Birth of an Adoptive, Foster or Stepmother: Beyond Biological Mothering Attachments [1 ed.] 1843107244, 9781843107248, 9781417501311

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The Birth of an Adoptive, Foster or Stepmother

of related interest Experiences of Donor Conception Parents, Offspring and Donors through the Years

Caroline Lorbach ISBN 1 84310 122 X

Third Party Assisted Conception Across Cultures Social, Legal and Ethical Perspectives

Eric Blyth and Ruth Landau ISBN 1 84310 084 3

Child Adoption A Guidebook for Adoptive Parents and their Advisers

R.A.C. Hoksbergen ISBN 1 85302 415 5

The Adoption Experience Families Who Give Children a Second Chance

Ann Morris, Adoption UK Published in association with The Daily Telegraph ISBN 1 85302 783 9

Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption Extraordinary Yet Ordinary

Edited by Stephen Hicks and Janet McDermott ISBN 1 85302 600 X

Birth Fathers and their Adoption Experiences Gary Clapton ISBN 1 84310 012 6

The Dynamics of Adoption Social and Personal Perspectives

Edited by Amal Treacher and Ilan Katz ISBN 1 85302 782 0

Looking for Oliver A Mother’s Search for the Son She Gave Up for Adoption

Marianne Hancock ISBN 1 84310 142 4

The Birth of an Adoptive, Foster or Stepmother Beyond Biological Mothering Attachments

Barbara Waterman

Jessica Kingsley Publishers London and New York

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1P 9HE. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher. Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution. The right of Barbara Waterman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in the United Kingdom in 2003 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd 116 Pentonville Road London N1 9JB, England and 29 West 35th Street, 10th fl. New York, NY 10001-2299, USA

www.jkp.com

Copyright © Barbara Waterman 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1 84310 724 4

Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear

For Bernard, Heidi and Lisa who have lived it with me

Acknowledgments I am indebted to my theoretical mentors – living and passed on – whose books are dog-eared, underlined and written all over because I have developed a relationship with them in my mind, aiding me in my development as a clinician, supervisor, woman and mother: Anne Alvarez, Jessica Benjamin, Wilfred R. Bion, Allan N. Schore and Donald W. Winnicott. To Daniel N. Stern I am grateful for fortuitously discovering his book The Motherhood Constellation at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California at a time when I was desperate for such a framework as a stepmother. My ideas about foster, adoptive and stepmother/child bonding have been largely organized around the themes subsumed in Stern’s analysis of the passage into motherhood. My profound thanks to those friends and colleagues who introduced me to articles and ideas which have pointed me in new clinical/theoretical and mothering directions: Mary Hope Dean, John Gibbins, Brian Feldman, Toni Vaughn Heineman, Alicia Lieberman, Barbara McSwain, Audrey Punnett, Caroline Purves, Jane Reynolds, Margaret Rossoff, Stephen Seligman, Annie Sweetnam, Maureen Wallace and Kristina Whitney. For critical input about earlier versions of this work I am obliged to Norma Campbell Barnett, Mardy Ireland, Elise Miller, Kitty Moore, Noelle Oxenhandler and Sharon Bass Scott. To my sandplay process mentors, my heartfelt appreciation for their help in refashioning myself from an overly developed thinking function colleague into one who can better hold the opposites by accessing my intuitive function, so I could overcome my poetry anxiety and let the pen (okay so it was a computer) write me: Kate Amatruda, Florence Grossenbacher and Janet Tatum. I am indebted to my painting instructor, Joanne Yeaton, and the members of our painting group – including Ellen Becker, Lauren Cunningham, Kate Donohue, Kyna Marie Snyder and Frances Tobriner – for bearing witness to my arduous journey through infertility and adoption, for pollinating my painting process, and for holding me in my

6

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / 7

grief, emotionally and spiritually, until I was able to find the portal, meant for me, through which to enter the ‘motherhood mindset.’ This work would not have come to fruition without the two midwives for my metaphoric baby, my written voice. Diane Ehrensaft and Harvey Peskin believed in my agency as a writer before I discovered the confidence to make it manifest. Having read my work from the time when these ideas were still in my ‘unthought known,’ Diane has unfailingly encouraged me from conception through gestation of this book. Harvey proffered me the temenos out of which I could create my ‘going-on-writing,’ to paraphrase Winnicott’s description of the mother’s facilitation of her baby’s ‘going-on-being.’ With unbelievable patience, they have each read innumerable drafts, impelled me to reflect harder and write better (overcoming my Teutonic sentence structure has been a challenge since German was my first language), and have fostered both my thinking about and living experience of the perspective contained in this book with their critiques, dialogue with me and unwavering faith in my project. I am ineffably beholden to both of these friends for their intellectual and emotional insights, and companionship throughout the demanding journey of birthing a book. To those who have been the doulas of my soul (see chapter 6) I give my promise that I will pass on their generously shared ch’i (life energy): Jane Dixon, Jean Johnston, Ginny Reis and Ann Smith. I would never have made it through the night as a mother or a psychologist without my spiritual comadres: Marilyn Chilcoate, Roma Heillig-Morris, Joyce LaMar, Arlene Ono, Nesta Rovina, Marcella Reeves and Ahbi Vernon. Doy gracias a mi Virgencita y La Pachamama por iluminar mi alma [I give thanks to my Virgencita and Mother Earth for illuminating my soul path]. Each of the men and women who shared their own parenting narratives with me offered something different from their experience which I could use as part of my internal supporting matrix, and which, with their generosity, I can pass on to others who might be comforted, feel less alone, or reflect about a parenting knot differently thanks to their hard-earned wisdom in the foster, adoptive and stepparenting trenches. My patients and their parents, who taught me so much of value, have richly rewarded me. Steve Austin, Gregg and Jessica Bernstein, and Maxine Turrett all gave me unique and deeply appreciated boosts as I faltered along my stepmother journey.

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I knew I had found my publishing ‘home’ when my editor, Amy Lankester-Owen, mapped out the book’s gestation with me in our first phone conversation. For her fine editing I am grateful on behalf of my readers. For their clerical and research help I thank Erin Alderete, Oriana Lisker and Heidi Lubin. To my husband, Bernard Lubin, I proffer my deepest respect and love.

Contents 1

2

3

4

When the Child is Delivered to You Rather Than You Delivering the Child

11

Conceiving this book Changing demographics Making it through the night Mothering vs. fathering behaviors The other mother

11 14 20 24 26

Cracked Wide Open

34

Need for ritual Chance or choice: women who don’t have their own children Resolving the loss

36 40 46

Longing and Belonging

59

Primary maternal preoccupation and containment Adoption and belonging Attachment and fostering Projective identification and the stepmother Conclusion

61 67 74 78 84

Holding the Mirror, Holding Up the Ideal

87

Mirroring and other building blocks for the self When parental resources for self-building blocks are lacking Culture and belonging Self-building supplies and development

87 99 105 108

5

6

7

8

Love and Difference

115

Mutual recognition and creative destruction Confusing creative destruction with failures in mothering Child omnipotence and parental abdication The life-growth theme and moral development

117 121 128 133

The Supporting Matrix

138

Adoptive, foster and stepmother invisibility Everyone deserves a doula Having an affirming matrix to bear witness Support the mother, heal the child Institutional support for foster, adoptive and stepmothers Finding support within the new extended family

140 147 151 155 161 167

Becoming a Mother

172

Mothering and identity Instant and disorderly gestation through adoption Mothering: entering adulthood Gathering one’s mothering legacy Transcending one’s mothering legacy Obstacles to stepmothering Conclusion

172 177 181 184 186 190 196

Mothering as a Spiritual Commitment

198

The spiritual call to illuminate the way of the next generation 198 Ana: spiritual and personal sources of mothering 204

9

Conclusion

215

The modern orphan Multiple parents: primary attachments

215 221

BIBLOGRAPHY

229

SUBJECT INDEX

247

NAME INDEX

254

1

When the Child is Delivered to You Rather Than You Delivering the Child A mother is likened unto a mountain that nourishes the tree at its root, but one who mothers another’s child is likened unto a water that rises into a cloud and goes a long distance to nourish a lone tree in the desert. (The Talmud)

Conceiving this book Like many women in my cohort, I came up against the limits of infertility when I attempted to get pregnant in my late thirties and early forties. My subsequent efforts to adopt an infant were equally unsuccessful, as 15 birthmother contacts and four near-miss babies later I gave up this venue for becoming a mother. Coincidentally, I met the father of my stepdaughters in the midst of my adoption quest. By the time his twin daughters were 14 they moved in with him full-time, we became engaged and a year later we got married. As things unfolded, I found becoming a mother to these two girls as profound an experience as any woman giving birth to a baby would as she enters into the mother role. On joining my new family, motherhood completely took me over. That is, I lost my mind the way many mothers of infants have described: my brain turned to mush – and this with new ‘babies’ old enough to be mothers themselves! I devoted my whole being to fathoming my stepdaughters’ emotional needs, while I tried to match their feeling states and help them through the adolescent doldrums. All relationships, never mind 11

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work, took a backburner to my mothering attempts to decipher my stepdaughters’ subtle shifts in mood, primarily communicated on a preverbal level. As a new mother, I was amazed to discover that the means to a heartfelt attachment with my stepdaughters involved my loving them enough to get lost in them, like a mother who surrenders to the intimacy with her baby (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998). Stepmothering took over my whole identity until a sense of belonging with my stepdaughters was in place. Creating these stepmother/child bonds utterly transformed me as a woman. Meanwhile, I longed for the rite of passage into motherhood that pregnant women have, where other women initiate them into this life-changing experience by giving them a shower or circling around their pregnant bellies. Instead my passage through the stepmother portal was an intense, overpowering, yet culturally unrecognized rite. This book emerged from my experiences as a stepmother, which taught me that a woman moves into the ‘motherhood mindset’ (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998) irrespective of whether or not she gives birth to her children, and no matter what their ages. The struggles and triumphs of over 30 adoptive, step or foster parents willing to share their journey with me also inform my account. From our collective wisdom I believe that the non-biological mother’s journey into motherhood is both more similar to and more different from mothers giving birth than is understood in common lore (Bernstein 1994; Smith, Surrey and Watkins 1998; Waterman 2002b). I hope to demonstrate that the slings and arrows of being a mother are pretty much universal, though the specific experiences for biological and non-biological mothers diverge. As a stepmother, my discovery of Daniel N. Stern’s (1995) book The Motherhood Constellation was a totally anchoring event. I hope to demonstrate that all women passing through the mothering portal, including adoptive, step and extended kin or non-kin foster mothers, must tackle the themes described by Stern: When a woman becomes a mother, in our culture, anyway, several related themes emerge: 1.

Can she maintain the life and growth of the baby? Let us call this the life-growth theme.

WHEN THE CHILD IS DELIVERED TO YOU… / 13

2. Can she emotionally engage with the baby in her own authentic manner, and will that engagement assure the baby’s psychic development toward the baby she wants? This is the primary relatedness theme. 3. Will she know how to create and permit the necessary support systems to fulfill these functions? This is the supporting matrix theme. 4. Will she be able to transform her self-identity to permit and facilitate these functions? This is an identity reorganization theme. (Stern 1995, p.173)

These themes provide a framework for a number of the chapters in this book as I offer a guided journey through the psychological experience of meeting, getting to know, nurturing an attachment with, and fostering the growth of children in mother/child relationships which begin with two separate people endeavoring to create a connection without the underpinnings of biological birth. Every foster, step and adoptive mother and child bring resources and grief from previous relationships into the new bond. Each will have his/her own life history. By taking the risk to love one another, mother and child may use the bond to grow further, face old losses, grow some more, face the past more deeply and so on in a spiraling fashion. This dialectic is the source of both the joys and agonies of the attachment process for such mothers. Whereas biological mothering begins with mother/baby ‘at-one-ment’ in utero, proceeding to ‘not one, not two’ post-birth (Oxenhandler 2001, p.25), non-biological mothering begins with the built-in differences of temperament, genes, family history or ethnic background. Building an emotional bridge to span the differences is the key to making a step, foster or adoptive mother/child tie that binds. In fact many of the joys of being an adoptive, foster or stepmother have to do with the excitement about a ‘meeting of the minds’ (Aron 1996) between mother and child, which permits a recognition of differences in culture, temperament, pacing, rhythm, or skin color. This is not a ‘how to’ guide for step, adoptive or foster families. (‘How to’ books for step, adoptive and foster families are marked with an asterisk in the bibliography.) Instead it attempts to help mothers and fathers make meaning of frustrating or unbearable moments with their chosen children in the context of the history of losses both mother and child bring to the

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bond-building endeavor. By proffering an understanding of what certain behaviors or feelings on the part of the child might mean, I’m trying to help non-biological mothers reflect about, rather than react to, difficult interactions with their chosen children. By normalizing the experiences of non-biological mothers, or extended kin like aunts and grandmothers, I hope to help contain and empower those who are serving a new generation via the creation of loving attachments. This book is intended for several audiences. I hope the many adoptive, foster, step, grandmothers or aunties who are wrestling with how to do right by their chosen children will find it useful. Further, I believe the bond-building perspective of the book will be an informative resource for the partners – gay and straight – of those doing the primary mothering (see below) of adopted, foster or stepchildren. Since fathers – or co-mothers and co-fathers in same sex parental units – may not always understand the raw emotions of their mates arising from intense mother/child struggles, this book will help them fathom and contain non-biological mother/child gambits by recognizing their co-parents’ experiences. In fact all extended kin who wish to support step, adoptive or foster mothers who are in their family can benefit from the insights herein since these mothers ought not to be measured against the ideal of the biological mother or nuclear family. Finally this book is an essential addition to the library of helping professionals who might be called upon to intervene when parents of adoptive, foster or stepchildren seek professional help. I believe that the empowering perspective in the book would enable mental health, medical, social work, and educational professionals to help non-biological mothers and fathers take the longer view about what is possible in building a loving relationship with their chosen children.

Changing demographics In this historical era it is becoming increasingly rare for children to live in a family consisting of father, mother and their birth children. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (Fields and Casper 2001, p.3) there has been a decline in the proportion of married-couple households with their own children from 40 percent of all households in 1970 to 24 percent of all households in 2000. Estimates from over a decade ago suggest that about

WHEN THE CHILD IS DELIVERED TO YOU… / 15

half of children living in a ‘single parent household’ were actually living with a parent and their current partner (Bumpass, Raley and Sweet 1995). In 2000 41 percent of unmarried partner households included children under 18, as compared to 46 percent of all married-couple households who had children under 18 (Fields and Casper 2001, p.12). Of household heads in either male or female referenced households 34 percent were divorced. (A reference person refers to the household member around whom non-married family units are organized; Fields and Casper 2001, p.4.) According to Bray and Kelly (1998) stepfamily projections for 2000 predicted that more children would be living in stepfamilies than in so-called traditional nuclear families. When interviewed Dr. Margorie Engel, president and chief executive of the Stepfamily Association of America (Witchell 2002), claimed that the 2000 census estimate of 16 million stepfamilies was low since it was based only on households where mothers were the custodial parent, leaving out stepmother households sharing the same children, cohabitating couples, unwed mothers, and gay or lesbian couples.1 Similarly in Britain the number of stepfamilies is underestimated at 8 percent, although 18 million people are involved in ‘the stepfamily experience’ (Freely 2001). According to the Policy Studies Institute, by 2010 more families in Britain ‘will go through separation and restructuring than will stay together’ (Freely 2001). The Canadian Health Network (2003) cites statistics suggesting that at least 25–30 percent of all Canadian children will live in a stepfamily before they reach adulthood. Finally in Australia (Martin 1998) a conservative figure for the incidence of stepfamilies is 20 percent or one in five families. Further, as more and more upper middle class couples wait until later in life to have children, they often turn to reproductive technologies and/or adoption for their family-building efforts. The percentage of U.S. women experiencing impaired fecundity increased to 10.2 percent in 1995, from 8.4 percent in 1988 (CDC 1997). Impaired fecundity is defined as difficulty conceiving or in carrying a child to term (NAIC 2002a). In 1995 there were 2.1 million infertile U.S. couples. Infertility is the failure to conceive for a period of 12 months or longer due to a deviation from or interruption of the normal structure or function of any reproductive part, organ or system (NAIC 2002a). Almost one-third of infertile childless married women were found to be between the ages of 35 and 44 years of age (Freundlich 1998). Also, older childless and married women were

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significantly more likely to report impaired fecundity, irrespective of race or ethnicity (Barth, Brooks and Iyer 1995). The two major factors associated with impaired fecundity and infertility among older, childless women are delayed child bearing and very large numbers of Baby Boom women who have moved into their reproductive years (NAIC 2002a). Similarly in Britain 20 to 25 percent of couples who are of reproductive age will be affected by infertility (Fertility Site for Men 2003), with increased incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) a significant etiological factor for women (Public Health Laboratory Service 2001). Most adoptive families in the U.S. are comprised of two parents aged 31 to 40 – with a growing number of adoptive parents in the 41 to 49 age range – who have college educations (Barth et al. 1995).2 The majority of families adopting independently earned over $50,000. By 1993 two-thirds of U.S. adoption agencies offered a continuum of openness in adoption from confidential to fully disclosed (Grotevant and McRoy 1998), as research and practice began to promote the principles of open adoption (Baran and Pannor 1993). International adoptions nearly tripled between 1992 and 2001, with the major source countries including China, Guatemala, South Korea, Russia and Ukraine (U.S. Department of State 2001). Families adopting from the public child welfare system were similar in age to those adopting independently, although their incomes tended to be lower as did their educational background (Barth et al. 1995). According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, adoptions from foster care increased 78 percent from 1996 to 2000 (U.S.DHHS 2001), due to state initiatives and President Clinton’s Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. Single women pursued 33 percent of adoptions out of foster care (NAIC 2000). Single parent adopters of U.S. children also tended to adopt ‘special needs’ children who were older, minority and/or handicapped (Feigelman and Silverman 1997). In fact, more and more parents are going online to build a family, either contacting groups that mentor them in international or domestic adoptions (NAIC 2002c; Wetzler 1999) or help them to match with children in foster care who need homes (Sink 2000). In both Canada and Australia domestic adoptions have dropped over the past few decades. Public adoptions fell from 83 percent of all Canadian adoptions in 1981 to 61 percent in 1990, while private adoptions increased from 17 percent of domestic adoptions to 39 percent over the

