Virtual Book Tour – The Kid by Dan Savage

The latest leg of the Barren Bitches Book Tour has been  The Kid by Dan Savage. It is a true account of two gay men in the US who adopt their son via open adoption.

First, let me say I loved this book. I found it funny  with a lot of insight.  What was especially refreshing was a real empathy with others, especially Melissa and the birth family, and a real feeling of wanting to do what was best for their son with an appreciation of what Melissa went through when she gave him to them. This was a sharp contrast to another book I read not long ago on a fertility subject which astounded me with its self-centredness (if that’s a word!)

Dan and Terry face opposition as a gay couple trying to adopt and are able to overcome that stigma with the help of an open-minded birthmother. In some international adoptions, their chances of adopting would have been slim to none due to their sexual orientation. How do you feel about the “rules” some countries have for parents looking to adopt from their country (Examples: sexual orientation, weight, age, mental health, marital status, or income)?  

I very much took the point that a restriction on gay adoptions would delegitimise existing gay families. I must say I find it hard to answer this question because the adoption experience here in the Uk is so very different to that in the US. On the one hand there are very few babies adopted domestically, and on the other hand, international adoption is much rarer than it seems to be in the US.  However, as far as adoption law goes in the UK, it’s actually prohibited to discriminate against prospective parents on the grounds of sexual orientation.  Even church based agencies are being obliged to comply.

I did some googling about international adoption and same sex couples and found this very interesting article.

With regard to the other possible “rules” I can easily discount marital status and income as possible factors. I can see no way they would impact on the future of an adopted child. I would be a little more cautious with regard to age and health … but that is because of my own experience with a mother who was ill through a lot of of my teenage years and then died just after my 22nd birthday. Of course, she WASN’T old when I was born, and was only 43 when she died. And here I am at 42, trying for my second child. A parent of any age can die and have to leave their child behind.

Dan makes a point that straight infertile couples have something in common with a same sex couple who are, by definition, “functionally infertile” and draws an analogy between coming out as gay/lesbian and “coming out” as infertile. This got me thinking about the issues of donated gametes, and how this approach to building a family has long been accepted by lesbians, of course, while the huge growth in egg donation has now begun to make donated gametes quite mainstream. But while a lesbian or gay couple have no choice but to be open about the making of their family (as Dan points out, the child will eventually realise he wasn’t born of two dads) it seems common for straight couples using donated eggs or sperm to keep it a secret. What’s your take on all this? If you have used donated gametes, do you see your family as non-conventional? Do you have an ongoing relationship with the donor? Do you plan to be open about the donation?

I’m a bit naughty answering this as the question wasn’t allocated to my group, (in fact it was my own question!) But one thing I really liked about Dan’s book, was the way he drew common themes from his specific experience and this was one of them. A same sex family has no choice but to be out with the child about its origins. The donor, surrogate or birth  mother may or may not be known to the child, but the child will need to know that they exist. And some less conventional family set ups have lessons to teach us about how children can thrive outside of the traditional mum, dad and 2.4 children.

Because I’m already older, and can’t guarantee I’ll always be around, and because I feel so intensely the gap left my by own mother when she died, I very much want my children to have others they can rely on. It worries me that little DG is currently an only child and that both my siblings and Mr DG’s siblings are rather light on the children/cousins for DG. That’s modern families in the UK. Older parents, and many only children. When I was a child, I had many cousins in my generation as it was expected that you got married and had kids in your twenties. Furthermore, my mum had close friends who were surrogate aunties and their children were extra cousins to me.

Little DG has a very close relationship to Mr DG’s ex-girlfriend who acts as (non-religious) godmother and sees him weekly. Some people find it odd, but she is very much part of our family and is always with us at family events. She had always spent Christmas with Mr DG’s family, and when they split and we later got together, that didn’t change. I hoped she’d turn out to be exactly the sort of godmother she has.   And as a childless woman in her late forties who probably would have liked to have children with Mr DG, it has worked out very well.

So I’m really hoping our FET will work and we’ll have our miracle baby and Hobbesy and her family will be part of its life. Little DG is happy to see the little Hobbesy’s as his cousins and to run riot with their cousins and if that’s good enough for him, it will certainly be good enough for any new baby who actually has a genetic link there.

I’m sure it is a bit unorthodox and will raise its own issues at times, but the one thing I know for certain, is that your mother is the one who mothers you. It can be the one who gestates you, it can be the one who fosters or adopts you. It’s not the one who provides the dna, but you have a right to know that person. At the very least to know that they exist. I find it hard to imagine building a life based on concealing something so vital, especially in families where others know that a child has been adopted or produced via donated eggs or sperm. What a betrayal when (and it is when, not if) they discover the fact.

For a work of non-fiction, the theme of signs and coincidences plays such a large role in The Kid. On page 152, Dan writes about three twists of fate that bring Terry and he and Melissa together: “…the Seattle conception, the likelihood that Melissa spare changed us on Broadway, and the fact that the kid would be born at OHSU.” Many other signs present themselves through the book such as the incident with Judy’s fortune cookies, and my favorite, the fact that Dan and Terry had their first encounter in a bathroom and that they found themselves in a bathroom together at the moment their son was being born. What role do signs and coincidences play in your life in relation to your infertility and treatment? Do you find that you actively look for signs (good or bad), and how much do you take them to heart?

Oh, I wish. When you’re a recurrent miscarrier every month brings some sort of omen or coincidence of dates. I’ve had babies due on dates I’d previously miscarried. Babies conceived on dates I’ve had d&cs. Scans on my mothers birthday. A baby conceived on our anniversary, one conceived on Christmas day. If our fresh DE cycle had worked, the baby would have been due on little DG’s birthday.

I think if you have enough sadness and badness in your life, then omens are everywhere but they don’t, in the end, bring you what you are wishing for. I think the only power you have in this life, in the end, is to accept and love what you have.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. All you have is today …. that’s why it’s called the present.

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/.  You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Love, and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman (with author participation!).

~ by drownedgirl on July 18, 2007.