to think that you aren't obliged to form a relationship with a chid you've given up for adoption

[Northernlurker]

Aplohies this is from the Daily Mail but I think it raises some interesting questions.

Susan Jameson has been honest with her daughter about her son's existence, she's given him medical information and told him who his father is but she doesn't want to try and turn back the clock for fifty years and I can understand that. Or does biology oblige one?

(All that aside - selling his story to the Mail is a deeply unclassy thing to do!)

Thing is, in the 1960's unmarried mothers had horrific time of it, and their children suffered for it too. "Bastard" still meant something in those times, and there was no support, families often cut you out, society ostracised both you and your child. She made a difficult choice that many young women had to make then, my mother included. It's just too simple to say she chose her career over a baby.
So she didn't bond with a child that she knew she was going to give up. Then she chose not to wear a hair shirt and punish herself for that choice. She has made a successful life for herself over 50 years, and has chosen not to be a mother to someone she has no bond with. Why would society be more comfortable with this if she had spent 50 years tearing herself apart,heartbroken? Would we expect the same of a man in this situation?

I do feel sorry for him, and feeling rejected is understandable, but I don't think she has done anything wrong. She has been honest with him. She made the right choice for them both 50 years ago, and still wants to make that choice.

As someone said above, cases like this show the anti-abortion argument of adoption for what it is. It makes me when they say "don't abort, it is better to give up your child for adoption", but when a woman does this we expect her to spend the rest of her life in pain, and when she doesn't, there is something wrong with her.

as someone rejected by a biological parent (father), I completely agree with Kew. Yes, it would have been kinder not to have named his mother in the article, but other than that, I don't see it as being unpleasant or unfair, just honest.

re:fantasies of famous parents - isn't that quite normal for children whether adopted or not - I recall that Marilyn Monroe, who didn't know her father, fantasized that Clark Gable was her father.

On the general point of the thread title, don't want to get bogged own in the specifics of this one case, I don't think the bio parent has any obligation.
I'd take humbrage with this statement of "but blood is still thicker than water." as it's patently not true.
I know loads of people who have fallen out with or actively hate their father/mother/cousin etc.
FWIW my bio mum tried to contact me and I refused. And it wasn't out of some sort of resentment or hate or as part of a revenge, it was simply because I had no interest. It would have been like having lunch with a stranger, which can be awkward enough in itself but this would be a stranger who expected me to be excited/form a bond/act like we have a relationship, and I just had absolutely no feeling of "wanting to find out" as I've seen some people claim that every adoptive child must have.

He says he knows his father's name, that's all. There is no suggestion he is in touch. Maybe that's his next story for the papers? You can easily be an actress and a very private person. I didn't even know she was married to James Bolam and have never read an interview with her. She is no rent-a-celeb, and I imagine all this is painful to her. The idea that she should be blackmailed into sending Christmas cards out of fear he would go to the papers is pretty distasteful, surely? She was a teenager (her birth date on the internet is 1944, he was born in 1960, but she could have fudged her age at some point) who was pregnant. It wasn't her 'choice'. She probably felt as if events were totally out of her control herself. Abortions were not easily obtained in 1960 (I think they were illegal actually), so it was not all her choice at all. She made the best of of what may have been a hugely traumatic event, the boy was adopted. I thought that adoptive parents hated terms like 'real mother' applied to bio mothers in this situation, yet Jameson is expected after a gap of 50 years to suddenly be this middle-aged man's 'real mother' again. She clearly did not feel up to it. It does not make her a saint, clearly, but I think going to the papers is a pretty shabby revenge.

He says he expects her to be a granny to his children - I doubt he would have been happy with the odd card.

I don't think its fair to judge either of them - we know nothing of how the son approached the meeting or what was said at it, other than what he has since chosen to tell the DM and what they have chosen to print.

From what's written - yes she could have handled it more gracefully. But we don't really know what was said on either side before, during or after the meeting and without that information it seems highly unfair to judge.