WHEN THE CHILD IS DELIVERED TO YOU… / 17

same period (Daly and Sobol 1993). This change is attributed to the shorter waiting period with private agencies, the fact that children from the public domain usually have special needs, and the significant shift from public agency handling of infant adoptions to private agencies taking over this role by the 1990s. In Australia there was a decline of local placement adoptions from 1336 in 1982–83 to 178 in 1997–98, while intercountry adoptions increased from 1979–80 (66), peaking in 1989–90 (420) and then decreasing again by 1998–99 (244) (Kelly 2000), although the latest data shows a slight increase in both domestic and international adoptions, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW 2002). The largest number of children from outside Australia since 1987–88 came from South Korea (41%), with India (10%), Sri Lanka (9%), the Philippines (7%) and Thailand (7%) being adoption source countries as well (Kelly 2000). Adoption applications in Scotland, 2001–02, remain just under 420 with 2 percent from overseas – rates roughly comparable to previous years. According to the Adoption Children Register of the Office of National Statistics (ONS 2002, p.109) the number of adoptions also decreased in England and Wales from 7170 in 1991 to 5982 in 2001, with a decrease in infants under one from 12 percent (1991) of adoptions to 4 percent (2001), children ages one to four years increasing in adoptions from 29 percent (1991) to 44 percent (2001) (ONS 2002, p.110). Approximately 300 children are adopted in the UK from overseas each year (Adoption and Fostering Information Line 2003). Increasingly, grandparents of all ethnic/cultural backgrounds must step up to the plate of parenting their grandchildren in order to break the intergenerational cycle of addiction (Hamburg 2000; Poe 1992; Resch 1997). Census 2000 data show more than 4.5 million children living in 2.4 million grandparent-headed households, an increase of nearly 30 percent since 1990 (Hudnall 2001). The American Association of Retired Persons Grandparenting Survey (AARP 1999) suggests that one in nine grandparents is a significant caregiver for a grandchild, with four in ten having more than one grandchild living with them (1999, p.84). Further, the beleaguered public social service system – including child protective services, foster care services, fost-adopt programs, adoption services – and its private agency counterparts are attempting to place, either temporarily or permanently, the burgeoning numbers of children who need care

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outside of the biological parents’ home. There has been a shocking increase in the number of abused and neglected children in the U.S. – at a figure of 3.2 million children in 1997, up 41 percent since 1988 (Pizzigati 1998, p.12). (Some argue that these changing rates are in part due to an increase in reporting and detection of such cases.) The number of U.S. children in foster care was somewhere between 550,000 and 560,000 as of 2000 (Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) 2000), with the quantity of children needing foster care outstripping the number of families available to care for them (Roche 2000). Frequently these youngsters are caught between social programs that seek a permanent placement for them and those policies whose commitment it is to reunify the child with his/her biological kin (Bartholet 1999; McDaniel, Merkel-Holguin and Brittain 1997). In 2000 291,000 children entered foster care, while only 275,000 exited foster care. Of those who exited foster placement, 57 percent were reunified with parents or primary caretakers, 10 percent were placed with other relatives, 17 percent were adopted, 7 percent were emancipated, 4 percent shifted from foster to legal guardianship status, 3 percent transferred to another agency, 2 percent ran away and 589 children – labeled 0 percent by AFCARS – died due to homicide, abuse, medical conditions or ‘accidents’ (AFCARS 2000). Of the 131,000 U.S. children waiting for adoption from foster care in September 2000, 52 percent were male, over half less than five years of age with black and white non-Hispanic children comprising the majority of children whose parents’ rights had been terminated. Despite President Clinton’s Adoption 2002 (U.S.DHHS 1997) initiative and Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 designed to expedite adoption out of foster care, the average course for a child in foster care was four to five years, with waits of about a year to one and a half years for a permanent placement once the children were freed for adoption through the termination of parental rights (AFCARS 2000). Because of the ideological bias toward reuniting foster children with kin on the part of social service agencies – despite recent legislation designed to promote permanency – thousands of children languish in foster care, surviving multiple placements, without ever having a secure base to call home (Bartholet 1999). The AIHW reports (2003) that the number of children placed in out-of-home care continues to rise, with those placed with either relatives

WHEN THE CHILD IS DELIVERED TO YOU… / 19

or in foster or residential care increasing from 15,674 in 1999 to 18,880 in June 2002. Substantiated child protection cases rose more than 3000 in the last year, most notably in New South Wales and Queensland. Indigenous children were overrepresented in the care and protection order population, with a rate of nearly six times that for other Australian children. According to combined data from the Department of Health, England, the National Assembly for Wales and the Department of Health Services and Public Safety, Northern Ireland (UK Census 2000), the number of children being looked after by local authorities has increased: in 1994 34,884 children were in foster placement, 8073 in children’s homes, 5517 with parents, and 2287 placed for adoption (not including N. Ireland). By 1998, 39,155 children were in foster placement, 6567 in children’s homes, 6479 with parents, and 2587 placed for adoption (again excluding N. Ireland). Clearly it is becoming common in this historical era for a child to have to rely on more than one primary caretaker, in the face of the loss of the nuclear family, the biological mother or another original caretaker. That social policies have not caught up with this trend is of grave concern to those of us contemplating the unfolding development of the younger generation (Bartholet 1999; Coontz 1997; Hewlett and West 1998). Because of these changing demographic conditions it will be incumbent on the new caretakers – grand, foster, adoptive, fost-adopt or stepmothers and fathers – to help the younger generation weather their losses on the way to creating an attachment with extended kin, or non-biological parents. Becoming a parent for these children can be a profound, yet socially and ritually underrecognized, event. In our society motherhood still implies an exclusive biological bond, despite demographics to the contrary. As more children live in extended stepfamilies, stay alternately with foster and biological mothers, or see their birthmothers as part of the open adoption process, it is high time that the soul journey of the adoptive, step or foster mother joins that of the biological mother in our consciousness. The nuclear family ideal is no longer the reality for most children coming up in our society, much less their mothers. New ways of thinking about the creation of attachments between non-biological mothers and their children, as well as working co-mothering relationships between step, foster and adoptive mothers, and the biological mothers of their mutual children, need to be included in

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a vision for the future of child development. As more mothers and fathers raise their children within the new extended family encompassing biological and non-biological, birth and fictive bonds, the prevalence of diverse family structures needs to be acknowledged and disseminated to the public, not just to the families who live the new family model.

Making it through the night Loss colors the experience of both mother and child as they attempt to bridge differences in the creation of an attachment. As many women choose non-biological parenting because they are unable to have children of their own, the degree to which they grieve their loss affects their capacity to enter fully into an attachment with their adoptive, foster or stepchild. Mothers who don’t get help mourning may confound conflict with a foster, adoptive or stepchild with their own unresolved losses. Children who have lost their biological mother or the nuclear family also need help in grieving. Much anguish on the part of step, foster and adoptive mothers is due to the child’s emotional dumping of previous trauma and losses in the bond with his new mother. Often the exchanges between mother and newly claimed child are fraught with powerful unconscious feelings, which threaten to flood and overwhelm their budding connection. This book illuminates many of the pitfalls, due to not-yet-mourned losses, or other developmental turning points such as adolescence, in the unfolding of non-biological attachments. For example, a foster mother needs to understand that it is precisely because the bond with her is feeling secure to the child, that he can safely act out his most difficult feelings with this new, and often beleaguered, mom. Otherwise she may see the misbehavior as a sign that he is incorrigible or in some other way defective and question his placement in her home. For the child, finding someone who will help shoulder his emotional burdens as he reworks the past is an essential step in the resolution of early losses. The more this ‘second’ mother can help the child face his pain without taking the turmoil of his mourning personally, the more an attachment that fosters his growth and development can be co-created. Thus the challenge for grandmother, aunt, foster, step or adoptive mother who has created a safe haven for her child is that she may be called upon to bear – and bear witness to – the child’s suffering from another time.

WHEN THE CHILD IS DELIVERED TO YOU… / 21

On neither side of the interaction can the attachment process be taken for granted: both mother and child have to work at belonging to one another. One of my stepdaughters, who could not be more different than I am if we had planned it, has taught me much about the effort required to raise someone so dissimilar in life spirit and rhythm. When she was younger the temperamental chasm between us forced us to make a bridge. We could then value those moments when we successfully transcended our separation from one another via shared understandings. Right after high school this daughter was able to articulate her experience of building the attachment. She told me that in order to make any connection at all we had to make ourselves vulnerable. ‘If we were too similar the bond would be under our nose, but because we’re different it jumps out at you,’ she told me. Thus we both knew something precious had been created via the link that spanned our differences. Despite periods of time when my stepdaughter and I have been extremely close, we have never been – nor will we ever be – able to take our connection for granted. It takes diligent effort on each of our parts not to fall into the abyss created by our momentous differences. Many interactions disintegrate because a totally different way of relating to and being in the world is misunderstood by the other. As a mother, my hare’s pace has not always matched her tortoise rhythm in building up the courage and stamina to take the next developmental step in her life; for example, going off to college. Similarly, she has let me know that it often takes many passes before she ‘gets’ what it is that I’m trying to impart to her – often leading me to feel impotent in my efforts to mother her, and her to feel hopeless about meeting stepmotherly expectations. With my stepdaughter and myself the tension between destruction and recognition of the other’s being is palpable, in part because of each of our greater vulnerability in attempting to reach one another. If I were to take a snapshot of our relationship at any given moment I would undoubtedly capture the ways in which this daughter and I miss one other. But as I am trying to convey to other mothers and fathers, it is the movie that matters, not the snapshot. What in one flash seems destructive for the non-biological bond or self-destructive on the part of the child may turn out to be a progressive communication on the part of the child as well as constructive for the attachment between step, foster or adoptive mother and child, if handled firmly and compassionately by the

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parent. As someone who has experienced the anguish of waiting while not knowing how to make meaning of various behaviors on the part of my stepdaughters which will impact our primary relatedness as well as their life and growth, I am offering this book as a supporting matrix to other mothers while they sort out the longer term import of their mothering efforts on behalf of their chosen children. Just like biological mothers, a foster, step or adoptive mother makes an educated guess as to what will meet the needs of her child, and then waits to see whether the child’s response confirms or refutes her intuition about her attempt at nurturing (or disciplining). Attuning to a non-biological child may at first pass seem more difficult than with one to whom one has given birth, but in fact the mutually attuned interaction sequences that build secure attachments are the meat and potatoes of all mother/child bonds (Oxenhandler 2001; Schore 1994; Stern 1985). Understandably within non-biological bonds the temptation to find a ‘one size fits all’ solution is greater, because of the burden of bearing the ambiguity and uncertainty of getting to know a child not of one’s loins. It is not always easy to ‘make it through the night’ without reacting to the provocations – often learned in previous attachment dramas – through which the child communicates his distress. By working with her own unconscious vulnerabilities – evoked by her child’s powerful emotions and behaviors – an adoptive, foster or stepmother can demonstrate to the child her effort in containing a potentially overpowering mutual drama, even if she has overreacted. By reflecting on what about a particular mother/child gambit set her off, a mother takes responsibility for her mistake. In a calmer moment, the non-biological mother can then model the power of love triumphing over hate by apologizing to her child while acknowledging her contribution to the interaction run amuck. I hope this book will help adoptive, foster and stepmothers find a firm, stable place from which to pause and reflect about the meaning of a specific mother/child exchange from a long-range perspective, rather than responding in the heat of the moment. The pay-off for consistent parental effort expended in understanding the meaning of feelings, unconscious and conscious, on both the child’s and the adult’s part is in knitting a solid attachment which permits mother and child to recognize one another’s strengths and vulnerabilities. While acknowledging that foster, step and adoptive mothers do not have the

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luxury of attributing successes in parenting to biology, this book makes the point that these parents do not have to fall into the trap of attributing difficulties, having to do with unresolved losses, to irreconcilable differences. Similarly, the book offers the professional helping such mothers, or families supporting them, a way to reframe challenging parenting moments as contributing to the creation of an attachment, so that the professional or family member does not inadvertently join the mother in the hopeless conclusion that it is impossible to connect with this particular child. Because non-biological mothers are often picking up pieces from the child’s past, it may take some time to see whether or not one’s mothering is making a difference. Nature and nurture both influence whether life hardships will defeat a child or give him the buoyancy to bounce back from adversity when given the opportunity to heal from the past. For example, some children are more welcoming of a new source of nurturance than others, just as some biological children take in their parents’ caretaking more easily than others (Karen 1998, pp.269–357). One friend became a stepmother to her boyfriend’s daughters, ages five and seven. The older one was able to engage affectionately with her stepmother much earlier than her sister, despite the fact that she came from a different racial background than this new woman in her life. In general this girl was more open to life and new experiences, and this translated into her being more inviting to the stepmother, whose confidence was increased by the mutuality of their bond. As a result, the stepmother could take the younger girl’s long reluctance to bond with her less personally. However, lest I be accused of a Pollyanna perspective, I need to acknowledge that some tears in a child’s early fabric of bonding, brought to the relationship with a new adoptive, foster or stepmother, have been so wrenching as to be irreparable. For example, one mother who had fostered a son, been a stepmother to a son and daughter, as well as adopted two daughters and birthed a daughter, attempted to foster yet another girl whose placement sadly failed because the girl’s early deficits rendered the foster mother’s efforts futile in repairing her foster daughter’s attachment disorder. Some women who are forced to face their inability to partake in the most fundamental of feminine experiences, giving birth, find that the suffering they endure impels them onto a spiritual path. Most of the world spiritual traditions attempt to guide their followers through anguish and

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affliction toward a compassionate resolution of their suffering by drawing on faith in Divinity. For these women, spirituality is another resource for making it through infertility and the subsequent perilous journeys through adoption, fostering or stepmothering, preceding their full entry into motherhood. These are the same women who draw upon their faith so that their mother/child bonds are nurtured by divine energies when they are feeling hopeless or impotent. The inclusion of a spiritual dimension in this book is in no way intended to apply to all women, nor is it proffered in an effort to proselytize. Rather, the focus here is on the faith of those women who draw on spirituality as part of their supporting matrix in order to make it through the night – sometimes literally, not just metaphorically – with their chosen children. 3

Mothering vs. fathering behaviors

While most of this book will focus on the impact on women of entering the motherhood constellation via a non-traditional route, many of the ideas and concepts presented are applicable to foster, step and adoptive fathers as well. The perspective here is that mothering and fathering behaviors are different from one another. All children need a combination of mothering and fathering in order to develop into the people their parents envision. That mothering has to be provided by women, or fathering by men, is an old-fashioned perspective no longer widely applicable post-millennium. However, I was humbled by Allan Schore’s caveat that women were still better than men at reading gestures, tones of voice and so forth in order to create attuned interaction sequences so vital in the early development of children (2002b). Traditionally the notion that women participate in parenting by being and men by doing (Winnicott 1971a) has been linked to the sexual division of labor in which women are the primary parents (Chodorow 1978). Drawing on Winnicott in her analysis of gender differences in parenting, Ehrensaft (1987, pp.94–95) explicates: The female element [Winnicott] calls ‘being.’ It occurs very early in human development and is first situated in an infantile experience. It involves a period when baby and parent or other are felt as one. In other words, a merging occurs in which parent and child have no separate identity. It is described by Winnicott as the simplest of all experiences,

WHEN THE CHILD IS DELIVERED TO YOU… / 25

and the source of the true continuity of generations. It is also labeled by him as ‘feminine.’ Doing, by contrast, is, according to Winnicott, the ‘male’ element of personality. It follows ‘being’ in development and presupposes a separateness between baby and parent. The infant can begin to recognize that the person who takes care of him or her is ‘not me.’

According to this classic analysis, boys and girls have a different experience in being raised primarily by women. Chodorow’s (1978) important contribution to psychoanalysis was to show that the social construction of parenting – with the major responsibility for raising the next generation falling under the purview of one gender, namely women – led to intrapsychic differences between men and women. ‘The basic feminine sense of self is connected to the world, the basic masculine sense of self is separate’ (Chodorow 1978, p.169). Because of these differences in self, it was overdetermined that boys would grow up to parent by doing while girls learned to be mothers. Thus fathers performed tasks, problem solved, or set limits: for example, when playing ball with his daughter or coaching her soccer team, teaching his son to win at computer chess, researching the best medical interventions and practitioners for a child who turned out to fall within the autistic spectrum, problem solving with his son about how to handle the class bully, or disciplining his children. In contrast, mothering-by-being traditionally involved something more fluid and all encompassing: for example, holding a child physically or emotionally when unraveling after a bad day, keeping the child in mind 24/7, empathizing so deeply with a son’s reactions to losses during wrestling club season that it hurt his mom inside, or containing and metabolizing a daughter’s body-disintegration anxieties when an unexpected life-threatening illness required surgery. Thus, in a female-reared culture, mothers did not have the same boundaries between themselves and their children or between their identities as mothers and their identities as women as did men who were better able to compartmentalize between public and private life. The traditional role of the father was to support and contain the mother’s being with the child, until the child was ready to face the existence of Other-as-a-separate-agent, a dialectical shift in the developmental interests of the child. At that point fathering-by-doing augmented mothering-by-being as a good match for the child’s growth. In this more

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traditional development parenting begins by subsuming primarily mothering behaviors. Presumably undifferentiated fusion was the order of the day in biological mother/infant bonds. With the child’s development out of the maternal orbit, fathering behaviors become more important and children accordingly benefited from these two complementary aspects of parenting. This parental role division has changed over the past decades with many fathers (not to mention co-mothers) mothering-by-being with their infants, and becoming involved from birth in helping the baby grow into the child they envision. As being and doing have become less gendered, each mother or father falls on a continuum relative to these two orthogonal dimensions of parenting. Further for men and women who adopt or foster children, bonding starts with otherness and moves towards sameness, in contrast to biological parenting which begins with similarity between parent and child and unfolds into difference between me and not-me (Ehrensaft 2002). Similarly, in stepmother/child attachment building the developmental direction is from doing to being, assuming the mother/child or father/child bonds expand into mother/stepmother/child, father/ stepmother/child or father/stepfather/child triangles, respectively. Thus the capacity for non-biological mothers and fathers to move flexibly between doing and being may be in the best interests of the child. A more in-depth explication of the differences between the motherhood constellation and the fatherhood constellation, although an important topic given current historical trends in the disbanding and rebuilding of families, is beyond the purview of this book.

