Revisiting Our Youth

I love it when truth intervenes in and disrupts the flow of adoption mythology. As hard as the pro-adoption factions, adopters and wannabe adopters and the ultra-elitist eugenicists try to keep the skewed lore of the culpable, sexually careless slut-mom alive, it is being slowly eroded into farce by more and more concrete information on what actually went on and goes on in the private lives of women and men.

New studies have shown that we weren't the only ones who "couldn't keep our pants on." It seems that nearly everyone, including the saintly adopters, were "doing it," too. I think the figure quoted was 95%...that's 95% that didn't anymore reach the hallowed marital bed with virginity intact than we did. Who'd a thunk it?

The only difference with us is that we showed the results of our passion and emotion. In the Baby Scoop Era, there was no access to birth control, period, for the unmarried woman. The guys could have used condoms, but you know what they say about the erect phallus and its lack of a conscience. As we have seen in the present day, prudish parents-in-denial and other super-conservative influences try to bar the availability of birth-control measures for the young. And, sometimes, even the best birth control doesn't work.

Some of these girls were just lucky, others had well-to-do families with good connections that could obtain safe abortions for their daughters, even to sending them to other countries where it was legally available. Others were pushed to marry when a pregnancy occured. I attended one or two of these "shotgun weddings" when I was in my late teens. The presence of a wedding ring on their finger when they gave birth to these "6 and 7-month" babies kept these women out of the pre-marital sex stats for some reason. More than that, it kept their babies out of the adoption pool and home with their moms where they belonged, so, even if the marriages didn't turn out great, maybe those forced nuptuals weren't so bad if that was achieved. And, lest we forget, adopters have bad marriages and get divorced, as well.

A great many of these daughters and sons contracted STD's, which, along with delayed childbearing, lifestyle choices such as smoking, overeating, drug use and botched abortions, are cited as the main causes of infertility (look it up). Clamydia and PID were prevalent if not talked about much, and I remember that, during WWII, there were a lot of GI's rendered sterile by the "mumps." I assume that gonnorhea just got a different nickname back them. The numbers of those rendered infertile by "no good reason" is a small one. (That "delayed childbearing" really gets me, as well, since there have also been good, scientific studies to show that our most fertile years are not in the mid-30's t0 late 40's but much earlier in our lives. I mean, Well, DUH!)

These are the same adopters who will now chastise the mother for "choosing to have sex" and will jump at every woman who has an unplanned pregnancy that comes at, perhaps, not the best time in her life and court her until they have divested her of her infant and her heart, then do all they can to dump her. When some of these people, especially the wannabe adopters, start telling us that we "should have kept our legs closed," I want to say, "You should have taken your own advice." And talk about your double standards. Has it been forgotten that there was someone lying between those "open legs?" The unmarried, young or financially challenged pregnant woman is the target of all this criticism while everyone else, who did the same damn thing, gets off with a wink, a nudge and a "Whew!"

Wake up, world! Adopters are not chaste and saintly. They are as subject to all the shortcomings of humanity as any of the rest of us. They have tripped over their own peccadillos and made their own mistakes just like everyone else. They get divorces, abuse, batter, have affairs, steal, cheat, and lie in the same proportions as the rest of the population. They have done nothing outstanding to merit the children they covet over the mothers of these children. Something is very skewed when these people can judge us moms as morally unfit or unfit in any other way..lack of funds is immoral???

I was very naive for a very long time. I bought into the idea that I was one of just a few stupid girls who should have said "no." I didn't protest my heartache or even address it, because I let a very unjust society decide my worthiness to do so. I compared my inner truth to the outer lies of those around me. I weighed my worth on a scale that was tipped against me. Well, now things are back in balance, big time! I will talk about how horrible it is to have children taken for adoption due to a fallacious idea promulgated by facilitators and their clients. I will tell young women to reconsider, to keep their babies, to spare themselves and their children the pain of that unnatural separation. I will tell the truth of what happened and what continues to happen and if the truth hurts...well, so did losing my children.

I also have to address the most recent self-delusion of the adopter...the "Paper Pregnancy." And they have the nerve to make trite remarks about the terms WE use...! It seems that once the home study is complete and their names are in the pot and things start proceeding, the potential adopter will declare herself "paper pregnant." OK..how delusional is THAT? Perhaps, then, we should call them "paper parents." We could give them a red crayon so that they could properly color their "paper labor and delivery." Or, better yet, just give them "paper babies," pictures they can put on the wall or paper doll babies whose outfits they can change by bending the little paper tabs. It would save a lot on education, diapers, you name it. Then we could start giving attention to helping a mother keep and raise her own child rather than having to fight against those that encourage her to surrender that intergral part of her own being.

Maybe there is a new truism in this. "Those that can, do. Those that cannot, try to do it on paper."