“Who needs two parents?” asks the Guardian

Sentimental footnote: My daughter is turning 12 on Monday. Here’s a photo of her at age 8 dressed up as a mining town gal. Transracial adoptees: take note of the utterly discordant costume.

This week a couple of single-mothers-are-bad stories drifted into my Google Alerts. I used to run with them but I’m much less inclined to do that now, a year into blogging. If you wish, you may visit the Rev. Raymond Dix, who recently calculated that 91% of single mothers are on the dole or Kristia Cavere, who steals a page from the Ann Coulter playbook with her assertion that

There are 1.5 million babies born to single mothers every year in America, and their probability of poverty, crime, promiscuity, drug use, suicide, and failing out of school are exponentially higher than their two-parent peers.

But let us not dwell too long on how many lies can be recycled about a topic before thoughtful discussion shuts down for good.

Enter today’s Guardian article by Sabrina Broadbent. What I like about this article isn’t that it goes over territory covered at O Solo Mama ad infinitum, because it really doesn’t go there. Instead, it tries to make the hidden reality of single parenthood visible. While two-parent families usually have more income, we have this opportunity for closeness, tightness, with our kids. It’s this amazing bond. For me and my daughter, it’s just us. There is no other thing here–save writing–to distract me from the job of parenting this child. At least ten times a day my daughter begins a sentence with, “My mom. . .” and then rattles off some good, silly, strange, or wise thing the old lady has said or done in the last 48 hours. I hear her on the phone, or when kids come over and it never ceases to amaze and delight me. This child and I are not broken. This family is whole.

Then there’s the happiness factor.

It’s almost impossible to explain to someone how great it is if it’s right for you. Because of the conservative propaganda machine and the research that fails to measure precisely the impact of “singleness” versus the impact of other critical factors, most people think that to succeed at single parenthood you’ve got to be heroic–you’ve got to be doing a million things *very right* in order to be beating the odds. They can’t think of it as something you were just cut out for. That might actually be good for civilization.

I remember once at the very start of my publishing career, I met a single mom who became my friend for life. She had three kids, the youngest of whom was seven, she had just divorced and this was her first job in publishing. One beautiful spring day we bought lunch at the deli and drove out to a park in her neighbourhood. When we were driving back to the office, I noticed that the happiness radiating from her face was giving me goosebumps. She was unreservedly, shamefully happy to be exactly where she was in that moment, raising those kids herself. It didn’t hurt that she had a great lawyer who got her a good settlement–money definitely helps. But that wasn’t the sum of it.

My memory of that incident was prodded by these lines in Broadbent’s article:

Far from considering themselves damaged and deprived by life with a single parent, these young people suggested a kind of family life, and in particular, a kind of relationship with their parent, about which most commentators and politicians seem unaware. They told of the renewal that divorce can bring, of positive parenting behaviours where there is closeness, listening, availability and support. What if, with the dissolution of the nuclear family structure, greater equality, intimacy and companionship develops between parent and children? Could it be that once freed of the spousal system, fathers and mothers become better parents?

“Could it be that once freed of the spousal system, fathers and mothers become better parents?” Broadbent is one of the few willing to go that far in the debate. But she’s onto something. A great many people have a parenting instinct that kicks in whether they’re married or not. The problem is that such an idea flies in the face of the *truth* that what kids deserve is two parents because that’s how kids are made. It’s a very tough sell.

Filed under: adoption, fatherlessness, kids, life, solo life , crime, drugs, Guardian, parents, poverty, Sabrina Broadbent, single moms, single parents

The Holocaust Museum: Why can’t art trump hate?

It’s always intriguing to me when a hater has talent for something other than hate. So now we know that James von Brunn was an artist and if even half of what is written in his biography on AskArt is true, he achieved some success.

It’s just so weird. You get this talent that’s big enough to make it in the advertising world (no small feat), and then instead of putting your energy into your art, you put it into hating. Your entire world becomes about hate, so all the things that could have given you and others joy never have a chance to grow. Art. Love. Marriage. Kids.

Son Erik von Brunn:

My father’s beliefs have been a constant source of verbal and mental abuse my family has had to suffer with for many years. His views consumed him, and in doing so, not only destroyed his life, but destroyed our family and ruined our lives as well.

For a long time, I believed this was our family’s cross to bear. Now, it is not only my families lives that are in shambles, but those who were directly affected by his actions; especially the family of Mr. Johns, who bravely sacrificed his life to stop my father.

You can no longer access the von Brunn biography at AskArt unless you subscribe (totally mercenary of them–let everyone see the damned biography so we can know what we’re dealing with) but if memory serves, von Brunn had a big chip on his shoulder right from the get-go.

You see, the Holocaust was like this big inconvenience for him with his German name and all. Other Germans told him he’d never make it in New York with a name like von Brunn because the Holocaust was making everyone hate the Germans.