The other mother Most books about step, adoptive, foster or grandmothering are targeted for one of each of these audiences. In the account I am about to weave I do not intend to gloss over the differences between these forms of non-biological mothering, while trying to highlight their commonalities. Step, adoptive and foster mothers vary in the degree to which the other mother, the biological mother, is present in the lives of their children. Typically, stepmothers enter an extended stepfamily where the mother has primary or shared custody with the father or co-mother. In addition to building a co-parenting relationship over time with her partner, the

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stepmother needs to participate in some sort of working relationship with the biological mother on behalf of their common children. For many mothers having stepmothers participate by doing parenting is acceptable, whereas sharing the being of mothering with a second mother may be too threatening (Ehrensaft 2001). For other mothers, once they see that the stepmother has the best interests of their mutual children in mind, they are available to develop more of a co-mothering relationship with the stepmother (this is even more likely if the father’s parenting is less than adequate). Among adoptive mothers, there is a continuum of involvement of the birthmother in the ongoing life of the adopted child. One adoption counselor I interviewed took a very strong stance about the necessity of including birthparents in the extended adoptive family. She herself had ongoing relationships with some, if not all, of the birthparents of her foster and adoptive children and counseled pre-adoptive parents about the importance of having the birthmother and birthfather present in their adopted children’s lives from birth on. Other adoptive families maintain a variety of levels of connection to the birthmothers of their children, writing to them with news, sending pictures, or seeing them occasionally, but without claiming them as part of an extended family. Still other adoptive mothers – and for that matter various mental health professionals – feel it is confusing for their children to see their birthmothers until they come of age, although they keep up with the birthmother’s whereabouts in case there are questions about the medical histories of their children, and in order to help their children when they are old enough to seek out their birth families. Finally, some adoptive mothers are so threatened by birthmother contacts that they choose closed adoption, or decline contact with the birthmother even when the child has re-established some sort of relationship with the birth family as an adult. An adoptive mother’s willingness to hold for her child – either internally or through a family narrative – the bond to the other mother can be quite important in cushioning a child’s loss and helping him hold onto his identity (Bonovitz 2002; Pavao 1998; Watkins and Fisher 1993). For some children adopted out of foster care, the shift to an adopted home brings mostly relief about being out of a bad situation rather than symptoms of grief or stages of mourning. Again, adoptive mothers vary in their capacity and willingness to share their status as mother with actual

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birthmothers, or by supporting the development of internal representations of birthmothers on the part of their children. For some adoptive parents, questions about the birthparent can be experienced as rejection or disloyalty rather than the child’s attempt to make sense of his heritage. Further, as some adoptive parents are envious of the birthmother’s fertility they may not be eager for a dialogue regarding her choices about an unwanted pregnancy. Many adoptive parents admit to a lurking fear that the birthmother will return to take back her child. Poignantly, denial about the presence of the birthmother (and father) in the adoptive family’s fantasy – if not actual – life can lead to the very rift between adoptive parent and child that the evasion of the truth about the child’s history was designed to prevent. Following the child’s lead about how to help him process his feelings about having been given up by one mother while chosen by another mother can require enormous courage (Watkins and Fisher 1993). Yet the more an adoptive mother can bear the child’s need to make meaning of the story of his origins, the less the adoption will turn into a ‘primal wound’ (Verrier 1993). Prager ends her narrative about her visit to her adoptive daughter’s Chinese birthplace – where sadly they could not locate the birthmother – with the following moving letter to the birthmother, which she had written before meeting her daughter LuLu: May 16, 1994 Dear Madam, The adoption agency has asked me to write to you, but I don’t know how. I don’t know what to say to a woman whose greatest tragedy is my good fortune… What can I promise you? That your daughter will be loved and adored? Most assuredly. That she will be wonderfully educated and prepared for adulthood? To the best of my ability. If I had my way, she would actually know you. But, they tell me, she will not have a record of who you are. But I assure you she will know of your courage and love in leaving her alive so I might raise her. Of the adversity and animosity you faced in doing so. I shall help her to feel in her heart as I do the gratitude and respect for the risks you faced in giving birth in a place where birth is not a free act. But I will also instill in her, as I’m sure you would want me to, a love of China, and an identity with the Chinese people. Don’t worry. She will know where she came

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from, that she was born of a great and ancient tradition. Perhaps someday, she would wish to go back. The history of China is, as you know, wide and long. As your daughter becomes my daughter, I will want for her what I have always wanted for myself, really: to be confident, secure, and jolly. To be at one with life. To find people and work she loves, to take pleasure in nature and art, to find nourishment in the spiritual, and to be eternally curious. Forgive me, Madam, for my part in ripping off the Women of China and in particular, of course, you. If I did not feel that your daughter would be better off with me than in an orphanage, believe me I would not be doing this. As your daughter becomes my daughter, your ancestors become my ancestors, and mine become yours. It is an interesting thing and very modern. Please understand that I respect this sacred trust, and should we meet in the afterlife, we would embrace as one family, for that’s what we will soon be. I shall think of you as the years unfold as I’m sure you will think of me. My heart is with you. (Prager 2001, pp.237–238)

By carrying LuLu’s birthmother internally for her, Emily Prager is creating the space for LuLu to gather the resources from all her legacies to help cushion the deep losses – of birthmother, of motherland – she has experienced in her young life. Like stepmothers, foster mothers and grandmothers have the other mother built into their lives with their children, unless, of course, she is deceased, imprisoned or in some other way more permanently absent. Depending on the life path of the birthmother, the foster or grandmother may not want to support the actual relationship with the mother whose errant ways may be a poor model for a child. One grandmother had a daughter in jail and another living hand to mouth on the streets, while she cared for a grandchild from each daughter. She did not feel it was in her granddaughters’ best interests to fill them in fully about what their respective mothers were up to. While helping children have a realistic sense of what they can expect from birthparents, foster parents or grandparents do need to help their children hold on to their parents inside as one of a pantheon of adults who are internalized because of their important role (giving birth to them) in the children’s lives. For foster mothers – whether extended kin care or non-related foster care – the question of who is the primary mother and who is the other mother can be more unstable depending on the birthmother’s capacity to rehabilitate herself, or the

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foster mother’s desire and persistence in attaching to and/or later legally claiming her foster children – through legal guardianship or adoption. Like with grandmothers, the question of where the buck stops in holding children accountable can shift depending on the temporal frame during which the child ‘stays’ with a non-birthmother relative or foster mother. In the poorer African-American community it is typical to ask ‘where do you stay?’ rather than ‘where do you live?’ because of the fluid exchange of resources including childrearing between kin and fictive kin, depending on which household has more supplies at any given time (Stack 1974). Unfortunately, foster parents are often the most shadowy and forgotten of non-biological parents. One mother who had adopted out of foster care was nonplussed when her son wanted to bring photos of his foster family along with those from his adoptive home and birthmother on the day it was his turn to describe his family to his class, although she did nothing to prevent his choice of what to show and tell. While she could fathom his need to include his birthmother in his family album, she reacted as if her mothering place was being usurped by his inclusion of a foster mother in his pantheon of caretaking attachments. Sadly, many foster mothers are loath to fully attach to their foster children because they anticipate the loss of these children and their own relegation to the limbo time when the child was in foster care, neither with kin nor adopted. Culturally, foster mothers are often regarded as the debris of a child’s life, even if they have been vital in providing elements of primary relatedness and life growth for a child, which is not to say that every foster home provides what a child needs. Still, many foster mothers and fathers have helped children develop a sense of a coherent personal history, which is essential in the creation of a solid identity. A now obsolete website designed to help former foster children locate their lost foster parents captures the meaningful contribution foster parents can make in helping a child move from feelings of being lost to the hope of being found: Renee: Over the years I have thought of you often and wanted to thank you for caring for me when I was an infant. All that I was told is that you cared for me for several months before I was placed with my adoptive family. My husband and I are now foster parents ourselves and are intimately aware of the love, time and selflessness it requires to care for foster children. If by chance you read this please contact me as I would love to hear from you and thank you again!

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Mary Anne: Searching for the foster family that took care of me my first five weeks of life. I have been reunited with my entire birth-family, but still feel that something is missing. I also want to thank you for loving me and taking care of me! I hope that you’ll be proud of me! My a-mom says I was colicky – says that foster mom said the same thing! Is this familiar to anybody? Thank you so much! Alice: I would dearly love to find my foster parents. They lived in Attica, NY, and had the name ‘Cherry.’ I vaguely remember ‘Mrs. Cherry,’ and have been told that it was very difficult for her to see me leave her home when I was almost 4 years old. I remember the day I left very clearly – it’s my first memory – and was very traumatic. I remember having lots of ‘brothers,’ and hiding under a chalkboard, but of course the legs were long, and it didn’t hide me very well. The feeling of loneliness and being bereft of all that was familiar to me as I was being driven in a car with a ‘lady’ I didn’t know for a long time, and standing by myself in the front yard of a strange house while the adults whispered nearby – I don’t like remembering it. All this happened around 1950. I was born in 1947, July 16th, and ‘relocated’ in 1951. I remember being happy where I was, in Attica. Please help me find the ‘Cherry’ family. Very private adoption – a father a lawyer, made arrangements. All papers destroyed. He is now passed on, a mother in 80’s and remembers nothing. Thank you. Danny: I remember vaguely of my life with my foster parents. I and my brother, Joe Ferrell, were with this family for about a year I believe. My brother also has a genetic defect in one of his legs. The foot is missing. We were in a previous home, but they were somewhat abusive and as soon as our social worker found out, we were removed. I’m sure the social worker’s name was Ms Barnett. I remember little things such as they had a peacock and a turkey for pets and I used to go to lodge meetings with my foster father. We used to lie by the fireplace. I loved that fireplace. Also, their son (adoptive or biological?) was named John. He was a great brother. I think he was somewhere between 14 and 17. I feel so guilty for forgetting their names, but I was so young and time has stolen those few precious memories. By the way, my older sister and brother were sent to separate homes if that info might help. My Mother got us back a year later and my Mother is my hero and she brought us up wonderfully. Basically, I just wanted to say to my Foster parents that I will hold a special place in

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my heart for them. I would greatly enjoy seeing them again to say thanks and also to express my love for them. (Heineman 2002a, pp.22–25)

Sadly, like the plights of many foster children who cannot count on returning some place (like a home) to find it there, this home page devoted to helping foster children reconnect with their past no longer exists on the internet. This book challenges the ideological primacy of the so-called ‘traditional’ nuclear family as well as the myth of the perfect (biological) mother. By drawing on the experiences of gay and lesbian parents, heterosexual couples in stepfamilies, or with adopted children, single parents, trans-racial families, international adoptive families, families of all ethnic groups where grandparents or other kin take over the parenting for their drug abuse troubled children and foster parents who do (or do not) become permanent guardians of their foster children, I hope my account will be as inclusive as possible of those families seen as anomalies in our culture because they exist outside the ‘norm.’ This book will be woven together like a tapestry. First, I will draw out the different threads that distinguish the adoptive, from the foster, from the stepparent experiences, respectively. Then I will pull the threads together to reflect the unity of experience that traverses all forms of non-biological motherhood. Where appropriate a separate section about one type of family will highlight dilemmas unique to that family form: for example, contradictions in stepfamily structure impact the journey of the stepmother through the motherhood portal. As non-biological mother/child and father/child bonds become mainstream, it is high time our society develops an awareness of the commonalities and differences between nuclear family and stepfamily, adoptive family or foster family life. A century ago the biological extended family was the prevalent structure for rearing children. Eroded over the first half of the twentieth century (Coontz 1997), this extended family gave way to the nuclear family, which is now being joined by new family forms. In this century the village it takes to raise a child will be a new extended family consisting of biological, step, adoptive and foster parents all working together on behalf of the new generation.

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Acknowledgment Thanks to Diane Ehrensaft (2003) for suggesting this title.

Notes 1

2

3

The Stepfamily Association of America has been critical of the U.S. Census Bureau’s method of counting stepfamilies at a time where both parents’ involvement is seen as vital to the children. Only the household of the primary custodial parent is counted in their tally – so a couple who splits time 60 percent/40 percent with the child would not have the 40 percent parent household counted as a stepfamily (Stepfamily Association of America 2002). With the exception of Immigration and Naturalization data, and Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System data – which gather information about international adoptions and adoptions out of foster care, respectively – there is no other systematic vehicle for tracking the total number of yearly adoptions in the U.S. (NAIC 2002b). Portions of the section were previously published in Waterman (2003, pp.59–76).

2

Cracked Wide Open

1

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. (Rilke 1993, p.154)

A few years ago, a friend who had come to the painful decision that she needed to divorce her husband talked about how the process of facing the loss of her marriage had ‘cracked her open.’ A willingness to have one’s heart cracked wide open is, in my experience, a necessary condition for turning a major loss into an opportunity for transformation. Without this inner commitment to growth, loss can result in a ‘frozen grief,’ leading poignantly to a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy better described as a ‘self-emptying prophecy’ (Peskin 1997). (I originally heard the term ‘frozen grief ’ from an Argentinian psychiatrist, Mimi Langer, M.D., who had emigrated to Mexico. In the 1980s during the many Juntas and revolutions in Central America she joined a team of mental health workers who would spend up to six weeks at a time in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua or Honduras to try to help survivors of repression or revolution through their post-war trauma. By enabling patients to get to the root of their frozen grief, so they could weep and let their mourning flow through them, the mental health workers facilitated the survivors’ process of bringing their losses to consciousness, so that defeated parts of the soul could be reawakened.) For example, I once worked with a middle-aged woman in psychotherapy for over a decade. She had many life losses to mourn, from childhood on. But the unresolved loss which lurked unconsciously – guiding her

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CRACKED WIDE OPEN / 35

unfulfilling choice of a life mate – was the loss of her first love, who rejected her unexpectedly right before their wedding. From that point on, she quietly shut down to the possibility of love in relationships, choosing a man to live with for many years who not only refused to marry her, but betrayed her like the first by leaving her for another woman. Sadly, not having had help to mourn the original sweetheart, she created a self-fulfilling prophecy about what she could expect from the men she loved. Similarly, during my sojourn within the world of people struggling with infertility, I learned that women handled the loss of the dream of biological motherhood in many ways. One acquaintance was absolutely clear that she would commit suicide if she did not get in-vitro to succeed. Luckily, after numerous tries she was able to become a mother through this reproductive technology; otherwise, she might have taken her life. Still, such suicidal feelings are quite normal when one has to confront the fact that one may be denied the most natural of human experiences, having a baby. There’s no other experience where you can go suddenly without preparation from such extreme happiness to such extreme despair. (Wakefield 1998, p.153) The sorrow I felt when I confronted the possibility of never having a baby forced me to acknowledge how desperately I wanted one. There’s a great vulnerability in desperation. How much safer you are if there isn’t anything you want too badly. And how much cooler. (Rossi 1998, p.63) When I began to think about what life would be like without ever having a child, survival felt impossible. I seriously contemplated suicide. (Schulman 1998, p.21)

Many couples, whether they stay together or not through the excruciating challenges of facing their biological childlessness, never really recover psychologically, living lives of bitter fatalism or quiet despair. Here, the loss often becomes a permanent narcissistic injury – an unhealed wound diminishing the self-esteem of the person unable to parent through biological means.

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Need for ritual A major part of what makes it so difficult to move on is the lack of rituals for the loss of potential parenthood, just as there are hardly any rituals in our culture for the hidden losses of miscarriage, abortion, and other crises that bear on women’s mothering identity (Elkind 1990; Kluger-Bell 1998). Consequently, the temptation to get stuck in the role of ‘infertility victim’ is a frequent pitfall among the casualties of conception. By providing a community forum for bearing witness to the loss on the part of an individual or family, ritual lends social support and recognition to the grieving party or parties at a time when they are overwhelmed by life’s suffering. This is the function of a funeral, wake or sitting Shiva, which enables people facing a death to feel the support of the community as they get ready to endure the formidable task of grieving. While ultimately the grieving process is a passage that cannot be bypassed if healing is to occur, the ritual marks the significance of this event before the entire community. When the profound loss of potential motherhood goes unrecognized by well-meaning, overprotective friends and family, it becomes more difficult to process. Our losses were painful to talk about. It was hard to convey the breadth of our grief and longing to those who hadn’t experienced it firsthand. We were also afraid and often amazed at the extent and power of our own suffering. Somehow the messages that we received regarding our miscarriages and pregnancy losses were that this child wasn’t meant to be, and in that message was also the fallacy that they weren’t to be mourned. And when something can’t be mourned, talked about, allowed to be real, the experience becomes ensconced in a cloud of shame. (Bialosky and Schulman 1998, p.4)

In Japan there is a ritual for women who have lost children to abortion, miscarriage and stillbirth, called mizuko kuyo. For a complexity of socio-political and historical reasons this ancient ritual became popular again in the 1970s. Kuyo refers to the rites extended to mizuko, the ‘water children,’ whose spirits can be comforted and honored through the ritual of mizuko kuyo (Hardacre 1997, p.2). Spiritual practitioners from a variety of traditions – Buddhist, Shinto, Shugendo, and others – offer this ritual to women whose regrets about these lost babies are partially resolved by elevating ‘the mizuko into the category of ancestors… The change means that

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they are no longer part of the unsettled dead, spirits that can provoke misfortune to punish or awaken those who should provide them with appropriate rites’ (Hardacre 1997, pp.159–160). Weaving together Buddhist thought and local spiritualism, the practice of mizuko kuyo varies from locale to locale in Japan. In general this ceremony recognizes the newly dead by setting up ihai (Hardacre 1997, pp.159–160), spirit tablets bearing a posthumous name, surmounted by a statue of Jizo, Japanese protector of children. At one Sainokawara, ‘a sacred place to pacify and comfort the souls of mizuko and young children’ (Hardacre 1997, p.214), 46 Jizo statues stand above a plaque with the following poem: Hopelessly piling up stones, no one can walk over Sainokawara. The children’s eyes brim with tears at the pain of the stones. Jizo’s lullaby, holding these children, so bewildered, not knowing what to do. The water is cold, and the darkness of Sainokawara is so deep that you can’t tell left from right. Taking these confused children by the hand, Jizo makes them all pure. Rain pelts down on Sainokawara. As they break into tears, Jizo comforts these bewildered children. (Hardacre 1997, p.225)

