Family

I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately. I’ve been thinking about how I expose my daughter to family and about how I present the idea of family to her. A family is so many things. A family is formed in so many ways.

A family can contain people of only the same race or culture. A family can contain people of different races and different cultures. A family can be biologically related. A famly can come together via adoption. A family can be a couple of people, or many people. A family can have a single mother. A family can have a single father. A family can be a couple in a heterosexual relationship. A family can be a couple in a same-sex relationship. A family can have many children. A family can have no children. A family can have one child. A family can be formed by friendships.

There are some things that I want my children to grow up with a sense of.

Family is responsibility. There are obligations we have as members of a family. We take care of each other. We are kind to each other. We spend holidays with each other. We do things for each other. We do things together.

No two families are the same. I want my children to know that all families are formed in different ways, by different people. I want them to know that there are families that are like us, and there are families that are not like us, and that the important thing is that a family is healthy and loving.

I was 5 was when I began to notice the racial differences between my family and the families of my peers. I was 5 is when we moved to Alabama to a neighborhood that was predominantly white and African American. Prior to this we lived in Germany, but I know that my parents hung out with many interracial couples who had children my age while we lived in Germany, and those things do have a part that played in how I viewed things when I turned 5.

My daughter is four now and I’m beginning to question how I am exposing family to her since I feel that she will soon begin to notice our family in comparison to other families around her. Right now, with family and friends that my daughter is exposed to on a regular basis, myself and my husband and my parents are the only interracial married couples. I don’t give her much exposure to families that are not same-race heterosexual married couples with biological children. And because of that I worry. I worry about how she’ll eventually view our family.

Luckily, there are several interracial families whose children attend her preschool. Unfortunately, I am horrible at making new friends or even wanting to make new friends. Of course, we don’t have much opportunity to talk to the other parents much more than “Hi” as we’re dropping off and picking up the kids. There might be a good opportunity at the summer concert that our children are part of to try to get to know them.

I’ve been trying to look at tv that both she and we watch and the books we read her to gauge some of the family diversity she may see from home.

While I haven’t figured out exactly how I’m going to go about this, stepping outside of my comfort zone and beginning to include in our circles families like our own and families that are formed in other ways is something that I think should be first, as well as adjusting her library to reflect this. I wish I could just walk into a book store and do this instead of searching all over the web for family friendly (as in, not mainstream family) books for children.

I view this the same way as I do needing to have peers that are adoptive families so that my children (current and future) can see other families like their own and also have peers that will fully understand what they may go through. This is another priority of my own.

Let me pause for a moment to explain that while I may think about this quite a bit (race, culture, family, and religion and how we relate to mainstream ideas of all of those), I don’t mention it to my daughter every second of the day. I feel like because I mention it often on my blog it may seem like that. My husband and I do talk about these things to each other and in front of her. I also look for opportunities to mention and discuss as she notices things or things are in front of her. I look for ways to incorporate into her life. I think that that is the key. As she grows, her needs will grow, which is why I have been recently thinking about how we expose her to family and the idea of family.

My intention is to always give my children a foundation to face and be a thinking member of a society that still has a fundamental fear and dislike of what isn’t mainstream. I want her to understand what it is and what it is about. Confidence in herself, in who she is, in her family and in who we are is part of that.

Cherry Blossoms and a Question Answered

We spent some time today at the Cherry Blossom Festival. One of the things that I have come to love about our area is that we’re so close to the festivals and fairs that the city holds. We can often just walk to them as they are only a few blocks away. Today was the Cherry Blossom Festival. In a couple of weeks they’re having a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

A lot of the kids booth – craft stuff and games and such – were run by the local high school students.

Of course, the first thing that we did was crafts.  They had an area to make keychains, pinwheels, sand art, and a couple of other things.

*She is so serious about her projects*

 Next we played games.  There was the cutest game there where you had to throw a ball into a toilet seat and they called it something like, “Potty Ball” or something.  Chloe won two prizes (*not for actually winning, mostly for being so damn cute*).  Here she is showing off her prize snake.

And what day, let alone festival, would be complete without ice cream?  They had wannabe dippin’ dots there.  Not as good as the real thing, but it’s ice cream so of course it’s yummy.

My daughter has always been intrigued by stage performances.  All of the fairs and festivals we go to, the highlight of her day is always watching the people and groups perform.  She always enjoys it whether it’s an old man and his guitar singing country music, or a puppet play about a pig and a woman in another language, or a high school choir singing How Far We’ve Come – it is always hardest to pull her away from here than any other part of the festival.

________________________________________________________ 

And a question.  Metaphase asked why I’m uncomfortable with networking. 

Networking involves the idea of putting your profile out there, and it is to give more exposure.  The idea is that the more exposure you have, the more likely your adoption will happen.  It can involve a website, newspaper ads, sending your profile to numerous places including family and friends, churches, doctors, hospitals, and so on. 

However, I’m not comfortable with the idea of networking.  I am very attached to the idea that I want our child’s firstmom seeking out adoption first, not have people pushing adoption seeking her out.  I would prefer her to have appropriate counseling before even seeing us, before calling us.  I do want her to know about heartbreak and loss that comes with adoption, even with an open adoption.

Back to networking.  I don’t have faith that an expectant mom would be approach appropriately, especially at such an emotional time, and especially if she wants to parent.  I know of someone who was pregnant as a teen, was fully intending on parenting, and attended a school for pregnant teens that had PAP profiles all over the school bulletin boards.  It almost screams out to all of those teen moms that they shouldn’t parent.  I’m not comfortable with that. 

Our family and friends know that we are on a journey to adopt.  I don’t feel like I should send out networking letters to them.  It honestly feels to me like I would be rallying the troops, so to speak.  Again, I’m just not comfortable with it.  They know we wish to adopt and that is enough for me.  I feel like if we sent out a networking letter everyone would be on the “lookout” and I would hate for any unsuspecting expectant mothers to be hit on.  Not that I think my family and friends are rude, but you just never know. 

In the way that we expect an ethical IA adoption to happen without certain tactics used to obtain children from mothers, the same goes for domestic adoption, only it may not happen in the exact same way.

The ideal situation is that adoption is the choice that the mother makes, that is it what she wants and not what she is shamed or pressured into, with full understanding of the consequence of that choice.  I want to rely on my agency, assuming that if an expectant mother is considering adoption she will seek out the information and why she would come to the agency.  I feel like any other way is almost arbitrarily targeting moms, even those who would parent and choose to parent. 

Maybe there is a way to network that isn’t coersive as I view it, but I haven’t found a way that I am personally comfortable with pursuing. 

Family Photos

I have one more week of vacation left. I’m going to miss it. We’ve been having such a good time. I’ll let you in on all of it next week, but I thought I would share a couple of the family photos we took today. We rarely go to a studio to do professional photos because it’s so hard to find a photographer that is good with kids. The girl we had today was phenomenal. She had a great relationship with Chloe and it really shows in the photos. I’ll be back next week, enjoy the photos!