A "Loving" Decision? Yeah, right.

What is wrong with this ad?

I opened my email this morning and found this...yet another paean to giving up a child.

The movie may turn out to be all right, but whenever I read that someone gave up their child by making a "loving" decision I see red."Loving" for whom? Giving up a child for adoption comes at the end of a desperate decision-making time. Either the mother is too young and can not imagine her life managing a child and going to school, et cetera, because she can't afford high-quality day care, or any day care at all, or the woman is too poor and overwhelmed by the things that poverty heaps upon one to keep the child.

If I had told my daughter I gave her up because I "loved" her so much, she would have laughed at me. Plain and simple, the word "loving" is used to make adoptive families feel good. Yes, they want to think, the natural mother/teenager/poor woman realized that she couldn't give her child all the niceties that money can buy and because she didn't want her child to be poor and foolish like her, so she gave us this baby so we can shower it with our love as well as--gee--all that money can buy. Really, how many women who have a fat bankroll give children up because they "love" them so much? None. How many 35 year-olds with careers make this "loving" decision to "complete" someone else's family plans? If the decision is so "loving" why are adoptees so angry--to judge from their memoirs--after they are reunited?

Adoptive parents are always telling us to clean up our language so they do not feel bad, but how about a campaign to take this bogus idea of a "loving" decision to give up our children out of the vernacular? We gave up our children because we felt we had no good options. It was a desperate act in a desperate time.

The bold below is theirs.


Bitter Sweet

“Bitter Sweet is an important film to help everyone understand what adoption is about. It is positive, accurate and very well done”
Sister Paula, Founder. International Life Services

A Video Documentary Bitter Sweet, Stories of Open Adoption is a poignant look at one of the most difficult, and loving, decisions a woman can ever make. Making the decision to turn an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, into the miracle of family, through adoption.

Filmed over two years, Bitter Sweet provides a rare look into the adoption process. It features the stories of five courageous women who share their sorrow, strength and hope as they process through the steps of considering and finally choosing adoption for their children.