick up a book titled "You're Not My Real Mother!". But having read some positive reviews, I expected a sensitive look at the complex topic of transracial adoption.

The book opens with a dark-haired, brown-skinned little girl examining her face in a mirror. With a concerned expression, she remarks, "You know, Mom, you're not my real mother." Her blonde, white mother responds, "What do you mean, my darling?" If only she had stopped there.

Instead, she insists, "Of course I'm your real mother!" and proceeds to make her case by reminding her daughter of all the things she does for her. ("Does a real mother let you put twenty bandages on a bruised knee when you really only need one?" "Does a real mother teach you how to tie your shoes?")

When her monologue finally ends, the girl is able to ask her actual question: "I know you love me, Mom. But why don't you look like me?" Where the book could have affirmed the "realness" of first parents, it instead briefly mentions her birth mom:

"I don't look like you because I'm not your birth mother."

"Who's that?"

"Your birth mother is the mother who gave birth to you. She started your life, and I am thankful to her every day for that."

"Why?"

"Because I get to watch you grow!"

(There is a very tender illustration of the birth mother embracing the little girl as baby.)

The little girl then launches into her own litany of the wonderful things her adoptive mom does. ("You jump with me on the trampoline!") The mother-daughter bond sufficiently affirmed, the book concludes with a declaration that she truly is the "REAL MOTHER" (emphasis not mine).

This book strikes me as created more to reassure an insecure adoptive parent than to address the concerns of an adopted child. Indeed, the author wrote it after a similar real-life conversation with her internationally adopted daughter. "Realness" can be a painful issue in adoption. The first time I hear those words from Puppy I am sure my heart will twist into a trillion pieces, regardless of the context. But juxtaposing "birth mother" with "real mother" only diminishes first parents and adoptive parents. I am Puppy's real mom through-and-through, but so is K. Though we have very different roles in his life, we are equally real. It is good to affirm the truth that familial bonds can be about more than biology, but it does not need to happen at the expense of children's first families.

This book sorely misses the mark. But perhaps it does have a purpose--as a primer on How Not to Discuss Adoption with Your Child. (Lesson #1: Ask questions, but don't wait for answers. Lesson #2: Launch into a knee-jerk monologue. Lesson #3: No need to explore what is behind their statements and questions. Just make the conversation all about you!)

Ages 4-8 years.

(written by Molly Friedrich, illustrated by Christy Hale; Little, Brown & Co., 2004)

Reflections

For the first year of Puppy's life, he only looked like his first dad. K joked a lot that if she hadn't given birth to him, she might doubt he was her kid.

Recently, though, his face has started to take on some of K's features. You can see her around his mouth and eyes, in the length of his face. It's really clear in the most recent pictures of the two of them together.

K mentions the growing resemblance a lot. I didn't think much about how frequently she referenced it, just chalked it up to the fun of seeing her features emerge in her baby or an affirmation her connection to him.

Tonight it hit me: Puppy is the only person she's ever seen who is related to her.

I've always thought about family resemblance in terms of what Puppy would see, both in his adoptive family and in his first family. I never thought about K finally seeing herself reflected in another person after all these years.

I am such a moron sometimes.

Why is it...

... that when I mention open adoption to acquaintances for the first time, they almost always bring up first parents who might pose a danger to their children?

Yes, there are cases in which direct contact between first parents and their children wouldn't be beneficial. No one is arguing that. But somehow those situations are held up as the norm.

When I tell them I'm married, they don't warn me that spouses can be abusers and some marriages end with restraining orders. Yet they assume we should approach our relationship with Puppy's first parents with great caution. The idea that K and R are just normal people in an unusual family arrangement is quite a paradigm shift.

I wonder if people bring up Joan Crawford when K and R tell them about us. I doubt it. We adoptive parents get much better PR.

What is so frightening about open adoptions that people who aren't near them automatically assume the worst?