Regarding your Jan. 3 story, “New moms of 40s and 50s give birth to questions too,” I would like to respond to Eileen Murphy, the clinical instructor in obstetrics/gynecology at Prentice Woman’s Hospital, who asked why a woman would choose a late-in-life pregnancy through extraordinary medical means rather than adoption or being a foster parent.
As a mother through adoption who first went through seven and a half years of infertility treatment, a significant part of the answer to Murphy’s question has to do with society’s lack of support for adoption as a viable family-building alternative.
Our society puts far too much emphasis on the importance of biological ties and far too little on the qualities that are the real essentials of what constitutes family-love, commitment and responsibility.
Too often, non-biologically formed families are viewed by society as less than authentic. Women who haven’t experienced pregnancy and labor are not “real women;” men who haven’t or who are unable to father a child are not “real men.” It is not unusual for parents through adoption to be asked, if we know who our children’s “real” parents are. The message society gives us, and our children, is clear: Adoption is a second-best alternative to building a family; adoptive families are not “real” families.
When our society values all families equally, regardless of whether formed by birth, adoption or remarriage, and values the qualities that are the essentials for a real family, then women will be less obsessed to go through any means possible to produce a biologically related child.
