Blogging Tip #5328
posted in Adoption, Infertility, Issues |Dear OmegaMom: I have a blog and want to increase traffic to my site. What should I do? Signed, Sorta Lonely
Dear Sorta Lonely: The best possible thing you could do is write a post about a very contentious issue related to two bloggers with lots of traffic. If you’re very lucky, you’ll see your hits turbo-charged, rocketing from 60 per day to more than 200! You may even gain new readers! Signed, OmegaMom
Har.
Ahem. My previous post seems to have lured a bunch of folks over, and gotten a certain amount of approval from some people. (OmegaMom waves “Hi!” to all the visitors.)
There were a lot of things left out from the prior post.
For instance, I have firmly come down on the side of “homestudies are really, really good, and if I were Queen Of The World, every single person who had a chance to get pregnant or impregnate someone would have to go through a homestudy.” (Let’s just set aside the fact that I’m not Queen of The World–what a shame!, and the incredible violation of civil liberties that I am contemplating there.)
For another: I firmly believe that when someone gives you custody of a child–whether directly by a birthmother, or via an agency or orphanage–you’ve been given a precious trust. Anyone who is in charge of deciding these things needs to examine the people who come along wanting to adopt, to be sure that they’re not really seeing it as a substitute for a “real” baby. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If I were forced to relinquish my darlin’ dotter, you can be damned sure I’d want whoever was in line to adopt her had been examined with a bloody microscope.
The adoption process is not meant as a torture chamber. It’s not aimed at making people feel unworthy from the very start. It’s a simple attempt to try to ensure that the people who do adopt are, in general, Nice People. It’s not about the potential adoptive parents, see–it’s about ensuring a relatively good home life for any child who is going to be adopted.
Thirdly: There are people who adopt who just plain shouldn’t. The process isn’t perfect. There are overworked or just incompetent social workers. There are harried, desperate birthmothers. There are really sickening people who deliberately hide the facts and make up a nice looking facade so they can adopt a child to do…things…to him or her (read up on the case of Masha Allen).
In a perfect world, everyone who wanted a child could have one biologically, and everyone who had a child would be in a position to raise him/her and want to raise him/her. But it’s not a perfect world, and there are children who need homes.Â
Singing Bird posted an interesting comment to my last post; she suggested we turn the process on its head, think of someone who couldn’t adopt “having to settle” for IVF. How odd many people would think that! I think she means it as an intellectual exercise for people who consider adoption “settling”…
At one time, I did consider adoption “settling”. But I moved on, and learned, and became committed to the idea, and met my lovely dotter who is our pride and joy. Having never had a biological child, I can’t objectively rebut the “you can’t love an adopted child as much as a biological child” idea. But I love her with all my heart, would run in front of a speeding car to knock her out of the way, and have lovingly dealt with puke and poop and pee and snot and other ew-icky bodily fluids without batting an eyelash. Subjectively, the idea of loving a child any more than this is kind of scary, because my heart is already full to bursting as it is.
So. Anyway. Go congratulate Singing Bird on getting her Travel Approval, and welcome Johnny and family back home.
Technorati: Adoption, adoption issues, infertility
