Comments on: Rosie and Kelli Working on Their Issues; So Is the Media

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:31:16 +0000

But the way the media phrased it gave no indication as to whether just one or both of them were the children’s legal mothers. (I believe the family’s legal residence is in NY, not FL, which means they could have done second-parent adoptions.)

By: Reader

Reader — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:09:36 +0000

I think the media was simply trying to point out potential legal implications (custody issues) that may result from the split.

By: Dana

Dana — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:25:25 +0000

Thanks, Lori–I really appreciate your thoughts on this. I’ve seen studies (based on U.S. Census data) that show less than 25% of all families consist of a married, opposite-sex couple living with their own (biological or adopted) children—which means even fewer consist of married, opposite-sex couples with only biological kids. So “normal” is really the minority, and people better get used to that. (I think we’re headed that way in terms of race, too, with white becoming the minority.)

(Nice to see you have a new blog!)

By: Lori Hahn

Lori Hahn — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:43:54 +0000

I rarely comment, I know. And, this will be long.

First, you never know what goes on in a marriage to bring it to the point of splitsville. But, I know that living with a person with mental illness is extremely difficult from my own experience with doing so.

My kids are all adopted. Oldest is half-Mexican, twins are black/white. I don’t know if I’d feel any differently about them had any of them been born to me (through my vagina!) but I can’t imagine I would. They look at each other as brothers/sister. Teachers rarely make the connection. People ask me who the children belong to because of the obvious ethnic differences (I’m pasty white Northern European). Their father, my ex-husband, adopted his wife’s son. The kids consider him a stepson. They also have a half-brother. The only two related “by blood” at all are his kids. My kids think of the stepson as a stepbrother because he was kind of shoved into their situation. But, over the years, they’ve still formed a bond as one big family there as we do here. I often mention their adoption because I’m a big adoption advocate and I want people to know that there are other choices beyond AI or remaining without children. My daughter and I were talking the other day and I told her that I have never ever felt less than 100% her mother from day one. And it was true.

Shame on all the news orgs sans The Advocate. It doesn’t matter how we put our families together – this is my family. And, in this country the people who put their families together by alternative methods (remarriage w/kids, AI, adoption, etc.) I would suspect is the rule rather than the exception.

When I die, should anyone bother with an obituary, I’ll come back and haunt the hell out of them if they use the word “adopted” to somehow diminish my relationship to my children.

By: feminist finance

feminist finance — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:25:14 +0000

Yuck. Some of this, too, may be the commonplace ignorance within the MSM about appropriate ways to handle references to children who have joined a family through adoption. For example, when Suri Cruise was born I remember being pissed off when a number of media outlets referred to her as his first child, and then might toss in the fact that he already had two children that he and Nicole Kidman adopted. Or Katherine Heigl’s new baby, who I have consistently seen referred to as her newly adopted baby. It’s practically a parody of how not to behave. Good to see the Advocate getting it ight (though not surprising).