Strollerderby : stepchildren

Adoption After Having Biological Kids: What's the Big Deal?

JeanneSager — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:28:00 GMT

I got a bit ferklempt watching the recent New York Times video of a May Lee Wong, a NYC principal who just adopted a little girl from Ethiopia after giving birth to three boys. Maybe it was the fact that the little girl, Mebrat, was thought to be three-years-old when she came to the Wong family but was, in fact, a malnourished six-year-old.

More likely? The fact that a family has adopted after having children "of their own."

Because there is still a stigma attached to mixing families of biological and adopted children. There is the inference that the older, biologically-related children will feel cast aside by their parents' decision to adopt. The idea that an adopted child won't feel they can make a home in a family where they are the only ones who don't have a blood connection.

Raised in a family with a mix of biologically-related and adoption-related aunts and uncles, it's an argument I'm familiar with - and one I can tell you holds no water. My family is my family. Just the way mixed families of steps and halves mix together, so do the adopted and the biological.

The criticism is generally lobbed at parents as they make their decisions to adopt, but at the heart they are pointed at kids - that the kids won't adapt. You can't equate the rigidity of adults with children. Because kids are more accepting of change and of other people than adults, even the most liberal-minded adult. There's also a sense of equality among kids that is inherent - something we all too often lose as we grow up and begin to experience slights both real and imagined at work and in the grocery store. For kids, life starts out an equal playing field - it's up to adults to keep it that way.

May Lee Wong's attitude toward adopting Mebrat sounds just right: "It’s not that I didn’t think my family was complete with my three boys, I knew that we had room for one more."

Image: NY Times

Divorce Doesn't Lead to Drug Use

Amy Kuras — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:40:00 GMT

There's lot of doom and gloom out there about the effect of divorce on kids. You don’t have to look far to find another study claiming kids whose parents divorced had a rougher time than kids whose parents stayed married (they never seem to study the effects of being raised with two desperately unhappy parents locked in a dysfunctional marriage "for the sake of the kids," but I digress).

A French study would suggest, though, one thing that divorced parents don’t need to worry about is their kid's drug use. The study looked at 16,000 French students ages 12-18 and their use of alcohol, tobacco or pot within the last 30 days.

Parental control was the deciding factor in whether or not kids used drugs. The study didn't define what constituted control, whether it was fairly benign things like curfews or more strict measures. Emotional support from their parents also had an impact, especially for girls. Family structure, whether an intact family, single parent or "reconstituted family" (just add water!) didn’t have near as much of an influence as those two factors.

Not especially surprising -- most people I know raised in fairly strict homes, whether they had their original two parents or just the one or stepparents, toed the line pretty well during their adolescent years (and then we lost our damn minds in college, but that's another study). But for parents already dealing with the sadness and stress of a dissolving marriage, I'd think it would be good to know there is one less thing they can worry about.

Babble Talk: Rebecca Walker: We DON'T Love Our Kids the Same

Ada — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:18:00 GMT

Third-wave feminist icon (and estranged daughter of Alice Walker) Rebecca Walker has a story up today on Babble called "To Each His Own: I can't help it, I love my biological child best." She writes:

In my new book, Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence, I wrote about some of these feelings, and when a New York Times interview recently repeated them, the reaction was swift . . . How could I be so irresponsible, so politically incorrect, so heartless as to suggest that there was any difference between biological and non-biological love?

We wrote about this controversy in last month's "Editor's Note: Stepmom." (And ran stories by Lily Burana and Lisa Selin Davis on their experiences negotiating stepmother-dom.) Now Rebecca tells us why the outraged parents' kids weren't as upset by her comments. Check out the story, and be sure to weigh in in feedback!

Strollerderby : stepchildren

Adoption After Having Biological Kids: What's the Big Deal?

Vote on Jon and Kate's Divorce Goes Too Far

Hint: We Really Might Know Our Kids Better Than You

Playdate: Does Your Sitter 'Love' Your Kids?

Divorce Doesn't Lead to Drug Use

Babble Talk: Rebecca Walker: We DON'T Love Our Kids the Same