Thanks for this powerful personal history, Susan. My wife and I have just adopted a teenage girl from Honduras, and now the issues in this election feel even more urgent to me. I’m a father for the first time at the age of 54.
Thank you for sharing this heartfelt and beautiful story.
For what it's worth-Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a twit.
Biology just means you have a genetic connection, it doesn't make you a parent. Parenting is the hours of love and angst and shared experiences as your child grows. It is the parent teacher nights, the scraped knees, and the school plays and performances. It is helping her with her homework, the time you needed to take her for her first bra and sanitary pads. It is the time you hugged her tight when that jerk of a boy crush asked her friend to the dance instead of her. It is the pride of a school graduation, and the beautiful prom pictures. It is helping her find out all that she can be and then some. You are your daughter's mother and Edward is her father. She is lucky to be so loved and from the pictures you post you can see it in her face that she knows how lucky she is.
Open adoptions are very unique. It is a kindness to the birth mother to let her know what is happening with that child. (it is really an acknowledgement by society of the truth of what is happening and how society embraces and tries to help everyone for the child's sake, which is wonderful. By the way someone I am acquainted with is also an adoptive parent with an open adoption. That girl like your baby is very loved.) You write so beautifully and caringly with concern about the grieving this 15 year old went through and you felt every bit of it. You are a truly special and lovely person.
The sad truth is that statistically the most dangerous person for a child is their non-genetic stepparent. But it doesn't mean it's the rule. It also doesn't necessarily mean its the majority. People need to be judged by their actions not their titles.
Whether you like Kamala Harris' politics or not, the one thing no one can take from her is the fact that she has a happy blended family, and those children feel loved and seen by all 3 of their parents.
I already replied to this in “notes” but worth repeating that I am incredibly touched by your response. I know I’ve said it before, but our relationship is like no other social media friendship I have, in that I feel very close to you despite differences that would have pulled other people apart. Someday—after the election, maybe—we should write about it!
Susan, I am deeply moved by the story of Cassie and all the parents and family in her life. I’m also an adoptive mom, so of course what you say resonates with my own experience. First, thank you for taking on the extremely un-humble Sarah Sanders. She and JD Vance are the worst kind of self-satisfied shills, because they know what they’re doing in portraying Kamala as childless but don’t acknowledge how much this hurts those of us who care for non-biological kids.
We met our son in a Vietnamese orphanage, and I still remember him staring at me while I held him, and my profound sense that he was already his own unique person. He was never going to be a little replica of me or my husband - thank God. I’ve come to feel that adoption, especially transracial adoption, opens the doors for all sorts of discussions about belonging and care and identity and difference within a family. I am grateful every day to my now-adult son’s wit and verbosity - and yes, he can argue me under the table 😉
Thanks Martha! You might be interested in reading a piece I wrote when Cassie was a toddler, about learning to do her hair, race, and transracial adoption. And maybe someday we can write something together about that topic!
Susan, I will read that piece of yours again, and it would be great to put our heads together to write about the topic, now that both our kids are adults. Early on, I stopped writing about my son, because I thought he needed to figure out his own story and way of framing it. But now, he and I have lots of conversations about adoption, and I'd like to revisit the topic. Parenting is still so mysterious to me in some ways; it happens in increments, but attachment and love are profound. They change everything, it seems to me, yet there are many events in life that involve caring for others that change us profoundly. You don't need to be a parent yourself to love the kids in your life. If anything is hardwired for us primates, it's our ability to attach and care for others (see Donna Harroway).
Why do people like Vance only talk about the fruit of their loins as acceptable children? Weren’t we told by MAGA that adoption was to be encouraged, abortion could be put behind us. I don’t hear much about adoption anymore. Wonder why? (I make an exception here for Amy Coney Barrett who has adopted several children. Of course hundreds more are in need of homes, and no legislation has been passed to make fathers pay child support. Just saying. And men don’t get penalized or die when women try to procure an abortion. How do they think the women ended up with the problem in the first place?
