Nobody uses Facebook anymore. Hello!
Two teenagers tried to explain Snapchat to me this week. It turns out it's not just for sexting. It's for sexting AND sending your friends pictures that aren't worthy of being kept. Frankly, that sounds even worse. I enjoy Facebook's feed of baby pictures and trip updates, but if you're going to interrupt my day with a picture I can only view for 10 seconds, at least make it worth my while and show some leg. Lord knows I don't need to keep up with what you're eating for lunch today. But I digress. My chief question at the end of the lesson was, "But how do you post articles and essays and have conversations about philosophical questions that are interesting to you but don't involve pictures?" The answer is, you don't. Apparently teenagers are not that big into sharing news articles.
What. Ever.
On that note, here's an interesting Atlantic article I stumbled across while looking up Cory Booker's tax policy statements. I have had a lot of friends go through the heartbreaking, joyful, expensive, time-consuming roller coaster ride of adopting children. And I've had a handful of birth-parent friends who have made the decision to give their biological children the best possible start in life with adoptive families. But I can't remember ever thinking about adoption from the perspective of a biological father who does not want to give his child up for adoption.
The article notes a few of the challenges that biological mothers face:
I'm instinctively sympathetic with all of the above and more: a birth father could disrupt an adoption with the result that the birth mother had to raise the child after all, he could use the adoption process to get back at his former partner, he could hold the process hostage until the birth mother or adoptive parents paid a de facto ransom.
But if having daughters makes judges more empathetic with women in civil cases, it's no surprise that having sons has made me see the world with more nuance than before.
In the case of Christopher Emanuel, the article's black protagonist, the white birth mother appears to have been bullied by her parents into terminating her relationship with him and giving their daughter up for adoption because of racial prejudice. Through a series of text messages submitted as evidence in family court, the birth mother lies to Emanuel about her intent to raise the child with him, claiming to still be pregnant even after she has given birth to their daughter and initiated adoption proceedings.
The old joke is true that if men were the ones who had to carry a baby for 9 months and suffer the agonies of labor, scientists would have long ago developed a male birth control pill by now. Instead, the responsibilities and burden of birth control fall overwhelmingly on women because the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy do too. But, as the article illustrates so clearly, those consequences do not fall exclusively on women, and they can harm men in ways I'd never given much thought to. And the article, of course, only touches on the (lack of) strong protections for unmarried fathers in the adoption process. Another factor worth noting for unmarried dads, via the New York Times:
Joking-but-not with a friend a few days ago, she said she planned to sit her sons down and give them "the talk" that included, in pretty explicit terms: "Use a condom, fool. I don't care what your [hypothetical future, colorfully described in the colloquialisms of an African American dialect I won't even try to duplicate] girlfriend says, use a condom. Actually, use two."
Two teenagers tried to explain Snapchat to me this week. It turns out it's not just for sexting. It's for sexting AND sending your friends pictures that aren't worthy of being kept. Frankly, that sounds even worse. I enjoy Facebook's feed of baby pictures and trip updates, but if you're going to interrupt my day with a picture I can only view for 10 seconds, at least make it worth my while and show some leg. Lord knows I don't need to keep up with what you're eating for lunch today. But I digress. My chief question at the end of the lesson was, "But how do you post articles and essays and have conversations about philosophical questions that are interesting to you but don't involve pictures?" The answer is, you don't. Apparently teenagers are not that big into sharing news articles.
What. Ever.
On that note, here's an interesting Atlantic article I stumbled across while looking up Cory Booker's tax policy statements. I have had a lot of friends go through the heartbreaking, joyful, expensive, time-consuming roller coaster ride of adopting children. And I've had a handful of birth-parent friends who have made the decision to give their biological children the best possible start in life with adoptive families. But I can't remember ever thinking about adoption from the perspective of a biological father who does not want to give his child up for adoption.
The article notes a few of the challenges that biological mothers face:
[A] birth father threw “a wrench in the works” by demanding his baby back after its new parents had already taken it home. The story ended unhappily for everyone: The adoptive couple lost the baby, the birth father proved unfit to raise it, and the birth mother ended up foregoing college in order to devote herself to raising a child she hadn’t wanted in the first place. ...
Marcia Yablon-Zug, who teaches family law at the University of South Carolina, said a woman in the position of Emanuel’s ex-girlfriend faces very real pressures and often has a “perverse incentive” to pursue adoption. Relinquishing custody to the father could make her liable for paying child support—or worse, being condemned as a “bad mom,” Yablon-Zug said. In contrast, adoption is seen as a “noble sacrifice.” ...
Whatever the particular pressures, there’s no question that an unmarried pregnant woman faces a different set of concerns than her male partner does. She’s the one who must carry the baby for nine months and suffer through the labor and delivery. And far more often than not, she knows she will be the one left caring for it if the couple breaks up. Many women have to contend with men who are abusive or otherwise unfit to care for a small child. Other women know they’ll have to rely on support payments that may not come through.
I'm instinctively sympathetic with all of the above and more: a birth father could disrupt an adoption with the result that the birth mother had to raise the child after all, he could use the adoption process to get back at his former partner, he could hold the process hostage until the birth mother or adoptive parents paid a de facto ransom.
But if having daughters makes judges more empathetic with women in civil cases, it's no surprise that having sons has made me see the world with more nuance than before.
In the case of Christopher Emanuel, the article's black protagonist, the white birth mother appears to have been bullied by her parents into terminating her relationship with him and giving their daughter up for adoption because of racial prejudice. Through a series of text messages submitted as evidence in family court, the birth mother lies to Emanuel about her intent to raise the child with him, claiming to still be pregnant even after she has given birth to their daughter and initiated adoption proceedings.
The old joke is true that if men were the ones who had to carry a baby for 9 months and suffer the agonies of labor, scientists would have long ago developed a male birth control pill by now. Instead, the responsibilities and burden of birth control fall overwhelmingly on women because the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy do too. But, as the article illustrates so clearly, those consequences do not fall exclusively on women, and they can harm men in ways I'd never given much thought to. And the article, of course, only touches on the (lack of) strong protections for unmarried fathers in the adoption process. Another factor worth noting for unmarried dads, via the New York Times:
The fathers’ rights movement contends that the treatment of fathers and mothers is unequal under the law, but the real difference is between married and unmarried fathers. ... [T]he custody of a child born to married parents who are living together is not an issue. ... Imperfect as they may be, courts do help divorcing couples establish co-parenting expectations. But unmarried couples do not need the court to end their relationship and without clearly established rights and responsibilities, everything becomes a fight.
Joking-but-not with a friend a few days ago, she said she planned to sit her sons down and give them "the talk" that included, in pretty explicit terms: "Use a condom, fool. I don't care what your [hypothetical future, colorfully described in the colloquialisms of an African American dialect I won't even try to duplicate] girlfriend says, use a condom. Actually, use two."
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