Soapbox alert!!!!
Something that obviously annoys me is if I hear comments made like the following (to me or any other adoptive parent):
- Don’t you want to have your OWN baby? (UM DUH – Nadia is my baby)
- You’ll never love her like you would your OWN baby. (Dream on. There is no possible way that I could love Nadia more if I gave birth to her. NO WAY, NO HOW)
- You’re not her REAL mom. (Here, come touch my arm. Am I an apparition? I feel pretty real)
- She’s not your REAL baby. (see above)
- I’m so sorry you can’t have your OWN children (this I hate because it’s always accompanied by a sorrowful look).
Okay, so you get the idea. Annoying and ignorant. Seriously. We chose to adopt rather than have a biological child. It doesn’t change that fact that we are parents and we love Nadia. She is our family and always will be. God just sent us halfway around the world to make us a family.
Now you may be wondering what got me all riled up about this. It’s a ridiculous contest that NBC is having for Mother’s Day (America’s Favorite Mom). You can vote for your favorite mom and they win a prize. A new category of MOM is featured daily. Here are the categories:
- The Military Mom
- The Working Mom
- The Chairman of Everything Mom
- The Single Mom
- The NON MOM Mom
So guess what the description of a Non-Mom Mom is? Grandmothers, Step Moms and ADOPTIVE Moms!!!! Look at the description for one of the nominees:
“She was an adopted child who is now mom to her own daughter, plus six adopted children who started life as ‘meth babies’. ” (emphasis mine)
Lame, lame, lame. Adopted kids aren’t any different. I seriously don’t know how I am going to react if something like this is said in front of Nadia when she is old enough to understand. Some moms just walk away because they feel it’s not important to educate ignorant people in front of the child – they feel it makes it more obvious to the child that they are being singled out. Some moms stand there and lay it on the line for people and make sure they know how tasteless and rude the comments are.
I guess it will all depend on what type child Nadia ends up being personality wise as she ages. Will she be feisty and say something herself? Or will she just want to get away? I don’t know, but this really is something I wish we could protect her from. Rant over.