A variety of practices attempt to karmically free the souls of the lost ‘water children’ by reducing interference from other ghosts or bad spirits, so the mizuko can continue ‘their progress toward rebirth and the eventual attainment of Buddhahood’ (Hardacre 1997, pp.178–179). The comfort to the mother – indeed, a generative spiritual resolution to the loss – is in being able to send the spirit of the lost baby on to its next incarnation. With greater awareness of miscarriage, stillbirth and infertility in our culture, accompanying the advances in reproductive technology, hospital and non-hospital clergy are developing memorial services for parents and families of failed pregnancies (Fein 1998). In the Roman Catholic Church, the rite Missa de Angelis, or Mass of the Angels, is available ‘to mourn children “who have not reached the age of reason,” which would include any fetus, since the church holds that life begins at conception. But owing less to theology than to cultural discomfort…the Mass has rarely been

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offered to families for comfort after a pregnancy loss’ (Fein 1998, p.22). Thus, many people are left to their own devices to mourn the children conceived and then lost, because of both the individualism and the secularism of North American Anglo culture. Among many of the older, well-educated, middle-class couples who are experiencing the losses of infertility, there is a trend toward creating their own unique mourning rituals. One Orthodox Jewish couple gathered a group of friends to recite the Kaddish with them surrounding a burial mound in their backyard that contained a lock of their stillborn baby’s hair (Fein 1998, p.22). This ritual was adapted from tradition, since strictly speaking under Jewish law a person must live at least 30 days before this prayer for the dead may be said for him. Another family (Bialosky 1998, p.269) goes with their adopted son to the graves of two babies who died, one through miscarriage, and one a few days after birth, to commemorate their place in the hearts of family members. A colleague and her conception partner created a ‘miscarriage box’ together using a special box, after losing a baby at three months. They placed mementos – condolence cards and letters from friends after the miscarriage, candles that were burning the night of conception, ovulation predictor kits and so on – into this memory box while they sat on the bedroom floor and wept. Without such acknowledgment through ritual and memorializing of these babies, people have trouble resolving the loss and moving on. Burying such a loss in the psyche without grieving it can have a significantly negative impact on a family, including children who are born, adopted or chosen in some other way, subsequent to the loss (Bonovitz 2002). That is, if the parents don’t fully grieve their lost children, these losses may affect the family by becoming ‘ghosts in the nursery’ (Fraiberg, Adelson and Shapiro 1975). At the 1998 Labyrinth: A Day of the Dead Exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, one altar by Anne Healy was entitled Bob and Moe and Frances: A Cathartic Story, 1998. Healy’s altar honors the memory of her late parents and brother, whose photos were the focal point of the installation. Folds of screens and veils encompass the entrance to this family gallery, characterized by her two extremely happy parents and their new baby boy, Bob, Ms. Healy’s brother, who died not long after birth. The artist uses the metaphor of the veils to depict the layers of unspoken grief of her defeated and lifeless parents, who, in contrast to their joy at Bob’s birth, were only able to

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provide a muted connection to Ms. Healy and her sister in their growing up years. So unspoken was their grief that, sadly for her, Ms. Healy only learned of the birth and death of her brother as a grown up. Through her homage to this frozen grief that affected her whole family, Ms. Healy’s altar offering to her parents may be the completion of the mourning they could not face. Many years later, the family veils can finally be lifted as Bob is held in the memory of his sister. In many cultures, where death is understood as inextricably connected to life, there are regular rituals for communication with lost ancestors or spirits ‘on the other side.’ The United States, in contrast, avoids death and its rituals, whereas our neighbors to the south treat death as a stage in the natural cycle of life. The yearly Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebrated by Mexican-Americans in autumn as nature fades and dies, provides a natural vehicle for grieving and staying connected to children lost to miscarriage, or stillbirth. Mexicans welcome the returning spirits, both by presenting offerings and holding vigils in graveyards, and by the creation of altars with ritualized elements including pan de muerto [bread of the dead], marigolds, paper cutouts, candles, fruit, sugar skulls, photographs and so on, commemorating the departed loved ones. ‘An altar for the Days of the Dead…was a “memory table.” A family could gather around it, speak of dead relatives, mourn their loss, recollect their quirks and their virtues with humor and love’ (McMann 1998, p.18). Like the Celtic Samhain, or All Souls’ Day, when ‘the veil was open then…between life and death, and the spirits were out’ (Marian Dunlea, quoted in McMann 1998, pp.19–20), the Mexican Dia de los Muertos is a time of ‘communion between those of us who are alive and those who have passed on. After it’s over it’s like you’ve had the family for the weekend, and they’ve gone home. They’re not forgotten, and we’re not forgotten’ (Candido Morales, quoted in McMann 1998, p.19). In a film she made about her and her husband’s infertility journey, Baby It’s You (1997), Anne Makepeace acknowledges the spirit of the child she aborted when she was young. Sharing this loss with relatives for the first time as she attempts to have a baby late in life, she grieves with them over this lost being. Her hope that another spirit is waiting to come in to be her child is sadly not realized, despite the best of reproductive technological intervention, and she has to fathom how to say goodbye to the child-soul with whom she had hoped to share this lifetime. Her way of making

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manifest the loss of the spirit of the baby she did not conceive is to send special stones back into the ocean. After this ritual and further mourning for their own loss, Ms. Makepeace and her husband are able to take a more active role as nurturing caretakers to their grieving goddaughter niece upon the death of her mother. When people conceive a child and then lose it – whether through abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or a lost pregnancy following in vitro, sperm or egg donorship – the loss is quite tangible. Never even having the opportunity to conceive and carry a life, however briefly, is a more intangible, but equally consuming loss. I have been amazed and disconcerted by friends and colleagues who distinguish the loss of a real conception as more momentous than the loss of the dream of having a child, as if the latter were not as significant a loss to the woman abiding it. As an essential step in the creation of life, the capacity to conceive may be as central to one’s sense of being a woman as are monthly cycles of menarche. While more women are choosing not to become mothers, for many women having a child is still a major way to experience oneself as part of the stream of Eros in creating the next generation. Giving birth is a kind of initiation into the mysteries of womanhood (Bolen 1996), on both the body and soul levels, and can be a defining event for a woman. Thus being unable to conceive – which comes from the Latin concipere or ‘to take in’ (Gabis 1998, p.82) – calls into question one’s identity as a woman, and purveyor of the life force. Hence, the finality of the loss of the dream of ever carrying a baby is a different but equally profound loss to the woman whose efforts to conceive never bear fruit. The meaning of this slight of fate can become especially devastating if a woman grew up herself with less than ‘good enough’ mothering in childhood, making the loss seem even more shameful, fated, unjust and, beyond any of these, ‘unspeakable’ (Kluger-Bell 1998).

Chance or choice: women who don’t have their own children In her complex analysis of the meaning for different women of remaining childless, Ireland (1993) writes of the process whereby a woman ‘reconceives’ her identity, so that other vehicles for feminine generativity can be honored.

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The female body, the womb space (specifically, woman space) can be viewed as a generalized creative metaphor of holding and bringing forth. Rather than limiting women to their reproductive function, the womb could be seen as a metaphor for the holding of all our creative seeds and the birthing of generative possibilities, as a way of being that could be termed a ‘feminine creative posture.’ To describe this more fully, the womb is a liminal space existing at the threshold between real and symbolic offspring. Opening the female womb to its metaphoric potential enables a woman to be seen as complete unto herself in the same way as a man is. (Ireland 1993, pp.138–139)

Ireland interviewed 100 women, between the ages of 38 and 50, who were voluntarily or involuntarily childless, about their experience of not participating in motherhood. Based on the nature of the pathway that led to a childless life, these women fell into one of three categories: traditional, transitional or transformative (Ireland 1993, p.15). For transformative women not having children is a conscious choice, permitting them to be childfree. These women make the complex decision to use the space that would have been filled by a child for their own creative purposes. As one woman clarifies: I’ve spent most of my life as a ‘caretaker’ of others. I just wanted a chance to live for myself… I thought there must be another way [besides being a mother] to have an identity. When I really sit down and think about it, if I give it serious thought, I always end up back on the side of not having a child. I end up on the side of living with the fear and the aloneness, and getting old, and having to cope with whatever that’s going to mean… I think it is exciting to decide not to have a baby, and really try to make room for your own creative self, but I also think it’s really hard. I don’t think it is easy. I think there are agonies involved. But I also think that there are agonies involved in being a mother, many of which are never spoken. (Ireland 1993, p.84)

Even when it is a conscious choice, therefore, a woman has to make peace with her regrets about not bearing children. Or with her regrets of not wanting children:

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Few women’s lives can be lived without regret, as every choice seems to preclude another. I don’t regret not having a child, but sometimes I regret not wanting to have one. I regret drifting far from the stream of shared female concern; I regret not ever loving anybody so much. I regret my ongoing delight in solitude and freedom, because a ‘normal’ woman does not want to be free or alone. (Linder 2000, p.72)

Thus even women who are firm in their choice not to have children feel they have to defend this choice (Ratner 2000, p.7). A colleague who is a stepmother herself told me about several stepmothers she had encountered who had chosen not to become mothers, but later coupled with men who had children. Essentially their attitude was ‘They’re your children. You deal with them’ (Campbell 1999, p.6). For these women, the contradictions between their ‘detachment’ towards their stepchildren and societal notions of women’s identity as ‘nurturing’ often pressed them into having to examine how their maternal ambivalence arose in part from the inadequacies of the mothering they had received, resulting in their lack of desire for children. In order to make the marriage work, these women had to re-examine themselves via psychotherapy, in order to resolve some of the childhood issues that impeded their participating even nominally in parental responsibilities with their husbands. One woman, while coming to regretful terms with her limitations as a stepmother, nonetheless was able to become a more responsive stepmother and co-parent, by having understood herself better. Transitional women are both childfree and childless due to the less intentional choices which informed their lives. Typically, these women wended their way through life juggling non-maternal and maternal aspects of their identity, until it was too late to have a child. Devoting themselves for years to political struggles, travel or other adventures, as well as ‘accidentally, on-purpose’ choosing mates who either did not want or could not have children, these women drifted along until life opportunities shrank and it was too late to have children. ‘For some of these women who pursued all these new possibilities, there was a feeling that time was “forever young.” They discovered only too painfully that time had eclipsed their capacity for motherhood. The deflation of feminism’s heroic posture, the realization that women can’t “have it all,” fell perhaps most heavily upon these women’ (Ireland 1993, pp.45–46).

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The transitional woman illustrates a dimension of struggle and sacrifice. Struggling to reconcile and fulfill both maternal and nonmaternal desires, and faced with the reality that childbearing is no longer possible, she may consciously accept her own particular childless circumstances, letting go of her identification with her womb as the place to nourish a child so that another kind of creative child may be born. In this act of conscious letting go, a different path is opened. An inability to relinquish the (for her) unrealizable aspect of motherhood for the sake of something else, something often unknown, can result in a life pervaded by bitterness, disappointment, and a sense of failure. (Ireland 1993, p.69)

Insofar as they are able to acknowledge the loss of the maternal path, consciously grieving it, these women can then utilize their creative and nurturing energies for something other than raising children (Alvarez 2000; hooks 2000). For some transitional women, mourning permits them to shift from feeling childless to feeling childfree. These women and their partners may begin to enjoy the freedom of childlessness, even though it is bittersweet (Liebowitz 1996).2 One patient of mine used our therapy to resolve infertility by recommitting herself to her career and marriage, deciding to put her mothering energies into her beloved dogs, and in devoting extra effort to her nieces and nephews, a value revered in her culture and extended family. Similarly, a colleague of mine, when coping not only with infertility, but her subsequent inability to adopt, faced her losses with her husband, and they then initiated a change in lifestyle by moving to the country. Another couple I know chose to give up the quest for a baby after they lived through two miscarriages, deciding to forgo in vitro and adoption, committing their parenting energies instead to their niece who, having a rather erratically present mother, absolutely needed their steadfast nurturance. Other transitional women take the opportunity to use the Eros that would have been devoted to children by contributing to the next generation in another fashion. Like D.W. Winnicott, who had no children but dedicated his life to working with families and children or adults to help them resume their healthy development toward the ‘true self ’ (Winnicott 1960), a colleague who sadly regrets having missed marrying as a prelude to having children or becoming a stepmother has dedicated

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her life to being an outstanding child therapist. Another woman I know committed herself to developing mediation programs in the schools to help teens deal with confrontation through negotiation rather than violence, when time passed and she had not found the right situation for birthing her own children. Teaching, whether in school (Kogawa 2000) or through other social programs (Linder 2000), permits women choosing not to birth to contribute to the next generation. Writing books, poetry, painting and other visual arts are all liminal spaces where a woman’s generativity not utilized biologically can be expressed. My own effort to pass on my hard-won, non-biological-mother wisdom to other clinicians and mothers on similar journeys is absolutely an effort to turn my losses into something generative. At the same time many transitional women end up attaching to children by non-traditional routes. At a friend’s fiftieth birthday celebration I encountered a woman who was part of the Stepfamily Research Project at the University of California, Berkeley. She recalled several in-depth interviews she had conducted with stepmothers who were unable to have their own children. For these women, having hooked up with a man who had children turned out to be an unexpected bonus, and they invested themselves enthusiastically in the stepmothering role. These women’s lives had unfolded on many levels, before they were faced with the passage of time and their inability to have children. Thus for a certain category of stepmothers, marrying a man with children permits them to fulfill the dream of mothering they thought they would have to forgo. Two stepmothers I interviewed had missed out on bearing a child because they didn’t have the right partner with whom to create a family. For one woman, Ginny,3 her becoming a stepmother accompanied her second marriage. In her first marriage, Ginny explained, there was no space for her as a person, much less room for a child. Consequently, becoming a mother did not seem feasible. When Ginny met and became engaged to her second husband, Jim, whose children were teenagers, she felt for the first time that she wanted a child with this man, both because of the way Jim valued her sensitivity to his children, and because of the deep love between them. However, a number of practical considerations (including age) weighed against the creation of a second family, and Ginny felt for the first time her loss about the dream of having a baby with a loving partner.

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As a result she found herself looking forward to loving and attaching to Jim’s children. A number of obstacles impeded Ginny’s efforts to stepmother, since Jim (see Chapter 7) first had to reclaim the reins of fathering while his teenage children struggled with their loyalty conflict between Jim and his ex-wife, Connie. Thus over time Ginny found herself mourning the futility of entering the stepmother role, alternating with feeling hopeful that, as time healed her stepchildren’s losses caused by the divorce, they would become more available to connect with her as they gradually had with their father. While stepmothering had promised to be a gift of the new partnership it turned out that taking the risk to care about Jim’s children brought Ginny both joy and anguish. The second transitional stepmother, Frances (see Chapters 4 and 7), had had a full and rich life, with travel and adventures, professional and social satisfaction with friends and colleagues, but did not meet a man with whom she felt she could partner and bear children until it was ‘too late.’ She had consciously chosen not to become a single mother. In midlife Frances met and began living with a colleague, Dan, who had teenage daughters: Arlene, age 16, and Diane, age 13. As the stepmother/daughter bonds developed, Frances regretted the loss of the opportunity for enjoyment of ‘the maternal,’ either through having had her own child earlier, or in having met her stepdaughters at a much younger age. But like Ginny, Frances was not inured from further loss in becoming a stepmother. Once after her two stepdaughters had left home, Arlene to live with her boyfriend and Diane for college, Diane sent a montage of her ‘family’ via e-mail to Dan. To Frances’s grief, she was not included in Diane’s visual depiction of family even though Dan had become the custodial parent after the girls’ mother, Ruth, had left her family to ‘go find herself.’ Thereafter Frances struggled to come to terms with her sorrow over the asymmetry of caring between herself and her stepdaughters, including examining her diffidence in making maternal claims on her stepdaughters which had been motivated by her concern about exacerbating their division of loyalties between mother and stepmother. For both Ginny and Frances partnering with a father of teenagers generated new sources of loss as they risked attaching to their stepchildren who were in the process of eschewing adults in general, never mind their stepmothers. For traditional women, the loss of the dream of having children is the most devastating, as they feel childless. Having always perceived

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motherhood as central to their self-expression, they have the formidable task of unhooking ‘reproductive capacity from female identity’ (Ireland 1993, p.19): The central issue among these women is one of mourning. They must grieve the real loss of their physical integrity, the loss of their anticipated child, and the loss of their imagined identities as mothers. This mourning process is necessary if the traditional woman is to be able to view herself and others like her in positive, rather than damaged, terms. The mourning of any loss, physical or psychological, involves a process that moves from denial of the reality of the loss through acceptance of that reality to a new position of integration. In the case of childlessness, the new position that must be achieved is one in which a positive female identity and sense of self as complete can be maintained despite the exclusion of the possibility of motherhood from this self-concept. (Ireland 1993, p.18)

When raising children is viewed as the central meaning of a marriage, both partners have to reevaluate their identities, in terms of gender and life goals, in the void left by being childless. Refashioning one’s identity about parenthood takes a period of time, as one mourns the relinquished dream of giving birth. Only then can new possibilities emerge in the space left by the loss of the biological parenting option.

