One of the reasons for blogging about my adoption is to turn over long-buried nuggets that I hadn't examined closely before. Last week this bit floated to the surface:
You weren't just adopted. In the 1960s era (or the modern era either) no apparently healthy white baby girl was ever "just" adopted; there's too much demand for them. You were purchased. You were bought and sold.
O-kay.
Extremely capitalist society. Should have expected that.
My adopted mother no doubt felt like she didn't get her money's worth. She wanted a Prom Queen, not a nerd. Shouldn't there have been a discount?
(Geez woman, you knew my natural mother was a college student in 1966 when most girls didn't go to college. What did you expect?)
I went looking up prices. Adoption agencies in the 1960s would charge up to $10,000 to the parents of the pregnant woman for her care, something only the well-off could afford. Then they told the adopters the girls were poor and had no money and the adopters would have to pay $10,000 to cover her expenses. And then they would do fundraisers to raise money from the public on the basis of al the good they were doing for poor people.
What a racket! If that isn't the slimiest con job of all time, it comes close. $20,000+ for each baby in 1960s money. No wonder they would do anything to coerce the women into giving up their babies.
But being bought and sold only made me uncomfortable. This is America, Americans don't know any other way to behave. The rich must be more decent than the rest of us, so whatever they do is automatically more decent, irrespective of actual consequences.
I was bought by my adoptive parents. I was sold by the adoption agency. As a white girl baby I possessed a defined positive value, a "price" as it were. And for the 1960s it was a fairly high price. But.... that wasn't the whole story. The other shoe dropped this morning.
You didn't merely possess a defined positive value, but also a defined negative value. Your grandparents were willing to pay goddamn $10,000 to have a professional "cleanup crew" haul you off like toxic waste so they never had to see your face again.
Somewhere out there lives (or lived, she'd be in her 80s at least by now if she's still alive) my maternal grandmother, a woman who paid a princely sum of $10,000 for the privilege of not being my Grammy.
Ah, yeah. Um....
***
How the fuck is that supposed to NOT fuck your head up?
Seriously.
You weren't just adopted. In the 1960s era (or the modern era either) no apparently healthy white baby girl was ever "just" adopted; there's too much demand for them. You were purchased. You were bought and sold.
O-kay.
Extremely capitalist society. Should have expected that.
My adopted mother no doubt felt like she didn't get her money's worth. She wanted a Prom Queen, not a nerd. Shouldn't there have been a discount?
(Geez woman, you knew my natural mother was a college student in 1966 when most girls didn't go to college. What did you expect?)
I went looking up prices. Adoption agencies in the 1960s would charge up to $10,000 to the parents of the pregnant woman for her care, something only the well-off could afford. Then they told the adopters the girls were poor and had no money and the adopters would have to pay $10,000 to cover her expenses. And then they would do fundraisers to raise money from the public on the basis of al the good they were doing for poor people.
What a racket! If that isn't the slimiest con job of all time, it comes close. $20,000+ for each baby in 1960s money. No wonder they would do anything to coerce the women into giving up their babies.
But being bought and sold only made me uncomfortable. This is America, Americans don't know any other way to behave. The rich must be more decent than the rest of us, so whatever they do is automatically more decent, irrespective of actual consequences.
I was bought by my adoptive parents. I was sold by the adoption agency. As a white girl baby I possessed a defined positive value, a "price" as it were. And for the 1960s it was a fairly high price. But.... that wasn't the whole story. The other shoe dropped this morning.
You didn't merely possess a defined positive value, but also a defined negative value. Your grandparents were willing to pay goddamn $10,000 to have a professional "cleanup crew" haul you off like toxic waste so they never had to see your face again.
Somewhere out there lives (or lived, she'd be in her 80s at least by now if she's still alive) my maternal grandmother, a woman who paid a princely sum of $10,000 for the privilege of not being my Grammy.
Ah, yeah. Um....
***
How the fuck is that supposed to NOT fuck your head up?
Seriously.
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