Saturday, June 07, 2008

About Those "Dads"

I got a huffy comment from someone who wanted to tell me that adoption is NOT just a woman's issue but also includes fathers in the mix. Well, to the extent that it takes a male participant to produce a pregnancy, yes, they are a part of the equation.

But I talk, here on this blog, about the BSE. I am coming at it from the true experiences of most Senior Moms, and believe me when I say, that most of us had NO support, input or help from the fathers. The numbers of moms who never told the fathers about their pregnancy is another tiny minority and many dads from our era who say that they weren't told are lying through their dentures.

For most of us, as in my case, once the word "pregnant" was spoken, these valiant examples of male fortitude ran like rabbits. In my case, the father of my oldest child lied about his paternity and spread the rumor, along with some of his buddies, that I was promiscuous, in order to escape the consequences of fatherhood. Luckily, his parents were decent people who did make him answer the social wrecker's questions and she was convinced that he was the father. He still won't take a DNA test or include our daughter in his life.

For those of you who know me, you know that the second child I was forced to surrender was not the product of misguided teen love, but an outright assault. In both cases, I was the culprit as far as society was concerned. I don't know how many of us have heard the phrase, "she went and got herself pregnant," as if we just spontaneously conceived on purpose. The men got away with a wink and a nudge and a "boys will be boys."

During the BSE and even now, most men do not take the responsibility they should when they dip their wicks. They are too hormone-driven to care what happens to the girl/woman and the child they conceive. They expect the woman to be prepared and protected. These women who don't tell the fathers are usually women who were left holding the bag, so to speak, while Don Juan went on to plow newer fields. Sometimes it is pride and rejection that keeps a women from contacting a man who obviously doesn't want her. The fathers who do come forth, after the fact, then make the mother the goat, making her sound dishonest when she was probably just desperate.

Even in the rare cases where a young man wanted to take his responsibility and take care of his girlfriend and their child, back in our time, he was usually barred from seeing her and threatened with jail and charges of statutory rape. I know of one father from that era who was removed from the premises of the maternity prison by the law. The last thing our parents wanted was to see us married and pregnant for all the neighbors to count months and shake their heads and say "tut tut" about our ages.

When a man can become pregnant, gestate and give birth, THEN, maybe I will say it is not a women's issue. But that hasn't happened yet. I could only wish............ But the fact is that this is still a man's world and women are still sirens and sluts and daughters of Eve when it comes to this kind of thing. We are the ones who are the object of moral censure..NOT the fathers. Not much has changed since the BSE in that regard. Men DON'T get pregnant despite that modern-day silliness of a married or committed couple proclaiming that "they" are pregnant. SHE is pregnant, and is fortunate to have the support, responsible actions and love of a husband or partner.

I am still wanting to find out why NOW hasn't addressed this crime against their older sisters. The BSE IS a woman's issue, will always BE a woman's issue and needs to be addressed as such. To the Dads from the BSE who have accepted and welcomed their adult reunited children, hey, better late than never. But remember that many of you broke some young woman's heart when you abandoned her and knew you could get away with it. Combine that pain with the loss of her child to adoption, and you have one very injured woman.

To the fathers of today, I have a suggestion. After having sex, especially unprotected sex with a young woman, why don't you stay in contact for a while until you know for sure that there was no seed planted? That would go a long way towards lessening the need for lengthy court actions to try to regain custody from avid adopters. You don't have to love, marry, live with or even like the mother of your child. But, you can give her support and, if she is totally unable to parent her child, you can ask for custody right off the bat. She will be a lot more amenable to that suggestion and telling you the truth if she is treated like she matters enough to have a little moral support.

Now, do I hear any male volunteers for that first male pregnancy? (and I don't mean a tranny) You'll just LOVE labor and delivery. It's sooooo much fun. (And rewarding in a way that I don't think a man will ever be able to understand.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

""I got a huffy comment from someone who wanted to tell me that adoption is NOT just a woman's issue but also includes fathers in the mix. Well, to the extent that it takes a male participant to produce a pregnancy, yes, they are a part of the equation.""