Resolving the loss Both transitional and traditional women and their mates may resolve their infertility by choosing adoption, or foster-parenting. Unfortunately, adoption can also be an uncertain and anxiety-provoking experience. Sometimes it takes many birthmother contacts to result in a ‘match’ between adoptive couple and baby in open adoption. Or there may be a waiting list for available infants through an agency in a domestic closed adoption. The long wait for international orphans or children relinquished from other nations is due to the bureaucratic obstacles of inter-country adoption. Thus, adoption can be an arduous journey, fraught with losses, also. Nonetheless many couples and singles succeed in adopting, either an infant or older child through domestic or international adoption. Others choose to endure a long waiting period to have a ‘fost-adopt’ child placed with them by the foster care system. Here the biological parent’s willing-

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ness to free their children for adoption by signing the appropriate papers may determine whether the foster placement becomes permanent. In all routes to adoption, adoptive parents may have to face another loss should the adoption fall through before finalization. One evening I was training a group of foster parents about ‘attachment and loss’ when all of us were distracted by the audible weeping of a woman who was being verbally comforted by the director of the agency. This sobbing woman, a foster mother who had raised her foster daughter from infancy to about two, had just heard that day that the judge had ruled in the birthmother’s favor, overturning her petition to adopt ‘her’ child. Because the judge privileged reunification over the carefully built attachment between foster mother and child, the foster mother was in the throes of inconsolable grief. While the training was about how foster children cope with loss, we were all privy to a live illustration about how foster parents cope with loss, since the foster mother had come to the private agency which had facilitated the foster placement of her child for solace after receiving her devastating news. As in any effort to risk love, there are no guarantees. A colleague told me of her near loss of a second adoptive baby to the birthmother after placement. (The birthmother had reclaimed the first baby my colleague and her husband had ‘adopted,’ after the baby had lived with and attached to her adoptive parents for a couple of months, in the legal window before finalization of the adoption.) My colleague recounted that the way they were successful at keeping the second baby was that she and her husband would take turns setting limits with this birthmother and her extended family. With either husband or wife on duty to protect the adoption, the other collapsed hysterically at the specter of another loss of an infant, until a resolution to the crisis resulted in a permanent placement. After waiting for a long time, my sister-in-law and her husband ended up being matched with a ‘fost-adopt’ boy when he was less than one year. On becoming his mother my sister-in-law shifted from her surrogate mothering of her nieces and nephews and focused her energy on her new son. A lesbian couple written up in the local paper befriended a little boy from down the street, whose parents neglected him due to their drug and alcohol involvement. Eventually, a compassionate social worker helped this couple (one woman had already raised a child, the other had not)

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become his foster parents, and it changed this little boy’s whole life from one of insecurity to one of safety (Lara 1998). In my own situation, once my reproductive endocrinologist told me to quit wasting my money and to go adopt, I was at the office of an adoption attorney the next week (an effort to master my grief by ‘doing’ something, no doubt). I believe the reason I was able to make this transition had to do with the support and recognition I had received from the members of a painting group I had synchronistically joined around the time I began my long and arduous attempt to become a mother. Not surprisingly so many of my paintings, created in the company of five other women, had to do with this quest: eggs and babies; archetypal and spiritual mothers such as La Virgen de Guadalupe; the annunciation of Christ and the Holy Family (it was Christmas time); loving hands holding and healing a feminine body; the spilled berries of Little Bo Peep; a Kokopelli seahorse, combining the Southwest Indian symbol for nurturing masculine fertility, and the sea species where the male carries the babies until birth; the garden of Eden with the sword of Damocles over the serpent’s throat; and phallic symbols upon phallic symbols. In the particular painting process we shared, each of us waited to see what images might emerge; painting separately in the same room together, we could bear witness to one another’s mysteries. Often I did not even know the meaning of a symbol that unfolded on paper until I had received the group’s input – as in one piece where I had painted a snake around an egg, which turned out to be the Kundalini serpent, ‘Tantric image of the female serpent coiled in the lowest chakra of the human body, in the pelvis’ (Walker 1983, p.517). Like in the Jungian sandplay process (Kalff 1980), my unconscious was tapping into archetypal masculine and feminine energies that I hoped would help me conceive a baby, while also fearing that my efforts would not bear fruit. Coincidentally, our painting group went to hear a lecture about invisible losses for women (abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth). At the end as I began to weep, the group of women who had been privy to my soul journey in attempting to get pregnant encircled me and just touched me so I could sob until I was done. I went home and painted a ‘grieving pelvis,’ since in sharing my feelings with my fellow artists, I had begun to face what was a few months later in the offing: that I would not be able to get pregnant. One reason I chose the first adoption attorney I did was that along with her legal expertise she had a spiritual perspective about the adoption

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process. Although raised as a Lutheran, I found the Hindu and Buddhist concept of reincarnation meaningful as early as tenth grade, after reading Huston Smith’s (1958) World’s Religions. In fact, I had to leave my Lutheran youth group that year, after a retreat where the pastor responded negatively to my question about whether Buddhists could earn grace. I found the notion that Buddhists would have to convert to Lutheranism in order to connect with God too narrow. I had had the privilege of living in the Middle East, adjacent to the Holy Land, in junior high school. Consequently, I knew first hand that there were many routes to Divinity as embodied in the Protestant, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim faiths who all congregated in the holy places of the Fertile Crescent, including but not limited to Jerusalem and Mecca. While I had given up all religion and spirituality for 20 years in favor of creating meaning via existentialism, psychoanalysis, politics and feminism, I found myself resuming my belief in an inclusive Divinity around the age of 40. Consequently, the adoption attorney’s perspective that each adoptive parent had a ‘time’ when synchronistically the flow of the universe would ensure the appearance of a baby was quite appealing. Like Ann Makepeace, I waited for the spirit of the baby meant for me to come forth through the right birthmother contact. Unfortunately, adoption also turned out to be a complex journey through hope and despair, when after two domestic open adoption attorneys, 15 birthmother contacts and four near-miss babies, I ‘hit the wall’ and chose to close the adoption chapter as well in my attempts to become a mother. Here again the painting process and the women who had shared my long journey with me, bearing witness to my anguish and triumphs, were an ineffable comfort. While my second attorney had told me about yet another baby who was ‘a sure thing’ (although in adoption it’s never over until it’s over, as any adoptive parent who has nearly lost their baby after placement can attest to), I felt I could not go on because I was so exhausted and overwhelmed by how many losses my soul had already sustained. To process this choice I found myself painting a landscape from Georgia O’Keefe ’s New Mexico, with the red/maroon-hued cliffs and crystal-clear expansive blue sky. In the middle of the sky I painted two eyes, with wings to help them fly off, eyes of the baby’s spirit that might have been mine, saying goodbye before going on

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to its next incarnation. It was with the love and compassion of my fellow artists that I could see my choice as a generative act rather than as a defeat. Still I had my disheartening moments of thinking this was God’s way of saying I would not have been a ‘good enough’ mother. The tricky thing about loss through infertility and missed adoption is the temptation to shift into self-blame. The sense of ‘why me?’ in losing a pregnancy, or ‘why not me?’ in not being chosen by a birthmother for placement of her child, causes deep anguish. Like most suffering in life, these losses ‘just are,’ but often it feels preferable to fault oneself for something one did (did not flick the Pergonal syringe just right before injection, was too open with the birthmother on the phone etc., etc.), or to berate oneself as a person, rather than to sit with the imponderable arbitrariness of life, mourning the cards dealt us. Self-condemnation gives us the illusion of being omnipotent, because in being self-critical or self-reproving about some aspect of the fertility or adoption quest one can defend against the painful reality that one simply does not have control. Unfortunately, this can be reminiscent of patients with life-threatening illness who cannot control the course of their disease and deteriorate, blaming themselves because of the lore about ‘exceptional patients’ who have the correct attitude and psychological fitness to conquer terminal illness (Siegel 1986). (I will never forget one acquaintance, a follower of New Age ideas, telling me that if I would just meditate and change my ‘attitude’ I would be able to conceive.) The omnipotence of magical thinking may be comforting, but the hidden cost is losing touch with reality while self-worth ebbs. I once wrote my second adoption attorney, with a stab at gallows humor, that I needed to take a break from birthmother contacts since I was experiencing a new sub-category of ‘Posttraumatic Stress Disorder’ (American Psychiatric Association 1994, pp.424–425), which I entitled ‘Adoption Rollercoaster Stress Disorder.’ I made this declaration a few months before I decided to let go of my adoption quest. It takes profound courage to face what is, acknowledge the losses and mourn them, rather than turning the suffering against oneself. Coming up against these human limitations in a culture so completely based on progress (we can solve any problem) and control over nature (as if we could control life and death) only makes it harder for individuals and couples to know when to grieve, so they can move on. Without the healing of true mourning, we get stuck in feeling there is something wrong with us if we

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are unable to determine our fate. The promises of fertility specialists and adoption professionals, whose overly confident advice may be informed by the profit motive as much as by actual data (Bartholet 1993), do not help us relinquish our dreams when they are not possible either. I remember being quite skeptical at the initial interview with my second adoption attorney, whose ‘glitzy sell’ put me off after my disappointing experiences with the first attorney, who promised much more than she ever delivered. In contrast, I was quite grateful to my reproductive endocrinologist for leveling with me about my miniscule chances of becoming pregnant, releasing me to face and resolve my infertility. Many couples who traveled down the adoption path with me did succeed in adopting, often two children. Other couples I know adopted a baby and then managed to have a biological child, with or without reproductive technologies. Some made it through domestic adoption by romanticizing the process, where a mutual idealization between birthmother and adoptive couple is set in motion, which if it can be held in place until the baby changes hands can be an effective way to cope with the enormity of giving and receiving the gift of an infant. In many ways this parallels the imaginings of a pregnant mother, who between the fourth and seventh month creates an ‘imaginary’ baby (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998), who may be unrealistically idealized. At birth, this fantasy baby needs to get reconciled with the real baby, lest the actual infant be lost in the mother’s dreams about the baby’s identity, resulting in maternal disappointment and disillusionment. As Wolff (1997) describes in Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother, moving from fantasizing about one’s adoptive child, to meeting him and feeling like a stranger, to falling in love with him, can take many months. Making a baby one’s own is to undergo this process, whether as an adoptive or biological mother. The tensions and contradictions of persevering through the adoption process are not trivial even if one is reconciled to this venue for family building (Green 1999; Janowitz 1998; Wolff 1997). Great bravery is required to bear the authentic feelings one has in shifting from biological to non-biological motherhood. It is complex to tread the fine line between surrendering to the process – keeping the faith that there is a baby-soul ‘waiting to come in’ – and taking charge so that one is not stepping outside one’s ‘comfort zone,’ in being so desperate that one puts oneself at the mercy of adoption professionals or birthmothers

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with mixed agendas. ‘Comfort zone’ is a term I picked up while participating in an adoption support group through RESOLVE of Northern California, an organization that educates, informs and proffers support to individuals and couples trying to ‘resolve’ infertility. An international adoption might be in one couple’s ‘comfort zone,’ but not another’s. Cigarette smoking by a birthmother during pregnancy was in my ‘comfort zone,’ which precluded alcohol consumption. It is a way to tag what is negotiable and what is not negotiable with potential birthmother contacts. A number of times I sensed that the birthmother with whom I was in contact was ‘ambivalating’ her way into keeping the baby, with me as ‘back-up’ just in case, while my optimistic attorney would keep encouraging me to pursue the young woman. Each time my intuition turned out to be correct, but since I was trying to adopt as a single woman, I would forget to honor my instincts as I did not feel I had the luxury of foreclosing any possibility that might lead to a healthy adoptive baby. Consequently my desperation led me to make errors in judgment that only made the adoption quest more emotionally burdensome. A few times the young women changed their minds about me because a previous contact with potential adoptive parents – usually a couple – had not worked out. In rejecting me these birthmothers were also protecting themselves from too much vulnerability and further losses. When I began to lose my compassion for the position in which birthmothers found themselves, because of a surfeit of losses on my part through the adoption process, I realized it was time to change course in my quest for a child to love. The universe did bless me with the opportunity to mother, although not in the way I might have originally hoped for, or expected. Simultaneous to, but separate from, my decision to forgo adoption, I became engaged to the father of my twin stepdaughters. Within a short time after our betrothal commitment these girls, then 14, moved in full-time with their father. We set about creating a stepfamily together, a process greatly firmed up by our marriage when they were 15. Two structural factors were on the side of the unfolding attachment between my stepdaughters and myself. First of all, my husband had had a stepmother as well, so having two mothers was built into the family legacy. In fact he had lived with his father and stepmother most of the time from age ten until he left home. Early on in our bonding process, my stepdaugh-

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ters gave their mother and me the exact same slippers for Christmas, exemplifying this acceptance of having ‘two Moms.’ Second, unlike in other stepfamily situations, my stepdaughters’ biological mother was relieved to have me take over at a time when the intense realities of adolescent crises were becoming more than she could manage. On my end I let her know of my gratitude for her willingness to let me mother her daughters by sending her happy ‘co-mother’s day’ cards each year through high school. To give us both credit, we have done very little to undermine one another, although since I came into the family I have done the lion’s share of the mothering (including making claims on my stepdaughters with a mother lion’s fierceness). If I am really honest with myself, there was a tendency on my part to want our stepfamily to be just like a ‘nuclear family,’ immediately. Similar to the ‘Romantic’ stepfamilies studied by Bray and Kelly, I probably wanted my new ‘family’ to make up for my not-completely-mourned previous losses – as fate had not been in my favor in either giving birth to or adopting a baby – by expecting ‘feelings of love and harmony and closeness to begin flowing’ (Bray and Kelly 1998, p.16) as soon as we officially became a stepfamily. Stepmothers who also have their own children are not under as much internal pressure to have the stepmother bond fulfill all their longings to mother (Bernstein 1994). While I think I was much more realistic about what to expect from a non-biological mothering bond than some of my cohort trying to adopt, I believe my unresolved feelings about having only deserved a ‘second best’ mothering role led me to need more reassurance about my capacities to stepmother than might have been the case for a stepmother who also had her own children. Similarly having been ‘investigated’ and ‘screened’ by my adoption agency through a ‘home study’ also eroded my confidence as a parent, making me angst as to whether I was entitled to be a parent at all (Bonovitz 2002). Of course the lack of rituals (I never got a ‘stepchild’ shower) for this transition did not help. In other words, until mourning is more complete, residual grief may unconsciously color the adoptive, foster or stepmother/child bond, from the mother’s side of the attachment. A mother giving birth can either come to terms with her actual infant or get caught in ‘assigning imagined identities and roles’ as ‘one way of coping with the perceived losses’ (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998, p.68) in the postpartum period. Similarly,

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adoptive, foster or stepmothers make assumptions about the identities of their non-biological children, based on their projections through the lens of loss and longing, fear and wishes. The more unresolved the loss, the more the mother will imagine the baby, whether biological or adoptive stepchild or foster child, will fulfill her needs and wishes, repairing some of her failures and disappointments in life. According to Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern (1998, pp.70–76), a baby may be turned to for: unconditional love, as a replacement for other losses, as an anti-depressant, or as a vicarious means for redoing the mother’s life. Because of greater differences between mother and child in non-biological mothering bonds, there may be even more fertile ground for mothers to project their fantasies into the child, only to become disappointed by the reality of the connection. To the extent that I had really mourned my losses, to that extent I could take off rose-colored glasses and see my stepdaughters for who they really were. To the extent to which there was mourning left to do, I was unrealistic about what was possible between us, and felt let down by the discrepancy between my fantasy of our stepmother/daughter bonds and the actuality of what was happening at any given point in their development as young women, and in the development of intimacy between us. An adoptive mother, Helen, whose ten-year-old son, Drew, had been placed with her at birth, told me about her ‘98 rounds of mourning.’ Having gone through a lengthy infertility process with her husband, Norm, who already had grown children, Helen and Norm were chosen by a birthmother in another state to adopt her child during the second trimester. In many ways Helen and Norm had an ideal open adoption experience, as birthmother and birthfather were steadfast in their choice to give Drew up throughout. Nonetheless Helen described mourning when she and Norm had to use donor sperm for insemination, mourning when they embarked on the adoption journey, mourning when they were actually matched with a birthmother since it marked her giving up biological parenthood, mourning when she became pregnant naturally after Drew’s adoption and miscarried in the second trimester, mourning not giving birth to a child, facing rounds and rounds of regrets that she had not tried harder to get pregnant via reproductive technology, mourning that Drew struggles so much with school that she cannot share her intellectual legacy with him and so on. Thus Helen openly acknowledged that she

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is ‘still actively mourning the loss of the imagined other who was never born’ (Bonovitz 2002, p.7), while simultaneously trying to expand herself to meet Drew in his own right as a person. Because Helen is aware of her residual grief about her lost birth baby – a construction in her fantasy life, rather than based on experience with a ‘real’ baby – she is able to work with her maternal projections about Drew consciously. Otherwise she might impose her projections on Drew, thereby requiring him to meet her unconscious expectations. Because of the arduousness of the infertility journey, many adoptive parents are still mourning their losses simultaneous to being thrilled to finally have a baby through adoption: Most infants adopted within days of their birth arrive in a setting in which the adoptive parents are still engaged in the active, ongoing, and often long-standing struggle to come to terms with their infertility and feelings of castration; their narcissistic injuries; their bitter frustration; disappointment, threats of divorce and often recrimination due to their inability to be natural parents. (Blum 1983, pp.143–144)

In fact there is evidence that undergoing fertility treatments – even if successful – adversely affects a mother’s capacity to attach with a biological, never mind an adoptive, child (Appelman 2000). Bonovitz (2002) describes the case of Billy – adopted at eight weeks – whose understanding about himself and his adoption history were highly colored by his parents’ unmourned losses in not being able to conceive. Guided by the themes in Billy’s play therapy, Bonovitz actively encouraged Mr. and Mrs. C. to share their experience of infertility (six years of trying to conceive) and adoption (a four-year process). Both parents were left with a sense of shame and humiliation in not having been able to conceive, which they unconsciously projected into Billy, who felt himself to be worthless and unlovable like trash to be thrown out. The whole family was released from a self-emptying drama once Mr. and Mrs. C. shared the ways in which they felt like damaged goods because of the toll infertility took on their sexual and gender identities, its adverse impact on their marriage, and the disgrace they experienced in having to prove themselves as parents worthy to adopt. Subsequently, Billy’s parents were able to acknowledge their hostility about the ways in which they each felt Billy fell short of their ‘dream’ child: his father cringing at Billy’s lack of coordination; and his

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mother wishing he were more social and outgoing. In order to atone for their guilt about this unconscious hostility toward Billy the parents had not set clear and firm limits with Billy, who was frequently impulsive and out of control. Once Mr. and Mrs. C. were able to discuss and face their buried feelings about their infertility and adoption journeys and their ‘unacceptable’ feelings about their adopted son, they could begin the process of mourning, which freed them to reclaim their authority as parents and to create a space for loving their living son. The infertility and adoption ‘ghosts’ in the parents’ psyches had to be exorcized so that these parents could move on: In situations where a couple has tried to conceive a child and have in some cases turned to fertility treatment, this painful endeavor then sets the stage for trying to adopt a child, in which some couples go through agencies where they are heavily screened to determine if they are suitable parents. Infertility and the loss of not being able to bear one’s own children may then exert its influence on the attachment to their adoptive child and the child’s understanding of where he comes from. The extent to which parents have mourned this loss will greatly shape the young child’s conscious and unconscious knowledge and understanding of his own adoptive history. The mourning of their wishes and the experience of disillusionment on the part of the adoptive parents allows for the child’s own mourning; a process that allows the parents to accept the gift of their child and, in turn, for the child to adopt his adoptive parents. (Bonovitz 2002, pp.34–35)

