You got implanted with the wrong egg. Would you abort?

Story out of Japan:

TOKYO – Health officials in Japan say a woman was likely impregnated with the fertilized egg of another woman by accident during an in vitro procedure last year.

The woman, who is in her 20s, aborted the pregnancy when she was told of the potential mix-up at the government-run hospital in Kagawa prefecture, about 530 kilometres southwest of Tokyo.

She is now suing the local government for the equivalent of US$222,000, according to news reports.

Japan is a place where adoption not only stigmatizes adopted children–it also stigmatizes the parents, specifically the mother. I noted with interest that this statement was also included in this news report:

The case drew wide attention because bearing and raising children who are not related to the mother is uncommon and has been discouraged by Japanese medical groups.

Okay that’s a whole debate that would have to take place on the basis of just that one statement. But more to the point: What do you think? What would you do? I’ll offer my opinion in the comments section once this gets going.

Filed under: adoption, kids, life

Sayonara, Tatiana. . .now what can you teach the kids?

So Tatiana gets dumped from American Idol last night and has a meltdown. It was a great lesson for kids. “Look at that,” I said to Simone. “That’s how not to act.”

Not only did she have a moment when they let Danny Gokey go through, she couldn’t stop sniffling during the final number and several other contestants had to keep reaching back awkwardly to pat and console her. How bad does it look when you lose on global television and can’t be gracious about it? Tatiana was a dark horse who coulda made something out of going as far as she did (she’s got a way better voice than Sanjay) but now she’s just yesterday’s crybaby.

For God’s sake people, this is a perfect example of how not to treat kids. Never tell your precious little bundles that they are

- better than everyone else

- too charming to resist

- entitled to succeed or win

- destined to be stars

- so talented that any negativity they encounter can be put down to jealousy

You won’t be doing them any favours. In the end, even good talent is forgettable.

But being a spoil-sport isn’t.

Filed under: kids, life, music , Tatiana, American Idol, talent, meltdown, crybaby, lounge act, entitled, Danny Gokey

The things I’ll never do

Yesterday I started thinking about the things I’ll never do.

As in my life. And it was pretty liberating.

And it all started with the word Beirut.

Helping Simone with her geography homework on the weekend, I watched as she plotted the landmarks of the Middle East on an outline map. There was Gaza, and the Dead Sea, and Jerusalem. . .and Beirut. She didn’t know how to pronounce it, so I said it out loud and then it hit me: I’ll never live there.

It had been a dream of mine in my twenties to go to the American University, nothing my parents ever really knew about or could have even afforded. I just wanted to do it. It was either Beirut (untouched at this point by the civil war that started in 1975) or Hong Kong, which seemed dizzingly exotic and remote. Either way, I figured these places were how I’d blow the family away, something every child has to do. (I’m fairly certain these fantasies were largely fueled by our National Geographic subscription.)

Before I could control myself I started babbling about Beirut to Simone–totally useless exercise, except it started me thinking about how dreams get deflated or beautifully transformed as time goes on, as in today I have a deeper connection to China than ever expected.

So here are some dreams of mine that have recently been put to bed in soft covers to sleep for. . .shall we say,  a very long time (eternity sounds so long). But before we go there, though, a moment, please, to gaze upon the glorious Paris of the East that once captured my heart:

Alrighty then.

1. I won’t live in Beirut or Hong Kong. However, I’ve done more than my share of travelling in Asia, and Beirut will be on the list one day if it ever stabilizes.

2. I won’t ever open my own restaurant. But maybe my daughter will.  (Mother living out her fantasies through her child. Gah.) For years I entertained this fantasy but cooking for family and friends is probably more fun.

3. The family piano won’t find its way here and I will not master jazz chords. Probably the most sorry to see this one go. Even as I read it now it wants to get up and bite me.

4. A dog. Ain’t gonna happen. It’ll be cats for the rest of my life. The fluffier and stupider the better.

5. A second child. I will not have. Officially gave this one up in 2000 but it still needs its own little bed to sleep in. Nighty-night.