Apparently, humiliation is a factor determining stuff like whether one is likely to become a terrorist or a professional hater. But the question remains: why do some people shrug these things off while others become obsessed and paranoid, including those born with some advantages? It makes no sense.

Footnote: O Solo Mama was 1 yesterday. If you are one of our readers who hasn’t posted, I’d love to hear from you.

Filed under: life , art, Erik von Brunn, hate, Holocaust Museum, James von Brunn, O Solo Mama

The graduation dress: A mother’s trip to hell and back

I can’t actually show you the dress but you can click to it here. That’s not the colour either; the real colour is a deep berry colour and the fabric is dupioni, a nubby silk. Hold for a second while the thing loads and selects the right dress.

But all mother can say is: Thank God that’s over with. If I hadn’t taken the advice of friends, I’d still be looking. The offerings of all the usual places–Sears, Reitmans, Fairweather, Suzy Shier–were uniformly hideous and unsuitable for a 6th grader. Step 1: Take five hopeless dresses into fitting room. Step 2: Try on. Step 3: Butt heads with mom. Step 4: Leave store not talking to each other.

I mean, c’mon people (I’d wail to anyone who’d listen) it’s Grade 6 graduation, not Ho for a Day.

So we wound up at Fashion Crimes on Queen Street in Toronto where a very smart lady (Pam Chorley) hit on a great idea–develop a specific number of figure flattering styles for girls and women and then make up the dresses in umpteen different fabrics. Voila.

Make them versatile enough that you can add wider straps or go strapless, as fits the occasion. Somebody here understands that life’s more serious moments, such as Bat Mitzvah or graduation, call for a garment that actually covers your boobs and bum.

I am sooooooo sick of the fact that clothing manufacturers haven’t realized that lots of Grade 6 girls are amazons with figures. They’ve left girls’ clothes behind but they shouldn’t look like starlets who forgot their pants. It freaks their parents out and it makes the Grade 6 boys do stupid things. (Trust me–no Grade 6 girls wants a Grade 6 boy, guaranteed to be at least 6 inches shorter than she–to have any occasion *whatsoever* to comment on her body parts. ) We pinned the neckline of this dress at least three times until Simone was comfortable with it, and the seamstress was so totally on-side.

I promise to post pictures of the girl *in* the dress too. Now that she’s comfortable in something, I won’t be able to get her out of it. And it’s a classic too. Lots more occasions to wear it.

Oh, and let me put in a good word for Jones of New York too.  They were the only folks with the few decent dresses we could find last month that might possibly work. However, we were stuck with what they had on the rack. At Fashion Crimes, you’re guaranteed your size and fabric, as well as reasonably priced alterations.

A happy mother = a returning customer.

Filed under: kids, life, solo life , Fashion Crimes Toronto, girls, Grade 6 graduation, graduation dress, starlets

On Third Mom hanging up her hat

We’ve been away in Vegas for a week (what a wonderful break–I didn’t think about work or adoption once) and I’m catching up on my blogroll this morning when I see Malinda’s post about Third Mom folding up her blog.

Hmm, I think. Third Mom has been a very big voice for ethical adoption and open records–an effective one, not a strident one. Perhaps she just needs to go do something else now. But when I go to her blog, I see she shut it down because of one last stupid comment by *Anonymous*.

Funny, isn’t it, how one bacterium can fell so many. Anonymous is the same “it” no matter where it lives on the pentagram. Anonymous makes ignorant assumptions but is always right. Anonymous is perpetually bent out of shape but still manages to point a rigid digit straight at you. No matter what the subject is–open records, birthmother privacy, ethics in adoption–Anonymous has no respect for anyone’s viewpoint but its own. Its greatest triumph is belittlement.

But there’s something else. Anon is often hurt about something. What people did to it. What you do to it with your __________ [fill in the blanks--bad attitude; opinions and feelings you're not entitled to have; stuff you have no right to say because YOU DON'T KNOW (only Anon knows), blah-blah-blah-blah-blah] Honestly, I think that’s why Anon is such a crappy opponent. Poke it long enough and Anon will get intensely personal, disintegrating into vicious character assassination or self-pity. You can’t argue with any of it.

Frequently, Anonymous also rails about the “real” issue too, as though there’s only one–the one that cleaves to Anon’s mind like the side of the bowl cleaves to the jello. If only everyone understood the importance of this one thing, this one truth, this one insight, everything would get better. But the reality is that we are many and there is no one thing; there are only many things, too many, probably, to truly know or understand in a lifetime.

I wish Third Mom would stick around because she has teens and I can learn a lot from her, but I understand her reason for leaving. But if this damned adoption conversation doesn’t get any better soon, she may not be the last to go.

Filed under: adoption, kids , adoption, anonymous, comments, Third Mom