“Natalist propaganda” is just some really silliness. People want to see their own genes combined. (Even if they really should be discouraged from doing so.) Adoption’s great, like I said, and I’m a person who might do it. And there’s a lot of adoption already in my family, so I don’t have the attitude that adoptees aren’t “real” family. But you can’t just say to people, any people, “You should just adopt a kid!” It’s not really like that. It’s a huge emotional thing to take a kid into your home who isn’t related to you. You can’t just encourage people to do something like that, any more than you can just encourage people to travel around the world for year or go to graduate school, or get married to a certain person. Adoption isn’t any kind of worldwide solution for social problems, because it’s such an individual decision.

The idea that world problems would be solved if you just picked the stray kids off the street in Bombay and stuck them in nice homes in Grosse Point–it’s just simplistic. Actually, it’s ridiculous. It always irks me to hear people say that.

Those same people will tell gay couples to “just adopt” without even considering that a gay couple might want a child biologically related to one person. Actually, my students in the college writing class I taught would always write that in their papers about gay marriage. They always, always had to put in their two cents about how gay couples should adopt. What a neat solution! These gay people want kids, and these stray kids need homes. I’d always have to remind them that gay couples can have their own kids, too, using donor sperm or surrogacy. It was somehow a total wake up call.

So the idea that people should “just adopt” is totally sophomoric–or maybe freshmenic, since I was teaching freshmen. It’s this strange notion that you have two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together–people who need kids and wow, spare kids! It just does not work that way. Everyone adopting would not really improve much, but more importantly, it’s just an impractical thing to suggest. Try suggesting people recycle or maybe ride their bikes to work. But major life changes? That’s not really a great suggestion to make to “everyone.”

By the way, it IS weird that this church will spring for so much for fertility treatments, because I would sort of assume that such an expensive bill would entail IVF, which creates extra embryos a lot of the time. Definitely not a popular thing with the fundies.

So why is that? It seems to me the natalist propaganda has certainly been ramping up since it has become possible to have fertility treatments, I mean, not that it hasn’t been ramping up anyway, especially for predominantly white people who are of the social class to be able to afford fertility treatments in the first place. (You’ll notice that while adoption is expensive, it’s less than half the price of fertility treatments.) From where I’m sitting, this issue is inextricably linked to class and race privilege.

Also, you have no idea how much people being blithe about how “most people simply do not want a child that isn’t their biological child” is offensive to adoptees, of which I am one. It normalises the attitude that you have to be genetically related to your family for it to count.

I actually find fundies’ support of things like infertility treatments to be kind of perplexing. These are the same people who, in many cases, reject things like contraception and vaccination and are anti-feminist because those things are “unnatural,” but they haven’t come to the conclusion (in their paradigm) that maybe infertility is God’s way of telling you you shouldn’t have kids?

That said, the truth is I’ve always planned to adopt one child. But when I found out what it involved, I thought it might just be cheaper cookin’ at home!!!

Julie
40 weeks pregnant, all natural baby, due yesterday dammit–where IS the little bladder kicking bastard???

Congrats in advance, Julie!