I’m an adoptive parent. Depending on who you ask, I could be a saint or a sinner. I am not a fan of extremes, so I just prefer to think of myself as neither. You know who does like extremes though? Nancy Verrier, the author of The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. There’s good reason that this book is so controversial, a lot due to Verrier’s all or nothing, black & white language. She says she speaks as an adoptive parent and someone who holds a Masters Degree in Psychology. My resume is the same in that regard, and so read the book through similar lenses, and have found things that I agree with and things that I find to be suspect at best and offensive at worst. First let me answer some of the questions that others are answering today:
1. Do you think that the negative media coverage of birth mothers has had an impact on your view of birth mothers as a whole? Have you seen stories about birth mothers that have made you think twice about adoption?
I think that for any subject out there, there are extremes. Nadya Suleman does not represent all women who undergo fertility treatments. Al Sharpton does not speak for all African-Americans. A tabloid-lifetime movie network-evening news horror story does not represent the majority of first mothers. Tiger Woods’ behavior does not mean that all golfers are cheaters. I say that having worked with a first mother that was using her child as a way to extort money from my husband and myself, among others. I don’t think of first mothers and then assume the worst about them. I actually try not to assume much about a first mother that she hasn’t told me herself (or said for us to know via a third party).
The first mother of our son asked to have a closed adoption, but she let our small agency know details about her and her family, which I appreciated. I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to walk in her shoes, but I can know that she is another human being. She is someone who found herself in circumstances where placing her son with us seemed to be the right choice at the time.
I do wish I knew more about V’s mother, and her (and thus V’s) extended family. I wish I knew why she didn’t want an open adoption. I don’t know these things, though. All I can do is respect my son’s wishes if the time comes that he wants to seek out his first family, and help him in any and all ways that I can.
That’s a long way of saying no, I haven’t been affected by media portrayals of first mothers.
2. Could you accept long-term legal guardianship of a child instead of adoption? How would such a status change your relationship with your child?
I’ve complained about not having our adoption finalized yet, but even with that, if the only way to raise a child was to be a long-term legal guardian, I would. Rearing a child, that’s what I want. The labels, whatever, they aren’t as important to me at this point. For me, personally, it wouldn’t change how I feel about my son, nor would it keep me from calling him as such. A guardian’s responsibility in this scenario is still to parent the child.
That being said, I don’t think that long-term guardianship is the best answer for children in society as it is set up today. Far and away the norm is to have at least a mom or a dad, be it one of each, one or the other, two moms or dads, step-parents or other permutations of the role. I think it is easier for a child to refer to his mother or father rather than his guardian.
I can see the argument from both sides. On one hand you have the argument that the child already has parents – the ones who conceived him. Anyone else is raising the child, but is not the mother or father. I get that, and appreciate where those who feel this is the case are coming from. I disagree, personally, but I can see how one could feel that way, especially if I were the one who had given birth to that child.
But does a child get that subtlety of nomenclature? I’d defer to adoptees, young and old on this issue. Would you have rather been in a long term guardianship? Would you have been more comfortable calling those who adopted you something other than mom & dad? Because really, what I would prefer in this situation is irrelevant. What the child needs is more important.
However, from the adoptees I have in my life (adult) – some in my immediate family, they see the people who adopted them as their parents. As such, that’s the path we are on.
3. To those who have adopted or are planning or hoping to adopt, does this change how you feel about adoption and how you would or will deal with things in the future?
This is where I’m going to go into more of my thoughts on the book as a whole. I absolutely have changed my thoughts on adoption after reading it. I haven’t changed in a yes/no way, but rather in a way that has continued to expand my understanding of adoption and helped me to learn more about the other participants in the adoption triad.
I would like to adopt again in the future, as I don’t want V to grow up in a house where he is the only child (said this way, since he may have siblings out there). I will approach the situation with a more open heart for the first mother. Now, I think that I was open-hearted and minded before, but the book helped me to see the first mother more as a person, no more or less flawed than myself, not as a saint who is giving my family a wonderful gift.
