Who's allowed to be a mother?

[jennyaxe]

I recently reread "Grass" by Sheri S. Tepper. It's set in the future, and the Earth is severely over populated - so much so that on Earth, nobody is allowed to have more than two children. If they have more than that, they have to emigrate to a colony planet. And any third child still on Earth is not allowed to reproduce. Marjorie, the protagonist, visits "Breedertown", where the supernumerary women and children live while waiting for transport to a colony. She helps a teenager, who is a third and therefore illegal child, get an illegal abortion. Marjorie explains that if the teenager had had her child, it would have been taken from her and sold to a colony world, and the teenager would have been picked up by the population police. Certainly she would not have been allowed to be a mother, either way.

Then I started thinking about international adoption. On the whole, I'm glad we gave that idea up. It's one thing to want to have a child, and to choose a child that already exists and needs a home, rather than to have treatments to try to bear one that my body isn't capable of on its own... but what about the mothers of those children? The ones who have to hide their pregnancy, the ones who have no way of supporting themselves and their child, the ones who already have too many children to feed but who will continue longing for and wondering about the one they gave up... and the ones who are dead, the ones who were raped and had no way of getting an abortion, the ones who have no choice at all, neither reproductive or otherwise... Is their life improved by our taking their children? If they did have a choice, would they choose to have their children sent away to the other side of the world? Then there are those who never wanted to give up their children, those who had their children stolen and sold to adoptive parents. There is trafficking in children just as there is in women, except in the case of children it's legalised and called international adoption.

This is not to say that international adoption is always wrong or bad. But merely looking at what areas the adoptive parents come from compared to the areas the children come from should tell us a lot about the economic and power structure of our world, as well as about how women and children are valued.

Comments

[heliumbreath.livejournal.com]

On the bright side, at least there are adoptive parents willing to give those children a home; I'd be a whole lot more worried if excess children were getting the same treatment as unwanted cats and dogs.

Yes, the children are coming from a whole range of broken backgrounds, but at least in this area the human instinct is to do what we can to improve things; caring about children is built into our nature.

[jennyaxe.livejournal.com]

Yes, caring about children is built into our nature. Caring about women apparently isn't...

The children are valued by people who want children. They are not valued in the place they come from, nor are their mothers valued at all. Or, at least, they are only valued insofar as they can be used to fulfill our desires - for children, in the adoption business, or for sex, in the sex trafficking business.

I first read that part of Tepper's book as "look, this is what is going to happen unless we fix things". Now I read it more as "look, this is how our world already functions, except you won't be able to see it unless it is couched in terms of a future dystopia".

[heliumbreath.livejournal.com]

You've got a present dystopia in places like Afghanistan; the attitudes toward women there are just seriously wrong. I can't picture acting that way, and somewhere there's a major divide between societies. Hopefully Western persuasion gets through to them.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

yeah. it's a really tricky area. my own personal solution to this problem is that i picked a country and an agency that i thought had an ethical program, that my agency is working to have adoptions from that country be as open as they can be (i'll get to meet birth family, if they want to meet me, i'll get to send letters, etc), that i admit that i am doing this because *i want a baby*, not because i'm trying to rescue anyone, and that for the rest of my life after godot gets here, we're going to be working to make life better in that country for people so that future birth families will not have to make that decision.

[jennyaxe.livejournal.com]

I see what you mean, and that is pretty much the way I had planned to go about it back when we were thinking about adopting. And the reason we chose not to adopt is also a selfish one - we like our lives and don't really want a child.

The reason I started thinking about this and finally made that particular connection to the book I read was that when I was handing out election ballots, I spent some time talking with a woman who was giving out ballots for another party. She had two adopted sons. She told me that she's met people saying stuff like "oh, how fortunate for those children to be given a home in this country, their life will be so much better here". She said that usually made her want to hit the people who said that...

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

the phrase i have learned but not yet had a chance to use is "oh, no, *i'm* the lucky one!" accompanied by beaming at the idiot talking to you.

(the phrase that i came up with by myself was "oh, fuck off and die", but that seemed inappropriate in situations where godot will be able to hear me.)

[bluemagpie.livejournal.com]

I have such mixed opinions about adoption. My eldest brother was given up for adoption because my mum was young (ish) and not married and everyone thought it was 'for the best'.

It all worked out in that he had a wonderful childhood, we (me and my younger brother) had wonderful childhoods and we met him as an adult and he (+ his own three kiddies) are very much part of the family again.

The pain that my mum felt until she met him again (and still does now) and the hurt and anger that I carry, especially now that I have Astrid and I understand a bit more about how you bond with babies while they are growing will always be with me though.