Two articles recently offered differing perspectives on the importance—and the risks—of sharing stories about our kids.
Sarah Netter, at the New York Times, says “My Son’s Adoption Story Is Not Mine to Tell.” She says, “I love my son’s story. . . . But it is my son’s story. Not mine, and I need to stop sharing it.” Even though being an adoptive parent “is part of my identity now, it is a bigger part of his,” she explains. “And as his mother, I owe him the chance to figure out what that means to him before he shares his story with the world.”
It’s a similar argument to what Abigail Garner put forward in her 2005 book Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is
Parents and their children will often have different ideas about when to be out and when to be more discreet. It is an ongoing struggle to anticipate and adjust to these differences, especially since parents have full control over this issue for the first few years of their children’s lives. . . . Parents will not always understand the choices their children make about when the do or do not come out. Regardless, parents need to put their personal and political feelings aside to honor their children’s coming-out experience, which in may ways is similar, though not identical, to theirs.
At the same time, straight adoptive mother Kim, in a piece at America Adopts, makes a good case for sharing her child’s story. In “How Our Blog Has Helped Us Bond With Our Son’s Birth Family,” she says, “When my husband and I decided to adopt, we knew we were going to blog.” During their first meeting with the birth parents, in 2013, they told them about the blog “and promised to update it every day.”
Fast forward to today: We see Kelvin’s birth parents at least once every month and their extended family three to four times a year. And we have never missed a day of posting to the blog. . . .
Our friends and family from all sides have gotten to know each other through our digital story. . . .
I can’t wait until he is old enough to look at the blog on his own and see his story, and all of these amazing moments with friends and family, laid out so openly and honestly.
Telling our stories matters—both on the personal level that Kim describes, and on the political one, where stories of LGBTQ, adoptive, multiracial, and other types of families have helped change hearts and minds and create legal changes.
Post about one’s children, or let them tell their own stories? Who’s right? Both of them are. They are doing what they think best for their respective families. Also, Kim’s target audience is part of her family (it is unclear if her posts are public), whereas Sarah is talking mostly about encounters with strangers. Each of their perspectives may change as their children grow older, too—I know a number of parent bloggers who have greatly reduced posts about their children as the kids started school and began forming their own social groups.
There will always be a tension between the need for visibility and pride, on the one hand, and our children’s privacy and right to self-determination on the other. I suspect we will each make the call differently at different times. For same-sex parents, too, it is often hard not to reveal at least part of our children’s story simply by being in the same space with them, as same-sex parents. As Sarah mentioned, too, sometimes it may also be obvious that children are not biologically connected to their parents if they look sufficiently unlike them. That may lead to intrusive inquiries, which we each must handle in our own way. No easy answers, then—but it’s always good to be asking ourselves the questions.