It’s perversely ironic, isn’t it, that SCOTUS is so gung-ho about adoption in DOBBS, but Vance and Sanders talk as though the only real parents are biological. Doesn’t square very well with forcing 13 year-olds to give birth, does it? What will happen to those babies if the grandparents can’t raise them? Shouldn’t Vance etc. be big defenders of adoption?
Absolutely. But Vance has a very clear line on family and a separate and completely opposite one on abortion. It is absolutely disgusting. He has no interest in the fate of individuals (women that is).
Huckabee is using an argument that makes the genetic bond between mother and child more important or more real than the equally genetic imperative to build family groups. Adoption is a sign of a species' flexability and adaptability, and there are many examples of it across the animal kingdom, so what she is saying is untrue even in nature.
Yes, glad you mentioned this. So much for the “natural selection” argument. And as far as human cultures goes, there are many examples of informal sharing of parenting, and informal adoption as well: Black, rural, immigrant, and during WWII.
This concept of ownership between parents and children comes straight out of a patriarchal society that saw children (who survived) as property to assist in household income. It survives in the idea that parents have total and unquestioned control over children. Humans can’t own other humans in this sense or any other. Children are a responsibility, not property.
I was raised by my mom and stepfather, and I thought I was lucky to have 2 sets of parents who loved me. Cassie sounds the same. I was closest to my stepfather. It wasn’t just that he loved me by choice; he treated all the children in the family, whether he was biologically related or not, with generosity and unconditional love. I went to a Catholic school, so I knew early on that some people were basing their judgement on rigid cultural rules that had nothing to do with actual families. A matriarchal history would have produced radically different outcomes, I think.
Thanks for all of this! Re: matriarchal cultures, when I was researching adoption, I discovered that before adoption became so encumbered with legal procedure, informal adoption often happened in communities where women were the heads of the household and central to the well-being of the community.
I didn’t know that you are an adoptive mom. I almost was. We had a newborn baby girl for one month, taken home from the hospital. We tried for an open adoption too. The biological father contested the adoption—we found out a month in. It’s a long and absolutely wild story, one I’ve been trying to write, but the project is on stall again. We don’t know who she ended up with, but it wasn’t us or either biological parent.
That must have been incredibly hard. Before Cassie, we had an “almost” but we never actually got to the stage you got to. And even so, I was torn up about it. I hope you do write about your experience, and let me know/share if you do.
Thank you. It’s been challenging to write about for a variety of reasons, including that there’s a push to focus on adoptee and birth parent voices over adoptive parent ones. Technically speaking, I’m not located anywhere on the adoption triangle. And while my situation involved a prospective adoption, the real story is one of complicated ethics (having to navigate moral uncertainty) while suffering PTSD at the intersection of my trauma history with this baby’s very traumatic start. To this day, I don’t know if we did the right thing or the best thing. It was certainly the most confusing situation I’ve ever been in, and our attorney felt like my adversary—not my helper. I still don’t know whether she was motivated by a “higher” ethic or by her own self-interest with regard to the case. It’s a real knot.
Back when I was trying to workshop parts of it, my pages triggered very intense and often negative emotions in adoptive parents—bc we didn’t fight the bio dad.
He did not show up out of nowhere. He’d filed his paperwork and the paternal grandparents were involved too. None of them had legal rights to the baby (the bio mom was married to someone else and there is sanctity of marriage in our state), but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fight a biological family who wanted the child.
It’s more complicated than this, of course. During all this, the Baby Veronica case was happening in the background (that went all the way to SCOTUS).
Thank you Susan. I’m an adoptive mom, and posted my first essay about it yesterday. Reading yours now was incredibly helpful and eye opening. It made me realize that I’m not alone, and how weird it is that I’ve never even spoken with another adoptive parent.