Similarly, I have consulted with many clinicians about cases where just as the foster placement is about to become finalized through adoption, the foster parents get cold feet because the fost-adopt child is not measuring up to their fantasies about the closeness they ‘should’ be having with the child. Foster parents need help facing their losses about their longed for biological child lest parental disillusionment about the discrepancy between fantasy and reality with their fost-adopt child result in a failed placement, causing one more loss for the foster child. In our society, where children are often regarded as commodities or ‘majestic babies’ (Ehrensaft 1997; Hymowitz 1999; Lawrence 2000), ‘most Americans reproduce their own genes because their culture has made them so narcissistic they are convinced that they could love only a clone’ (Linder 2000, p.73). Thus not having a child live up to one’s fantasy subsumes both the loss of the

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dream to birth a baby, and the loss of having the child provide the gratification of being a narcissistic extension of the parents. ‘Awash in the desire for perfection’ (Ehrensaft 1997, p.31) as a defense against the loss of biological paternity, such parents may have unrealizable expectations for their adoptive children. One upper middle class couple in my community actually returned their white infant – who had been placed with them at birth through open adoption – to his birth family when it became clear that he was deaf, and therefore defective as compared to the ‘designer’ baby they had wanted. Parents need help relinquishing their fantasies of the perfect baby, baby as purveyor of one’s seed and baby as ‘just like me,’ so that they can mourn the gap between their expectations and how their fost-adopt or adoptive children may behave at a given moment. Otherwise the parent will be unable to move on to learn about the meaning of the child’s behavior in order to respond to it empathically, and to recognize who their chosen children actually are. A fellow mental health professional shared a vignette with me when I presented an early version of this work at a local children’s hospital. She was leading a group for single women all adopting children from orphanages located in a region of Eastern Europe filled with political turmoil. She wanted to know from me why, as the adoption of these children got closer, the women were asking her and one another in the group: ‘What if I don’t like my child, and the adoption doesn’t work out?’ As someone whose professional background led her to keep the interests of children at the forefront of her concerns, she was disturbed by this chorus of doubt that foretold a self-emptying prophecy for the orphan/mother bonds. While I was also alarmed at this entitled expression of the mothers’ fears that their adoptive children wouldn’t live up to their expectations – especially since I knew just how demanding and difficult making an attachment with children from such a background would be – I wondered if these women, too, were trying to relinquish their fantasies about their ‘chosen’ children, as a preparatory step for the ‘real’ children they were about to adopt. On the other hand, if these women had not resolved their losses along the way to choosing to adopt orphans from a crisis-filled area of the world, then they might well have been unrealistic about the mothering project ahead of them, with the children about to pay the price for not meeting the fantasy needs of these mothers.

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The more a mother – biological, adoptive, step or foster – comes to terms with her own life and losses, the more she will be able to be cracked wide open as a mother, capable of loving a child for who she/he is rather than needing the child to fill a specific identity in her fantasy life. In grieving my infertility and adoption losses, I was increasingly freed to meet my stepdaughters on their own terms, as the people they are. While my mourning about not having had a baby still surfaces periodically in waves, with each one that sweeps over me I work through more of my grief and get closer to the other side of mourning where I can accept and make peace with my loss (Kluger-Bell 1998, p.26) and love my stepdaughters more fully. To meet your adoptive, foster or stepchild where she/he authentically is, something essential to parenting all children, you must have tackled your own losses. Otherwise the actual connection between non-biological mother and child will be confounded by other psychological processes, which have to do with the unresolved losses on both sides. As the parent, one has to bear the child’s losses, but it should not really be the child’s burden to bear our losses. When a mother’s losses are unconscious, unprocessed and underground, they can undermine the potential attachment between adoptive, foster or stepmother and child, and therefore the sense of belonging with this ‘second’ mother in a child’s life. This is the topic to which we now turn, in Chapter 3.

Notes 1 2 3

Portions of this chapter were previously published in Waterman (2001a, pp.277–300). For an extensive bibliography about the childfree choice see Ratner (2000, pp.242–244). In order to protect the privacy of the mothers and fathers kind enough to share their experiences with me I have used pseudonyms. All of the people I interviewed have read the portions about their narratives and have given me permission to use the passages.

3

Longing and Belonging

1

Those who know ghosts tell us they long to be released from their ghost life and led to rest as ancestors. As ancestors they live forth in the present generation, while as ghosts they are compelled to haunt the present generation with their shadow life. (Hans Loewald 1980, p.249)

In this chapter we turn to the losses that the child brings to the new bond-building endeavor with an adoptive, foster or stepmother. For many women who choose non-biological parenting because they are unable to have children of their own, the degree to which they grieve their loss is a factor in their capacity to enter fully into the primary relatedness (Stern 1995, p.173) dimension of the motherhood constellation with non-biological children. Because of the child’s loss of the biological mother or the nuclear family, many agonies that non-biological mothers endure result from the child’s use of projective identification to communicate the devastating feelings, which accompanied the losses she/he experienced prior to engaging with this new caretaker. The child, too, needs to make peace with these losses, by having them acknowledged so that she/he can move on to new developmental pains and gains. Progressively, then, the child calls upon the new caretaker – grandmother, aunt, foster, step or adoptive mother – to weather the emotional havoc of his mourning in the context of a new, and it is to be hoped stabilizing, mothering bond. On neither side of the interaction can the attachment process be taken for granted: both mother and child have to work at belonging to one another. Often the feelings which permeate the interpersonal space between mother and newly claimed child seem like insurmountable obstacles because of their unconscious, primitive or preverbal nature. The

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non-biological mother’s capacity to contain and bear witness to the child’s profound distress will reflect and influence her confidence as a mother. It is incumbent on us as helping professionals and fellow-parents to help foster, adoptive and stepmothers make meaning of the intensive communication, via projective identification, that can arise in the creation of an attachment. In bearing witness to the mother’s experiences we can enable them to contain their child’s suffering rather than joining him in a spurious rupture of the fledgling attachment. By helping these mothers – and the fathers who participate with them – understand that it is precisely because the child is beginning to trust her that he can safely act out his anguish about the past with his new attachment figure, we can function as part of the supporting matrix (Stern 1995, p.173) for these beleaguered moms. ‘Looking after a grieving child is exacting and unrewarding work; and it is small wonder if caregivers become impatient and irritable’ (Bowlby 1980, p.397). As clinicians, family or friends we can help non-biological mothers, or extended kin like aunts and grandmothers, by normalizing their experiences. In providing the caretakers with containment and empowerment, we facilitate the creation of loving attachments, thereby serving a new generation of children. My sister-in-law and I laughed ruefully together several years ago. Her highly spirited adoptive son would be better matched by my temperament (of the ‘kick-ass’ life force variety), whereas one of my stepdaughters, unlike me, is the more acquiescent type of child with whom my sister-in-law would be ideally matched. In that moment we could see the humor in the differences between ourselves and the children we call our own. While getting to know the nature of a newly claimed child, a parent also has to discover the nurture which will be the right fit for the child, since biological congruence cannot be presumed. Differences – whether because of temperament, spirit or energy level, rhythm and cadence, family history and culture, or ethnic background – are built into the foster, adoptive or stepmother/child connection. You have to come to terms with who you are and who your child is in a way that accords each of you a place in the relationship (Beall 1990). At times these differences get confounded with as yet unresolved losses. When the mother attributes non-verbal communication, such as rage, to the child’s nature rather than to the child’s attempt to have his/her most overwhelming and frightening feelings contained and understood

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on the way to primary relatedness, the potential disappointment over irreconcilable differences is greatest. If the adoptive, step or foster mother can be enabled to bear, and bear witness to, these primitive feelings from the child, without abandoning or retaliating, the attachment will be deepened and the child can then resume his development using resources from nature and nurture. Paradoxically, the tension between connection and separateness is also the source for the unexpected joys of these mothering bonds, where mutual recognition and hard-won affection permit a bridge across the gulf between mother and child (Benjamin 1995a).

Primary maternal preoccupation and containment As I was unable to conceive a child or adopt one, becoming a stepmother comprised my entry into the ‘motherhood mindset’ (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998). To my amazement, as a new stepmother to teenagers, I immediately fell into the kind of ‘illness’ Winnicott describes as part of ‘primary maternal preoccupation’ (Winnicott 1956). Thus, on behalf of my twin stepdaughters, I succumbed to a mental reverie while I tried to fathom the nuances of their yearnings, striving to resonate with subtle shifts in mood in order to be attuned to their respective emotional needs. One vehicle for my ‘knowing’ their inner world was through their preverbal communication via projective identification (Klein 1975). Here the child inserts projected feelings into the mother, who identifies with these emotions by living them, while containing them for the baby. Even though my daughters were adolescents, or perhaps because of it, my fathoming their inner lives via projective identification was no less crucial to the development of our respective bonds than with an infant. As with a newborn, this complete giving over of my psyche for a period of time was one way I forged an attachment with each of them, since it offered them an experience of me as ‘live company’ (Alvarez 1992). Their using me as a container for expressions of preverbal experience, or the ‘unthought known’ (Bollas 1987) – those aspects of their inchoate experience they ‘knew’ but had not thought out loud to themselves until I named them – was crucial to their emerging trust of my maternal intentions. As a new mother, my willingness to identify with and contain the emotional experience of each of my daughters has been an essential part of the unfolding primary relatedness between us. Thus, I discovered that

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forging a feelingful attachment through surrender to primary maternal preoccupation generates a sense of belonging with the child, irrespective of age. The experience of the non-biological mother as a reliable container for this level of communication permits the child to relax into the new holding environment (Ogden 1986). If the child feels enough safety to let go and ‘drop’ into a regressed state within the new bond, she/he can often face the ‘breakdown’ feelings from previous losses, thereby using the new caretaker to heal old wounds (Winnicott 1974). As Bion (1962a) notes, it is a normal part of development for a mother to help a baby contain his more primitive states by identifying with noxious feelings projected into her. Such identification does not mean to absorb the toxic feelings, but rather to accept the child’s need to have the mother be a repository for them. When parents are unable to metabolize the negative projections, and return them to the baby in a form he can handle (Ogden 1982), the child misses out on a crucial developmental phase, often living under the shadow of the ‘bad object’ (Spillius 1988a) internally. That is, the intrapsychic world of omnipotent objects predominates over the reality of interpersonal life, so that bad introjects are less amenable to modification through relational experiences. I am using the terms object and introject to refer to the internal representation of a relationship experience. For example, a ‘bad object’ might have to do with a child’s emotional abandonment due to maternal post-partum depression; a ‘good introject’ could be evoked by a piece of music which envelops one in an oceanic sense of well-being similar to close breastfeeding moments as a baby. Many theorists in the psychoanalytic literature (Balint 1979; Kohut 1984; Winnicott 1962) address the nameless dread the infant is left to cope with if she/he is unable to find an object to provide the container/contained phase of caretaking (Etchegoyen 1991). Further, other capacities of the mind may not develop if the child has lacked maternal containment or a mutually attuned attachment (Schore 2002a), such as an ability to think (Bion 1962b), and to form symbols (Segal 1957). Not surprisingly many adopted and foster children suffer from learning disabilities, which may reflect their having missed out on the primary maternal preoccupation that provides them with unconditional care and nurturance. Left to their own devices to handle the inner ‘bad object’ drama (‘I’m bad because my mother gave me away’), they struggle

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with an internal self-emptying prophecy, often acted out with adoptive or foster parents. This intensive preverbal communication can either advance or rupture the attachment between non-biological mother and child, depending on how consciously and firmly an adoptive, foster or stepmother provides a container for her child’s suffering. Sometimes the child has come from a situation with his original mother where the container/contained relationship was inverted. That is, the child may have been at the mercy of the biological mother’s own extreme distress, both conscious and unconscious, through experiencing ‘excessive maternal projective identification’ (Ogden 1982). According to Ogden’s analysis, children who absorb their mother’s suffering through this mode of communication are being prematurely called upon to provide their mothers with containment. In order to survive psychically, such children take on as their own identity ‘the bad object’ that mother was expelling through projective identification, lest they fragment in the face of a separateness which they are not yet structurally able to handle. On the mother’s side, this strategy for handling stress or suffering is a way to avoid the intense and painful feelings that accompany life losses or trauma by evacuating them from her own psyche into that of another, in this case the helpless child. Primary maternal preoccupation on the part of a ‘second mom’ can help the child have a new experience of self in a nurturing relationship, permitting him to shed previous parental projections. The impact on the child of absorbing the unconscious projections of the parents is profound, as in a case written up by Piontelli (1992). She tells the story of a boy (18 months old) brought to her by his biological parents because of his restlessness and insomnia. In the joint meeting with the boy and his parents, he moved restlessly about the room as if looking for something he couldn’t find. In addition he would shake objects as if trying to bring them back to life. The parents mentioned that each developmental milestone was excruciating for the child as if he were afraid ‘to leave something behind him’ (Piontelli 1992, p.18). Dr. Piontelli’s suggestion to the boy that he seemed to be looking for something he had lost, trying to shake things back to life, led to the parents nearly bursting into tears, as well as stopping the boy mid-action. The parents shared the fact that the boy had had a twin who died two weeks before birth. Letting the boy know that she (Piontelli) understood that he feared each step forward in development because it might entail the loss of a loved one, as

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he felt responsible for his twin’s death, led to a remarkable change in his behavior. Once his parents were enabled to mourn the loss of the twin, the boy’s experience was parceled out from the anxiety, guilt and pain the parents felt and he was freed from the shadow of his lost twin fetus. As with all mothers, non-biological mothers vary in their capacity to create a ‘secure attachment’ (Ainsworth et al. 1978). In her classic study Ainsworth developed a typology of attachment between children and their mothers, based on how the babies reacted to what she called the strange situation: an experiment where the mother left the infant alone temporarily, returning to the room after her child had also been in the presence of a stranger. How the children coped with the separation from and reunion with their mothers formed the basis for three attachment categories: the securely attached, the avoidantly attached, and the ambivalently attached. Researchers also investigated what kind of caretaking each type of child received in the first year in the natural context of their homes. Not surprisingly, secure children experienced sensitively attuned and reliable mothering; whereas avoidant children experienced rejecting and somewhat harsh mothering, from dismissive caretakers (Main 1995). Ambivalent children, the most overtly anxious, experienced the most inconsistent or unpredictable mothering since the mother was preoccupied with her inner emotional states rather than with attuning to the needs of the child (Main 1995). Many studies in child development have built on this original typology, and the type of attachment a child develops is associated with later self-esteem, persistence, enthusiasm, frustration tolerance, impulse control, quality of peer relationships, not to mention patterns of language and structures of the mind (Karen 1998). But what is it that leads a mother to provide one or the other of these types of experiences to a child in the bonding process? As Fraiberg et al. (1975) determined from their initial forays in infant–parent psychotherapy, there are ‘ghosts in the nursery.’ That is, unconsciously or even consciously, mothers tend to reenact with their babies dramas that occurred between themselves and their childhood caretakers. Emerging from this understanding, infant–parent psychotherapy is designed to help the mother shift her inner attachment representations so that she moves from feeling inadequate to the task of caring for her baby, to feeling empowered to do so by therapeutic input that highlights her successful mothering efforts (Fraiberg et al. 1975; Stern 1995). A positive outcome

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from such bond-building interventions with mother–baby pairs is that the mothers become better able to provide their babies with secure attachment experiences. The work of Mary Main and some of her associates suggests that other ghosts from the childhoods of mothers of children labeled disorganized/disoriented contribute to their attachment style, a hardened maternal strategy that meets their children’s love or longing with aggression or dissociation. That is, many of these mothers often experienced early tragic losses or trauma, which they have neither faced nor mourned (Main 1995). Thus a sense of anxiety and fear is communicated to the baby preverbally (Main and Hesse 2000), flooding him with an excess of overwhelming feelings without the help of maternal containment. Unlike children who fall into the other insecure attachment categories, disorganized children have no attachment strategy, because the discontinuities in mother’s bonding make predicting her behavior all but futile. In contrast there is a logic to the behaviors of insecurely attached children whose previous caretakers were either dismissive or preoccupied. Strategically, the ambivalently attached child has learned from mother (preoccupied) to be hypervigilant in relationships in order to get attention, while frequently alienating others with clinging or needy behaviors. On the other hand, the avoidantly attached child – whose mothers tend to be more rejecting (dismissive) – has learned to defend against any and all longings for attachment, and avoids situations that might activate such needs (like true intimacy). Not surprisingly, adopted or foster children who have been through a number of placements, or who grew up in orphanages, or stepchildren whose mothers have died, may exhibit both ends of these attachment dilemmas: being either indifferent, aggressive or cloying with new caretakers as a way of coping with unrequited attachment longings. Such children often re-elicit the original attachment drama with their new mothers because they invite congruent responses in the new bond. A foster, step and adoptive mother very much needs education and support about meeting her child’s needs despite the self-defeating attachment strategy underlying his behaviors (Dozier, Dozier and Manni 2002), especially if the child’s attachment legacy turns out to be a painful mesh with his new mother’s childhood attachment strategy.

