'Like adoptive parents, who want to be accepted as being the same as biological parents'

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Trans women are like adoptive parents, who want to be accepted as being the same as biological parents. And they are accepted as such, despite the differences in how they became parents in the first place; and if society could do the same for trans women, we’d be in a better place.”

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jul/11/uks-only-trans-philosophy-professor-to-jk-rowling-harry-potter-helped-me-become-a-woman

I'd be interested in the reaction of adoptive parents or children to that analogy. It doesn't work for me.

I presume adoptive parents like mycatismadeofstringcheese (thanks for sharing your story) don't butt into all conversations about biological parents by saying "I'm a parent because intersex conditions exist so nerr" either.

The word parent is both a noun and a verb. One is a parent and one parents. You can be a parent by virtue of having contributed a gamete to the creation of a human being, but you are also a parent if you have the legal and social responsibility of a parent and you do the work of being a parent.

The word woman is a noun and nothing else. You are a woman but you don't womans. You don't go around womaning all over the place.

But adopters don't get post modern and declare biological inheritance a social construct.

The reason adoptive parents become legal parents is not for their own validation but because the children need adult/s to exercise parental responsibility for them and provide permanence.

It's completely not the same as men wanting to be legally recognised as women. Nobody benefits from that other than the individual.

I might start doing that Gncq. See if I can get away with it!

@CodenameVillanelle

The reason adoptive parents become legal parents is not for their own validation but because the children need adult/s to exercise parental responsibility for them and provide permanence.

It's completely not the same as men wanting to be legally recognised as women. Nobody benefits from that other than the individual.

Also society benefits from adoptive parents. We save the state somewhere between £500k and £1m per child in what would otherwise been spent on care costs.

Of course! That is obviously also true.

@Michelleoftheresistance

It's not hard to find online the accounts of adult adoptees who feel they suffered emotional harm and have a lot of anger about the erasure of their reality and their biological parents by those who wanted to be positive about their adoption and the 'realness' of their adoptive parents.

Those bonds, the reality, people's truth and stories and feelings matter. Adoption is a complicated walk along a tightrope of it all, but even things like 'gotcha' celebration days now are more recognised as being for the adoptive parents a wonderful joyful anniversary of receiving their beloved child - and for the child, a trauma anniversary of leaving family/loved foster families/going to people they didn't know well/ a legal end to their contact with their biological family.

If you want to draw the TW parallel - it's the same issues there that erasure can be a joyful thing for one group, and at the same time it can be trauma and damage to the other. Everybody's needs and truths matter.

Of course it’s not without exception; but in the uk where children who join families by adoption do so overwhelmingly because of abuse or neglect (unlike the US), it’s pretty rare nowadays for adoptive families to celebrate ‘gotcha days’, or erase a child’s birth history. The latter would be completely counter-productive.

None of the adoptive families I know (a lot) do either.

@OhamIreally

I think that society would agree that there is a similarity in that both are a legal fiction. Adoptive parents understand they are not the biological parents of a child.

Legal fiction? Bollocks.

@CodenameVillanelle

The reason adoptive parents become legal parents is not for their own validation but because the children need adult/s to exercise parental responsibility for them and provide permanence.

It's completely not the same as men wanting to be legally recognised as women. Nobody benefits from that other than the individual.

So true, you can’t just identify as an adoptive parent, you have to go through a legal gate keeping process and be approved and you only get approved if it’s in the child’s best interests, the process doesn’t care how much you really really want to be a parent, if you’re not suitable then you won’t get approved.

Wait so someone can suddenly self identify as a parent, and take whichever child they identify off the streets? Adoption is a lot simpler than I thought...

I don't know any adoptive parents who are calling for their child's birth cert to be changed to state that they are the biological parents, nor do I know any adoptive parents who deny that their children are adopted, or who object to anyone else talking about conception or birth, or who try to make other people change their language to pretend that adoption doesn't exist.

I wish my children weren't adopted - because that would mean they could have safely stayed with their birth families, that they might not have the feelings of rejection they have etc. But me pretending they weren't wouldn't have any effect on the reality that they are.

The comparison with adoption and trans would perhaps be valid if new "transition certs" were issued rather than birth certs being altered, and also if transpeople stopped insisting that changing their "gender" meant that they were biologically the opposite sex to their sex at birth, and if they stopped insisting everyone else pretend there is no such thing as biological sex.

Adoption should never rewrite history. My children's adoption is part of their history.

There are no legal documents that represent that adoptive parents are the biological parents.

I’ve never know any adoptive family where the parents or children claim this.

Adoptive families don’t claim that the whole world of children and families centres them and their needs and wishes.

