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serynI can't decide how I feel about adoption. Intellectually it seems like a good deal all around. Reproducing seems more like moving to a house and taking the cat that comes with it.
Keep in mind that I have zero interest or need of this discussion personally. There is no way I am having a child in my home, even if one came gift wrapped and with a buys-its-own-house maintenance budget included. This is all a hypothetical exploration of the concept.
If you're adopting, there's some choice involved. It's a bit like going to the animal shelter. The selection is limited and the options are all creatures which have been rejected by someone else for some real or imagined defect. Adoption is the "open box special" from the unlamented Circuit City. (They would sell you something used and returned, often lacking in essential components that were listed on the box. The discount price was not eligible for the seemingly-continuous sale, so the "open box special" was something that actually cost more than buying a new one.)
It seems like it's good for the kid who gets adopted. I don't know anyone personally who was adopted who didn't think it was better than the alternative. I have had a relatively large number of friends who were adopted, probably something in the neighborhood of 10-15%, it's well beyond the expected percentage. None of them even cared about finding their birth parents. (I don't know why the TV obsesses about birth parents, but it really does. That seems disjoint from my real life experience.) There is some weirdness when the kids get teased at school, but being adopted isn't worse than being a nerd or wearing unfashionable clothes.
It seems like it's good for the birth parents since unsafely disposing of a baby will get you arrested and imprisoned in a way that baking a toddler in a car seat does not.
My question really is this, directed at the adopting parents, "Why on Earth would you want to do that?" It's expensive. Most of the babies are not going to look like you. A lot of the adoptees are born with a dread disease or addicted to something that dissolves brain cells. After all of that, assuming you didn't get a half-dead one, you've got a baby. What are you going to do with it? That's another quarter million, assuming it's not too retarded for college. It's not soft and furry. It's not going to love you. It's just a baby, all it does is poop approximately a seven times greater volume than the intake port accepts. Then it gets bigger and nastier and more horrible and screams that it hates you, then it crashes your car and spends too much money texting.
I can, vaguely, understand why people want cats. Maybe even dogs if they don't live in the city. But why would you want a baby? It's got all the neediness and effort that a dog requires and none of the affection. It's never going to condescend to purr in your lap and it certainly cannot keep itself entertained.
There's just no reason to want something so unrewarding and expensive. Sure, I can see religious people who accidentally get pregnant keeping the kid... they probably see it as god damning them for having sex. And society really frowns on married women giving up babies for adoption--- not sure why, but I don't know anyone who would even consider it. But voluntarily taking in a baby? Paying for the "privilege"? Insanity. No one could possibly want a baby. There's no rationale for it at all.
ew. euuyewwwwwwwww.
Keep in mind that I have zero interest or need of this discussion personally. There is no way I am having a child in my home, even if one came gift wrapped and with a buys-its-own-house maintenance budget included. This is all a hypothetical exploration of the concept.
If you're adopting, there's some choice involved. It's a bit like going to the animal shelter. The selection is limited and the options are all creatures which have been rejected by someone else for some real or imagined defect. Adoption is the "open box special" from the unlamented Circuit City. (They would sell you something used and returned, often lacking in essential components that were listed on the box. The discount price was not eligible for the seemingly-continuous sale, so the "open box special" was something that actually cost more than buying a new one.)
It seems like it's good for the kid who gets adopted. I don't know anyone personally who was adopted who didn't think it was better than the alternative. I have had a relatively large number of friends who were adopted, probably something in the neighborhood of 10-15%, it's well beyond the expected percentage. None of them even cared about finding their birth parents. (I don't know why the TV obsesses about birth parents, but it really does. That seems disjoint from my real life experience.) There is some weirdness when the kids get teased at school, but being adopted isn't worse than being a nerd or wearing unfashionable clothes.
It seems like it's good for the birth parents since unsafely disposing of a baby will get you arrested and imprisoned in a way that baking a toddler in a car seat does not.
