'Her adopted children'
11:23 AM Posted In adoption Edit This 5 Comments »Okay. So, I follow celebrity gossip just as much (or more) than the next girl who spends a good portion of her week in a cubicle with internet access. Because of my current condition (condition: pre-adoptive waiting potential parent), stories about celebs who've adopted or are pregnant usually catch my eye. Generally, I feel pretty great about the celebs who've adopted. I admire them for social justice work. Most of them went about adoption in the most ethical way that promotes the cause of adoption and is respectful of children, birth and adoptive families, as well as foreign governments.
However, one of my lingering pet peeves is how the press has decided to label the children of these famous people. If you didn't know already, Nicole Kidman is pregnant. People.com reports that she has two other children from her marriage with Tom Cruise. But, is that how they said it? 'That she has two older children' NO. She has two ADOPTED children. Why is it necessary for it to be said that her two older children were adopted? What does this add to the story? Why does the reader want/need to know that information?
My suspicion: I think it serves to keep families formed through adoption as 'different' than families formed through birth. My feeling is that it is pointed out because it is viewed as important, as if her older children aren't her 'real' children (like this new one is) because they were adopted. This burned me when they did this with Angelina's kids too.
I may be totally misinterpreting it. But, that's my feeling.
5 comments:
Fully, completely with you on this 100%. Makes me nuts. I think someone once wrote into the celeb page in Parade magazine taking them to task for doing this, and they printed the letter!
I completely agree. there was a child who got in trouble with law around here and they had to inform that he was adopted. There are so many others who do the same crime, but they focused on him because he was adopted. You are stating a great point that I have thought about. Everytime I hear the word adopted with anything, my ears perk up to hear what they are talking about.
I too have thought about this before and am glad to know I'm not the only one that it bothers....hope you guys had a merry Christmas! And btw: I had no idea that Nicole Kidman was preggo - totally didn't see that comin'!
Hi! I just stumbled on your blog, by visiting another blog with a link, from another blog, anyway, you get the point :0)
That always gets to me as well. As someone that had adopted twice before having a biological child, I am surprised to say that I heard that "real baby" comment more times than I'd like to remember~and this was from people that I knew!!
I don't go around telling random people which of my children are adopted or biological, so it was even more stinging for it to come from friends and extended family members.
Giving birth does not make you a mother. Cleaning up warm throw up, making a booboo all better, being the one he/she runs to first in the morning or after a long day, waking up at 12, and at 2:30, and then again at 3:30, now THAT'S the kind of stuff that makes you a 'real mother' and your kids 'real' whether you have the same DNA or not.
Good luck to you as you await the arrival of your baby!!
Seems to me that the same baseness that leads people to think less of an adopted kid is what makes us want to know whether a celeb's kids are adopted, and maybe is what makes us want to know anything about celebs’ kids in the first place. Anything that can be construed as dirt becomes immediately fascinating.
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