Fathers: Are they necessary?

Jane

The adoption industry uses fathers--or the absence of them--as a wedge to convince mothers to give up their babies. Fathers who stick around, create a problem for the industry. The industry characterizes them as an obstacle to the best interests of a child. The adoption industry's message to single pregnant women: your baby needs a father, but not the bum who got you pregnant.

LOSING A MOTHER TO GAIN A FATHER
"A child needs a mother...and a father." I'm sure I heard these words more than once in a TV show, spoken by an all-knowing social worker (or parent, teacher, clergyman) to a scared single woman who wanted to keep her baby: The words repeated endlessly in my mind when I was faced with having a child without a husband.

Is giving up a child for adoption a 'loving' decision?

Jane

"Adoption is a courageous and loving decision" touts the Children's Home Society of Florida. We've heard this a zillion times although in my day it was often phrased as "think of your child, not yourself." Signing the papers on a rainy day a week before Christmas in San Francisco, and giving an adoption agency the power to select a family for my daughter Rebecca was not a courageous and loving decision. In many ways it was not a decision at all. I simply did what white middle-class singe mothers of (I hope) a bygone era did--acquiesced to social mores trumpeted in advice columns, soap operas, pulpits, and teen magazines.