Good Enough Mum: Just in case there aren't enough opinions out there already on the Madonna-and-child story...

Just in case there aren't enough opinions out there already on the Madonna-and-child story...

The 'for the best' concept I was musing on in my last post set me off on a tangent talking about the Madonna adoption story, which I was originally going to put in as a note on the last post but ended up growing until it took on a post of its own. So, some general philosophical ramblings on the whole subject of whether or not the adoption is the right thing for David:
I think that what has underlain (is that a word?) the debate so far is a lack of talking about The Right Thing or The Best Thing.

That way of putting different columns of numbers and see which total is bigger at the end. way may be worse in another, and the two don't just cancel each other out like negative and positive numbers. The pros of one option may outweigh the cons, but that doesn't mean that the cons all shuffle quietly away and stop bothering everyone.

And it also doesn't mean that everyone's cons rather than another.
a result of being adopted. The simple fact is, both are true; he'll be better in some ways and worse in other ways.

He'll be better he's used to, which is what actually matters to children his age) and in terms of connection to his birth family and his culture long-term. So the question is - which of these things are most important?
they're all important.

I think this is partly because there's values as family, security, and culture. But let's not forget that in this case, material advantages don't just mean the vast fortune that he'll now share in (which, true, isn't as important as other and proper medicine if he gets sick, better education, and way more wants to do with his life.
important, because the fact is that not only are all of them important, but different people will put different priorities on different things, and it's an area where there genuinely is room for different opinions.

What actually matters at the end of the day is which of these things are going to be a priority to David. Which, of course, we don't know, because he's not old enough to make an informed decision on the subject. And the person whose job it is to decide such things - his father - future.

had he stayed where he was - is making the wrong decision? There's a tendency to get a bit patronising there and assume that we know better than he possibly could, this poor uneducated man. And maybe we do - after all, parenthood, unfortunately, does not give one immunity to making wrong the ones who don't know what we're talking about.

And yet...

I'm still uneasy about it. Less so than I was - my initial reaction to this story, I've got to admit, was to leap to the with a saviour complex. Didn't she realise it might be a bad idea to take a child away from everything he knows, to uproot him like that and assume it's All For The Best?

When I realised that I seemed to have started channeling , I had to give some good hard thought to why I was reacting so differently to this than to, say, or adopting.
Some of it was my own stereotyping. Because Madonna is rich and famous, my automatic assumption was that she was merely rushing in to prejudice.

But...

from what I've been reading of the Oprah interview and her comments on the matter, I honestly don't get the impression that she has thought much about the issues involved.
Which may very well be completely and hopelessly unfair, because I didn't see the Oprah interview, and all the snippets I've read of what she's said or done have come via the filter of the media. One of life's lessons that I try to keep in mind is never, ever, ever to incident almost beyond recognition.

Maybe she actually has thought media just aren't bothering to make headline news out of it.
I hope so. Because.

.. part of doing the best we can with whatever reality is out there involves recognising the bits that aren't best, pros outweigh them, the problems that don't fade away into Happily Ever After the way they do in a fairytale or Disney movie.

Recognising and acknowledging them, in order to figure out how best to deal with them. great idea, because someone who feels that way is probably not going to be acknowledging the disadvantages. And when you refuse to acknowledge the existence of something, you probably aren't putting yourself in an optimal position to deal with it.

whatever Madonna had done, there would have been disadvantages for David. There are disadvantages for him in being adopted; there would have been disadvantages for him in being left where he was. We can this situation, but that's water under the bridge; the really important issue now is how Madonna can go about giving him the best possible life now that he is here.

To do that, she'll need to recognise that 'the best' will involve more than else.
And I'm trying to fight my cynicism as to whether she'll be able to do this. Fact is, I don't know her, I don't have a clue what kind of mother she is, and it's not exactly as though it were my business anyway.

So, I hope she's thought about this more deeply than the media seem to be portraying; but I figure she deserves the benefit of the doubt. Besides, ultimately it's David, not any of us, who will have the right to make that call.