My question really is this, directed at the adopting parents, "Why on Earth would you want to do that?" It's expensive. Most of the babies are not going to look like you. A lot of the adoptees are born with a dread disease or addicted to something that dissolves brain cells. After all of that, assuming you didn't get a half-dead one, you've got a baby. What are you going to do with it? That's another quarter million, assuming it's not too retarded for college. It's not soft and furry. It's not going to love you. It's just a baby, all it does is poop approximately a seven times greater volume than the intake port accepts. Then it gets bigger and nastier and more horrible and screams that it hates you, then it crashes your car and spends too much money texting.
I can, vaguely, understand why people want cats. Maybe even dogs if they don't live in the city. But why would you want a baby? It's got all the neediness and effort that a dog requires and none of the affection. It's never going to condescend to purr in your lap and it certainly cannot keep itself entertained.
There's just no reason to want something so unrewarding and expensive. Sure, I can see religious people who accidentally get pregnant keeping the kid... they probably see it as god damning them for having sex. And society really frowns on married women giving up babies for adoption--- not sure why, but I don't know anyone who would even consider it. But voluntarily taking in a baby? Paying for the "privilege"? Insanity. No one could possibly want a baby. There's no rationale for it at all.
ew. euuyewwwwwwwww.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 05:10 pm (UTC)Then again, there are people who want children and who cannot gestate, or who're worried about carrying an unhealthy kid to term, so.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 05:29 pm (UTC)If the mother reproduces herself, she can control maternal drug use too. But it's not like if she births a lemon they're going to take it back and exchange it for the non-defective model. Adoption at least gives you the right of refusal.
A lesbian friend posted about her on-going adoption process and does not read me here. I keep thinking the best thing about being a lesbian would be the can't-get-pregnant sex. It's the feature that compensates for the social intolerance.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 05:36 pm (UTC)If the mother reproduces herself, she can control maternal drug use too
This is not as simple as it sounds--a pregnant woman who doesn't want a child might take (inconclusive) steps to get rid of it, whereupon someone who adopts the child later might get what you're calling a lemon. Not all health issues are visible immediately at birth.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 11:27 pm (UTC)Adoption, you're taking someone else's reject. Some of those must be lemons. Some probably aren't the "right" color or don't have power windows. There's no way to guarantee that the child you get is going to be long-term healthy. With adoption, you have the option to refuse a child that's known defective in specified ways. If you're doing the reproducing yourself, you have the ability to avoid some of those specific ways. [The example given was a question about whether you would want a child if the mother failed a drug test or was positive for hepatitis.]
The current political and social climate where pregnancy and childbirth is the penance for sex, it's got to be that basis since nothing else makes sense since they're continually trying to ban oral contraceptives too, makes it hard for women who do not want the child to take decisive action. If I needed an abortion, I would not ask my insurance to cover it. I would insist on being anonymous in all patient records. I would not give them a real address, a real name, or my real primary care doctor's name. I would pay in cash. It's not worth the long-term risks. And I live in California and have the resources to make that choice. If I lived in the middle of the god-ridden parts of the country where there are no abortion providers, I might do ineffectual things to stop it. But I'm pretty hardcore; I'd hang myself to ensure I did not damn someone else to being an unwanted child.
It seems really obvious that unlike buying a car when you live somewhere without good transit options, having a child or adopting a child is only going to get you a huge amount of risk exposure with no net gain. It's obviously something to be prevented since even in the absolute 100% best possible scenario, all you've got is a child. If I were a LOLcat picture, my caption would translate to "Do NOT want." The part I don't see is what the cat's looking at. When it's bath water, it's obvious that it's a cat thing not to want it. If it's a picture of vomit or a pancaked house or armageddon, no one should want it. All the other women I meet in real life seem to think my view of babies is bizarre. I look at pregnant women about the same way I'd look at a serial killer with leprosy. There is absolutely no possible scenario I can comprehend why anyone would do that to themselves when it's still legal to have it fixed.
I wasn't aware that lesbians were nagged about having babies. That sucks. I stopped getting nagged about having a baby. Some of it was the 5 years where I didn't go anywhere and actually looking 40 now. But there was definitely a secret trick. I've asked other women and it's pretty universal.