Adoptive parents say the darnedest things. To their adopted children.

Jane

“What’s Jane’s agenda?” my surrendered daughter, Rebecca, told me her adoptive mother, Norma, had asked. After an eleven year search, Rebecca found me in 1997. In April of 1998, Rebecca let me know she was coming to the west coast from her home near Chicago to visit her adoptive parents who lived near San Francisco. She needed to reassure them, she explained. (No need to fill in what she was reassuring them about.) Would it be okay if she came to my home in Salem, Oregon for a couple of days while she was on the west coast? Of course I was delighted to say “yes.”

I picked her up at the Portland airport. It was a beautiful spring day and I suggested we do a quick tour of Portland before driving to Salem. After we walked around downtown, we stopped for lunch at a popular restaurant on the Willamette River which bisects Portland.

As we looked over our menus, Rebecca mentioned that her adoptive mother, Norma, was uncomfortable that our relationship had continued beyond our initial meeting. Norma had asked her “What’s Jane’s agenda?” I was stunned. Agenda? Agendas are for business meetings, political aspirations, not mother-daughter reunions. I learned much later that Rebecca’s adoptive father, Nelson, had first raised the “agenda” question.

Norma, like other adoptive parents, was well-schooled in adoption lore and held to the fantasy that first mothers pretty much forget their surrendered children and go on with their lives. Rebecca mentioned to me later that Norma had told her when she was growing up that I probably did not think about her. Nelson had, however, assured Rebecca that I likely did think of her, at least on her birthday.

“What’s Jane’s agenda?” I hesitated. Rebecca went on, “She thinks you’re trying to make me a feminist.” Rebecca and I had had heated discussions via email about feminism and she had conveyed these to Norma. I was shocked to learn when I first met Rebecca that she knew little about the women’s equality movement. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, the Equal Rights Amendment, Mormon opposition to the ERA, the 1977 National Women’s Conference (which I attended as an alternate delegate)—all these things were unfamiliar to Rebecca. According to one of Rebecca's emails, Norma had told her that "'women's lib' has been another name for sexual promiscuity" and that feminists rationalized that "if men could do it, women should do it to prove they're the same as men....Feminists are dangerous to family values. Feminists mean moms who work full time and let nannies raise their children. Feminists get abortions and don't think twice about it. Feminists thwart men's efforts to be fathers. Feminists hate men and at least half are lesbian."

As I had explained to Rebecca earlier, my interest in feminism had gone beyond the question of rights and opportunity. I was firmly convinced--and still am--that my gender-based powerless had caused me to lose her at birth. You simply could not be a respectable mother in 1966 without a gold ring on your fourth finger, left hand.

I was trying to expose Rebecca to ideas which were, by 1998, very much a part of mainstream culture. I cared about Rebecca and, as a woman who had grown up in the sexist 50's, I believed that learning a different way to think about about gender roles would be beneficial, empowering. Our discussions about feminism, however, were only a small part of a complex relationship.

I drew a breath, kind of smiled, shook my head, and said “well, I’d try to convince any woman—and man for that matter—to be a feminist and support women’s rights, but that’s not why I want to continue to know you.” I didn’t finish. I thought the reason was obvious; love drove my need to have Rebecca as part of my life. She had actually always been a part of my life although I had walked out of the hospital with empty arms over 31 years earlier. Now, I wanted her to be a visible member, not just a phantom hidden in my thoughts.

I don’t know if Rebecca ever told her adoptive parents this. Perhaps she never knew it herself.
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(I referred to this incident in a comment on Lorraine's previous post, Adoptive parents say the darnedest things. To us. but decided to add the details to complete the picture.)

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National Women's Conference

From FMF:
Two Mothers, Part 3
A Letter to Prospective Adoptive Parents