Savior Complex

Savior Complex

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Today I finished this latest piece in the Silent Voices series. Only a handful of people have seen it as I was working on it. I was told it was - creepy but effective and potentially offensive. I guess they're both right. I don't think I could've painted an image like this years ago. We all go through stages of development and healing when dealing with issues about adoption. At the beginning of the series I was painting as a catharsis. It was my own personal therapy. As the series progressed it became more about a statement on infant adoption in general.

When I started sketching for this piece I think I had Kathryn Joyce's book The Child Catchers in the back of my head. If you haven't read it, it's an important read. I highly recommend it.

Infant adoption is seen as such an idyllic institution. People love the idea of saving babies. Who wouldn't? And it gets better.... not only do they see adoption as saving little babies, they see it as saving the baby's mother from a life of shame and drudgery, limited opportunities and poverty. Of course religious folk are gonna jump all over that. They're encouraged by their pastors and consider it a mission. Some focus their mission here in the United States and some go overseas to bring babies back to what they consider to be a much superior country.

What does that say to the international adoptees when they grow up? Do they consider their lost culture to be inferior? And what are they saving the domestic adoptees from? In days past children of single mothers were considered bastards. People truly thought they were saving a child from the stigma of being illegitimate. That's not the case anymore so what is it? Some claim it's from a life of abuse or neglect. And they would know that how? Maybe if she had some support and the opportunity to raise her child she could be an excellent mother. 

Being young does not equal bad. Unmarried does not equal bad. Young and unmarried does not automatically equal abusive and neglectful.

The comments I see from people are the typical..... "well it's better than the baby ending up in a dumpster". If they take the baby away from his mother right away, they can save the child from certain death. Why is this the view? Is this a hold over from the old days of unwed pregnant girls being considered mentally unstable and neurotic? Exactly how does putting a ring on a finger suddenly make a woman mentally stable and capable of mothering?

So, in the process of saving the baby, the baby is traumatized. The baby grows up with a feeling of abandonment and no knowledge of her beginnings - in the case of closed adoption. And in the case of open adoption (we know that 80% of those close in the first couple of years) she has knowledge of her history but is still left with the feeling of abandonment. In both cases, in the majority of states, her birth records are sealed, hidden from her and she's treated as a second class citizen.

Now what happens to the mother who is saved from this burdened life of motherhood? She is left with a lifetime of grieving that can in some cases become debilitating. It can lead to a life of depression, anxiety and sometimes even suicide. 

The two people who are supposedly saved don't seem to be faring all that well. But... the infant adoption industry seems to do just fine when all this saving is going on. They're making some good money. The adoptive parents seem to be doing just fine. They're growing their family and scoring some religious points in the process. The industry loves to encourage this, it's good for their bottom line and the churches love to encourage this because it brings more followers which is good for their collection plate.

In the meantime, the babies and mothers are the ones sacrificed at the altar of greed.

Growing a backbone

There's nothing sweet about this cranberry. In her post she's talking about the Dan Rather article and I felt compelled to comment on it along with numerous other commenters. I had my doubts about it getting past moderation on the blog but was then pleasantly surprised to see that the blog author did post my comment along with the others. Several of us thought - kudos to her for putting them there and allowing her readers to see other points of view. Well, the kudos didn't last long. She removed the comments and then did this follow up post. My original comment on her first post was....

You feel sympathy yet you also feel contempt for us? Would you feel less contempt for us if we had spoken up when our children were first stolen from us? Would that make you feel better? Most of us haven't spoken up before now (although I have been blogging about this for a few years) because of the shaming. We were shamed by our families BECAUSE of the church! Our children were taken from us BY the church. Getting pregnant was not a crime but what the church did was criminal. It was illegal for a woman to sign adoption consent forms before the birth of a child but they had  me sign away my rights when I was only 6 months pregnant.


I have a few other things I'd like to say about her post. One thing I found interesting was the information she shared about herself.

"My parents told me that abortion was not an option if I ever got pregnant, and that I would have that baby no matter what (if I ever got pregnant). I took my dad very seriously and used birth control faithfully to prevent pregnancy. I was in one relationship for 6 years, and when that ended, I took almost 3 years off of dating before I started to socialize again, and eventually met my husband."


Fine. Then in the next paragraph she says


"I wonder sometimes that these single women of decades past were even capable of providing a family for their children. Their own moral failings in giving in to frivolous sex instead of waiting for proper marriage indicate impulsiveness or naivete that might mean failings as a mother, as well."


So it was ok for her to have premarital sex yet when we did the sex was frivolous, we were impulsive and naive, we would probably fail as mothers and we were moral failures. Interesting. Did she not realize that her birth control could have failed her at any time? That she could have found herself in the same predicament as the mothers who were sent to maternity homes? Would SHE then be a failure or unable to mother a child? Part of her concern appears to be church teaching on the matter of single motherhood. What about the church's teachings on birth control? Where was her concern when she was "faithfully" using birth control? I thought the faithful weren't supposed to use birth control. More of her post....


"Is this an unprecedented time in history, that single moms are not only exalted but encouraged to take on the task of raising a child without a father present? I can think of no other time when illegitimate children were so tolerated and their mothers were forgiven and championed for the job they do.

This can only be bad for the Church, for it further erodes credibility in the public eye. But even more damaging is the response of the Church to this issue – already the Church accepts single moms, divorce and divorcees in its parishes, and bastard children. This might not be official, written policy, but informally it’s being done. It signals tolerance, which is good, and forgiveness, which is also good, but those are gifts freely given. No remorse or change in lifestyle or commitment seems to be required of women and men who divorce or abandon their children or choose to have children out of wedlock. No chastising or shaming is done from the pulpit (as happened in my younger days from our stern, scary, old-school but entirely correct pastor). I don’t know what kind of counseling is offered to young mothers but I suppose it does little to shame and frighten them into adopting better morals."

First thing I have to say here is... every child is legitimate whether that child's parents are married or not. The marital status of your parents should have no bearing on your standing in your church community. It's a sad statement that children are still being called bastards and the attitude still persists that they are just people that must be tolerated. Here she is also lamenting the lack of shaming by the church. Does she want us to go back to the days of hiding in maternity homes? If not, what type of remorse is she looking for? Keeping and raising your child is a commitment in and of itself. Should a mother run out and marry the first man she finds just so she can say she's not a single mother?


The author of that blog would love to think that the church performed some sort of service that benefited us and our children and that all of us speaking about what was done to us are just out to cause problems for the church. She asks when the accusations and demand for apologies from the church will end. We've only just begun. She thinks the church should grow a backbone and put parishioners in their place. I think the church demanded more from their parishioners than they had the right to and it resulted in the stealing of our children. We are now the ones with the backbone and won't let the church's criminal activity just be shoved under the carpet because some people who have just found their way back to their church feel the need to defend an organization that destroyed families.