Guilt and choices

Reading a lot of the anti-adoption blogs, I noticed a common thread that I finally realized explains the passion of these people.

Guilt.

Guilt is probably the most useless emotion there is. Why in the hell would they feel guilty? I have always heard the hard thing to do is usually the right thing. In most cases, I think if you are thinking of giving a kid up, you probably need to, because you are probably thinking about giving it up because you don't think you can raise the kid successfully. If you think that you probably can't.

Some of the blogs don't specifically mention feeling guilty. Most do. This saddens me, because they are being unfair to themselves. I don't see any reason whatsoever to feel guilt for giving up a child for adoption. I know it is natural to feel it, and I can't understand the depth of what they feel. Saying they shouldn't feel guilt is not going to assuage the feeling. But to give up a child should not be seen as something done selfishly, it is something done with a great amount of courage. I am not talking about the losers, the "Nuts and sluts" as one blog put it, women that give up a child due to substance abuse or mental health problems. But even those women have to be applauded for making a choice that, at least in the end, is unselfish. I have another family member that is adopted. My dad told me the family member's biological mother was a drunk. Not an alcoholic, just a worthless stinking drunk. I am sure she is dead now, given the math, and I am sure he is better off not ever knowing her. What she did may have been to her at the time simply convenience, but she did the right thing. It took courage at some level. No mother gives up a child, or aborts one, without feeling something, I hope.

I think some of them may feel this way because they were able to pull it together after being in a bad situation, and realized that they could have been a parent after all, and they want to prove it. Most of the bloggers have children, in fact, and seem to be very loving parents.

They want to destroy closed adoption because they can't stand the thought of having a kid they can't see. The curiousity must be unbearable, and I suspect that explains their passion. I would think that having a kid in front of you that needs you would temper the obscession over the adopted-out kid, but I am sure the mother urge is strong even when it isn't your kid anymore.