Who's Your Daddy?

[joreth]

I'm reading a book right now and there's a recurring theme that's pissing me off. The reason it's pissing me off is because I see this same theme in society around me, and it happens to be an extremely personal issue. The issue is adoption

Comments

[joreth]

It really angers me. I just watched a Bollywood film (I'm watching all the films from which my dance routines come) where a grandmother was outright hostile towards her grandchild because the grandchild was adopted. Her son was married, had a daughter and a son, and then they adopted another daughter. The son committed suicide and the daughter-in-law was left to raise 3 kids on her own. The grandmother blamed the wife for the husband's death and, to her face, would say the child was a burden and unwanted.

The grandmother finally wised up only after she was told that the grandchild WAS her natural grandchild. The husband had an affair, knocked some woman up, the woman died, and the husband took in the baby. The wife, the one who was cheated on, embraced the child, loved her, raised her as her own because 1) she was an innocent child and 2) she was part of her husband, whom she had now lost.

I get the message they were trying to send - that the old woman was a bitch and children shouldn't be treated like that. But the old woman never actually learned her lesson, because she only accepted the child as "hers" when she learned they shared genetic material. She never came around to believing that the grandchild was worthy of love just for being a child.

I have to say, though, that the wife came out of the whole mess looking like a damn fine admirable woman, and the film gave her all the credit for being an admirable woman.

[leora]

That is horrible. I try not to make distinctions or play favorites between my nieces and nephews. Some of them are related genetically and some aren't, but they are all my nieces and nephews (except my great-niece and great-nephew who are a great-niece and a great-nephew). I mean, I kinda sorta do have preferences sometimes, but it's more about which ones I have more in common with or am currently getting along with better, because they are different people. And I try not to make that too obvious, but it is a different matter anyhow. And I'm not actually sure I have much in the way of preferences currently. It helps now that they've gotten older. I used to have preferences for the older ones, just because they were more developed.

The children raised by my siblings are part of my extended family. The details of how those families formed isn't as significant as that those families formed.

I think this meme is weakening a little though. The frequency of step-families without portraying any step-family members as evil helps. My nieces and nephew not through blood are through marriage. I think that's pretty common. As more people get the experience of non-blood relatives somewhere in their family, whether through marriage or adoption, it helps them realize that that is just as meaningful.