Friday, May 31st, 2013
More than 40 percent of American women consulted in a Associated Press/WE tv poll say they would consider having a baby even though they are not married or in a romantic relationship. More from The Associated Press:
An Associated Press-WE tv poll of people under 50 found that more than 2 in 5 unmarried women without children—or 42 percent—would consider having a child on their own without a partner, including more than a third, or 37 percent, who would consider adopting solo.
The poll, which addressed a broad range of issues on America’s changing family structures, dovetails with a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau that single motherhood is on the rise: It found that of 4.1 million women who’d given birth in 2011, 36 percent were unmarried at the time of the survey, an increase from 31 percent in 2005. And among mothers 20-24, the percentage was 62 percent, or six in 10 mothers.
The AP-WE tv poll also found that few Americans think the growing variety of family arrangements is bad for society. However, many have some qualms about single mothers, with some two-thirds—or 64 percent—saying single women having children without a partner is a bad thing for society. More men—68 percent—felt that way, compared to 59 percent of women.
The survey found broad gender gaps in opinion on many issues related to how and when to have children. One example: At a time when the can-you-have-it-all debate rages for working mothers, women were more apt than men to say having children has negatively impacted their career.
And this was true especially among mothers who waited until age 30 or older to have children. Fully 47 percent of those mothers said having a child had a negative impact on their careers. Of women overall, 32 percent of mothers reported a negative effect, compared with 10 percent of men.
Image: Mother and child, via Shutterstock
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Friday, May 17th, 2013
Rachael Clark, who was discarded in a trash can by her birth mother–umbilical cord and placenta still attached–shortly after her birth in 1989, is a remarkable young woman by any standard. Now 23 years old and about to graduate with straight As from the University of Maryland, Clark, who was raised by adoptive parents, is seeking her birth parents…to tell them she forgives them. More from NBC News:
The 23-year-old is so focused and busy that she sometimes forgets about the turmoil that’s dogged her since childhood. “Some days, it’s like it never happened,” Rachael said. “But some days, I really do struggle. I have such strong abandonment issues.”
Her issues stem from the way her life began. On Sept. 27, 1989, the day Rachael was born, she was sealed inside a dark garbage bag with her umbilical cord and placenta still attached. The trash bag was then thrown, hard, into a dumpster.
Minutes before she ran out of oxygen, someone heard her cries and saved her. Her abandonment and rescue in Temple Hills, Md., became one of the most widely publicized stories of its kind — so well-known, in fact, that Rachael overheard people talking about it in front of her when she was about 2.
Now, at this especially happy juncture in their lives, Rachael and her adoptive parents are speaking out about their story. They want to let other adoptive families know how normal it is to need help navigating the delicate process of telling adopted children about their violent or tragic pasts.
They’re also making their story public because, in spite of everything, Rachael has a persistent longing to find her birth parents.
“I just want to be able to tell them that I forgive them,” she said.
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Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
Newly released court papers document how a mother in the United Kingdom forced her 14-year-old daughter to become pregnant using syringes of donor sperm, apparently in a desperate attempt to have another child herself. After seven attempts at insemination, the daughter gave birth to a baby boy at age 17. More from Yahoo News:
In a ruling reported for the first time Monday, High Court judge Peter Jackson said the mother had behaved in “a wicked and selfish way” that almost defied belief.
The judge said the woman, an American divorcee living in Britain with three adopted children, hatched the plan after she was prevented from adopting a fourth.
The scheme involved getting her oldest daughter to inseminate herself with syringes of sperm purchased over the Internet from a Denmark-based company, Cryos International.
Jackson said the daughter, identified only as A, “became pregnant at the mother’s request, using donor sperm bought by the mother, with the purpose of providing a fourth child for the mother to bring up as her own.”
In his ruling, the judge quoted the teenager as saying said she was shocked by the suggestion, but thought, “If I do this … maybe she will love me more.”
“My mum is a very determined person and she does her best not to let anything get in her way if she wants it,” the teenager added.
The baby was taken into foster care custody, and the mother is serving a 5-year jail sentence for child cruelty.
