The Reality and My Reality

This topic makes me cringe. I'm hoping by writing some of it down I can get it to stop rattling around in my head.

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading on adoption issues, specifically the idea that adoption is morally reprehensible because women are trapped in low economic or social situations with no way out except to relinquish their children to people of higher economic or social situations.

This situation isn't an opinion. This is a fact. I look to the women in Korea, women who are stigmatized and shunned for having a child. I would venture that many, many, many of these women want desperately to be able to parent their babes, and yet, their societies offers them no support. Their children are practically forced out of their hands.

That is a fact.

It's like that in countries all over the world. The majority of children who are available to be adopted around the world are victims of economic and social problems, not a lack of love or caring arms.

To a slightly different extent, it is that way in this country, too.

I don't like reading about it, to be honest, but I am compelled to. I've been lurking on some first mother sites and some adoptee sites. I've read in depth some of the advocates who consider adoptive parents to be akin to kidnappers, and I've read some pretty close minded stuff from advocates who think adoptive parents are the heroes of the world. Both leave my stomach turning.

Then I sit in the middle ground and look up at the nursery door and wonder if I'm part of the problem or the solution. Or either.

Both my children were not able to live with their birth family for reasons FAR from a lack of love. Both my children have mothers in Korea who expressed sadness at not being able to keep them.

That is how my children came to my waiting arms. Not because I could love them more or better, but because I am randomly luckier than their birth mothers in my circumstances.

And that makes me uncomfortable.

But where does that leave me? Where does that leave my children? How can I fix a problem so global?

The reality is that both my children were relinquished and needed homes. They were unable to have a home found for them in Korea. I'm the 3rd best option, and I understand that. But some would argue by being an option at all, I'm still perpetrating the problem.

This is where I struggle. By adopting my sons, I am participating in a cycle that is clearly destructive to mothers and children. But then again, these two children are not hypothetical spokes in this cycle, they are living, breathing children who need and deserve a family....and there was no family in Korea for them at the time when they needed one. I don't believe they would have been better off in an orphanage. I want to think by raising them with as much exposure to their Korean culture and an openness for any type of communication with their birth families that the might possibly have, coupled with a loving home, will be enough to make this 3rd best option better than an orphanage. My sons might some day feel differently...I hope not, though.

But how do I become part of the solution for these yet-to-be-born babies and their mothers? It seems from my research that no one is exactly sure of that. Extremes seem so....extreme, and yet, it stands to reason that only an extreme will force any sort of change.

This isn't about me. Of that, I am sure. I don't have a right to be a mother. I can't give birth to a child, but that does not give me a right to parent someone elses.

But at some point, children will suffer from lack of families if adoption is ended. There will be a gap between the problem and the solution, and children will be caught in the middle. How do we determine which children get the be the martyrs for the future?

That's what I can't riddle out. How can we solve a problem by hurting the very people we are trying to save? But how can we continue to happily pretend that women all over the world have babies and choose to give them up for completely personal reasons and are happier for their choices? How can we pretend that the competent, loving (albeit perhaps poor and young) birth mother and the child's lives are best served by allowing or even encouraging a separation?

I don't know.

I don't know if this even makes sense. I doubt it does. I lay in bed at night and my head does circles as I think about my children and their mothers and myself and how we all fit together.

Ultimately, this is where I am at.

I can't change the past. I can't and won't contact my Little Bug's birth mother and apologize and offer to let her parent Little Bug while I pay her the money I would have spent parenting him myself (which isn't a legal option anyway, no matter what some advocates suggest). It is selfish, but I love my sons and I am glad to be their mother. That's a reality, too.

And until something happens on a larger scale, there will still be children, especially children with special needs, that will need a home. Our wished for Little Sis will, mark my words, be one of those little children. I don't believe us choosing not to adopt again would make any different in the current climate, except to deny a child who legitimately needs a home a family. Individual boycotts are not nearly as effective as other methods of change.

I can't change a global climate. I can't change the way a country supports unwed mothers or their children. I can help by supporting causes and organizations that are working on a bigger scale to make change. One of our new annual donations this year is to an organization that supports unwed mother's rights in Korea. We make our donation in honor of Little Bug's mother.

I can help by continuing to be aware of issues and talking about them. I can help by not putting on my rose colored glasses and reading books about how baby, we were meant for each other, as if everything and everyone beforehand was only a means to our end.

I love my sons. I love my family. I love the way our family bonds are created. I don't love the reason for adoption to be necessary. I don't love the hurt of two families that has resulted from it. I don't love the gaping hole in my sons' hearts that I will never be able to fill.

But even after it all, I come back to the thought that I am grateful for my children. I am grateful for my reality. God, I love Little Bug so painfully much. I know I will feel the same about Little Bro.

I owe it to everyone involved to try to make our blessings count, to pay it forward. I think that starts with having some hard conversations with myself and using my lucky circumstances to advocate for those who have less resources.