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The non-biological mother, who may also bring childhood losses and vulnerabilities to the bond – and more recent losses in not being able to birth a baby – will probably have her most unbearable feelings reactivated in relating to such children. If such a mother had an attachment experience (with primary caretaker, or in psychotherapy) where she was able to internalize a self-soothing capacity from the mutual regulation of affect intensity between herself and the caretaker (Schore 1997), then she will be better prepared to contain herself in the face of a child’s primitive feelings. That is, a woman who has her own inner capacity to shift from a negative feeling state to a positive one will be better able to proffer a child the same kind of containment in response to unbearable feelings. Children who have the experience of being ‘kept in mind’ by their primary attachment figures are better able to ‘mentalize’ primal feeling states (Fonagy et al. 2002) because they learn from their mothers how to think about powerful affects. That is, infants or older children whose mothers are able to reflect about – rather than simply react to – what goes on in their children’s minds facilitate their children’s development of the same capacity internally. Mothers who were not so fortunate in having mothering experiences that helped them learn that hard feelings could be mutually regulated with an attachment figure into bearable ones may get pulled into a more primitive exchange with their children, such that both have deep fears and anxieties activated. Until an attachment is forged, the chances for an impasse (Elkind 1992) between two intersecting primary vulnerabilities – mother and child – may be greater in non-biological connections. Like in biological attachments, a reenactment of unconscious primary attachment patterns is possible and even likely with the newly claimed child, if the non-biological mother has not faced trauma, grieved lost attachment figures or mourned dreams that life circumstances require she relinquish. Thus, the child’s grieving behaviors may dovetail with her unconscious anguish or disappointments projected into the child, thereby making an impasse more likely in a precarious adoptive, foster or stepmother/child bond. According to Steiner (1996), unless true mourning takes place through psychoanalysis or with other reliable caretakers, it will be impossible for the sufferer to reclaim parts of the Self she has projected into the object. Thus, a child – adopted, step or foster – who has not had the opportunity to mourn previous attachment losses will be caught in an omnipotent

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world, where others are treated as parts of the self, and parts of the self are projected into others, in order to avoid facing the other as a personal subject outside of his grasp. Melanie Klein (1946) refers to this phase of development as the ‘paranoid-schizoid position.’ Optimally this position is followed by the ‘depressive position’ (Klein 1935, 1940) if the child is able to relinquish his omnipotent fantasies and mourn the loss of the idealized object in favor of introjecting the real object. Winnicott (1954) also notes the important developmental achievement that entry into the depressive position entails, since here the child becomes a whole person and relates to others as whole people outside the realm of his control. (See also Ogden 1986, Chapters 3–5; Ogden 1989, Chapters 2–4.) Relating to the other as an extension of self prevents the child (and perhaps the mother) from encountering the ‘joyous shock of difference’ (Eigen 1981, p.416). The child needs his new mother’s forbearance and compassion, so he can fully enter the new attachment and learn that actual relationship experiences can modify his inner object landscape. ‘The need to be good in order to make up for being bad is a very different moment from the freedom of loving for its own sake’ (Eigen 1981, p.418). Here the child feels safe to destroy and love the same object, because the object survives.

Adoption and belonging As Piontelli’s (1992) research suggests, children may remember in utero experiences inchoately. In a recent parent meeting the mother of Paul, adopted from a Siberian orphanage at age one, addressed the prenatal portion of what she felt her son had been reworking in play therapy and at home. Paul’s adoptive parents were told that there had been several ‘illegal’ attempts to abort him. Paul (see Chapter 4) had been very fearful of ‘sticks’ with a hook on the end of them (like the metal rods that open skylights), as well as terrified of being washed down manholes or other holes with running water from the time his adoptive parents took him home. His mother had begun to understand these fears as originating from communications Paul had absorbed from his birthmother on a bodily level (de Bianchedi 1998); that is, Paul was still haunted by the trauma of his birthmother’s attempts to flush him out of the womb via a coathanger abortion, a psychosomatic memory he was attempting to lay to rest with

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the help of his parents and myself. Other less noxious psychosomatic exchanges between birthmother and fetus during gestation also lay the groundwork for attachment post-birth. At a conference I attended during my adoption quest, the keynote speaker, Suzanne Arms (1992), maintained that adoptees never get over the loss of the biological mother, her sense of smell or heartbeat, because of the prenatal vessel she provides. While I fathom the enormity of such a loss, I believe a child can be helped to face and mourn the profound transition from birthmother to adoptive mother. One very demanding aspect of adoption is the extent to which the adoptive mother has to handle the child’s preverbal feelings of abandonment and rage (Verrier 1993); experiences which are often communicated through projective identification. Thus primitive feeling states, such as annihilation anxiety, from a child’s prenatal or postnatal life may be unloaded into the adoptive mother. This may comprise a progressive effort on the part of the adopted child to have his new mother contain overwhelming somatic or psychic experiences – depending on the adoptive mother’s capacity to ‘metabolize’ (Ogden 1982) these states – which had threatened to overwhelm the not-yet-strong-enough-to-contain-theminfantile ego. If an adoptive mother cannot meet her child – whether adopted as a baby or as an older child – with primary maternal preoccupation, he will be forced to continue attempting to rid himself of overwhelming fears of breakdown or fragmentation without the help of a good enough container. An adopted friend of mine, Ann, still copes with her past by denying her own attachment needs, a precocious defense since childhood. After being given up by her birthmother at about six months, she was in several foster homes before a final placement in her second year. Incapable of primary maternal preoccupation, Ann’s adoptive mother, Jill, responded to her daughter’s pre-toddler experiences of attachment and loss in a mean-spirited and withholding fashion. Whatever trauma or losses unconsciously motivated Jill’s mistreatment of her daughter, they were incorporated by Ann as one more indication that she had no right to exist. Her adoptive father was better at bonding with Ann, but in no way protected her from his wife’s malevolence. Because Ann never received the containment or empathy she needed from her adoptive parents, but instead absorbed Jill’s rage and discontent, she continues to struggle with feeling

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defective. After meeting her birthparents who are more generous of spirit than her adoptive parents, Ann felt relieved that it wasn’t her nature that was the root of the ‘hateful’ treatment she received from her adoptive mother. A recent humiliation at Jill’s hands involved a literal enactment of the evacuation of malevolence from mother to daughter. Her life completely taken over by the eldercare required by her adoptive parents, Ann was visiting her mother at the hospital when Jill spitefully defecated on her. As a consequence of such malicious treatment, Ann does not feel she has a place in human company unless she is the caretaker for others. Typical of lore about the legacy of adoption, whose extreme critics consider placement of a child with other than natural mother tantamount to child abuse (Verrier 1993), many adoptees feel they have to legitimate their existence by being hyper-empathic to others. Ann’s narrative is an example of the confounding of the adoption process with the adoptive mother’s abuse, which harmed an already vulnerable child. Jill primitively retaliated because Ann was unable to fully contain her adoptive mother’s excessive maternal projective identification. Adopted by her aunt soon after birth, an African-American student of mine, Lynn, shared her experience of having two ‘mothers’ with me. Mama Josephine, Lynn’s adoptive mother, had been the ‘sub-Mom’ to her brothers and sisters, dropping out of school in fifth grade in order to become the caretaker for the younger children so her parents could work. In charge of raising her siblings she was naturally devastated when one brother was accidentally killed while playing out on the neighborhood street. Lynn’s natural mother, Mama Lily, was a younger sister of Mama Josephine. Mama Lily and Lynn’s older brother lived with Lynn’s grandmother, the matriarch of the family. When Lynn was born, she was sent to live out west with Mama Josephine and her husband, who did/could not have children. During the summertime Lynn would visit her grandmother and Mama Lily down south, where she had a loving relationship with each of them. Lynn remembers with great fondness Mama Lily’s affection and sense of play and humor. A firm disciplinarian, Mama Josephine was more concerned with raising Lynn to be a lady than with offering her support or encouragement. Still caught in her childhood caretaker identity, Mama Josephine did not feel free to ‘spoil’ Lynn with affection, and instead kept a critical distance from her. Luckily Lynn felt

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her adoptive father’s faith and love in her, and came to regard him as her primary attachment. While Mama Josephine and Mama Lily were good sisters and friends, so that there was no competition between them for Lynn’s attention, neither one was as close to Lynn as her father, Mama Josephine’s husband. Mama Josephine could not let the little baby girl she was charged with raising, by the family who so honored her contribution, crack her open. Opening her heart up to Lynn’s loving had the risk of tapping into Mama Josephine’s frozen grief about her younger brother, for whose death she blamed herself. As Lynn recounted the burdens placed on her second mother so early in life, she wondered if perhaps this unmourned death was why Mama Josephine had so much trouble being a loving mother. Here Mama Josephine’s ghosts prevented her from letting in the attachment with Lynn and using it to soften her inner struggles from a childhood filled with responsibility. The poignant outcome of this unmourned loss in the real relationship between adoptive mother and daughter is Lynn’s current reluctance to ‘give of herself ’ to her ailing mother, who is belatedly turning to her for closeness. Thus both adoptive mother and daughter missed out on a mutual exchange of unconditional love because of the tragic loss that lay unprocessed between them. A clinician who came to me for consultation wanted help working with an adoptive mother, Wendy, whose daughter, Yasmin, was adopted between the ages of three and four after spending several years in an orphanage in Africa. In many ways Wendy was still suffering from the narcissistic injury of not having been able to birth a child, so her need for Yasmin to conform to her expectations was palpable. Wendy and her husband John’s choice to adopt from this particular country had been inspired by the political repression which had caused Yasmin to be orphaned. Nonetheless Wendy was having trouble fathoming Yasmin’s accumulated deprivation – the loss of her mother through war and her motherland through adoption – because Wendy had not yet mourned her own losses. Instead enormous power struggles occurred between mother and child over Yasmin’s attempts to soothe herself by overeating. John was unable to pick up the slack in building an attachment with Yasmin since, as a rather cerebral armchair activist, he was not very emotionally present either. Thus, Yasmin continued to turn to food as the most reliable source of nurturing, one over which she could exert omnipotent control. Sadly,

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Yasmin still had not experienced the kind of primary maternal preoccupation in her adoptive home that might help her heal from devastating experiences of attachment and loss that she brought with her from another land. With infants or younger children, physical contact and the development of attachment in the realm of the skin ego (Anzieu 1989; Bick 1988) are vital. Cuddling, rocking, feeding, and all manner of affectionate exchanges such as kissing and hugging, as well as age-appropriate games that involve touching, including rough and tumble play, are crucial in the creation of a new bond. Later affection can make up for and mitigate an original loss through adoption, especially if other aspects of emotional holding are in place with non-biological mothers. Adoption after six to seven months of age may be more challenging because the loss of the original attachment figure, if there was one, is more traumatic to the child than during the first six months (Bowlby 1958). Still, a responsive adoptive mother can provide her child with a secure base by offering her new child physical holding along with emotional containment for pre-adoption losses. All children bloom when touched (physically and emotionally) in an attuned fashion. Children who have lost their original maternal bond especially need this source of Eros (Oxenhandler 2001). A lesbian couple (both Caucasian) came to me to consult about their four-year-old daughter, Tina, who had been adopted from the Third World, at five months. Left by her biological mother at the hospital, where for three weeks Tina survived minimal nursing care, lying in her urine and feces, the baby was taken into the home of friends of the couple who adopted her, for a foster stay until the inter-country paperwork could be completed. As the primary parent during infancy and the toddler years, one of the adoptive mothers, Joan, was called upon to contain the more primitive expressions of the girl’s early losses, enacted via tantrums. Further, Tina usually squirmed away from physical affection with either Joan or Toni, her other mother, communicating through projective identification her early trauma. While Joan would have to hold Tina physically to keep her from banging her head on the wall during these tantrums, Tina would volubly scream about this containment, while trying to hit her Mama, making Joan feel like a terrible mother. In making Joan feel bad, Tina was communicating her own experience as the abandoned baby, left all alone post-birth.

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The reason for the professional consultation was Tina’s escalation of these tantrums to daily fare in response to a change in her school, a loss that tapped into her previous injuries. While the parents were doing everything possible to contain and metabolize the girl’s rage and terror, enacted in attempts to hurt them or herself physically, they were understandably exhausted by how demanding it was to bear Tina’s distress, and bear witness to how badly she felt about herself. While crediting them for efforts to build the attachment despite such self-persecutory and rejecting behaviors on her part, I confirmed that physically holding Tina until she could calm down and neither harm herself nor them was the optimal parental response. Joan responded that Tina would use the ‘need to pee’ as a reason to be freed, and when released would resume her out of control behavior. I asked if Joan would mind if Tina peed on her. If Joan could bear this bodily evacuation, I suggested, while letting Tina know in words that she understood that Tina was making Joan feel what it was like when she was left in urine alone in her bed in the hospital as an infant, this might contain Tina. This way, Joan and Toni could convey to Tina that they had received and understood her projective identificatory communication on the body level, while still setting limits on the ‘bad object’ drama. This insight gave the parents renewed compassion, along with a behavioral plan for managing Tina’s urination, and they left feeling empowered. At our next meeting they reported this new understanding of the meaning of the ‘pee’ ploy permitted them to create more of a space between the projective identification from Tina and their parental absorption of it. Their behavioral containment of Tina’s acting out became less charged. As parental anxiety decreased, there was a concomitant abatement in the intensity and frequency of Tina’s enactment of her annihilation terror. Some time later Joan returned to do some work with me, including needing my help separating the excessive projective identification from her mother, who had been constantly agitated and anxious, from her own mothering identity. While Tina had been busy using Joan to heal her pre-adoption trauma, the girl’s wounds had often intersected with Joan’s worry about following in her own mother’s footsteps by repeating the overly anxious maternal style from her upbringing. Absorbing her daughter’s unbearable feelings, on top of Joan’s legacy from her own mother, made Joan doubt herself as a healing container-mother. As Tina benefited from her mothers’ greater calm in the face of her fits, she began

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to seek Joan out physically. Tina would lie on Joan belly to belly during rest time. One day she played a birth game in between Joan’s legs, later suckling with Joan. Because of her experiences of containment for her most unbearable feelings, Tina was finally able to let herself be held emotionally and physically by Joan. I kept reiterating that it was Joan’s capacity to provide Tina with a secure attachment that made it possible for Tina to heal near unbearable early losses. Meanwhile on her part, Joan was wrestling with her maternal ghost, which kept her from fully surrendering to the attachment with Tina. My reframing of her mothering in contrast to that of her mother helped Joan become more vulnerable with Tina. A sweet moment of mutual recognition and acknowledgment of differences followed. One day as Tina and Joan were resting belly to belly, Tina looked into her mother’s eyes, touched her own and then her mother’s skin, taking note of their different skin color with a kind of marvel. Here Tina could enjoy the joyous shock of difference in a tender intersubjective moment because Joan and Toni had been such persistent and loving container-mothers. Tina is now freed to continue her development with more ancestors than ghosts, because her history – including many physical and emotional memories from infancy – is shared by all family members. I take issue with the position that adoption leads to a primal wound (Verrier 1993) that can never be healed since I believe this ideology may contribute to a self-emptying prophecy. No doubt all adopted children struggle with the question of whether they are defective because their birthmother chose to give them away, or are special because birthmother and adoptive mother both wanted the best for them. Parents who are willing to persist in making emotional claims on their adoptive children, even in the face of strong projective identificatory processes due to previous losses on either side of the connection, will eventually be able to help their chosen child experience the most fundamental of human experiences: belonging. At her adoptive son’s bar mitzvah, a colleague of mine gave a speech to him before the synagogue congregation about how important it was for him to have come into their family. Citing temperamental (high-strung, intense, questioning) commonality between herself, her husband and their birthson, she explained lovingly what a mitzvah [gift in Hebrew] it was to have this son’s calming, even-handed, faith-filled being among them to help balance out the family. Her adoptive son, who was named ‘gift from

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God’ in Hebrew, knows that his belonging is secure due to this special role he has in the family because he is different.

Attachment and fostering Many of the attachment struggles in fostering are the same as in adoption, with the added twist that the ambiguous duration of the foster mother/child bond can heighten unconscious fears of loss on both sides. Especially if the foster placement is under the rubric of a reunification program, the foster mother will be understandably ambivalent about becoming too attached to the child, a reserve that may not be in the child’s best interests. As helping professionals we need to be clear in empowering foster parents with the adage: ‘It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’ If the attachment between foster child and parents is good and the parents decide to seek legal guardianship or adoption, the child may decide to test the safety of the container by expressing more negative or difficult feelings, creating the risk that parents may back off from a more permanent placement. Children who have come up through the foster care system usually have suffered from many insecure attachments, followed by frequent losses. Thus they will often act out in order to get the inevitable ‘boot’ over with. Foster and fost-adopt parents need to be educated about this self-emptying prophecy so they can mirror back to the children their understanding of the fear and rage about previous losses which motivate these testing behaviors. Further, foster parents need to be reminded about the bond-building aspects of providing empathy for these children, while they contain the child’s bond-rupturing behaviors, since it is progress for the child to be able to work out old losses on a new and stable caretaker, thereby firming up the fresh attachment. While giving an attachment training to foster parents, one foster mother, Ella, told us how she had planned to seek legal guardianship for her ten-year-old foster daughter, Tanya, as the first step toward adopting her. Tanya’s sister was in a group home for high-risk foster children, her mother strung out, in and out of prison. Ella described her efforts to help Tanya change from her ‘hood’ ways to becoming more of a lady. Just at the moment of finalization of legal guardianship, Tanya got caught stealing and there was some question if she should be moved to a group home.

