Comments on On Children: Note One

Funny you should mention this. My first girlfriend in high school was adopted. Her father was a pastor and her mother was a school teacher. When she was 5 her mother hit her so hard it caused brain damage and her father once burned her with a hot pan as punishment. She ran away when she was 14. When they caught her they had her locked up in a private mental institution. Two years later she killed herself.

Her brother, her parents' biological offspring, received none of this treatment -- evidently because he was experiencing a lower form of love than his sister.

Thank god she had that higher love.

Hey, you know the Steve Winwood song, right?

You should read White Oleander .

I have to call Bullshit on this posting. My step-father adopted me and beat the shit out of me when I was a kid. (I went to school with bruses on my face and back and could not do track or cross country in Junior High due to the brusing). But my sister (his biological child) was treated like a little queen by the prick. Word.

when i say love, i don't mean beating the shit out of a child. i really mean love.

Charles, all of your posts should begine with "I think..."

You are the master or generalizations.

as a stepparent, i think the most selfless, highest form of love is raising someone else's kids with compassion & no expectation of gratitude or affection from the children.

and then bragging about it on the internet.

not all stepdads are violent creeps.

Wait, you can specifically measure love in vertical increments now? Bold new frontiers being crossed at The Stranger office these days...

i feel sorry for your children (it doesn't really matter if they are biological or adopted, i'm still sorry).

Uhm... so is parental love proportional to the amount of effort that the parents have to put into getting the child?

So the heirarchy from most loved to least loved children goes:

Adopted child
Child conceived with the help of fertility treatments
Child conceived by parents who were trying
Accidental pregnancy
Redheaded stepchild?

Hmmm, the higher love that motivated my wife's parent's to adopt her appeared to be driven entirely by a last ditch effort to save their marriage. Didn't work. And it took her a loooong time to get over growing up in that house.

Charles, your arguments would carry some weight if it was backed up with proof. Trust me, my beatings were ALWAYS done with my step-father's claim of loving me. Mom did nothing (and I was her biological son). Sooooo...how does that fit into your generalization of what can only be described as self-rightous dribble?

So hold on Charles, your contention is that parents who beat the shit out of their children can't also love those kids?

Man, for a dude who's all about highbrow art shit, you're understanding of human behavior is about two inches deep, isn't it?

"you're" = your.

Hate it when I blow that one.

My little sister and i were adopted, so i am elated to hear that our parents love us more than our older brother who is their only bilogical kid! I can't wait to call him and rub it in his smug, biological first born face! ha ha ha ha (just kidding CJ, i love ya)

I think the individual anecdotes in the comments really miss the larger question behind this post. there must be some difference between the love for a biological, vs an adopted, or step-child. I'm not sure if Charles is right, or even close, but since his argument places me in the "more loved" category i have decided to agree with him 1000%.

I'm sorry, but I honestly don't think you can generalize this topic. Parental love, whether natural, adopted or foster is entirely dependant on the parents involved. For an example, my family.

My mother raised three biological children, my two older sisters and I. Of the three of us, she loved me most, loved me best. We all know that, we all admit it, and we all have dealt with it... sort of. She loved my sisters, but I was her baby, I was her son, I am the child she prayed for, the child she sought. It was obvious growing up that she loved me differently than she did my sisters.

Now that my sisters and I are all adults, she and my father have become foster parents. Every baby, every child, who has come into their home has been loved, but some receive more love than others. One baby my parents are working to adopt, a few other babies still come home to visit my parents, still refer to my parents as Momma and Daddy.

You could take our scenario to argue that the children my parents worked the hardest for (myself and the foster babies) were loved the most, but I would think that a weak analysis.

Parents are people, human beings. They feel love because they do, not because of some equation attached to the emotion. I know couples who love their eldest child with a passion much greater than the love they give their younger children, and parents who lavish love, praise, adoration, on their adopted children, but ignore their biological.

Sorry if that got rambly.

What's most idiotic about this isn't that it fails to take mistreated adoptees into question - it's that Chaz frames it as fact, as though you could assign value to parental love at the click of a button. At the very least he should've said "The love that a man or woman feels for an adopted child is potentially higher", and even then it'd still sound silly. Even if the difference in loves exists - and I know plenty of families with an adoption, who maintain that said difference either doesn't exist or doesn't matter - how the fuck can you rank it?

Also, instead of "Note One: On Children" (can't wait for Notes Two, Three etc by the way), this should've been called "You're Not Just Adopting A Child - You're Adopting Plato". Much more persuasive.

Seems pretty on paper, too bad it's a crock of shit. Kinda like Marxism...

What a stupid post. Generalize much?