To answer the original questions, though, No - I don't think a woman should be obliged to have a relationship with a child you've given up for adoption.

I imagin she feinds the details of a teenage one night stand becoming tabloid gossip-fodder absolutely mortifying.

NOw I thnk this man is a self-pitying wanker who needs a kick in the cock - and I was adopted as a baby myself.
To be fair, maybe the DM have made him look much more of a whinyarse than he is, but their motivation in this piece (the DM editorial staff that is) is bog-standard misogyny. 'Heartless' women? Drunken slag? Selfish career bitch? Because a teenager who got PG in the early 60s, chose to have the baby adopted because trying to keep him would have meant a life of poverty and absolute humiliation unless some man married her (and if not the baby;s father, reminded her on a daily basis how grateful she ought to be). Having put it behind her, she gets contacted out of the blue and the next thing has her private life all over the papers. It;s more than possible he behaved like a whinyarse at the meeting and that's why she disengaged rapidly.
It's woman -hater bingo, really.

What I'd like to know is what she's holding in the first picture? A cat? Racoon?

Oh my God I am so shocked by the responses. Being given up for adoption must be a very tough thing to discover, moreso if your birth mother goes onto to have a family and is not struggling for cash. 'Amicable' with a child you gave birth to is horrible, that poor man.

Selling his story is not a 'crap thing to do' he is probably very hurt and rejected and I can't imagine too many people act completely rationally when it happens.

SGB sometimes you take the words right out of my mouth.

A really hateful piece of journalism.

Is his birth father Martin Shaw? He looks just like him!

Her wealth and her subsequent family have nothing to do with it.
Women are allowed to move on with their lives after they give a child up for adoption and she didn't exactly have a successful career and a family to spite him.

Selling his story is a crap thing to do. If you want to sell a story about your personal life, then fine, just make sure you don't drag others in with you. It's not fair.

If that article made him feel better, than that speaks volumes about what he hoped to get out of a relationship with his birth mother.

Her wealth and her subsequent family have nothing to do with it.

IMO these have everything to do with the DM publishing the story, though. Would they have bothered if she worked behind the till of the local ASDA?

In the mind of an adopted person surely the wealth and success have much to do with it.

The adopted son has every right to feel devastated and hurt by the rejection by his mother. And I have every empathy with that.

The mother has every right not to continue contact with him and to have given him up for adoption in the first place. And I have every empathy with that too.

The father has every right not to contact him and to have given him up for adoption. But here my empathy runs out because he manages to do that without receiving any anger and vitriol in the national press.

I'm with grandhigh and SGB. Unmarried women in the 60s didn't gaily hand over babies and skip off singing. They were blackmailed and coerced, if not worse, into 'giving up' their babies. They faced intense stigma and a desperate struggle to survive if they did try to keep their babies.

A private detective once told me she reckoned forced adoption had been the punishment society meted out to women who transgressed.

My mother only found out she was adopted a few years back - both her parents had been dead for years and we can't find any way of tracing her birth mother (private adoption, court records lost in a fire, the mother would be at least in her mid-80s now so pretty hopeless). But IF by some miracle we did locate her, we wouldn't dream of rushing to the papers to denounce her.

Absolutely edam

Why doesn't the Daily Mail just have her tarred and feathered?

I have a lot of empathy for her son but she gave him up for adoption and was brought up in a happy and loving home. She did not dump him on the doorstep of some grim orpanange.

Yes, I suppose you are right. He can't be expected to think rationally when he is hurting and it might hurt more thinking that she's only successful because she rejected him, but in the end, it is irrational to be angrier, or more upset because your birth mother made a success of herself.
That means he is essentially, angry at her for moving on with her life, which is only to be expected considering the circumstances.

I agree with Kew.

DuellingFango - I thought exactly the same!

I think he looks like the other one out of the Likely Lads.

Me too , see earlier post ..
It's teh nose .

I don't think she is obliged to do anything

but he probably feels as though he has been interviewed and has failed

bit heartless of her, IMO

but I do feel about the DM story - grubby, isn't it