Adoption isn’t a “ legal fiction “. Adopters ARE the legal parents of the child.

It’s nothing to do with “ real “ and “ unreal “ or fake parents.

Adoption doesn’t “ erase reality “ as a PP suggested. That sounds more like a Disney film than contemporary adoption in most western counties.

I am an adoptive parent. I don't pretend to my children that I gave birth to them, they know they have their 'first' parents (as we put it). I disagree with changing birth certificates as well, I think they should be left unchanged. We have a court order to state we are the children's legal parents. There's no need to change their biological reality in their birth certificates either.

This is not a good analogous at all. I am my children's mother, in the sense that I am raising them and doing what other mother's do post birth. However, I will never be my children's biological mother. I would never pretend to be either. (I am also real!)

*analogy

I’d like to see a move to birth certificates reflecting parenting history. Biological parents and adoptive parents. In some cases, the biological parents need their identities protected so the names could be redacted with court approval, but the line and their existence should still be reflected. I suppose a trans parent could take that approach as well, but I don’t really see the argument for their name being redacted as the biological Parent. The point of that is to facilitate getting children into safe families and there are cases where the biological parent can’t parent and can’t risk being revealed. We don’t want them taking drastic measures, so we provide an alternative. I don’t like to think about the fact that I produce sperm instead of eggs really doesn’t have the same weight as, I come from a religious family that will ostracize or even physically harm me if they find out I had premarital sex.

Yes adoptive parents are absolutely parents

But they would not be invited to something to discuss post birth trauma for example

If their child had a genetic illness their genetic history would have no relevance

As these issues aren't part of their history with their child and nobody pretends it does

It's clearly nonsense, the two situations are not comparable. However I wonder if the reason that the argument is being made is a continuation of what we've seen recently with campaigns relating to surrogacy and trans men giving birth, where there's an attempt to remove the importance of the sex of the parents on the child's birth certificate.

When I make the argument that trans widows should not have their status as "mother" usurped I often get asked "so you don't think same sex couples should be able to have children?"

I bet the person in this article would like to be recorded as an extra female parent of his children, as same sex adopters are, I believe, rather than as the Father.

Is Chappell proposing trans women should undergo a similar vetting process to adoptive parents? Or just reaching for a lazy analogy?

I am an adoptive mum and I find this exasperating.

A good adoptive parent is truthful with their child about their adoption, their birth parents and their history. Even if it is incredibly difficult. There are no fairytales for adoptive parents, no rainbows or unicorns.

We need to look our children in the eye and in a calm way describe their own history, which may include domestic violence, neglect or sexual assault or all of the above.

We attend parenting causes and describe our children's violent behaviours and are told to look for the root of the behaviour, to dig deeper and understand the underlying trauma.

At the school gate, we nod and smile as we listen to stories of babies being born

We dont try to join the NCT, infact I have found my own third space by having a supportive network of adoptive parents.

We dont ask for the word pregnancy to be banned because it is exclusionary.

We live in the real world, and some days it is really tough.

Ultimately, adoptive parents are legally parents because they parent. Transwomen cannot woman so they should not be legally women.

I was an adoptive parent, (for a short while, the placement broke down) of a child of 7.

I took on all the aspects of being a parent during that time, in much the same way as for BC.

However, adopters never seek to ignore the start in life their child had - nor could you even attempt to with an older child.

Codename - your response is much more succinct. But to add to this, I recognise and accept that I am not my child's birth mum.

I think the time is coming where all children should have both their biological parents and the parents who are to bring them up on their birth certificates.

I don't agree with birth certificates for same sex couples having only the couple's names on them; I don't agree that babies born via a surrogate should have only the names of the commissioning parents on them. In the past it was understandable that children born from donor sperm had the mother's partner's name as "father" but with the knowledge we have now that should also no longer be allowed.

With DNA tracing, hiding reality from children is no longer possible, and with all we know about the psychological harm done by lying to (indeed, not necessarily purposefully lying, but concealing knowledge from) adopted children, it should not longer be legal to lie to any children about their origins.

Birth certs should be a record for the child of his or her birth. The information on it should be accurate. Another cert - like an adoption cert, or the old short form cert - could be issued for children with complex parentage, but in no case should the birth cert - a legal document - contain untruths. Nor should it be changed at a later date to contain untruths.

My children have no access to their birth certs (not in UK), but they have adoptive certs which are factually correct. If and when they get access to their original birth certs it is important that the names of their birth parents are on them.

Sorry, off topic, but I feel very strongly that altering factual records is wrong.

topcat, that must have been difficult for everyone