This was lovely and inspiring. Every adoption story is different, and you have a particularly interesting one. Our son is now 40 and there were no open adoptions then, so your initial experience was very different. We subsequently had two children naturally and all three are our children. Period. Adoptive parents have a consistent and significant advantage in that, perhaps, they are better prepared, and the children are always very much wanted. Pregnancy does not automatically confer attachment, and as an obstetrician I saw many women over the years who struggled to bond with their child for reasons that were not always clear, but certainly ambivalence, pregnancy complications, and postpartum depression were factors, and also (I now suspect but never clearly saw) past and/or current abuse.
And many tales of abuse at the hands of biological mothers and fathers. As well as adoptive fathers. Sp I’m not sure what “it” you’re referring to that you see as “truth.” Perhaps some personal experience that you have every right to keep private?
Personal experience, but also the gaslighting that came from being pushed out by the step mother while it was demanded that I pretend it wasn't happening.
It's a rare person who treats their step kids as well as their biological kids.
I think adoption is different though. A step parent chose the parent, not the kids. Adoptive parents chose the kids. But I also knew adoptive parents who treated their adopted children as less than their biological children.
Thanks for explaining. I think the conclusion is that too many parents—whether biological or not—feel that they have a right to treat their children however they want, even to the point of abuse. And gaslighting is especially cruel and destructive. I was truly shocked when I taught “Lolita” how many of my students had been sexually abused. I hope that whatever family you’ve created for yourself as an adult is nothing like what you suffered as a kid, and that every one in it feels loved and safe.
What a beautiful and heartwarming account you’ve written of the myriad challenges of being a mom. Society just won’t let women be. Cassie is blessed to have you and Edward as parents. 💕
She is, I agree!! And we are blessed to have her as our daughter. I know her birth family would have loved her if they’d have been able to raise her, but I don’t think Abilene, Texas would have been the best place for Cassie to grow up. Even though she could wear short-sleeves all year long—a big plus in her book!
Thanks for this powerful personal history, Susan. My wife and I have just adopted a teenage girl from Honduras, and now the issues in this election feel even more urgent to me. I’m a father for the first time at the age of 54.
Congratulations!! I was 52. You’re about to embark on a great adventure! We should discuss more in a PM.
Thank you for sharing this heartfelt and beautiful story.
For what it's worth-Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a twit.
Biology just means you have a genetic connection, it doesn't make you a parent. Parenting is the hours of love and angst and shared experiences as your child grows. It is the parent teacher nights, the scraped knees, and the school plays and performances. It is helping her with her homework, the time you needed to take her for her first bra and sanitary pads. It is the time you hugged her tight when that jerk of a boy crush asked her friend to the dance instead of her. It is the pride of a school graduation, and the beautiful prom pictures. It is helping her find out all that she can be and then some. You are your daughter's mother and Edward is her father. She is lucky to be so loved and from the pictures you post you can see it in her face that she knows how lucky she is.
Open adoptions are very unique. It is a kindness to the birth mother to let her know what is happening with that child. (it is really an acknowledgement by society of the truth of what is happening and how society embraces and tries to help everyone for the child's sake, which is wonderful. By the way someone I am acquainted with is also an adoptive parent with an open adoption. That girl like your baby is very loved.) You write so beautifully and caringly with concern about the grieving this 15 year old went through and you felt every bit of it. You are a truly special and lovely person.
The sad truth is that statistically the most dangerous person for a child is their non-genetic stepparent. But it doesn't mean it's the rule. It also doesn't necessarily mean its the majority. People need to be judged by their actions not their titles.
Whether you like Kamala Harris' politics or not, the one thing no one can take from her is the fact that she has a happy blended family, and those children feel loved and seen by all 3 of their parents.
I already replied to this in “notes” but worth repeating that I am incredibly touched by your response. I know I’ve said it before, but our relationship is like no other social media friendship I have, in that I feel very close to you despite differences that would have pulled other people apart. Someday—after the election, maybe—we should write about it!
I would love that!
