Two Years ago, when Catherine was in sixth grade, she was given a school assignment that would have been unremarkable for most kids: make a timeline for history class in which half the events occurred before she was born and half after. For a while, she worked quietly at the dining-room table of her family’s rambling Northern California home. Then she looked up.
“Mom?” she asked. “What was the year that you and Dad met our donor?”
Sitting with me in May, Catherine’s mother, Marie, a 59-year-old therapist, smiled wryly, remembering the incident. The crinkling of Marie’s eyes gave her a passing resemblance to the actress Anne Bancroft ”” but not to her own daughter. Marie, who asked me to use only her middle name and a family name for her daughter to protect their privacy, is dark where Catherine is blond, olive-skinned where Catherine is fair, brown-eyed where the girl’s are hazel. There is no similarity to their jaw lines, their cheekbones, the shapes of their faces. Of course, lots of kids don’t look like their mothers; few people would consider that odd, though they might ”” often incessantly ”” comment on it in conversation.
“So, what’s going to happen with this project?” Marie recalled responding to Catherine at the time, being careful to keep her voice neutral. “Is it going to be put up in the hallway? In the classroom?”
Catherine shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. And later, “Mom, this is my timeline.”
In the last year I have come to know a man who is basically ignorant of his background. He was adopted and his adoptive parents were fine people who must have showed him much love.
But the man suffers and is the poorer for his situation. I can not immagine purposely condemning a person to that situation. I know that my own heritage, though impoverished in every other way, is rich in character and history. I know generations of people that formed me and my family. I know where God entered the affairs of an ancestor and the effect that this had on future generations. My own grandchildren will have that wealth if they have no other.
I am not blaming nor criticising the children “parentless” backgrounds – they need God’s love and our sympathy and friendship. In fact, they need even more of God’s love and our sympathy as they are often a black hole that absorbs every bit of sympathy and help given them.
But, no, I would never condemn a child to that situation. It seems from Scripture that God wouldn’t either.
DonGander
DonGander, are you saying that adoption is wrong? Should children never be adopted? Do you propose that they be aborted instead or raised by a young, single mother who might not be able to care for herself, let alone her child?
I believe that the Scriptures, especially the O.T., provide some wonderful examples of adoption and fostering. And God adopts us as his own through the work of the Cross! (I wrote a Bible study outline on adoption when I was in my late 20s.)
I cannot agree that adopted children have parentless backgrounds and are “black holes.” Can’t a loving and nurturing home environment with parents who consider them their own children ever overcome any biological short-comings? Sure, it’s helpful to know something of the biological parents’ family health history but back in the days of closed adoptions this was often not possible. So were all the children adopted before ca. 1980 doomed to failure? No way! And not everyone who was adopted feels a need to find their roots (some do, especially women) but to most the roots of the only family they’ve ever known are sufficient.
The above-mentioned article is really of a different nature. By entering into what is for many an ethical “gray area,” we’re looking at something that is more than conventional adoption. Personally, I don’t agree with such methods. There are plenty of children in foster care and orphanages, to say nothing of those headed for premature death if only their mothers could be persuaded otherwise, waiting to be adopted. If a couple cannot naturally conceive a child, after plenty of prayer, research, and time, the best thing to do is to look into adoption. A child of the heart, long-desired and waited for, is just as special (if not more so) than a child of the womb.
As an adoptee, an adult, a Christian, I appreciate DonGander’s insight. Although it is true, as SheepDog says, that “not everyone who was adopted feels a need to find their roots”; the discovery of one’s roots can still make a huge difference to those who do desire it. One’s history and one’s real past is important, even essential, to knowing oneself and one’s place in the world.
Too often in my experience the words of adoptees and the children produced through surrogacy do not get heard. The question of the true history of the child is a very important thing pointed to in this article. SheepDog and those like him, even though advocating for adoption over IVF, still need to get beyond ignorant statements like “to most [adotpees] the roots of the only family they’ve ever known are sufficient.”
