Adult Responsibility

I think the thing I hate to hear from anyone, when someone has been rude, crude or cruel is "that's just the way he/she is" or "he/she is damaged by (adoption, traumatic potty training, seeing grandma naked)." Those comments might very well explain their actions, but they don't excuse them. There is no excuse for hatred, bigotry, cruelty and pure rudeness except, perhaps, advanced senility or severe mental illness.

We all suffer or have suffered. If I had been given a choice, I would have chosen another father. But I got what I got and I had to grow past it. No infant, raised OR surrendered ever has a choice about anything, so that particular whine is irrelevant and laughable. Should we be taking surveys in the hospital nurseries or perhaps we should get the opinion of every ovum and sperm cell?  I  have been abandoned, molested, raped, had my children taken from me, been through poverty, divorce, the suicide of my stepson and homelessness. Oh, and my sixth grade teacher, a real psycho, slapped me. Gosh, does that mean I can be nasty to people and it will be OK?

Right! It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Every time I see a TV show where the psychiatrist says, "tell me about your mother," I want to barf. There comes a time in our lives when we, not our mothers, fathers, adopters, neighbors, siblings, or anyone else, are totally and irrevocably responsible for our own behavior. It's called adulthood. How we treat others is OUR responsibility and to say that we have a right to call people nasty names or denigrate anyone because of something that happened to us as a child or infant is whining cowardice. If you are going to be an asshole, then OWN it. Don't blame mommy.

People point to some one's childhood, say a person whose parents divorced when they were young, and say that this is why they murdered their neighbor. How many people had divorced parents who DIDN'T murder their neighbor? They used to use this one, the single parent, as a yardstick with generalizations about how the children of unmarried mothers grew up to be felons. They didn't include the children of long-married parents who landed in the slammer. Statistics can be skewed just like Bible verses and made to prove any point you think needs proving.

This "MeMeMe" attitude is getting old. I cannot say how much I appreciate people who can be civil, agree to disagree and not feel they have to blame all their snarkiness on something from the dim past and other people they don't even know. If you are going to place any blame, make sure you get the facts and the person right. Don't just throw it out at everyone that bears a faint resemblance.

I have a friend, not connected to adoption, who has read some of the items where we mothers are blamed for everything from hangnails to Uncle Joe's drinking problem. He called what he read "emotional masturbation." I call it childish and inexcusable. To any who want to "give the other side of things," or "add perspective" or "participate in lively debate," let me say that the negative posts that have actually come into my comments box are anything but these things. I either get excuses for how these people behave, or I get nastiness. One mother, one I thought of as a sister in this situation, posted me one of the most gratuitously nasty comments I have ever read. She's blocked. So, it's not just our children.

I want to be able to state the case of the Senior Mother with respect (well, not to the industry) and receive that same respect in return. We have valid issues as do adopted people. They do not have to be mutually exclusive and we have as much a right to be heard as anyone else.

So to the Snarks, Hissers, "Birther"Haters and the just plain mean-spirited, either back off or grow up.