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Wednesday, March 13th, 2013
Bill Arnold and his wife, Dr. Jennifer Arnold, have adopted a little boy who was born with dwarfism, a condition that the Arnolds both live with and chronicle in their TLC reality show “The Little Couple.” They had been attempting to have a biological child using a gestational surrogate, but their surrogate suffered a miscarriage in November 2011. More from PEOPLE.com on the Arnold’s son, William, who is 3 years old and is from China:
“We are thrilled to announce that we have adopted a beautiful young boy from China,” the couple said in a statement to PEOPLE. “We are so proud to welcome William to our family and look forward to bringing him home.”
On their TV series last March, the couple explored adoption after their surrogate suffered a miscarriage.
“My entire life, even before I met Bill, I always thought, ‘Oh, I’d love to adopt a child who is another little person,’ ” Arnold said on the episode. “And Bill and I talked about it after we got married, and I think we both realized we both would like that.”
The new season of “The Little Couple” will premiere on April 30 at 10 p.m. EST.
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Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
Surrogate pregnancy is not uncommon, and it usually ends well for all involved. But a story out of Connecticut and Michigan is almost operatic in its complexity, drama, and high stakes. CNN.com tells the story of Crystal Kelley, who acted as a gestational carrier to a Connecticut couple who wanted a fourth child and had frozen embryos from previous in vitro fertilization cycles.
Kelley became pregnant, but a routine ultrasound uncovered a number of severe birth defects in the fetus, including brain and heart abnormalities as well as a severely cleft lip and palate. The biological parents, on hearing the news, wanted Kelley to terminate the pregnancy, but Kelley refused.
After a legal battle erupted–the contract Kelley had signed stipulated “abortion in case of severe fetus abnormality,” but didn’t specify what that meant–the biological parents said they wanted to take custody of the child at birth and then turn her over to Connecticut’s state-run foster care system. The case became even more complicated when it was discovered that the couple had used an anonymous egg donor to make the embryo.
Kelley, disturbed by all options on the table, fled to Michigan, where she would be considered to be the baby’s mother under that state’s laws.
While in Michigan, Kelley gave birth to the girl and found adoptive parents for her. From CNN:
Baby S. — her adoptive parents are comfortable using her first initial — has a long road in front of her. She’s already had one open-heart surgery and surgery on her intestines, and in the next year she’ll need one or two more cardiac surgeries in addition to procedures to repair her cleft lip and palate. Later in childhood she’ll need surgeries on her jaw and ear and more heart surgeries.
Her adoptive parents, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their family’s privacy, know Baby S. might not be with them for long. The cardiac procedures she needs are risky, and her heterotaxy and holoprosencephaly, though mild, carry a risk of early death, according to doctors.
If Baby S. does survive, there’s a 50% chance she won’t be able to walk, talk or use her hands normally.
In some ways, Baby S. looks different from other 8-month-olds babies. In addition to the facial abnormalities, she’s very small, weighing only 11 pounds and she gets food through a tube directly into her stomach so she’ll grow faster.
Her adoptive parents know some people look at her and see a baby born to suffer — a baby who’s suffering could have been prevented with an abortion.
But that’s not the way they see it. They see a little girl who’s defied the odds, who constantly surprises her doctors with what she’s able to do — make eye contact, giggle at her siblings, grab toys, eye strangers warily.
“S. wakes up every single morning with an infectious smile. She greets her world with a constant sense of enthusiasm,” her mother said in an e-mail to CNN. “Ultimately, we hold onto a faith that in providing S. with love, opportunity, encouragement, she will be the one to show us what is possible for her life and what she is capable of achieving….”
….Just as there are two ways to look at Baby S., there are two ways to look at Crystal Kelley, the woman who carried her.
In one view, she’s a saint who fought at great personal sacrifice for an unborn child whose own parents did not want her to live. In another view, she recklessly absconded with someone else’s child and brought into the world a baby who faces serious medical challenges when that wasn’t her decision to make.
Image: Pregnant woman in hospital, via Shutterstock
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abortion, adoption, donor eggs, gestational surrogate, in vitro fertilization, infant surgery, special needs babies, surgery, surrogacy, surrogate | Categories:
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