Sheepdog:
My wife and I spent several years attempting to adopt a child. I am not opposed to adoption. Please read my post more carefully, I believe I laid out my thoughts well.
There is one exception which might even be the problem. I said: But, no, I would never condemn a child to that situation.
I meant to say: But, no, I would never INTENTIONALLY condemn a child to that situation.
I am sorry for that oversight.
DonGander
The situations spoken about here should make us all hesitate and reflect darkly on the effect that technology is having and will continue to have (in a quantum way) over our sense of being human, of belonging to a human lineage.
AS you know, gene splicing is presently inserting genes from one species into another. Think for a moment where this process may well go. When we put human genes in a dog, the live birth is a what?
Well, I will say this again. We Anglicans – Christians generally, but Anglicans in particular because this is our family – have to begin the hard task of bringing Christian belief to technological transmutation. WE cannot wait, for technological change will increase in a quadratic way while the ability of a culture to absorb the significance of that change will be standing still. Has it occurred to you tht there are some technological things we should NOT do under any circumstances, even if the immediate goal is acceptable? These alterations in our fundamental identity are taking place – this article is a painful case in point – and we haven’t had a chance to ask: Should this be done? How will the New Testament be brought to bear? Can science and technology be permitted to do anything they want simply because they can do it?
There are nightmare possibilities riding in this train that is rolling toward us at top speed, and we are worrying about whether the ACN is doing what is right or not. Shall we allow Orombi inside the US?
The nightmares are virtually upon us, and we shall ride them where they wish to take us if we do not face what science is making of humankind. Larry
A close family member of mine is adopted. Some years ago he traced his birth mother (as is his right in New Zealand) and found out that he had 4 half-siblings. It turned out he resulted from an adulterous relationship that his mother had when she split from her husband when she already had two children. Shortly after he was born she wanted to return to her marriage – but her husband could not accept the child and he was put up for adoption. She then had two more children with her husband.
For a while he was very entranced by his birth mother – who was much more of an exciting free spirit than his adopted mother. But gradually he came to see that the selfishness that had led to his adoption was a wider characteristic of her life, and that it had adversely affected his half-siblings chances in life. He also came to see that the unselfishness of his adopted mother which had led her to take in yet another child who needed a family (at a time when there were more children than families wanting them – especially children who were not tiny babies) was also characteristic of her life, and for many years now he has been grateful for the chances he received through the adoption, as well as very happy that he was able to learn of his origins.
I tell his story because often there is a lack of balance in adoption discussions. There needs to be an acknowledgment that adoption is both a desirable and undesirable thing — neither one nor the other. As often seems to be the case, when God’s laws have been broken all the options then available are less than the best option that He supplied.
“Roots” are funny things. I discovered when my grandmother died that she had adopted my mother. At first I felt cut adrift, but then I realized that that part of my history consisted of love ties rather than blood ties. At that, all my history and roots fell back into place. My uncles became my uncles again, and my great-grandparents were again part of my family. I don’t have any idea who my mother’s blood parents were, and she doesn’t either, but we still know where our descent is from. If the way of finding out her blood parents were open I MIGHT try and find them; as it is, I don’t miss them at all. The break in blood ties doesn’t affect me, except that part of my medical history is missing.
And, re technology, it can be abused but so can the lack of technology.
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
Sheepdog #2: “There are plenty of children in foster care and orphanages, to say nothing of those headed for premature death if only their mothers could be persuaded otherwise, waiting to be adopted. If a couple cannot naturally conceive a child, after plenty of prayer, research, and time, the best thing to do is to look into adoption. A child of the heart, long-desired and waited for, is just as special (if not more so) than a child of the womb.”
Beautifully expressed. I certainly cannot speak for couples who desire a “child of the womb” — I cannot address the inherent longing. I suspect, though, that your comment could provoke further reflection — and perhaps lead to adoption, bringing a hitherto unwanted child (for whatever reason) into a loving, nurturing home.