Originally Posted by Nyororin
I was out there living life, and taking care of my own child, so I didn`t get a chance to reply as things progressed. I think most of the issues have been covered, but I feel a need to reply to this. Probably because I`m most likely one of the only, if not only, posters in this topic who REALLY has children.
There were several points which irritated the crap out of me, and I am going to give my opinion on them. As a MOTHER, and as an actual developmental specialist, not just a random someone.
Congratulations! You win at life!
Seriously - great for you... But if you consider this a central prerequisite for having a child, you really have your values mixed up. You say you`re financially stable, making $50,000/year - but are not yet out of college. Wow... But not really. Let`s think this out. Financially stable? At 19? Before graduating? Making money from one of the most unstable careers? (Club owner, landlord)
You`re 19. How many years has that life been going on? One? Two? If that. I doubt you were making $50,000/year before you were 18. You can`t say "stable" without it lasting 5 years. At least. Unless you were magically making $50,000/year at 14, you failed. That`s not stability. That`s "making a lot of money in a short time" and nothing more. Having the ability to pay for a child doesn`t mean a THING. Sure, it`s nice. Sure, it simplifies things. But it isn`t going to make you into mother of the year. Life doesn`t work that way. Even if that income is stable, and guaranteed for the rest of your productive life - you show so little stability in other areas that you simply SHOULD NOT HAVE A CHILD until you fix that.
You do not appear to have the emotional stability to care for a child. You may think you do, but if you did - do you really think everyone here would be pointing out problems?
And now to move on;
I actually wasn`t saying you needed counseling because you didn`t like your culture. You know what? I really don`t like American culture in general. I certainly don`t think disliking your home culture is a reason to get counseling.
The reason I think you need counseling is your response to that. Thinking that having a child, preferably born in a different culture, is going to provide a solution to that. That the genetic make up of a child is going to change YOUR life. That`s not a child. That`s a proxy, and making one out of a child is a recognized mental illness. Do I think you`re at that stage? No, but you`re setting yourself up to make some really unfortunate choices.
Priorities come from personal experience - the culture you were raised in, the style you were raised in, and your own independent experiences. Priorities are NOT genetic. You`re right in saying they`re learned. They ARE. This means that ALL the priorities are learned. No one is naturally "a part" of something. It`s ALL learned behavior. All of it.
Or that can backfire. You`ll be expecting something from your child that they never learned. It`s not in their blood. What they WILL learn from you is that you think you are inferior. You think your blood is inferior. That you think those around you are inferior. That is NOT the way to raise a well adjusted child. If you`re their mother, they will think that way too. Not only does their mother - who to a child is equivalent to god - think she comes from "bad blood".... The child doesn`t even have that. Mother trumps child, so the child is even LOWER than the mother.
But we`re not talking about you. A child will not be a little clone with genetically instilled values. What`s to say they won`t put peers before their insecure, self-loathing mother?
You`re wrong. This sentence makes me shake my head, in real life. What are you fulfilling? A child never makes things simpler. A child never makes life easier. A child never reduces problems. Never. You want something that will never be, and the one who will suffer the most is the unsuspecting child.
What are these "Japanese values" that you find so appealing? If you find them so important, and so incredibly valuable, then I would assume that you yourself would want to follow them. If you are not, then there is the problem. A child learns from their parents first. If YOU are following those values, and they are the values which you run your home around, they will be passed on to your child. If you can`t even follow the values you think are so great, then NO amount of effort in other directions are going to make them stick with your child.
Then they messed up somewhere along the line. Maybe it wasn`t something they did, but something they didn`t do. Maybe it was the way they responded to something. But in the end, it comes down to there being some kind of problem. You say you don`t even want to be around them. That doesn`t make them sound like the greatest parents. They obviously did something that you feel is bad enough to space yourself away from them. But yet, as you like to tell everyone, you overcame all of this and succeeded.
If this "everyone" includes your parents and relatives, then there is the answer to what they did wrong.
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And now, to move on to the most important thing I have to say. Even if you read nothing else that I have written, read this part.
What do you plan to do if your child doesn`t turn out the way you expected? I don`t mean in it`s teen years, or as an adult. I mean this in a much more short term sort of way. What are you going to do if the child you adopt turns out to have been given up for a *reason*... Such as the mother doing drugs during pregnancy, or the child having had an accident at birth... Something which leaves the child with some sort of damage. What are you going to do if the perfect little half-Japanese baby you make with donated sperm ends up being born with a major birth defect? Or ends up having a genetic disorder from the *father`s* side?
What are you going to do then? What if all of this puts your child at a more obvious genetic disadvantage?
My son is half Japanese. That didn`t stop him from having a stroke while I was pregnant. A stroke which prompted the doctors to extract him from me before he even weighed a pound... It didn`t stop him from having countless medical problems, an expected adult height of 4'6", an expected adult intelligence in the vicinity of a normal 12 year old.
Nope. Being half Japanese didn`t help a bit. Still, I sit here, living in Japan, with a Japanese husband, enveloped in the values you seem to think are just great.... and my child is likely incapable of ever being "a part" of them. I sit here with a genetically half-Japanese child who can`t even so much as say "mama" at 3.
Can you honestly say that you wouldn`t care? That you would be able to cope with not only having a child that wasn`t within your expectations - but that was completely incapable of ever fitting within them?
You want a child to fulfill your dreams and your wishes. What if the child you have is completely incapable of fulfilling any of them? And don`t think it can`t happen to you. Don`t think you`re somehow exempt. I was 23 when I got pregnant, in perfect health, never did drugs, never smoked, never drank, did everything PERFECTLY - plus I had the thing you see as a great bonus - Japanese genetics on my side! Whole lot of good it did.
Even if you manage to adopt, particularly from Japan... Good parents with great values don`t give their kids up. If they die, their great families take the kids in based on their strong values. The kids up for adoption are there because their parents couldn`t take care of them. Because their parents were too immature, too selfish, abusive, or felt they couldn`t provide the specialized care the child needed if a disability was involved. You`re not looking at the pick of the crop when it comes to genetic background.
You honestly have no idea how selfish you are. If your baby turns out to be "defective" you can`t just give it back.
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