My daughter was born in China under the one-child policy and was found outside of a government building at dawn at about ten days old (as there was no legal way for parents to relinquish a child). Dire, but someone cared about her enough to risk discovery and imprisonment…it would have been far less risky for the adult to just leave her in an empty spot in the countryside, as some were. Was she lucky in that respect? Yes. Was she lucky in general ? You tell me. Yes, and no. Unlike children born into loving families that can care for a child without interruption, she was moved from a children’s home, to two different foster homes and then back to the children’s home before meeting her new permanent parents at almost ten months of age. Think about the bonding that happened between you and your biological children and think about what it would have been like for them if instead they were bounced around like that.
However, this is a happy story. My D p, at 21 is thriving. She has a stable, even-keeled personality. She is smart, loving , sociable and trusting of people she knows well. But still, she can get irrationally, temporarily upset at times of minor transition and her babyhood may have something to do with that.
Harder for her was growing up as one of the only Asian children in our small community, and looking different from her parents. There’s no way to hide being different. Still, she had a lot of great things in her childhood (and says so), very much an American, and has no particular desire to learn about her roots even though I’d encourage that.
Finally getting to the meat of my story. When she was a baby in the US, and well into a highly verbal, perceptive early childhood she had to listen to people telling me, and telling her to her face how lucky she is, to be here in the US, to have parents who love her instead of growing up without a family. As if it had to be drilled into her head. And no other children in the vicinity being told such things, just her. My mother, my sister, neighbors. Even people at my super-progressive religious fellowship. Musing out loud, in front of her, about the miraculous chances that landed her safely in a life of milk and honey. She was made to be super-aware how badly it could have turned out at an age most children are just thinking about their next meal or new game. I knew what they meant, really. They WERE happy for her. But did they think for a minute how it would make a child feel? Singled out? A pitiable charity case? She already had to look different from everyone else. I’d nip it in the bud. There was always a look of confusion on people’s faces, some disagreement. My mom , and lots of other people said some version of, well we should all have more gratitude, why should she not be told she’s lucky?” I had to reply “when was the last time you walked up to a four-year-old White child, born and raised in the same biological white family with no trauma in the process, and felt the need to imprint a sense of gratitude on their part that their parents took them in? Because those children are the luckiest of all. So lucky that they never have to KNOW they’re lucky. That’s real privilege. I’d tell them that I am truly the luckiest of all because I get to be her mother (still true) and that I won’t have my child singled out in this way, made to grow up as a charity case or an exotic accoutrement, She’s my CHILD.
I’m not sure all these people got it. But at least my D got to hear me say it. She is just my child and her dad’s child and that is that.
This doesn’t have anything to do with male privelige denial. But it does have to do with privelige and denial and how swaddled in obliviousness we can all be about all kinds of things when they are not brought to our attention.
yet not wanting to admit they get a kind of freedom of movement in every walk of life that women don’t. I don’t know the word for that.