Robin...was this 'huffy comment' from a man or a woman? If from a 'man', he is talking out of his Man Ass, when it comes to pregnancy, surrender and adoption and in relation to the BSE! I have often asked...Why is it on the many, many adoption groups (talking about closed adoptions, coercion, surrender, etc., especially from the BSE)that maybe ONE male may spring forth to speak and that male being much younger than from the BSE? Where in the hell have all those Fathers?? been hiding for the last 30, 40 and 50 years?? Why haven't they had the courage to come 'out of the closet'?? Personally I don't want some woman who has surrendered a child to adoption, making excuses for men that impregnate women and just walk away, with his excuses 'I didn't know, she didn't tell me','I wasn't sure 'it' was mine', 'No, No..I never knew her'! Pregnancy and giving birth is a WOMAN's ISSUE!! Like Robin..when men can get pg and give birth, then we can have a 'legit' discussion. And JMO! this 'we' are having a baby..is absolute silliness. Like Robin said...the woman is having a baby, she is pregnant..not him. Boyfriend/hubby should always be her main support thru HER pregnancy,,financially and emotionally. But HE is not pregnant! Never has, won't be today, and not in the NEAR future. Who knows a hundred or more years from now..science & technology could make that happen. Just too bad for me..that I won't be around to hear men crying, whining about their aches and pains and how bloated they feel while pg. Now L&D, would absolutely be worthy of the price of an admission ticket!

Sheesh... pregnancy still is a 'female thing'...men haven't been able to co-opt that, YET! But we are in the beginnings of..when women willingly volunteer men to co-opt with the ...'WE' are pregnant, which is still physically an impossibility!

Just the laments of an Ole Lady/Female...who still believes women and men are not biologically and emotionally wired the same. I also don't believe in Uni-Sex! I want women to be women and men to be men...there is room in this world for both of us...as Mother Nature created and intended.

Robin said...

I'm not sure, Shadow. I think it might have been an adoptee who didn't get the welcome from old Mom like they thought they should and sided with old Dad. You know how much our children like to blame us and try to hurt us and don't want to really listen, sometimes. Men can say a lot of things, years later, when the surrendered, adult child finds them, to make themselves look good and we have to take into consideration that there is more than one side to the story. Men who screw and run are not my favorite kind of people.

Anonymous said...

""Men can say a lot of things, years later, when the surrendered, adult child finds them, to make themselves look good ""

They could have made themselves look a hell of a lot better, in my opinion, if the majority of abandoning fathers had stuck around, and stuck up for their soon-to-be born kids, even if they know longer wanted to resume a relationship with the mother of their child. Many of their parents gave these young guys and not so young guys, the easy way out...'It's not your fault'..and they took it and ran away with it.

I have yet to find any stats in how many natural fathers search for their lost children. I imagine there is a few, a very few..but I will believe that most just put 'it' all behind them...until the 'fruit of their loins' shows up decades later. Then I bet there is some real fast tap-dancing that takes place. Is it noticable how jaded my stance is on abandoning fathers?? I bet it does..and for a million plus reasons, including whoever my 'abandoning' father is.

Robin said...

Heh heh, Shadow, when my daughter showed up and wanted to meet her father, you should have seen WILLIAM J. ALBRIGHT of PACOLET, SC, doing the funky chicken as if he had six feet...all of them running in different directions. First the jerk wanted to know what she wanted from him, then he said he wasn't going to lose everything he had built up over the years to his wife if she were to divorce him. Seems wifey is threatened when she doesn't have a damn thing about which to worry her poor widdle head. I don't want the arse-hole.

Adoptive.Mommy said...

Dear Robin,

I wrote you a few days ago and said some horrible things to you. I want to apologize now for what I said. I'm sorry--truly, genuinely sorry. I don't know why the post struck me wrong--maybe because of the situation my children's birth mother was in when she gave birth to them. She is very badly addicted to meth, among other things, and my youngest son has no biological father to speak of--the man she claimed as his father proved to not be. My oldest son had a fight on his hands when he was born; and could have very easily died. He is a trooper and fought so hard for the life that he deserved. He wasn't even born in a hospital. She waited hours before even calling for help, and he wound up being born in some seedy motel room, having his chord tied with a shoelace (clean, at least I hope). His biological father has a very long criminal past, and has even to this day (2 years later) not been able to keep himself out of jail, or other types of correctional facilities.
I want my children to know they are adopted. I want them to know where they came from; who their parents are. It troubles me to know that my youngest son will only be able to have half of his past explained to him, as we do not know who fathered him.
I am sorry for what you went through. Even though my children aren't my blood, and I didn't bear them--the thought of losing them makes me physically ill. I am sorry for you, and every other beautiful mother (Including my sons') who ever had a child snatched from their arms--regardless of reason.
If my children decide to search for one, or both parents, I will not only encourage them, but help them in their quest. They not only deserve to know; but I feel that they should know where, and who they came from.
I love my children, Robin. I can't say that I love them like a biological child, because they aren't--and I sadly will never know what that feels like. But I can say that I love them from the depths of my soul--beyond everything I've ever thought possible. They have my heart; my desires, my strength. Even if they don't have my eyes, or the same hair color.
I like to think that I saved them from possibly what could have been a terrible fate. To this day, their mother is still an addict, and has trouble remaining stable. I hold no ill feelings for her; I am thankful for her, and for the life she gave my boys.
Please accept my apology. I said terrible things, and I hope that you have a blessed life, and please forgive my harsh words.