6. I will not go back to school. At some point life teaches all things and the corresponding need to know goes down, down, down.

7. I will never fly to the moon or even into zero-gravity. At $200,000 for 30 minutes, it’s too big a drain on the single-mom wallet. Anyone who gets to go: send this space junkie your pics.

8. The Olympics won’t be awarded to Toronto in my lifetime. Or ever. And I won’t get to see them.

9. There is no chance that my nails will be “done” day in and day out.

10. I will never reconnect with a few important people who blazed through my life. Blame it on distance, time, circumstances. It just is, and it’s OK.

So how about you? I’m calling this a meme and tagging Ms. Single Mama and Lorraine over at FirstMother forum. I think their responses will be pretty cool.

Filed under: adoption, cats, food, kids, solo life

The mother, the grandparents, and the gay couple

A consortium of business people, lawyers, and members of the Catholic Church in Scotland is planning to fund a legal challenge to stop two children from being adopted by a gay couple in Edinburgh. The children were removed from their mother because of her heroin addiction. The mother’s parents wished to care for the children but were deemed too old (46 and 59) and in too poor health by social services. The grandparents fought to keep the children but after two years consented to have them adopted because of mounting legal costs.

Do you see where this is going? A few weeks ago, it was announced that a suitable couple had been found. They happened to be gay. The mother flipped. The grandparents flipped. The UK media flipped (example: What kind of selfish couple would want to adopt these ’stolen’ children?), and the story stopped being a story and became a flashpoint for attitudes on adoption, parenthood, gay rights, and family preservation.

Oh, and you’ve gotcher Ann-Coulter-clone freak show thing going on too, with the likes of columnist Melanie Phillips insisting that

to place children with two gay men when an adoptive mother and father are available, just to uphold a brutal dogma, is a sickening assault on family life.

God, this thing is a complete mess. One of the problems is that the official record is so limited. The mother and the grandparents have been quoted freely, often leading to provocative assertions such as the following:

The mother of the two Edinburgh children at the centre of the gay adoption row is reported to have claimed social workers said the youngsters’ grandparents would never be allowed to see them again. It was claimed that the reason was because they had put the case in the public eye. . . . The city council has denied the mother’s claim.

But Edinburgh city council has stayed mostly tight-lipped and has vigorously defended its actions.

It puzzles many why kids who begged to stay with their grandparents and grandparents who wanted to keep them couldn’t be supported to do that. As someone who came to parenthood at 44, I definitely feel for a 46-year-old grandmother considered over the hill. All of these details have helped to make this a needlessly bitter story about gay adoption when it’s not even especially relevant. Scotland has already legalized gay adoption, and that law will not be overturned by this most recent action. The best the local Catholic church will ever be able to do is prove why this child should have stayed with these grandparents.

Arguing that case may have some merit.

But at what cost when the rhetoric sounds like this?

Pictured: The grandparents, The Daily Mail online

Filed under: adoption, kids, life , adoption, Catholic Church, gay adoption, grandparents, heroin addict, legal challenge, Melanie Phillips, Scotland

Divorcing on Facebook

Some guy just broke up with his wife on Facebook. He changed his status to read “Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady,” and a mutual friend called his wife to find out how she was coping.

She says she didn’t know anything about it.

Is this for real? More to the point, is this in my kid’s future? Personally, I think this is much more wicked that the single mom with 14 kids. The part that ticked me off royally was when Emma Brady saw Neil’s Facebook friends commenting on their marriage and how he was better off “out of it.”

Notice how the cruelty factor gets ratcheted up when already-hurtful events get posted on the web, whether through innocent social media or through more sinister bullying websites. More exposure, more pain, more morons commenting on things they know nothing about. Honestly, it gives you some insight into the way celebrities live. Maybe we’ll all have to consider ourselves celebrities one day and take no notice of what our public thinks. Scary thought.

Filed under: life

Why aren’t these single mothers dating?