Susan, I am deeply moved by the story of Cassie and all the parents and family in her life. I’m also an adoptive mom, so of course what you say resonates with my own experience. First, thank you for taking on the extremely un-humble Sarah Sanders. She and JD Vance are the worst kind of self-satisfied shills, because they know what they’re doing in portraying Kamala as childless but don’t acknowledge how much this hurts those of us who care for non-biological kids.
We met our son in a Vietnamese orphanage, and I still remember him staring at me while I held him, and my profound sense that he was already his own unique person. He was never going to be a little replica of me or my husband - thank God. I’ve come to feel that adoption, especially transracial adoption, opens the doors for all sorts of discussions about belonging and care and identity and difference within a family. I am grateful every day to my now-adult son’s wit and verbosity - and yes, he can argue me under the table 😉
Thanks Martha! You might be interested in reading a piece I wrote when Cassie was a toddler, about learning to do her hair, race, and transracial adoption. And maybe someday we can write something together about that topic!
Susan, I will read that piece of yours again, and it would be great to put our heads together to write about the topic, now that both our kids are adults. Early on, I stopped writing about my son, because I thought he needed to figure out his own story and way of framing it. But now, he and I have lots of conversations about adoption, and I'd like to revisit the topic. Parenting is still so mysterious to me in some ways; it happens in increments, but attachment and love are profound. They change everything, it seems to me, yet there are many events in life that involve caring for others that change us profoundly. You don't need to be a parent yourself to love the kids in your life. If anything is hardwired for us primates, it's our ability to attach and care for others (see Donna Harroway).
Why do people like Vance only talk about the fruit of their loins as acceptable children? Weren’t we told by MAGA that adoption was to be encouraged, abortion could be put behind us. I don’t hear much about adoption anymore. Wonder why? (I make an exception here for Amy Coney Barrett who has adopted several children. Of course hundreds more are in need of homes, and no legislation has been passed to make fathers pay child support. Just saying. And men don’t get penalized or die when women try to procure an abortion. How do they think the women ended up with the problem in the first place?
It’s perversely ironic, isn’t it, that SCOTUS is so gung-ho about adoption in DOBBS, but Vance and Sanders talk as though the only real parents are biological. Doesn’t square very well with forcing 13 year-olds to give birth, does it? What will happen to those babies if the grandparents can’t raise them? Shouldn’t Vance etc. be big defenders of adoption?
Absolutely. But Vance has a very clear line on family and a separate and completely opposite one on abortion. It is absolutely disgusting. He has no interest in the fate of individuals (women that is).
Huckabee is using an argument that makes the genetic bond between mother and child more important or more real than the equally genetic imperative to build family groups. Adoption is a sign of a species' flexability and adaptability, and there are many examples of it across the animal kingdom, so what she is saying is untrue even in nature.
Yes, glad you mentioned this. So much for the “natural selection” argument. And as far as human cultures goes, there are many examples of informal sharing of parenting, and informal adoption as well: Black, rural, immigrant, and during WWII.
This concept of ownership between parents and children comes straight out of a patriarchal society that saw children (who survived) as property to assist in household income. It survives in the idea that parents have total and unquestioned control over children. Humans can’t own other humans in this sense or any other. Children are a responsibility, not property.
I was raised by my mom and stepfather, and I thought I was lucky to have 2 sets of parents who loved me. Cassie sounds the same. I was closest to my stepfather. It wasn’t just that he loved me by choice; he treated all the children in the family, whether he was biologically related or not, with generosity and unconditional love. I went to a Catholic school, so I knew early on that some people were basing their judgement on rigid cultural rules that had nothing to do with actual families. A matriarchal history would have produced radically different outcomes, I think.
Thanks for all of this! Re: matriarchal cultures, when I was researching adoption, I discovered that before adoption became so encumbered with legal procedure, informal adoption often happened in communities where women were the heads of the household and central to the well-being of the community.
I didn’t know that you are an adoptive mom. I almost was. We had a newborn baby girl for one month, taken home from the hospital. We tried for an open adoption too. The biological father contested the adoption—we found out a month in. It’s a long and absolutely wild story, one I’ve been trying to write, but the project is on stall again. We don’t know who she ended up with, but it wasn’t us or either biological parent.
