First: Happy Mother's Day, MOM and all you other mothers out there, starting with my own sisters and sisters-in-law, and my dear Godmother Toodie and my other aunts.
Now for a look at today's news.
The Chicago Tribune's Mother's Day front page story was one of those human interest tales about a mother who was so full of love that she gave her twin daughters to her best friend. Seems the two women (not partners in life, just really good friends) had been life-long friends. One had two children, and the other godmothered those children marvelously, but would probably not have biological children of her own, given her medical history (which included a miscarriage). So when the first found herself pregnant with twins (and divorced, but not from the babies' father, who wasn't really involved in her life), with her true-blue friend at her side, helping her and always available, she just knew she was going to let her have her babies.
So now the babies are born. God bless both women: when they learned that one of the children had a serious heart defect and probably Down Syndrome as well, they refused to hear anything about "selective termination." They knew those lives didn't come from anyone but God.
Still, there is something unsettling in what this story indicates about society.
These are two women with good jobs, settled lives, living as singles (and now as single mothers). (One woman has two almost-grown children.) There are no husbands involved. And the father of the twins is really not around, either. It is simply a matriarchal situation. The lifestyle calls out to be addressed.
Then you have an adoption that was predetermined spontaneously by the birth mother in favor of her childless friend. She has great confidence that their relationship will continue to be strong, but the first night the adoptive mother took the healthy twin home, the birth mother seemed to be stricken. "I thought I'd have more time." So there are all those unstated, unexpressed, unconscious expectations that enter in--and this is no longer just about a mother and her closest friend: this involves two tiny babies and their relationship with their birth mother, whom they will know as an "auntie."
It is almost presumed, not only by the women, but by the Tribune article, that children "belong" to their mothers like possessions that can be signed over to another party. (Clearly, this is not a case of necessity, where adoption is chosen as the best way to provide for the needs of child and birth parent.) Did anyone else read the story?
1 comment:
I too read the article and I thought it was an interesting take on "mother's day" which is one of those holidays that journalists dread because what is novel or unusual to say about it (every religous holiday is in this boat, too).
I thought that there was a strong pro-life message in 1) chosing to bear children when the father is "out of the picture" and 2) rejecting "selective termination" (killing the "defective twin" and leaving the other alive).
African-American society has given its men a pass when it comes to being fathers to their children. Women are more likely to be educated, they are more likely to be employed and men become dispensible. I saw the same phenomenon among the very poor people in the big cities of Bolivia. Daniel Patrick Moynahan wrote of this distruction of the black family back in the 1960s, IIRC.
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