Mary KennyI was informally fostered by an uncle and aunt when I was seven, and I often feel this has given me a sense of identification with children who are fostered or adopted.
Family fostering – an old Irish custom – is not quite the same as being placed with an unknown foster-family. Yet I did have to adapt to a contrasting way of life. My mother, a widow, was laid-back and in some ways charmingly Bohemian: my aunt and uncle were highly disciplined suburbanites.
This experience has also, I think, given me an insight into the advantages that arise from adoption and fostering. And while I adored my Ma, who was a terrific woman, my uncle and aunt did provide me with the kind of regular life which greatly benefits children.
I am wholly supportive of the thinking behind Mothers and Fathers Matter: as the child of a widow, I had a rueful yearning for an intact family, and a real, present Daddy, when I was growing up.
And I believe the idea of ‘commissioning’ babies through donor genetic material is highly exploitative – mainly of poor women. It isn’t ethically right to use human beings instrumentally – to use a person for someone else’s ‘fulfilment’.
At the same time, I think we shouldn’t overemphasise the genetic link in family relationships, because that would be excluding love and attachment developed through successful fostering and adoption.
Thankful
Many adopted people do want to trace birth parents, but many don’t. One study indicated that while adopted women may want to trace biological parents, adopted men are less interested in doing so.
The British politician Michael Gove, for example, has always said that while he is very thankful to his biological parents for giving him life, he doesn’t want
to contact them – his ‘real’ parents are the Aberdeen fishmongers who adopted him so lovingly.
Christianity, from its inception, focused on ‘community’ rather than ‘clan’ alone. It is not a faith based on blood links, but on the followers of Christ. So non-genetic attachment is important too.
In France last month, a court awarded damages to two families whose daughters had been mistakenly switched at birth.
Sophie Serrano from Grasse came to realise that her daughter Manon, now 20, was not her biological child: her birth daughter, Mathilde, was being raised by another family (who chose not to be named) and the true parents of Manon.
It was a terrific muddle, and Mme Serrano’s marriage broke up. But the extraordinary thing is that both families decided to keep the girls they had raised, and Sophie Serrano was photographed arm-in-arm with the daughter she had clearly come to love.
Attachment also matters.
Refreshing happy family story
Miriam O’Callaghan got a fantastic listenership response on Sunday last after her morning RTĖ radio 1 programme, being a retrospective with the author Colum McCann and his father, the journalist and editor, Seán McCann.
Seán died at the end of February, and the programme returned to an interview that father and son had done together in 2010. I think what touched people so much about this programme was the open and natural way that father and son spoke about their love for one another.
We hear so much about dysfunctional family problems – and the ‘miserable Irish childhood’ is a staple of literary endeavours – that it strikes a refreshing note to hear a father and son talk about their happy and harmonious family life.
Seán McCann, formerly of the Evening Press, gave me, and so many writers, a first break in journalism and he was unfailingly encouraging. Married to Sally, a committed Catholic from Northern Ireland, and the father of five children, I believe their family unity was a huge factor in their children’s success in life. Although I remember Seán worrying about the economics of raising five children when they were all coming along, he was thrilled to have them and proud of every one of them.
Nothing like a good spring clean
Heaven knows I am not Mrs Good Housekeeping, but even I get the urge to have a go at spring cleaning at this time of the year.
They say that the sunlight shows up more stains on the glass, and through the glass we see how grungy everything seems to have become. Or it could be part of our primeval prompts of spring awakening after a winter of hibernation.
In Jewish traditions, spring cleaning is part of a seasonal rite. It is certainly cleansing to material surroundings and perhaps to some aspect of the spirit. It can also be reflective. I’ve been clearing out a cellar, full of letters and papers and photographs and books, and thinking how much of my life has been focused on vanity projects. “Vanities of vanities, saith the preacher,” wrote Thomas à Kempis. Such is spring cleaning!