God Bless,
Tiffany

Robin said...

Tiffany, I will accept your apology, but please understand that I do not support adoption. Adoption is for meeting the needs of the grown-ups to feel "like normal parents" or to, in some cases, feel noble. Legal guardianships with no pretenses or changed birth certificates or assumed last names is more for the sake of the child. I can't hold you to any kind of blame because you were raised in the kind of social climate that celebrates adoption as the best thing since sliced bread...all warm and fuzzy and wonderful and makes women who cannot have their own children feel entitled to adopt the children of other, less fortunate women, often without a thought to how this unnatural situation affects both the mothers and the adopted children.

The mother of the boys you adopted represents only a small minority of mothers who lose children to the $1.6-billion-a-year adoption industry and to the state agencies who have their quotas to meet. And, bless her heart, somewhere along the way, someone failed that woman, badly. It is obvious that she has less than adequate self-esteem, to say the least.

The overwhelming majority of mothers, from my era up to the present day, are fine women with good values who were made to believe that the situation they were in was some kind of unresolvable crisis, were coerced, forced and pressured by family, social workers and agencies and deserted by the men who were half of the pregnancy equation.

When we start helping women to overcome poverty, addiction and illness, when we start celebrating the birth of a child to any woman, with or without a husband attached, at any age, with any financial status or educational level, then we will be the egalitarian society that we are supposed to be according to our poor, mangled constitution. When we see a woman in any of these situations and we say, "what can we do to help her and her child to grow together and make a life?" then we are truly thinking of the child's best interests.

So, I thank you for your apology and I do hope that the mother of the boys you adopted gets her act together and finds recovery for her illness of addiction. Because, there is more than just curiosity there...there is a bond. It happens in utero. Prepare yourself for it and for their pain if she is not receptive. It would be wonderful for them and for her to feel the love that my reunited, adult children and I feel for each other.

Anonymous said...

Tiffany,

I am a mother who
had her son taken
for adoption in 66. I am a mother
who wasn't sent away but never saw her son's precious face never was allowed to hold him. The medical
and hospital bill was paid by my step thing so son's birth was not state paid. But the wrecker obviously gave orders and my own hospital followed those orders..knowing and I say knowing full well this was wrong and against the law to withhold a baby MY baby from its mother. I was his mother then and I still am. I gave birth and that amended certificate with another woman's name on it giving birth to the same baby, at the same hospital is a lie. A flat out lie. I do have the his original and so does he.

Anyway, I would like to add you are speaking like you might be open to reunion. I have to admit that anyone mostly women who adopt not men are very different when the mother appears. YOU will feel and think differently I guarantee it. But you will have the drug infected mother scenario to use against her so that will be in your favor. YOU are the savior!

For those of us that had our babies taken just because they could do it we have had a rough road our kids usually didn't have anything to use against us..as we were deemed not worthy just because we could provide a baby for a woman who could not have one.

Our grown adults have problems even with that. Why didn't we fight...why didn't we..refuse to sign. Didn't we want them.

My own son's adopter told him I didn't want him. After 14 years or so in reunion I still haven't clarified that to this person. She didn't know me and she didn't care if she hurt him.
She said that to protect herself she WANTED him. I didn't bull.

So maybe just maybe I might finally get the chance on Father's day to tell this adopter the truth of course it would have to include where I heard that from and it was from my son. Breaking his confidence in what he had told me she said. But I want this person to know the truth. Her lies have gone on way too long. I did WANT him she was the one with the ring on her finger and she soon after acquiring my son was a single mom JUST like me. WITH TWO adopted boys...

Just wanted to let you know that the drugees
were and are not the moms that lost their babies in the BSE. WE were taken advantage of by everyone including our own parents.

Gale

Angelle said...

Robin,

Your post and your comments to Tifffany are spot on!

Legal guardianship and helping young and/troubled women. There are some novel thoughts.

I think that I have carried the burden of feeling "underclass" my whole life. I am successful and finacially secure. It has been a lifetime struggle to over achieve against the odds.

My son was taken away from me in the 60s, thankfully we are in recent reunion.

Keep writing.

Angelle