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A review by heatherbermingham
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson
4.0
I grew up being taught that adoption was the obvious solution for unwanted pregnancy. I mean, doption makes everyone happy! Adoptive parents get a baby! Baby gets a stable and loving home! Birth mom doesn't have to worry about raising a baby she doesn't want! I could say SO MUCH about this book, but the short version is, it turns out this is another thing I was taught that doesn't work quite the way I was taught. That's really turning into a thing!
The two most impactful things for me were this:
1) Most women who relinquish babies aren't choosing between abortion and adoption, they're choosing between parenting and adoption. And it turns out that deciding that you're not in a place to parent - especially when that decision isn't really based on who you are but on outside circumstances - circumstances that could change! - is pretty traumatizing. Carrying a child that you'd love to parent to term and then giving it away is really hard! I mean, when I type it out that like it seems like common sense, but boy, does the pro-life community just blow right by that. Most women actually don't regret having an abortion. Most deeply regret relinquishing a baby for adoption even when their child ends up in a loving and happy home. Because the child still isn't with them.
2) A lot of the birth moms interviewed over the course of this book talk about how the message they received from crisis counselors, adoption agencies, etc. sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly, was that they didn't deserve to be mothers. Sisson really interrogates how we as a society fail families of origin over and over and over, especially when they're not in privileged classes. It's not a coincidence that adoption pretty much always transfers an infant from someone with few resources and little societal privilege to someone with lots of resources and more societal privilege.
Anyway, as someone who was raised in a very "Adoption is the answer!" community and who seriously looked into both domestic and international adoption for a while, I found this book to be challenging, thought-provoking, and kind of devastating.
The two most impactful things for me were this:
1) Most women who relinquish babies aren't choosing between abortion and adoption, they're choosing between parenting and adoption. And it turns out that deciding that you're not in a place to parent - especially when that decision isn't really based on who you are but on outside circumstances - circumstances that could change! - is pretty traumatizing. Carrying a child that you'd love to parent to term and then giving it away is really hard! I mean, when I type it out that like it seems like common sense, but boy, does the pro-life community just blow right by that. Most women actually don't regret having an abortion. Most deeply regret relinquishing a baby for adoption even when their child ends up in a loving and happy home. Because the child still isn't with them.
2) A lot of the birth moms interviewed over the course of this book talk about how the message they received from crisis counselors, adoption agencies, etc. sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly, was that they didn't deserve to be mothers. Sisson really interrogates how we as a society fail families of origin over and over and over, especially when they're not in privileged classes. It's not a coincidence that adoption pretty much always transfers an infant from someone with few resources and little societal privilege to someone with lots of resources and more societal privilege.
Anyway, as someone who was raised in a very "Adoption is the answer!" community and who seriously looked into both domestic and international adoption for a while, I found this book to be challenging, thought-provoking, and kind of devastating.