credit: pfv.
This question just floats around: Who is your daddy?
Last month we had a vote on adoption, on gay marriage, and an interview with the re-pregnant man. Then on Saturday night one of my friends talked about the difference between her birth-father and her dad (it is important to note she is not adopted). Put yourself in the shoes of a child. This should be easy; you used to be one. Is there a difference a dad and a father?
Think about who your father is/was: was he around, alive, supportive, loving? Was he who you thought he was? Chances are the man you call dad had some competition, probably the same for your mom. Between death, divorce, and poor-parenting there are an increasing number of Americans who describe someone as “just a sperm/egg donor.” Meaning, roughly, they gave me life – not love. Kids will instinctively find people to raise them. Because kids want protection and love, and there are adults that feel driven to provide for them.
But, who are these people? Aunts, Uncles, Foster/Step/Grand/Adoptive-parents; the names don’t matter, the only thing that does matter is that they provide some degree of safety. Well-adjusted adults come from well-loved children, those that can find the support they need to thrive.
Two-Moms (but not in gay way)
Two moms, two dads, and half-a-bajillion relatives; this is the joy of quote-unquote blended families. You have birth parents and you have their spouses and a mix of brothers and sisters and grandparents on-and-on; the post-nuclear family offers up a grab bag of potential mentors for a child. You can’t really tell in advance who is going to be most important in a child’s life. Kids need love. Love makes a family, regardless of blood.
So, today I opened the Stranger and read an article that ponders the subject of interracial adoption, Black Kids in White Houses: on race, silence, and the changing American family. Jen Graves makes it sound like there is quite a bit of pent-up emotion on this issue, mainly from the adoptees.
What is it like growing up in a multi-racial household? Let me tell you. For me it was normal. But, so is growing up in a single-parent household, I did that for a while. For you those things might be strange. For me living in a single race household would be strange, I’ve never done that. There are many problems with America’s image of family, most of them are the result of convenient lies. We never really had nuclear families, as a nation, race matters, sex matters, timing matters, and age matters.
The sad truth is that most parents come into parenting from the wrong angle. Having a child is not god’s way of teaching you to be a better person. That baby doesn’t owe you anything. When you take responsibility for the life of a child you have to dedicate your being toward their growth. Jen Graves has two passages that together make a strong point:
In my fantasy, I hadn’t considered how exactly I would protect my child. The child was a means to an end, a healing agent: Want to rid your parents of their overt racism? Give them black grandchildren and defy them not to love them! Need to atone for your own covert racism? Adopt a black child and let him teach you!
“What I’d ask parents is, are you willing to be the uncomfortable one?” Goller-Sojourner says. This is how he’d question a prospective parent if he were a social worker. “Because somebody’s gonna be uncomfortable, and it seems the burden is on you. You have to be the uncomfortable one.”
If you want kids you need to be prepared to be uncomfortable. You have to honestly explain sex, race, drugs, and all the mistakes you make that they ever find out about. Seriously, if you don’t provide the support your child needs they will find an approximation of what they need somewhere, even if it comes with unseen strings.
Growing up is not a pleasant experience. The racial dissonance that occurs between your home and what the society expects of you is not a monopolized by interracial families. Questions of sexuality and gender are not the monopoly of the queer. As a parent you are not going to be able to answer all of the questions that kids need to ask, but you do have the resources to swallow your pride and help your children find what they need in a safe way.
As adults we need to take responsibility for out situations and in some degree accept that different doesn’t mean better or worse. It just means different. I have been raised split between my mother’s home where everything was white and my dad’s home where we were a complicated tangle of multi-racial. I am left with some strange experiences. Ranging from polite inquiries if I am adopted to accusations that my parents are retarded for giving me a Spanish name. How do you discuss being called nigger with a white mother and a dad who doesn’t admit that he is black? That was a difficult, short, and confusing moment in my life.
Growing up between cultures is not nearly as simplistic as most people talk about it is not like being one thing raised by another. It is not sheep raising lions; it is not cats raising dogs. It is people raising people. However, it is confusing.
I will leave you with a joke that approximates my feelings about growing up multi-racial.
A baboon walks up to a zebra and asks, “Are you a white horse with black stripes, or a black horse with white stripes?”
After a moment the zebra replied: “No. I’m a fucking zebra.”
