Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Blood isn't the only lie Philadelphia, Pa. To the Editors: As the mother of four biological children and one very precious adopted son, I take exception to the...
...Afternoon classes are filled with lethargic children, overly contented because their bellies are full...
...They wind up insecure and lonely, and with no visible future but a man They are vulnerable to men and may become pregnant...
...Cost containment, which somehow got lost in the confused debate over health-care reform in the 103rd Congress, will continue to haunt us until we face and deal with this issue...
...Fed on Tuesday, they are hungry the next day They are not fed on Saturday and Sunday Obviously they do not need federally sponsored lunches at all...
...Men were curs before Roe...
...DOROTHY DILLON Styron on 'choice' Alkmaar, Holland To the Editors: I was deeply touched by Margaret O'Brien Stemfels's comment on Roe v. Wade ["What Women Have Lost," October 21 ] because it seems to ex22 press so clearly the ironic, almost cynical understanding of "choice" that some of us have come to learn only too well Since my own bleak expenence with the pressure to abort, the birth of my daughter eighteen years ago, and the subsequent decay of my first marriage, I have been haunted by that word, choice...
...As for my "glib parenthetical assertion" about infants exacting worship always and everywhere, this was meant to be a hghthearted comment (paraphrasing the Mass, of course) on the innate appeal of infants—an appeal found, by the by, among other primate groups Obviously, human beings can suffer dreadful breakdowns in parenting When biological kin cannot provide acceptable nurture, I'm convinced that it is an altruistic and joyful privilege to adopt children In debates on abortion, I've been booed and hissed for advocating and defending adoption...
...Now everybody wants to eliminate welfare...
...The only thing we can hope for is some reform around the edges of the problem— making job-related health-care insurance portable from one job to another, prohibiting denial of insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, and possibly providing basic coverage to children and expectant mothers—though I would not bet on the last of these...
...In my column I equated adoption with marital and religious bonding, all of which I hold to be universal goods...
...Perhaps because Sophie's Choice had seemed to be the Holocaust novel, I had never thought of looking at it this way Because there's no Reader's Guide at our local Dutch library, and I' m rather isolated here, I don't know if the book has been analyzed in this light...
...From the opening epigraph from Rilke's Dmno Elegies ("Who'll show a child just as it is...
...There is nothing Callahan says about genetic kinship that could not be applied to the consensual bond we have with our adopted son...
...Gaughan and to Messrs Hobbes and Gaffney Science News, August 13...
...Let me add that Commonweal is the one magazine that can sabotage my schedule...
...So I bought the book and read it with only one goal in mind...
...The costs of dealing with the crisis will be greater than if the problem had been dealt with earlier, but we never seem to learn from experience, either our own or someone else's...
...NANCY forest-flier Don't blame 'Roe' Auburn, Wash To the Editors: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's suggestion that in gaming "choice" women have lost something important may be valid...
...Children are in school to learn, not to eat...
...For most women, that won't happen until they are in their twenties, male maturation being so retarded Poverty and lack of opportunity are part of the childhood and youth of so many girls These conditions contnbute to low self-regard, both directly and via the consequences of poor performance in school...
...I feel that our decision to adopt has liberated us from narrowly defined "images and metaphors derived from genetic ties" and has enabled us to experience a more profound understanding of the relationship we are privileged to share—and are obliged to cultivate—with each of our children...
...It gets worse...
...I think the worst thing to befall women and children does have a name beginning with "R," but it is Republican, not Roe Republicans have intensified the conditions that contribute to unwanted pregnancy and abortion Poverty is often the reason for bastardy and is also a significant cause of abortion decisions...
...School lunch interferes with education...
...Gaffney) gave the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes a new first name Apologies to Ms...
...Not until marriage, not in our culture, but until a worthier fellow happens along...
...But this, though death, the whole of death, even before life's begun, to hold it all so gently, and be good, this is beyond description'") to the last pages describing the faceless Dr Niemand at Auschwitz, it seemed to me that Styron was writing an allegory for our age: Society (a faceless force, niemand, no one) is forcing horribly cruel choices on people, and the result is social suicide...
...As Christopher F. Koller suggests ["A Coroner's Report," November 4], prospects for reform may improve as time drags on and the nonvoting poor are joined by an increasing number of uninsured and undennsured members of the middle class in being priced out of the private insurance market...
