Last week I heard the song "such great heights" by the postal service. It made me think about how jealous I get of other families who have babies. We all have things others want and vise versa. We desire things that we see others have may it be a owning a house, a car, marriage, a job, family close by and in our case a baby. Those things we desire look so easy and desirable when others have them. In reality all of these things we lust after require hard work and are far from easy. Although I'm ready for the responsibility and my intellectual self knows how challenging a baby will be my emotional self says it looks so easy and other families are so perfect. In reality all things look perfect from far away and nothing is perfect.
This train of thought then brings me to think about how our society views perfectionism and the American Dream and how it relates to adoption. I can't be perfect from this vantage point as we can't produce the 2.5 children. From my experience thus far there is a perception that children that are adopted are defective and are destined for devient behavior. Far more frequently then I wish I the initial response to the fact that I'm expecting a baby is positive then followed up by a adoption horror story. Frequently these "horror" stories are stories of babies, children or teens that happen to be adopted acting like typical babies, children or teens.
Everyone wants their children to be successful but I feel an added pressure to make sure my child isn't held back by a perception that they are destined to be bad. I also dont want the burden of knowing that when my child makes mistakes, or throws a temper tantrum like all children do that someone in the room will be thinking about the fact they are adopted. I wish everyone around me was better then that but unfortunately its my reality. My child will not be perfect, I'm not perfect but I'd love to at least be perceived that way.
It took a few days to publish this post... I'm still not sure that I have this right.
No comments:
Post a Comment