When I first heard of this interview project, I really only wanted to interview a birth father.

I wanted to interview a birth father because I wish we had better relationships with the birth fathers of our children (to put it super concisely) and I had some questions/wanted a peek into what our relationships could be, what I hope they will be in the future. I sent in such a request and was paired up with the only birth father (to my knowledge) participating in this project.

Today I am interviewing a man who refers to himself as “I Am” from Statistically Impossible.

I lost myself in his blog a couple weeks ago as I was preparing for my interview. I really love the way he talks about open adoption–check it out.

Share with the readers a micro version of your story.

I’ll refrain from introducing myself by my real name. That isn’t because I’m embarrassed by, or ashamed of, anything. I use a pseudonym to underscore my belief that it is less important to know my story than it is to know a story. I am a birthfather. To keep things simple I write under the name “I am”, borrowed from the old testament when Moses asks whom he should tell the pharaoh sent him. The simple beauty of that response resonates with me. Who is speaking doesn’t matter when what’s spoken is truth. My hope is to speak truth.

As for the context in which this story occurs, here are the basics. I am 29 years old. I am college educated, and in fact work at a major state university. I train undergraduate and graduate students to work in the scene shop making sets for plays, musicals, operas, and dance performances. It’s the field I’ve been in for fifteen years. I have never used drugs. I have never had a substance abuse problem beyond smoking cigarettes, a habit I’ve thankfully kicked. My partner, Athena, and I have been together for a bit over three years now. We met when she commissioned me to make a tattoo design for her. We hit it off and talked for sixteen hours straight the first day we met in person. Three months later we were looking for apartments together, and in late October moved in to our first apartment. We discovered she was pregnant on December 28th of that year. Much later, on September fourth of the following year we placed our newborn son, Festus, with is adoptive parents.

All this time later, Athena and I are still together, and still in contact with Festus and his parents. We meet up regularly as they live rather close to us. Festus is currently a little better than two years old, quite tall, and very physically adept for his age. So far he’s managed to dodge the bullet of developing a cockney accent that I encountered (very strange for a child born and raised in Michigan).

How involved were you in the selection process of the family you placed with? How involved were you at the hospital and at placement?

Athena and I made all the decisions regarding Festus’ placement together as equals. There’s an annoying concept, particularly strong in adoption circles, that a child is somehow more the mother’s than the father’s. The ability to be geographically removed from the location of the child during gestation doesn’t change the relationship of a child to his/her father. The father is the father. He may be a horrendous jerk, but his child is still his child without regard to his ethical quality.

In my own story I was directly present physically for most milestones related to the pregnancy. There were about four doctor’s appointments I couldn’t attend due to work. Beyond those I was present for everything and actively participated. After all we’re talking about my son! The decisions I didn’t participate in directly were the choice between adoption and termination, and the choice of where Athena was to give birth to Festus. As I mentioned earlier I work at a major state level university with an renown medical program/hospital. After visiting it Athena described feeling “like cattle lined up for the execution chamber” and couldn’t stop thinking about how “cold” it felt. She researched her option and eventually decided she wanted to check out a birthing center near her parent’s home (fortunately fairly close to us).

During the labor itself I was her primary coach. The midwives were very helpful, but they made it clear from the beginning they were there in case anything went wrong and to help the family. My job was to coach Athena through her labor, which is still one of the most terrifying and heart-wrenching experiences I’ve ever had. To have the love of your life bellow in pain two inches from your face for hours is a special kind of agony. After Athena gave birth to Festus we took a few hours to ourselves. I had already called his future parents when I knew Athena had entered labor. Before long they arrived, entered the room and greeted Athena’s family for the first time. Athena’s mother, father, and brother were all there. I, on the other hand, invited an old friend from college as my family had decided not to come. Rather, my family wouldn’t give me a straight answer as to whether they would come or not. It wasn’t until mid-way through Athena’s labor that I knew if anyone was coming to help support me as I tried to support Athena.

The placement happened there at the birthcenter. We have pictures of everyone together, smiling. We shared champagne in Dixie cups. Athena and I went to her parents’ house, where we would stay for the next week, and cried for three or four hours.

What does open adoption mean to you? What does openness in your adoption look like? Is there anything you’d like to change about it? What do you love?

To me open adoption is an expression used to describe an adoption that has continuing relationships with the first family. The nature of an open adoption is, hopefully, an expression of the relationships between the adults and, eventually, the children and the adults. In my case our open adoption includes e-mail and phone contact which we use primarily to set up a visit once a month. Sometimes life gets in the way and we have to skip a month, which is never fun. But we try to get together as regularly as we can to share a meal and talk about our lives and our son. That’s the funny thing about an open adoption. He is our son. All of us. He has two parents, but he is son to four adults.

What I wish I could change in our relationship is the same thing I’d change in all of my relationships. I want more time to share. I wish I could invest more time and energy into my relationships. Unfortunately I don’t have the resources to do so. I love that I have the chance to know my son, and that he can know me. I can’t imagine how much harder of all this would have been if I couldn’t see him to know how well he is loved and how deep his parent’s care is for him. It is my greatest wish that I could have a relationship with him that is similar to my relationship with my closest aunt and uncle. My uncle taught me to be a carpenter, and my aunt taught me to be an artist. They are two of the most important people in my life. I can only hope to support my son in the way they have supported me.

What was your thought process when you found out you were expecting? Did your heart go right to adoption or did you consider other options as well? Can you tell us a little bit about the journey of choosing adoption for your child?