...All of these children have been deprived, in some way, of the "worship" they had every right to expect from their biological kin Genetic kinship ties often fall far short of the idealized standard Ms...
...My remark about wanting to divorce or murder one's adolescents implied no cntique of the emotional adjustment of adopted children...
...The correct name is Ann M Gaughan...
...But I don't believe, as her article seems to suggest, that Roe v Wade has a role in the dismal deportment of males...
...Socrates said, or was it Cicero, "lunchum freeum non est...
...I feel no less "attuned" to this child than to those who carry my genes Biological similarities are irrelevant to the "mutual obligations of the flesh" that bind our adoption-built family together...
...Charles Murray and others are now including Head Start on the list of unneeded programs, on the grounds that the gains evident in the first grade (when the program ends) are diminished by the third and gone by the sixth...
...If girls and women could reasonably expect the benefits of education, job preparation, and careers at the level of their ability, with incomes to match, there would be less dallying with irresponsible studs, more selectivity in dating, more postponement of sexual intercourse...
...I believe he was I took copious notes as I read (I'd never read a book this way before...
...ROSEMARY CONROY HUGHES The author replies: Whoa now, wait a minute My defense of biological kinship and noncontractual familial bonds does not mean that I do not value adoption...
...And Callahan's argument that the biological link to children is particularly important dunng the troubling times of adolescence ignores recent clinical research indicating that adolescents who were adopted as infants exhibit "emotional health and self-image throughout their school years equal [to] those of children living with their biological parents" [Bruce Bower, "Adapting to Adoption," CORRECTIONS Owing to an editing error, the name of the wnter of a letter appearing in Correspondence in the issue of December 2 was misspelled...
...After Head Start is gone altogether, Republicans will use the same logic to write long studies showing that the school lunch program is a failure...
...When counseling single young women with crisis pregnancies I've always presented adoption as a positive alternative that can work out well for everyone Being in favor of adoption does not mean you must become "liberated" from the value of biological kinship, or erase the differences between them...
...The nourishing lunch received on Monday is gone by Tuesday...
...Was Styron trying to uncover the real problem of choice...
...I had only seen the film...
...To the Editors: As the mother of four biological children and one very precious adopted son, I take exception to the glib parenthetical assertion in Sidney Callahan' s column ["Kinship Is Forever," November 18] that "[i]nfants exact worship always and everywhere...
...An anonymous reader gently calls attention to an error that appeared in a column by Edward Gaffney, Jr., in the issue of November 4 We (not Mr...
...At least it was for us...
...There can be different goods in life, each of which should receive its due I stand by what I wrote SIDNEY CALLAHAN Health care stalled Washington, D C To the Editors: The results of the recent election—Republican control of both houses of Congress—virtually guarantee that there will be no comprehensive health-care (Continued on page 22) 2 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) insurance reform over the next two years...
...A few years ago it occurred to me that in his novel Sophie's Choice, published in 1976 (only three years after Roe), William Styron may have been dealing with that very issue, the real meaning of choice, at a time when the idea had begun to be bandied about with frightening ease...
...Try telling that to the more than 1 million children in the United States who now live with adoptive parents, or to the millions in foster care...
...It was an attempt to make an ironic joke about parental ambivalence dunng what's often a difficult period...
...I'd welcome any help readers may provide...
...But I've already written reams on the value of commitments and promises (my dissertation topic, in fact) and this time out I was trying to articulate those organic values too often dismissed or scorned by rationalistic types Of course I recognize that not all biological families are ideal, but then neither are all adoptive families...
...Therefore the school lunch program should be eliminated " earl landau 23...
...Whether they abort or keep the child, their future remains dependent on a man...
...The assumption that engendering a child with a partner is the exclusive route to becoming "equally invested [in] and morally responsible for the child" seems rather more reductionist than the "antibiology" quotes the authorsingles out for criticism...
...thank you for your good work...
...To us, the bond is irrevocable and genuine...
...When the bills for private health-care insurance become so large that even the most economically illiterate among us begin to recognize that they are paying for the uninsured through cost-shifting, then perhaps, in typical American fashion, we will demand that our government do something about it now that a crisis stage has been reached...
...Callahan sets forth in her commentary on "the conflicting claims of biological versus social parents...
Vol. 121 • December 1994 • No. 22
