Probably not, but strangers on a message board really don’t have anything at stake either. I part company with those who claim furnishesq is somehow obligated to slap this woman down, or that not doing so reflects negatively on future parenting skills.
Perspective, please. He vented on a message board. As a reader, I would have gotten vicarious satisfaction if he’d knocked the bitch down a few notches but the slight letdown doesn’t justify slashing furnishesq for choosing to handle it differently.
I’ve been in your situation and until you stand up to this woman, you aren’t fit to adopt, IMO.
We had three issues during our homestudy:
I’d suffered depression, sexual abuse and PTSD. This triggered all sorts of questions, but they were addressed in the homestudy. They’d all been more than five years in the past. I could have not admitted it - we knew it would raise flags - but I also knew they wouldn’t find it on their own in a background check.
My husband is an atheist. This also raised red flags. We stood our ground. (We now recommend, however, that adopting atheists check out their local UU church, which allows you to put a religion in the box without needing to buy into a dogma - would have saved us half an hour of justifing a personal spiritual philosophy to our social worker).
I wouldn’t promise not to spank a child. I prefer other disciplinary measures, but I can’t promise that a spanking won’t occur before I parent. Almost cost us our child, but I have a problem promising someone I won’t do something in a situation that hasn’t yet occurred.
(I also pissed off a woman in group who decided during our infertility group to vent about other women’s abortions reducing the pool of adoptable children. God, being infertile stretched my committment to pro-choice. But you know what? I refuse to imply that anyone else is my personal baby factory - and I won’t let anyone else do it either. Be pro-life because you believe life begins at conception and is sacred - I can respect that. I can’t respect “someone else should be forced to bear children for me.”)
Having lived this, I think honesty is vital to the process. As I’ve said, I’ve been involved in these for eight years, and I’ve seen someone screwed by the process once (I’m on a message board that has a few hundred people adopting at a time). And even the couple that got screwed were able to take their complaint up the ladder and eventually got a child. The social worker wants a successful placement. She doesn’t want to turn people down. And if Brainiac4 and I - with our lack of compromise and big mouths - not only got through this process, but were asked to become a poster family and speak to prospective adoptive parents, I think your fears are overblown. I also think that you need to stand up for yourself, your child, and the choices you are making to become a family. Because you will be standing up for these for the rest of your life - you might as well practice in a room where most people are going to be supportive.
(Our adoption was interracial. We are white, he is Asian. So we are obviously an adoptive family to look at. We don’t get too many nosey questions - living in the Twin Cities, which had at the time of our adoption, the biggest population of Asian adoptees (not even per capita) - makes it easier here than it is other places. However, even here, not everyone is supportive. Most people are just stupid and make stupid comments - but some people are actively hostile.)
Honestly, Victory Fist is just some random tool, not furnishesq’s final test. There is no way in hell I would ever do anything to jepordize something that was so important to me (even if there is only a small possibility of something going wrong) just to shut somebody else up.
I just wanted to point out that this is one of the most messed-up things I’ve heard in a long time. It continues to blow my mind how people seem to just take this kind of religious bullying garbage in stride. I suppose if it pervades every level of your society, there isn’t much you can do about it.
furnishesq, you are indeed in a difficult position. After your adoption is complete, do you have plans to make a complaint about the facilitator of this group who should have said something a long time ago?
Huh? Whyever not? Being nonconfrontational makes you an unfit parent? How about all the other people in the class, are they going to get weeded out too? This is an exercise in ticket punching – furnishesq just needs to get through this class because it’s a requirement. Confront the woman and anything could happen. Venting on a messageboard is actually the right thing to do here.
By the way, what about this woman’s husband? Does he cower and cringe every time the victory fist appears, or does he put his chest out like the cock of the rock? At this point, I’m well on my way to feeling worse for him than for anyone…
This is not an exercise in ticket punching. The exercise they are going through, and the homestudy that will follow, are in place to minimize the risk that a child does not get placed in an unsuitable home.
Parenting is a lot of confrontation (this morning was my daughters “I don’t want to go to school”) And yes, if you are completely non-confrontational you are an unfit parent. Adoptive parents are set up for additional opportunities to confront and educate people. And I feel strongly that it is, at some level, an obligation, not a choice, once you decide to adopt. Children need their parents to be their advocates.
Strong advocates yes – but one must pick their battles. Publically confronting an insensitive oaf – which we will never see again after next week – in front of a county social worker who will decide if we are “fit parents” – and also bringing attention to our infertility problems (which the social workers have indicated is a serious issue they look at) seems ill advised.
What do we gain? A single moment of personal satisfaction of “putting her in her place” along with possibly raising a red flag in our report?
We believe it is better to bite our tounge, roll our eyes, vent here, and after we are “approved” send a letter advising the county to reevalute senistivity issues regarding infertility in future classes.
I agree with you. I think an unwillingness to confront the horrid bitch in question suggests possible unwillingness to confront other people who are going to imply that the child isn’t “yours” because it’s adopted. That or furnishesq is simply oddly paranoid - a calm, civil confrontation of completely unacceptable behavior seems like the last thing that would make a social worker decide you were an unfit parent.
At this point, it’s one more week, so it’s probably not worth the effort. I don’t think you have a moral obligation to be the “bringer of comeuppance.” But I really think you’re paranoid to think that saying “Excuse me, we’re very happy for you that you’re having us a baby, but I think you should know that it’s a bit hard for us to hear right now.” Or something equally non-confrontational that still calls pregnant lady’s attention to her insensitive behavior.
If you’re that worried about it, maybe you could have said something to the instructor in private, asking for advice on how to handle the situation. Then they couldn’t exactly criticize later, right?
But to me, the situation is only tangentially about infertility. My big problem with the woman’s actions as you describe them is that she seems to be saying that pregnancy is superior to adoption. I know someone who was in the process of adopting internationally when she finally became pregnant. Their reaction was not jumping up and down celebrating, but concern that they would lose the opportunity to bring home the child who was already a part of their family in their hearts.
It seems to me that this woman’s behavior is exactly what they fear from infertile adopters, and where a “red flag” comes from in the first place.
Yeah, but can anyone guarantee that the confrontation will remain calm and civil? I agree with furnishesq – you have to think what the stakes are here. The Victory Fist Valkyrie is hurting no one – she’s just being an attention whore. Yeah, in a generalized sense, I feel people like that should get a comeuppance, but furnishesq has little to gain by offering it, and a lot to lose. Besides, I repeat, furnishes
The confrontation may not end up calm and civil. One can only control one’s own behavior. But if I were the social worker, I’m pretty sure I would be disgusted at watching several couples simply sit back and let their future children be implicitly insulted - over and over and over - by that dumb bitch. It would certainly make me concerned about the prospective parents’ abilities to handle other confrontations. I can’t see how it could ever be construed as a positive thing to sit back and let your family be insulted without responding at all.
And yeah, absolutely. Not that I’m declaring anyone unfit, but obviously the other couples have the same responsibilities. So far as I can see, though, they’re not posting threads about it, so I haven’t had the opportunity to tell them.
also, we did advise the leader once. we get “roadwork” each week, aka, their cutsey name for homework. on week 2 or 3, there was a section on what we thought could be done to improve the class - we listed a couple of things - and one thing we listed was:
There needs to be more sensitivity to infertility issues in class by both staff and classmates.
To date, we have heard nothing about this suggestion.
We will not bring it up in class again b/c of the reasons we already mentioned.