The comment about adoption made by Ruth Crawford KC, the Scottish Government’s lawyer in the Supreme Court case on gender recognition, is ignorant and offensive. I was not going to write anything today but I’m afraid this is a personal issue for me. It is an encapsulation of why I detest identity politics so much and why they’ve made every debate toxic.
Let me set the scene here; my son is adopted. We got pregnant by accident (our best ever mistake) and immediately planned to have two kids and adopt the second. We actually called them ‘belly rat’ and ‘paper rat’ between ourselves in our tizzy of excitement and soon-to-be new parent delirium.
But Cristina had such a positive experience with the birth of our daughter we decided to try for another ‘belly rat’. Sadly, we then went through a string of miscarriages (people should talk about this more – it was only after it happened to us that we found out a number of our friends had been through it in a sort of shame and silence, or feeling they had to carry their pain alone).
So the decision to return to our initial plan of adoption was easy for us. If my daughter was our best mistake, our son was the best decision we ever made in our lives. The process of adopting him was one of the most profound and inspiring things I’ve ever done and I love him with a depth of feeling which belies any stupidity about genetics or bloodlines.
This is why Ruth Crawford’s comments have set me off. She claimed that a Gender Recognition Certificate is no more a ‘legal fiction’ than adoption. First, I want to return to my loathing of identity politics. Ms Crawford’s comments reflect my loathing – it is always, perpetually, about setting one group against another in pursuit of the interests of one and against the interests of the other.
I refuse to do that here. Nothing in this article is about trans people. I want the best for trans people. Trans people and adopted children have nothing to do with each other and I would never, ever use adoption to attack either gender critical feminists or trans people. It is ugly and unnecessary and crass.
This is about adoption and the ignorance of those comments. If she knew anything about adoption she would know that adoption is not about the parents, it’s about the child. Adoptive parents do not ‘shop for the right to possess a child’, they apply to take on the responsibility for being the protector and guardian of a vulnerable wee one.
You don’t get a catalogue because it isn’t and has never been about you
It is a deep, intensive and at times harrowing process. We went through with a group of about 14 couples who were prospective parents and I think only slightly more than half made it through. At every stage it is made clear that this isn’t about you, it’s about the child. How much you want it has nothing to do with it.
For us it was a slightly longer process because of a technical complication during the process but it took us nearly three years start to finish. It began with three months of weekly preparatory courses. These are rigourous. When you have to sit in a room for two hours on a Thursday night and be led through the horror of the long-term effects of sexual abuse or physical abuse or neglect on a child in detail, you would understand why her ‘legal fiction’ comparator is so crass.
A number of people dropped out during the preparatory phase. You’re going to be paired with a child with difficulties if you’re accepted; that is the reality. It’s why I have become an adoption evangelist – if anyone reading this has ever wondered if it might be for them PLEASE, PLEASE GO AND APPLY TO DO THE PREPARATORY COURSE.
It isn’t for everyone and by the end of it you will know if it is for you. But there are so many children who need someone like you in their lives and there are so few people who come forward and make it all the way through. Try fostering if you want to get a sense of your ability to cope.
From there it’s screening. We had months of long (sometimes very long) one-to-one sessions with the social workers. We were so lucky, we had two (one was retiring and the other training). They were wonderful, supportive people who made things great for us.
But they will comb through your life, your personality, your own childhood history, you’re traumas, how you live. They will jump on and test any marker of a problem. I made a lighthearted joke one session (‘can’t wait until this is all finished so I can stop pretending to wash my hand every single time I pop to the toilet’) which got me a half-hour lecture on hygiene at the next meeting.
(No correspondence thanks germophobes…)
You will fill in forms about yourself which, certainly for Cristina were almost cathartic, causing her to talk about things she hadn’t talked about in years. You will supply the name of six close friends and family and they will be grilled extensively about you.
Only at this point – all the police checks, all the social work checks, all the financial and debt checks – will the possibility of an actual, real child start to crop up. Even that is a process – you don’t get a catalogue because it isn’t and has never been about you.
If you ever do this I encourage you to be brutally honest about what you can cope with. We were clear that our lifestyles meant we could cope with ‘wild’ but not ‘intensely introverted’. Don’t pretend. And then at some moment which, for us, totally knocked us for six, you’ll sit in a room that isn’t yours and you’ll see a photograph and, dear god, it’s your child. Or will be.
We had a reason the very last stage was slightly accelerated (the foster family were going on holiday and they didn’t want to put the child into respite for no reason). We were at what we thought was another scoping meeting with about nine senior officials from right across the child protection agencies. At the end the panel said ‘congratulations’.
We walked out the utterly unmemorable council meeting room in some municipal buildings in East Kilbride and asked our social workers what just happened. "You’re parents" she said. I wanted to cry, but all we could think was that we had to cancel our summer holiday and get all that fencing up (god, we had to put up soooo much fencing round a pond and two boundaries).
Adoption is not a right, it is a duty and a privilege; the rights are the rights of the child, the right to have a stable family life
We met the birth mother. We took her a whole album of photos of the life her son would have. We promised her that we would absolutely support our son making contact and having a relationship when he is old enough (no, the birth parent isn’t totally erased from the child’s life). We maintain a great friendship with his foster family.
Yes, they changed his birth certificate and while we couldn’t have cared less, it is really difficult to do paperwork for things like passports and suchlike with a minor if you don’t. It wasn’t amended to make us feel ‘more like parents’ but because it is all-but technically necessary if you are to be the sole guardian for a minor.
Adoption is not a right, it is a duty and a privilege; the rights are the rights of the child, the right to have a stable family life. We are just the people tasked with delivering that. Nobody rocks up and says ‘I want a baby – gimme gimme’. It isn’t a ‘legal fiction’, it’s the moral necessity of giving a child a fighting chance who might not otherwise get one.
I love my son. He is 11 now and is at an age where he and I talk for ages about stuff, music, computer games, the plans he’s been drawing up for an eco-hotel, his on-repeat love of Olivia Rodriguez, Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan. It’s weird; he’s not my genetic son and yet his personality is my twin. Oh my poor partner and daughter…
The other day he was throwing one of his fits and when it all calmed down I could look him in the eye and say ‘remember, you’re one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life’. The emotions which writing this has thrown up have made my morning special.
I can’t end this without one more plea; if you’re under 50 (probably under 45) and have ever though about adopting a child, please reach out to your local authority. If it doesn’t work out it doesn’t work out, but I promise you it will change you for the better either way.
And to those who can’t walk five minutes without setting some group in society against some other group in society as if to drag what little a child in need of adoption has (the right to hope for the stability that gives them a fighting chance in life, and to feel loved) into a political spat is fine it it is a convenient talking point to achieve something else; for those who create proxy battle between people who didn’t ask for it; could you just fucking stop it.