MATERIAL BABY

 

 

 

 

Tricia Smith Vaughan
November 18, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

So Madonna, formerly known as the Material Girl, is trying to adopt a child. She’s only one celebrity who, despite her apparent fertility and the two natural children that she already has, is promoting herself and the $1.5 billion U.S. adoption industry by taking a child from its country and its family. In more than one celebrity adoption, there have been rumors in the natural family preservation community, and on the Internet, that the mother or father is alive and well; some natural parents have tried challenge the adoption of their child by a celebrity.

Madonna’s excellent public relations folks, however, have managed to squelch any possibility that the family of her soon-to-be adoptee have qualms with her taking a little boy from his village to Hollywood or London or wherever the Material Girl calls home these days, where he will, no doubt, be raised by a fine nanny. His father, strangely enough, seems elated by the whole process, not sad at all about losing his only surviving child—his other two children died of malaria and the children’s mother died during the birth of the child that Madonna wishes to adopt. Being that he had never heard of Madonna before she descended on their village, I can’t help but wonder how much that dad really understands about the U.S. adoption industry.

At this point, I can’t help but think of the documentary “Daughter from Danang,” in which footage from the 1970s showed American social workers begging mothers in Vietnam to give them their children, promising these moms that their children would be much better off in the United States than with their families in Vietnam. Many moms, most of whom had a hard time understanding English, signed away their children to the social workers. These children were then marketed as orphans in the United States; the people who adopted them were seen as their saviors. Is it any coincidence that the pressure to take children away from mothers outside the United States occurred in the 1970s, around the time that Roe vs. Wade made fewer domestic children available for adoption?

With celebrities being photographed with their little adoptee on their hip, readers of People, InStyle, and other magazines that tell us what and whom to covet believe that one day, we will all want to adopt someone else’s child. It’s a subtle yet effective message. And it’s working.

Over one year ago, I published a critique of the United States adoption industry, called “No More Mommies?” Along with the usual deluge of pro and con mail, I received an e-mail from a wonderful man who was about to become a grandfather. The circumstances were not ideal, mind you; his daughter was no longer with the father. As a result, the grandfather was encouraging her to give her baby away, to “a nice Christian couple.” My article had made him reconsider giving away his firstborn grandchild. How happy I was a few months later to receive a beautiful photograph of his daughter and her newborn son, together. While their lot would probably have been better had the baby’s dad stayed in the picture, the mom and baby together are fine. The maternal grandpa, after reading that adoption isn’t the wonderful thing that mainstream media make it out to be, started thinking about keeping that grandchild. As a result, he will be able to see his beautiful grandson grow up.

I also received e-mails from adoptees who told me that they understood what I was saying, that they too had always felt an emptiness from losing the chance to grow up with their natural parents. Moms who had lost a child to adoption wrote to tell me how thankful they were that I’d written the article. Rarely do they see their side of the adoption process covered in mainstream media. Some people who had adopted a child wrote me to thank me for making them see adoption in a different way. One man who had adopted a child and disagreed with me on some things, after we exchanged a few e-mails wrote that although he disagrees, he thinks I am "a pretty nice" person.

A couple of months after I published the article, however, someone, without my permission, published it on a site that was mainly made up of people who were desperately seeking someone else’s child, or who had already adopted. Within a few days, I received threats not only to me, but also to my family. I was wished “secondary infertility,” my children were wished a “fatal disease,” and it was hoped that my children would grow up “gay and infertile.” And those were the nice e-mails. Others were so threatening that they were reported to the abuse departments of their ISPs.

Over one year later, many of those people still stalk me. Recently, a breastfeeding organization asked me to perform comedy for them. After a press release went out, the stalkers called the organization, demanding that my performance be cancelled. The organization, fearing controversy, acquiesced to the stalkers. How ironic, I thought at first, that an organization claiming to be such a friend to breastfeeding mothers would choose to reject this breastfeeding mother and side with people who made such terrible threats to my breastfed children and to me.

And then I read some of their comments. Here’s a snippet, not personally directed at me, from one of the Web sites that has derided me:

From [Read] . . .

Is it fertility that these people dislike? I suppose that I was doomed, in that sense, before I ever wrote a word. Some people at this site and others were hoping that I would have a miscarriage, criticizing me for so easily, or so they assumed, giving birth to three children. Although there were quotes from my Web site and my articles all over the Internet, no one seemed to read the parts of my live journal in which I wrote about the miscarriage that I had this past summer. I suppose they would have been cheering at that news. Perhaps they are cheering as they read this paragraph. Personally, I don’t wish anyone infertility or miscarriage or any other difficulties and at first, I found it difficult to accept that an organization claiming to support moms and breastfeeding would support people who had wished such terrible things on someone. The people who called the organization and wrote nasty things about me across the Internet do seem, however, pretty scary. While it is sad that the breastfeeding organization acquiesced to their bullying, it is easy to see why.

The words that I wrote over one year ago, however, are even more important today, as celebrities promote the current adoption industry. None of those who threatened me seemed to make mention of the fact that over 40 couples wait for each adoptable infant. If the current adoption industry is truly about helping children, then why does the demand for infants so outweigh the supply? Nary a thought seems to be given to preserving the natural families of the children; instead, some potential adopters seem to have developed the attitude that it’s all about them, and about the child that they desire. What I wrote over one year ago is, unfortunately, even more true today: Children are no longer seen as a blessing, but as a right.

Meanwhile, the rise in infertility, which has been occurring since World War II, is devastating to many women and men. I have heard from young women in their 20s who are having trouble conceiving children. While the reasons for this problem are probably quite complex, and the solutions may be even more complex, the answer does not lie in taking away someone else’s child, eggs, or sperm.

A little more than one hundred years ago, searching for and obtaining a child that you desired would have seemed strange at best. True orphans were often taken care of by extended family members instead of being scooped up by celebrities.

Yes, there is occasionally a good reason for a child to be separated from his or her family, but such situations are rare; mothers should be encouraged to keep their children, not given scholarships to give them away. A person who has the material wealth of the Material Girl can help a child stay with his or her family and improve the living conditions of that family. Imagine what a million dollars or so, which Madonna could easily give, would have done for this little boy, his father, and his extended family.

But then again, preserving this family would have done little to promote Madonna, or to promote the U.S. adoption industry itself. And so another child will be separated from his family and in this case, his country, and with not even a whimper from most of the public. A whole new generation of little girls will be watching Madonna, Angelina Jolie, and other celebrities as adopting a child becomes the trendy thing to do.

One can only wonder what effect that such promotion of familial and cultural separation will have on our society. Then again, a generation of lost children, separated from their natural families, may indeed provide fertile fodder for those who wish to control us. As those of us who have experienced the pain of familial separation attempt to speak and write about our experiences, mainstream media refuse to publish our writing; Madonna and other Hollywood adopters are celebrated. Perhaps at this point the best thing for us to do is to sit quietly and watch the spectacle that adoption is becoming. As natural families continue to be broken up by the adoption industry, those of us who have experienced separation from our families will continue to be silenced if we do not sing loud hosannas to an industry that would not survive if mothers and extended family members were encouraged to keep their children. The question one must ask is why some people feel the need to keep those of us who do not wish to sing those praises so very, very quiet.

© 2006 Tricia S. Vaughan - All Rights Reserved