IV: Is Adoption Right for You?, Page 2
Mourning Infertility or the Death of a Child
Infertility for a couple is psychologically always a joint condition, and sometimes even physically so. The cure for infertility is fertility, and to think that a child will solve the problem is wrong. If you adopt because you are infertile, you will still be infertile after you adopt, and if the infertility itself and the feelings of inadequacy which often go with it are not addressed, the psychological problems will still be there, no matter how many children you have.
Most people who adopt because of infertility or after the death of a child go through some kind of mourning. This can be fairly straightforward for people who have always known they wanted to adopt and where adoption is part of their wider family already. They know adoption is a positive thing, not a second-best option. For others it means coming to terms with what most people see as a critical loss, even failure as a man or woman. It means accepting that something perfectly natural to most people, easy as falling off a log, isn’t going to be yours. You will never be able to look at a baby and think: “I made that”.
If you have endured the death of a young child it means letting that child go (not forgetting: you can and should never forget) and making room in your heart for another one who will be her own person, not a replacement.
But mourning is something which needs to be gone through and pretty well concluded before or during the process of adoption, or it will interfere with later life. There are several groups which can help with mourning a dead child or the emotional issues surrounding infertility: CRUSE, The Compassionate Friends, and ISSUE to name three.
I think that uncompleted mourning can be behind one of the commonest complaints of prospective adopters: that we have to go through rigorous vetting, while other people, no matter how vile or incompetent, are allowed to have children, just because their gonads are in good working order. That’s true, they do. But just because some feckless toe-rags spread their seed all over the country in a succession of unplanned pregnancies, or some trailer-trash slappers breed like rabbits (and that’s really how some in our position think in our moments of despair or righteous indignation, isn’t it?), it doesn’t mean that social workers shouldn’t exercise great care in finding homes for children, especially children who need special parenting, as most adoptees do.
Whether the state should start licensing people to sexually reproduce or forcibly sterilise unmarried mothers and criminal fathers are subjects worthy of discussion, but they are red herrings as far as we are concerned right now. The fact is that social workers have the right and the duty to make sure that the children in their care go to homes where they will be loved and cherished, where their parents will be able to look after them properly until they grow up. And that’s where we, your certified grade “A” number one adopters come in! Campaign later on for the forcible sterilisation of women with green hair and men with skinny dogs on string leads if you want, but don’t waste the social workers’ time on it now. Once you have adopted your child you may be surprised at how soon the passion to control the breeding habits of the “lower orders” subsides! And remember, before you disparage them, that those people may be your child’s parents.
© Roger Ridley Fenton