That must have been incredibly hard. Before Cassie, we had an “almost” but we never actually got to the stage you got to. And even so, I was torn up about it. I hope you do write about your experience, and let me know/share if you do.
Thank you. It’s been challenging to write about for a variety of reasons, including that there’s a push to focus on adoptee and birth parent voices over adoptive parent ones. Technically speaking, I’m not located anywhere on the adoption triangle. And while my situation involved a prospective adoption, the real story is one of complicated ethics (having to navigate moral uncertainty) while suffering PTSD at the intersection of my trauma history with this baby’s very traumatic start. To this day, I don’t know if we did the right thing or the best thing. It was certainly the most confusing situation I’ve ever been in, and our attorney felt like my adversary—not my helper. I still don’t know whether she was motivated by a “higher” ethic or by her own self-interest with regard to the case. It’s a real knot.
Back when I was trying to workshop parts of it, my pages triggered very intense and often negative emotions in adoptive parents—bc we didn’t fight the bio dad.
He did not show up out of nowhere. He’d filed his paperwork and the paternal grandparents were involved too. None of them had legal rights to the baby (the bio mom was married to someone else and there is sanctity of marriage in our state), but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fight a biological family who wanted the child.
It’s more complicated than this, of course. During all this, the Baby Veronica case was happening in the background (that went all the way to SCOTUS).
Amazing story and journey. Thank you for sharing.
You’re so welcome!
Thank you Susan. I’m an adoptive mom, and posted my first essay about it yesterday. Reading yours now was incredibly helpful and eye opening. It made me realize that I’m not alone, and how weird it is that I’ve never even spoken with another adoptive parent.
This was lovely and inspiring. Every adoption story is different, and you have a particularly interesting one. Our son is now 40 and there were no open adoptions then, so your initial experience was very different. We subsequently had two children naturally and all three are our children. Period. Adoptive parents have a consistent and significant advantage in that, perhaps, they are better prepared, and the children are always very much wanted. Pregnancy does not automatically confer attachment, and as an obstetrician I saw many women over the years who struggled to bond with their child for reasons that were not always clear, but certainly ambivalence, pregnancy complications, and postpartum depression were factors, and also (I now suspect but never clearly saw) past and/or current abuse.
Thank you with all my heart - from another mother by adoption.
You’re so welcome! Delighted the piece resonated with you.
What does real have to do with it when you are giving “love”!
There is truth to it. I think many of us could tell you tales of abuse at the hands of step mothers.
And many tales of abuse at the hands of biological mothers and fathers. As well as adoptive fathers. Sp I’m not sure what “it” you’re referring to that you see as “truth.” Perhaps some personal experience that you have every right to keep private?
Personal experience, but also the gaslighting that came from being pushed out by the step mother while it was demanded that I pretend it wasn't happening.
It's a rare person who treats their step kids as well as their biological kids.
I think adoption is different though. A step parent chose the parent, not the kids. Adoptive parents chose the kids. But I also knew adoptive parents who treated their adopted children as less than their biological children.
Thanks for explaining. I think the conclusion is that too many parents—whether biological or not—feel that they have a right to treat their children however they want, even to the point of abuse. And gaslighting is especially cruel and destructive. I was truly shocked when I taught “Lolita” how many of my students had been sexually abused. I hope that whatever family you’ve created for yourself as an adult is nothing like what you suffered as a kid, and that every one in it feels loved and safe.
What a beautiful and heartwarming account you’ve written of the myriad challenges of being a mom. Society just won’t let women be. Cassie is blessed to have you and Edward as parents. 💕
She is, I agree!! And we are blessed to have her as our daughter. I know her birth family would have loved her if they’d have been able to raise her, but I don’t think Abilene, Texas would have been the best place for Cassie to grow up. Even though she could wear short-sleeves all year long—a big plus in her book!