I also noted down things in my mind to think about as our son grows. I already considered things like the fact that the termination of his first parents’ rights was a day of loss for him. However, the book gave a voice to that loss.
The biggest take home for me is that there needs to be serious sensitivity from both sets of parents first, in support of the adoptee, and then from all members of the triad for each other. It’s common sense, but it pointed it out from the perspective of the first parents and adoptees – a voice that adoption material often leaves out. One needs to check their ego at the door before reading this book, and if you can do that, you can get a lot out of it. Adoptive families are, by their very definition, different than biological families. Paying attention to those differences without adding a negative (or unjustifiably positive in some cases) stereotype is what families can strive to work towards. I really did like her approach to reunions and her cardinal rules for adoptive parents.
However, there was a lot that I didn’t agree with, and that tended to be around Verrier’s penchant for over-generalization. I feel like she put adoption in a vacuum, where all things being equal, the first parent would have parented in the first place. Now, to be fair, her experiences may be based around the very secret closed adoption era, but maybe she took that into consideration. Without dragging on about it, here are a few of the topics I took issue with, and I have more than I listed, but these were the big ones:
- Adoptees either are passive or act out. She left little room for middle ground here. By doing that, I think she’s marginalizing adoptees and putting them in a box whereby people could then expect them to be either, when frankly, they could be neither.
- Mothers should stay home. I’m lucky enough to be married to someone that makes enough that I can stay home with my son. That could change tomorrow in this economy and I’d have to work. While I agree, it would be best if people could not have a need for daycare, but for the majority of people, it just isn’t the case. Putting that out there only serves to make first mothers and adoptive mothers feel guilty. If the family adopting the child needs to have both parents work, what then does Verrier think of first mothers who cannot find the financial means to keep their children? I don’t know, something about the language she uses really rubbed me the wrong way and seemed to really look down on women.
- A woman who gets an abortion and isn’t devastated must be in denial. I haven’t had an abortion, but I remember freaking out when I was a sexually active college woman. Me then could have had an abortion and not thought twice about it. I’m pro-choice. People make the choices they are comfortable. I think that too often, women who choose to give birth without financial resources are given little support. They get little pre-natal care, they don’t get child care assistance, and the children don’t get access to early education intervention. Though my family was built via adoption, I would like to see more children able to stay with their first parents who get the support – financial, emotional, physical – that they need to do so. To assume that a woman who isn’t devastated is somehow missing out is flat out projecting her morals on another person’s situation.
- Use of terms like “most” or “all” without proper citations. Had Verrier not made the upfront statement about being a psychologist, I would have been much more willing to accept her blanket statements as her anecdotal experience. Unfortunately with such a claim comes a responsibility to back up her assertions of fact with empirical data. I believe that adoption is a very emotionally and physically taxing event for all members of the triad, especially the adoptee. However, she lumps all first mothers together – though their reasons for placing a child for adoption are likely extremely varied, and similarly generalizes adoptees into few groups. While there are obviously recurring themes involving trust and loss, Verrier pushes her agenda without backing up many of her theories. Those that are quoted are 30-40 (or older) year old data. She believes that Gestation > Biology > Nurture. She makes statements that further her point, but does little to explore data on the subject beyond her anecdotal claims.
In the end, I do find that the general themes of her book are extremely valid and relevant, nearly 20 years after the book was published. I recommend that all members of the adoption triad read it, but only if they can take it a) with a grain of salt and b) only as one piece of a very large amount of information one gathers regarding adoption. Having been published in 1991, I do wonder how this book would differ if written today. Children born now and raised in an adoptive home live in a time where there is far less taboo and secrecy regarding adoption. I say that knowing that there is light years more that we must travel, especially with regards to how first mothers are treated and how adoptees can access the records attached to their very existence. Families look very different as we approach 2010 than they did in the 1970s, or earlier, where much of Verrier’s research is based, and perhaps how we as a society cope with that has changed as well.
To continue to the next leg of this book tour, please visit the main list at The Open Adoption Examiner.