Lots of interesting commentary in the blogosphere on Emily Bazelon’s weekend article in the New York Times about middle-class single moms by choice, 2 Kids + 0 Husband = Family. Much of it says more about the commentators than about single moms.

Gruntled Center (a sociology professor) points out that, as a group, single moms

. . . don’t just rely on one another. Many in the story live near, or with, their parents, and depend on their siblings, neighbors, and friends.

Sorry but this sounds like single-parent families are inherently fragile and must be shored up by lots of people in order to work. But this is not how it comes across in the article. The support network for the single-parent households is just constructed in a different way. It may be bought with money (daycare, babyistters, nanny) or leveraged through connections to other single moms, adults, or parents. Disgruntled makes it sound like necessary dependence. Maybe he missed the part where it said, “Their [choice moms] primary relationships with adults support them without interfering with them as parents.”

Right-ee-o.

Bazelon’s piece shows clearly that these moms are operating outside a dating/marriage paradigm. They don’t want the support of a husband; they want the support of other adults who won’t interfere with the primary business–their primary business–of raising the kids. Truthfully, I can relate.

Enter Julie Shapiro, another sociology professor who asks if this group of moms is getting respect because they’ve decided to be “chaste.” Interesting idea but I’m not sure. Check out the Suburban Turmoil post from 2008 in which Lindsay Ferrier throws out the question of moms by choice to her readership. Many can’t forgive it. One woman called making a family without dad the equivalent of child abuse.

But let’s get back to the topic of this post? Why aren’t these women dating? Lots of single moms date. But here’s the other side: If you’re older when you start your family (like I am) and you haven’t been married and you have your child and all goes along as it should. . .at some point you ask yourself: why fix what’s not broke? It’s actually very hard to merge a serious dating life with a parenting life if you’ve never known co-parenting, i.e., parenting with another person. From the NYT:

In treating co-parenting as the alien and potentially harder state, Anne-Marie and her friends say they are different from the divorced women they know. “I have a few friends who are divorced, and they are more interested in getting married than I am,” Anne-Marie said. “For them, it’s going back to the couple’s life they’ve known. For me, it seems like adding on a big mess to something that’s comparatively stable.”

Again, I can totally relate. The few times I’ve dated, I’ve gotten pretty snarly over my territory when datee decided what was best for my kid and I’m not patting myself on the back for that. I’m just trying to say. . .there’s no model of marriage around here. We are not a poor copy of something we are trying to restore; we’re just us, and maybe not you.

Also, with this whole post-40 dating thing. . .maybe there are a few other things at work like libido going down, especially if you’re 45+. I know all the stories about women’s sex drive but according to the women I’ve talked to, for many it goes down, just like a guy’s. Not saying don’t fix it but it’s just something to be aware of.

Finally, I think when Shapiro focuses in on the chaste word, she’s forgetting that for many single moms, they just can’t figure out how to fit sex in. It’s not that they’re opposed to it. It’s just that it comes with too much baggage. If you could give these moms a decent after-hours, no emotional bullshit way to have some fun and keep their mommy crown, they might take you up on it. You never know.

But I’m left with this notion, once again, that there’s this huge gap between the life of a single mother and those who comment on her.

Filed under: fatherlessness, kids, life, solo life , adults, dating, family, Gruntled Center, libido, marriage, parents, Related Topics, sex, single mom, single mothers

Amazons in the kitchen

Simone asked me tonight if she could cook her own meal. I said yes–anything to reduce my domestic goddess load is a good thing. It started off great and then deteriorated into some bickering over who had dibs on the one large burner (I killed the other one at Thanksgiving and have yet to replace it).

The crazy thing is that we made essentially the same dish (Exhibit A below) so fighting over space was too silly for words but we did it anyway! Oh, yeah! At one point I think both of us either threw pasta or slammed it on the counter. Good thing about food–it’s forgiving.

Filed under: food, kids, life , burner, cooking, kids, kitchen, meal, pasta