In the fourth podcast I listened to, it focused more on the actual woman who was giving up her child for adoption and less on the actual child. While there are many valid reasons to give a child up, it doesn’t make it any easier to do. This podcast encapsulates that difficulty in regards to an open adoption, which means that the mother would have contact with her child and the adoptive family forever.
An open adoption allows the mother to personally choose a family for her child based off of one page letters. This mother hyper focused on the smallest aspects of the potential adoptive family’s lives such as being too religious, being too busy with work and much more. While it caused her to feel bad, it also made sense why she would be so scrutinous with these potential parents. This was her child and she had the right to be as picky as she felt she needed to be.
It isn’t just picking the right family that’s difficult for a pregnant single woman like her but having to hear the assumptions people make about her is also difficult. She, like many others in her shoes, face getting lectured by people who only know the very basis of her story. She has to listen to people who genuinely think that adoption is an awful idea, despite knowing woman’s ability to even raise a child. The other thing is that the woman in this podcast doesn’t “fit the mold” for most women giving up a child. She was almost 30, had her own place, had a good job, but just didn’t want a child.
This podcast opened my eyes to the idea that not everyone has to give you their entire life story in order to validate why they wish to do something, even if it’s as serious as giving up your own child. It’s something I don’t think many people realize, either. Sometimes, children just aren’t in the plan for people and it shouldn’t be up to anyone to accuse or assume anything of anyone.
Ink and Crystals 