When Athena took the pregnancy test I was asleep on the couch in our living room. I had asked her to make sure I was awake when she took it, because I wanted to be there for her. I know now that I felt so sleepy because I had been holding my breath. She woke me up and told me, “I’m pregnant”. At that moment conscious thought stopped. I couldn’t make those words make sense with how I understood the world. Athena and I had always been very cautious when it came to birth control. We still don’t know how or when Festus was conceived. The following week we were barely capable of thought. Athena’s description of us was “weepy zombies” and it is very apt.

After the first week of shock we began talking about how to proceed. Upon our first meeting we had already discussed our thoughts on parenthood. We bonded when we each shared how foreign the idea of parenting was, how little appeal it had for us. The proof, now, was in tasting the pudding. After several discussions we confirmed that we had both thoroughly thought about parenting and discarded the notion. We were not going to parent. No matter what. It was not a part of who we were, as individuals and as a couple. The best way I can think to describe it, to someone for whom this may be a strange concept, is to think of it like sexuality. Some people are heterosexual. Some people are homosexual. Some people are somewhere in between (bi-, pan-, polysexual, et cetera). Some people don’t need to experiment to know their sexuality. Sex with men makes sense or it doesn’t. Sex with women makes sense or it doesn’t. This isn’t always the case, but sometimes it is. If it’s a part of you, you know it. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, parenting is not a part of who I am. Athena knew the same of herself.

So our options were termination or adoption. We talked about different forms of adoption. Intrafamilial, extra-familial, closed. We talked about termination, but it became apparent early on that Athena wasn’t drawn in that direction. This was in no small part due to the fact that her own father was an adoptee. Beyond that was another important factor. If Athena could carry a pregnancy to term, it could save her life. When we met Athena had been struggling with, and slowly losing to, Crohn’s disease. Her internal bleeding was frequent and significant. I spent many nights awake wondering how many more days we had together. Would I wake one morning to find her cold beside me. The thought still brings tears to my eyes.

What are things/ideas/values that you want the adoptive parents to teach your child?

A common thread found among many families built through adoption is first families looking for similarities in the adoptive family. That is to say many first parents place with adoptive parents that are similar in character and priorities to themselves. The same is true of Athena and myself. What we hope Professor Plum and Ms Scarlet (pseudonyms for Festus parents) will teach him are intangible notions that come from the character of who they are as people. It seems strange to me to think about a shopping list of skills or ideas I hope they impart to him. Any specific skills I want my son to learn I intend to teach him myself. I hope he gleans the importance of thinking, compassion, and creativity. I believe his parents way of living will show him that money isn’t the greatest priority in one’s life. Above all, I know his parents will teach him to live honestly. That, more than anything, is what I hope for all people.

What is your biggest fear in regards to adoption?

The biggest fear for me, within the realm of my adoption experience, is the possibility losing contact with my son as a result of relational collapse. That is to say I would be afraid of my relationship with my son or his parents becoming so strained that is falls apart. I honestly don’t believe that will happen. There was a time that I was paralyzed by this idea. Now, however, I can say we have a strong enough relationship with one another this fear seems almost silly. This fear, however, is endemic to first parents. That is because the very nature of adoption, as it is presently executed, marginalizes the first family. The issue here is that birth mothers and fathers are, essentially, considered optional after the legal placement of the child has happened. Our involvement is permitted by the grace of the adoptive family. Not everyone has this attitude, but it is the rare family that can skirt this issue entirely.

My biggest fear regarding adoption globally is that this attitude of marginalization may be allowed to continue. More and more people are challenging it. Many adoptive parents are actively speaking against the idea that first family relationships are optional, or icing on the cake. Unfortunately it is the system of adoption itself that helps perpetuate the negative attitudes about first parents. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about I strongly recommend reading James Gritter’s book “Life Givers: Framing the Birthparent Experience in Open Adoption”. The short version is this: social taboo tells us asking others to raise our children effectively makes us defective humans. People who take in children that are not of their own lineage are compassionate heroes. So giving a child to another for adoption is abhorrent, but the act of adopting is a beautiful miracle. These contrary attitudes need to be addressed and changed. My greatest fear is they will be allowed to stand unchallenged.

There are adoptive parents out there (like me) that hope to improve the relationships they have the biological fathers of their children. What advice or pearls of wisdom you do have for them?

The most important thing to understand about birth fathers is the same as with birth mothers. Paradoxically, it is this: you don’t understand. You will not understand. You can’t understand.

None of that means you can’t care. What first fathers need to be able to engage in an adoption is the knowledge that they can engage, fully, and as they wish. Understanding why it is so common for first fathers to leave adoptions is as easy as searching google. Hop over and search for “birth father resources”. Of the few links that have anything to do with birth fathers at all, one is an out of date activist site specific to the state of California. Birthfather.com looks like a great organization, until one recognizes that it is a single page that’s a part of the Adoption.com pages. The article, though well written, is in fact written by a woman. I’m glad to have women’s perspective on the subject of adoption, but we are well out of balance. Susan Wadia-Ellis wrote, in her introduction to The Adoption Reader (1995):

Adoption, like motherhood, has always been a woman’s issue. It is women who give birth, and women who have had their birth children taken from them because of cultural, political or economic forces; and it is women who sometimes feel they must relinquish their birth child in order to protect that child[p.ix].

Why aren’t more birth fathers involved? Does one sit at a table where no chair is available? What I believe will help open the door for more birth fathers to engage is recognition. It is important to realize that the emotional processes men undergo in adoption are largely the same as women! Men, too, are placing their child in the care of others. It may be a shock for some to hear that men have emotions. We love our children every bit as much as their mother’s do. I wish I could personally thank every individual who gives us space to express that.

Thanks again to I Am for helping us better understand birth fathers and giving us lots of food for thought!

(He also interviewed me, which you can read on his blog when it goes live.)

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Categories: Adoption, Adoption Stories, Open Adoption • Tags: Birth Father Stories