Now, a year later, hubby and I are approved adopters and if all goes well we will have a Matching Panel in a couple of weeks. I feel the time is right to dip my proverbial pen into the ink and start my own blog.
How dare a SW judge the
sincerity and communicational depth of my relatively short marriage when she
claims to become an expert in knowing me in and out after meeting me only 6
times before her report (and my future happiness) is set in stone?
To be fair our SW is a
well seasoned professional and a lovely person who is very able to assess me /
us as a couple and write up a fair and true report, but my question is still
valid...
In all honesty we are a
V-E-R-Y unusual couple. Unusual is good – the SW said. Panel likes unusual –
the SW said. But do they, really?
When they have to sit
all day in a small room with familiar faces around the table; when they have to
comment on each case for the minutes; when they have to read hundreds of pages
to come prepared for the panel meeting; when they already know who will have a
problem with which couple; when all they want is to approve a couple... do they
really want unusual cases? Or do they rather wish for simple, straight forward,
clean cut or (heaven forbid) textbook cases?
We could have children.
We are 35+ young professionals from safe and stable families who C-H-O-S-E not
to become birth parents themselves. We could fill pages (oh, wait, we did! On
countless occasions!) with the reasons, but for now let’s just forget the many
reasons and focus on the choice we made. If pro-choice is so widely popular; if
abortion is so acceptable; if nobody is allowed to tell a young or old / drug
addict or alcohol addict / severe mental health / abusive... etc or just simply
a very nice ‘perfect’ person the sentence ‘you must not have birth children of
your own’ or ‘ok, lady, you had enough, maybe a dozen will do’ and all these
people and their choices are and should be respected then why do I feel I am
the bad person here?
Why
do I have to keep defending my view? Why am I labelled ‘unfit to be a parent’
if I am not desperate to become one (in other words: I need a child, any child
would do really, just so that I can be a parent)? We have a happy marriage and
life, we feel our family is complete, we do not yearn for a non-existent hole to
be filled by somebody else’s child. We simply put our own needs aside and
choose to adopt siblings already in the system who do not have a safe and
loving home where they can just be children and then grow up to be happy and
supported adults. We could provide all that and much more for these children.
Yet, somehow we find ourselves time and time again judged, questioned,
condemned even for the choices we made in our lives.
Other that this we tick
all the boxes. House, car, income, support network, stay home parent...whatever
you need. Why would then our chances of being approved tripled if we said we
C-O-U-L-D not have children? I fail to see how any of the above mentioned
factors would change and still, somehow we would fit the ‘usual’ box and would
be approved in no time...
But I do want to become
a parent...
I do want to get approved...
I do want to bless those children...
I do want to get approved...
I do want to bless those children...
So I don’t rock the
boat. Just keep quiet. And I keep answering the same questions on and on again.
With a smile. As usual.
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