I've been holding this post for a while, coming back to it often while it percolates through my brain, and I've finally decided to publish it with hopes that some dialog is generated. In my continuing efforts to understand, I feel input can only be a good thing.

This article, "Birthparents -- allies or enemies?", appeared in the Adoption.Com e-mag recently and has been at the root of some group buzz.

Due to the hoopla, I perused the piece and will admit to being annoyed right along with some of the adoptive parents reacting with confusion and exasperation at yet another birth mother diatribe based on blanket statements with no attribution, such as:

"... I thought that the people who bonded, raised, and nurtured a person to adulthood would not feel threatened, but I was wrong ..."

"Few adoptive parents and birth parents become friends or even meet each other ..."

"The birth mother is often seen by the adoptive family as a threat or as someone who is trying to take away their child ..."

And I thought I'd come to some sort of understanding of birth mothers ... Jan Baker and I did a tango that ended up in step for a while (I wrote about this starting here), even though one of us was always dancing backwards because that's how dancing works ... but apparently I was wrong about my grasp.

Articles like this make it appear to be okay for a birth parent to be hair-trigger quick to judge, then throw out any old comments they like about adoptive parents with little to no regard given to accuracy of statements and no back-up at all.

Can you imagine an article written by an adopive parent appearing in the adoption.com e-mag saying things like: Few birth mothers respect their child's adoptive parents, seeing them as less than adequate because they did not produce them biologically; or, Birth mothers often see adoptive parents as challenge to their motherhood; or, I thought birth mothers would want the best for their child, but I was wrong.

Of course not. In fact, just coming up with comparable statements was taxing because in my experience adoptive parents tend to take the high road when it comes to thinking about birth parents, even verging on sanctification.

So, why is it okay for those sorts of leaps over logic to be published when it's a birth mother doing the writing?

Continued ...