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While Ella decided to keep Tanya, to whom she was deeply attached, Ella did back down from accepting legal guardianship in the face of Tanya’s provocative acting out. Following Winnicott’s (1971b) analysis of stealing as a sign of hope about recovery from the original deprivation, Ella needed help understanding this pre-legal guardianship communication. Ella did not grasp that the behavior of her daughter was a test which required behavioral punishment, accompanied by confrontation of the reversion to ‘hood’ ways just as the legal union between mother and daughter was about to be realized. Tanya may have needed help with her ‘survivor guilt’ and the loss of her identification with her natural kin (via loyalty to their ‘bad ways’). Instead Ella and Tanya managed to create a self-emptying prophecy, resuming the tenuous foster status of their relationship. Tanya’s therapist is quite concerned about the precocious ‘tough girl’ identity that her client exhibits, perhaps to defend against the loss of a more permanent placement, as well as to avoid the inner object loss of her kin, were she to surpass them by becoming a lady. Another little girl, Kim, had the following history. At seven days Kim was removed from her natural mother because of this woman’s history of breaking bones in the abuse of an older sister. From seven days to three weeks Kim was in an emergency foster home. Until three months she was placed with a foster mother who ultimately found Kim’s inconsolable crying and self-harming behavior (rubbing her feet together until they were raw, scratching at her head until it bled) unbearable, requesting her removal from the home. At four months Kim was hospitalized for 11 days because of failure to thrive. Another agency picked the case up and by seven months she was placed with a couple who had three biological children, the youngest a pre-adolescent. The new foster parents hoped eventually to adopt Kim. Kim continued to cry uncontrollably and to rub her feet and scratch her belly, as well as exhibiting developmental delay in speech. With the help of the therapist, who came to me for consultation, the parents were coached about the need for them to contain the self-mutilation while holding Kim physically and emotionally. The foster mother was encouraged to bear witness to Kim’s expression of her anguish over the sequence of losses she had endured as a young child. Over time Kim’s fits abated some, but recurred whenever the family was going to visit another home. When the therapist suggested this might have to do with Kim’s fear of being placed in yet another home, the parents began to help

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Kim by warning her verbally about all transitions, including reassuring her that she was still going to be part of their family after they went out. By two and a half years, Kim had made progress in her verbal development, and her destructive behavior was no longer directed against herself, but primarily directed at the foster mother, when she did have one of her less frequent fits. With the trauma Kim had endured, healing was going to be a long haul, but the kind, compassionate, firm maternal containment of her outbursts by her fost-adopt mother augur well for her future resumption of development as the bright and resilient girl that she is by nature. Visitation with the biological parents can often lead to an increase in the acting out behavior of foster children. One 15-year-old girl, Lee, who had had the good fortune of having a long-term foster placement (about ten years), as well as a dedicated psychotherapist, Ms. Owen, throughout this placement, was engaged in teen testing behavior with the foster mother, Jackie. This testing behavior became especially intense when Lee’s natural mother was released from prison, with rage-filled adolescent communication pushing Jackie’s buttons. When Jackie was provoked too far she would make comments about Lee going to another placement. The therapist and I agreed that Ms. Owen needed to confront Jackie and have her desist from making these abandonment threats unless she really meant them. Further, Ms. Owen supported Jackie by confirming how demanding parenting a teenager could be. Similarly, the therapist confronted Lee about her provocative behavior, suggesting that even if she were to leave the foster placement to go live with her mother, she need not create a rupture to make it happen. With Ms. Owen as containing go-between, Jackie and Lee were able to step back from mutual projective identificatory processes and separate with the love and loss between them expressed more consciously. This way neither Jackie nor Lee needed to spuriously create a more intense and tragic loss in order for Lee to be reunified with her mother. The gift for Lee was that she had three maternal figures to carry with her inside as resources: birthmother, foster mother and therapist. A student of mine worked at an agency which had received funding for a parenting group for mothers about to reunify with their children. These mothers, too, needed to be coached about the abandonment feelings and testing behaviors they would be called upon to contain when reunited with their children. Providing these mothers with group support and

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containment could help prevent them from getting discouraged too quickly and resorting to their previous substance abuse to cope with feeling inadequate as mothers, thereby risking another loss for themselves and their children. Like children who move between a mother and stepmother, the transitions between foster mother and natural mother can be fraught with the threads of each person’s loss. Each member of this triangle deserves compassion: the child for no longer living with mother and being unsure about returning to her; the mother for having had to give up her child because of her difficulties mothering or being out of control in her life; and the foster mother for knowing she may only be temporary in the child’s life, while picking up the pieces for the parent’s errors. The more each mother can help the child hold onto the other mother internally as an object, the less traumatic will be the separation and reunification for the child. It doesn’t help the child for the foster mother to over-identify with his abandonment and rage in the face of parental failures. As helping professionals and community members we can intervene to help foster mothers provide the best possible container for the child, who is hoping against hope for reunification, by giving these caretakers credit for their essential role in the child’s life. In a foster parent training program in Delaware, Attachment & Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC), ten sessions of about an hour each are conducted in the home of the caregiver (Dozier, Dozier and Manni 2002). This program attempts to retrain foster parents about how to provide nurturing to their new charges, who often behave in ways that push their caretakers away, due to a history of abuse and neglect, poor prenatal life and disruption in the infants’ primary relationships. As attachment experiences subsume complementarity and contingency between mother and child, ‘avoidant’ attachment children have been found to have mothers who had primarily ‘dismissive states of mind’ in responses to an attachment inventory (George, Kaplan and Main 1984), as well as dismissing the dependency needs of their children. ‘Ambivalent’ – more recently referred to as ‘resistant’ (Main 1995) – attachment children had mothers who were often ‘preoccupied’ with their own attachment issues on the inventory as well as inconsistent in their responses to the attachment cues of the child (Main and Solomon 1990).

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Because the majority of these young foster children develop disorganized attachments if their foster parents are unable to provide them with secure attachment experiences – even if the caretaker is ‘dismissive’ or ‘preoccupied’ rather than disorganized herself – the ABC program attempts to educate foster parents about attachment issues and the profound difference they can make in the lives of their foster children if they parent consistently and reliably, in a manner attuned to the child’s needs. Further the ten-step intervention program encourages foster parents to look at their own issues, which might interfere with their provision of sensitive nurturing to their foster children. Finally, the training attempts to build the child’s sense of agency by increasing parental succorance in response to direct – rather than hidden, defensive or oblique – expressions of need. By proffering foster parents this training container, the intervention boosts the effectiveness of these parents as they help their children (usually under two years) heal from early adversity. One delightful shower I attended was put on by two gay men who had just had the placement of their second fost-adopt child finalized. Included among the guests were the previous temporary foster mother and the two new grandmothers of the child being welcomed into the family. Both men were committed to including all the significant caretakers in their children’s lives so that further losses on the part of the children could be minimized.

Projective identification and the stepmother Some of the complexities of stepmothering also have to do with projective identification that permeates the exchange between stepmother and child during the attachment process. In her incisive novel Other People’s Children, Trollope (1998) compassionately describes the experience of a stepmother, Josie, who must bear the primal abandonment and rage of her stepchildren, Becky, Rufus and Clare, learning only over time how to contain it, despite the fact that she has her own son. Because their mother, Nadine, had been decidedly self-absorbed even before the divorce from their father, Becky, Rufus and Clare had long experienced rejection and neglect while being called upon to take care of their emotionally unstable mother. After their father, Matthew, finally leaves the marriage and his detached wife, Nadine escalates her demands on the children by claiming

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to be a victim at the hands of her ex-husband. Josie becomes the target for projections of the children’s feelings about their mother, whom they dare not cross as they fear Nadine will collapse since she can barely manage to keep her life together. Protecting themselves from further loss by not using Matthew as a container, Josie becomes the repository for the overwhelmed and furious feelings the children have towards father for leaving them to cope with Nadine and towards mother due to her pull to have the children rescue her out of her misery after the divorce. A turning point in the stepmother/child bonds occurs when Josie helps out her adolescent stepdaughter, Becky, in going to visit Nadine, whose self-destruction has exceeded the children’s capacity to handle it. In this encounter Nadine physically attacks Josie. As Josie and Becky manage to escape and stand shakily by the car, Josie feels for the first time a stirring of hope in Becky’s reliance on her. Subsequently, Josie is able to take the stepmother/child drama less personally, stepping back from identifying with the children’s projections, in order to offer the three children her good faith in building a different type of family together, an offer that the children in their way accept. Having proven herself to be a resilient and non-retaliatory container, as well as having borne witness to Nadine at her worst, Josie shows the children she has a different maternal stance to offer them as a stepmother – one which need not endanger the real bond with their mother, although it may shift the children’s internal loyalty to Nadine. With 20 years of reflection, a colleague, Darlene, realizes that her stepson, Jack, tried to communicate his losses to her when she became his stepmother. Unlike his two older adolescent sisters, Denise and Cary, ages 15 and 16, who lived with their mother, 13-year-old Jack lived fulltime with his father, Randy, a man in his forties who had coupled with 24-year-old Darlene. The major source of conflict between Randy and his ex-wife, Fiona, had to do with Jack’s emotional problems and tendency toward impulsive behavior. In fact, Fiona had detached from Jack to the point where Randy was more like his ‘mother,’ and Fiona his ‘uninvolved father.’ As a stepmother, Darlene yielded readily to primary maternal preoccupation and fell in love with Jack. Mothering Jack gave Darlene a second chance, a way to make reparation for her choice to have an abortion when she was 17, and they spent hours of companionable time together. Probably because of Darlene’s devotion to Jack, she provided him with a

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deeply needed container. Not surprisingly Jack began to act out his worst sense of himself as the ‘bad boy’ unworthy of his mother’s love. From minor substance abuse with friends, Jack escalated to committing so many felonies in one afternoon that he was sent up to the Youth Authority in ninth grade. Jack’s sisters were very grateful to Darlene over the next six years for her persistence in mothering Jack, especially since they saw Fiona washing her hands of their brother. Sadly for Darlene, she began to identify with Jack’s ‘bad boy’ projections to the point that she felt it was her failure as his stepmother, and her fault for joining the family as a youngish stepmother, that caused him to embark on such a self-destructive path. Rather than seeing his outbursts and self-sabotage as tests requiring the parents to set really firm limits, Darlene and Randy took Jack’s failures to rehabilitate post-release from prison personally. Because they lacked input – during the permissive 1970s – which might have empowered them in their arduous parental job of containing Jack, Darlene and Randy had trouble holding Jack accountable for his self-destructive and antisocial behaviors. Instead they identified with Jack’s projections to the point of believing Jack’s negative sense of self, becoming angry and defeated by his ‘bad boy’ drama. Poignantly through his self-emptying prophecy Jack managed to convince the two people who kept him in mind and loved him the most that his character was irredeemable. To this day Darlene wrestles with her conscience about what she could have done differently as Jack’s stepmother to help him vanquish his inner Greek chorus of bad introjects so that he could have learned to mentalize rather than act out his impulses. At the time, Darlene’s own previous loss may have inhibited her sense that she was entitled to fight for Jack, since unconsciously she felt her failure as a stepmother was another stage in her punishment for a teenage pregnancy. Like Jack, Darlene was vulnerable to the sense that everything was her fault, an omnipotent strategy for delaying the more strenuous process of mourning. Another stepmother, Laura, endured the legacy of a very early loss on the part of her eldest stepdaughter, Karen, whom she met at age 12. Karen was the family renegade, drawing the focus on herself as the ‘identified patient,’ thereby diverting attention from all the complexities between two contentiously connected stepfamilies. She was often quite rejecting, contrary and disrespectful of Laura, and this stance changed very little over the decade Laura was in her life. Some of this behavior was motivated by

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Karen’s loyalty to her mother, Leah, who was threatened by Laura’s stepmotherly efforts with Karen and her younger sister, Claire, as well as being developmentally driven by Karen’s entry into adolescence. However, another level of the stepmother/daughter drama was the deeply unconscious projective identification from Karen’s infancy that Laura was called upon to abide. Karen’s conception had been the unwanted pregnancy that forced the marriage between Leah and Karen’s father, Tim. Unlike Leah, who had conflicted feelings about Karen from pregnancy on, Laura could be a much better container for Karen’s baby feelings of rejection projected into her. Laura most likely helped Karen rework her infant experience of Leah’s ambivalence during adolescence by identifying with and metabolizing the feelings of being ‘unwanted,’ since it was too dangerous for either Leah or Karen to be conscious about the negative underpinnings of Karen’s parents’ marriage. Sadly for Laura, Tim had always given primacy to his paternal bonds over the couple relationship, so that when Karen and Claire left home there was insufficient glue between Laura and Tim and they separated. During our interview, Laura was belatedly able to take credit for all the invisible, non-reciprocal bonding which permitted her stepdaughters to avail themselves of her stepmotherly containment as they reworked the family ghosts. Laura could then reclaim Karen and Claire, internally, cushioning the loss of their actual connections with her, which were waning with time and distance. Similarly, Laura was able to see how being ‘used’ (Winnicott 1968) as a maternal object by her stepdaughters was predicated upon her having been willing to proffer them primary maternal preoccupation. Despite their outward diffidence toward their stepmother, Karen and Claire used her internally to get themselves launched, identifying with her by following in Laura’s professional footsteps. Because stepmothers usually join an extended stepfamily as either third or fourth parent, their contribution to their children’s well-being – by keeping them in mind, enabling them to rework loss, fill in holes in early attachment experiences or repair previous parental misattunements – is often overlooked or taken for granted both by the stepmothers and other members of the family. One stepmother, Sage, explained to me that the lore passed on to her as a new stepmother was about not interfering with the parents, while establishing a friendly relationship with the stepchildren. After many years of pursuing her passion in art, marrying

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and divorcing another artist, Sage became involved with a father, Ron, who had separated from his wife, Sylvia, when their daughter, Carol, was 11 years old. Carol also had an older half-sister who was extremely close to Sylvia, in contrast to Carol who chose to move in with her father not long after the separation. While Carol was cordial to Sage once she moved in with father and daughter, the primacy of Carol and Ron’s bond, subsuming blurry boundaries, was evident to Sage, who accepted her relegation to an insignificant position in the family. Reluctant to make claims on their relationship, Sage never felt she mattered much to Carol as a stepmother. Still Sage and Carol quietly created an attachment with one another, sharing art projects and other activities while they enjoyed a ‘ground level affinity.’ Over time Carol began to share with her stepmother her sense of having been unimportant to both parents whom she felt paid her no attention as a young child, a feeling Sage deeply identified with in describing her early stepmothering – ‘inept, intimidated, afraid, confused, didn’t establish myself as a force, had no place’ – which colored Sage’s sense of her maternal capacities long thereafter. Meanwhile Sage’s calm steadiness contained Carol as she reworked early attachment experiences, and seemed to help Carol come to terms with some of her parents’ failures without risking her bonds with her actual parents. Although Ron and Sylvia had high expectations about her future accomplishments, Carol felt that they had not actively intervened early enough to determine why she did so poorly in school. It was Sage’s understated advice about how to pursue her dreams that showed Carol that Sage was keeping her in mind when Carol’s lack of effort and dyslexia converged to create an academic crisis in high school. Many of Carol’s eventual career choices were guided by Sage’s input during Carol’s late teenage and early adult years, even though Sage continued to feel peripheral. Sage acknowledged that much of her reluctance to make claims on Carol as a stepmother was overdetermined by cultural notions about stepmothers (see Chapter 6), while also recognizing that her unresolved grief about her mother’s death at age 11 contributed to her difficulty in establishing a place for herself as second mother in the stepfamily. Having mourned the death of her mother more fully since becoming a stepmother about 18 years ago, Sage has been able to reclaim her late mother’s legacy in noting the way she attended to her teenage stepdaughter by supporting Carol’s projects and dreams, like

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her mother had done for her. This has also enabled Sage to take credit for her part in helping Carol develop into the person she is at 30-something. Consequently, Sage is finally feeling empowered to claim her place in the stepfamily as a grandmother alongside Sylvia. Lest I be misunderstood as only fathoming the challenges of loss for the stepmother, mothers, too, have to survive enormous losses with the break-up of a marriage and the sharing of their children with another woman. One mother, Rose, told me of how her husband, Rick, left her for another (younger) woman, Zoe, to whom her very young children became quickly attached. It was only with time, as she mourned the loss of her husband and the betrayal of their marriage, that Rose could imagine developing a working co-mother relationship with Zoe. Thus, until Rose can get to the other side of mourning, she will have a hard time dealing with Zoe as a whole person. Similarly, the more Rose works through her grief and lays it to rest, the less her daughters will be burdened by her unresolved losses. Joy met her stepchildren at ages three and a half (Lisa) and eight and a half (Sam) when she became involved with their father, Larry. At first, there were tensions between Joy and Corinne, the children’s mother. Corinne was especially fearful that Lisa would choose stepmother Joy over her. In Corinne’s fantasy Lisa would prefer the bond to Joy, because mothers and daughters have more difficult and conflicted relationships than mothers and sons. In part due to the poor parenting of Lisa and Sam by their father, Joy and Corinne became close allies once the losses created by Larry and Corinne’s divorce could be worked through. Unfortunately the very aspects of Larry’s personality that made him unwilling and unable to enter the fatherhood portal with Lisa and Sam, or by having another child with Joy, also led to the demise of his marriage with Joy, who divorced him after about five years. Nonetheless she and Corinne continued to have a companionable co-mother relationship, saving seats for one another at the children’s school events, getting along much better than either woman could with Larry. Joy told me with tears in her eyes of one time when Corinne shared her regret that she did not have a co-parenting relationship with Larry, but how grateful she was to have Joy as a co-mother to their children. Facing their losses helped two mothers – one biological, one stepmother – avoid imposing projective identificatory dramas on their mutual children, while creating the resource of two attachments to help the

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children through two divorces and toward an acknowledgment of their father’s feet of clay. Corinne, whom I also interviewed, was not quite as effusive about the co-mother relationship as Joy had been. She was very clear that she was Lisa and Sam’s mother and that while she was grateful for Joy’s practical support and help, since she was a single parent, she was at times puzzled by Joy’s investment in the mother/stepmother bond. Still Corinne could see how her children benefited by their attachment with Joy and she was thankful that Joy’s involvement with a new man who had two children about an hour’s drive away did not deter Joy from continuing to be active in Lisa and Sam’s life. As the stepmother, it made sense that Joy would be more inclusive of Corinne than vice versa, since she was the one who could not take for granted her access to the children after divorcing Larry. Further, when Joy had to face her own infertility, and mourning helped her use the bonds with Lisa and Sam to cushion her loss, her attachment to them naturally became more precious.

Conclusion It has been the thesis in this chapter that a child’s loss can color the unfolding connection between himself and an adoptive, foster or stepmother. The more unresolved losses can be mourned or processed, the less the emerging attachment will be diluted by projective identification from the child towards the mother or vice versa. Discerning projective/introjective processes due to unmourned or incompletely mourned losses and distinguishing them from differences between mother and child – who will have to get to know one another in order to build the bond – is vital to the creation of a new and viable attachment. While not much has been said about fathers, partners and other companions along the non-biological journey in parenting, it should be noted that support from these sources is essential to the blossoming of such attachments. In families adopting older children, or in stepfamilies, it is crucial that the father (or co-mother in lesbian couples) be empathic to the mother’s struggles with rejecting, shadowing or other behaviors unique to attachment-shy children, without dismissing the pain they cause a new mother. Having partners or companions to bear witness to one’s parental anguish, while holding the hope for the mother/child bond when it feels

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impossible to build, is critical so that non-biological mothers can go on despite excruciating uncertainty along the way. In order to contain primitive communications from the child, the mother herself will need containment – not judgments – from her loved ones. As in biological bonds, a significant difference in temperament can require more effort on the second mother’s part as she builds the attachment. The chances for different rhythms and cadences between mother and child do increase in non-biological mothering bonds. Nevertheless just as many low-energy biological mothers may have difficulty coping with a high-energy child, as their adoptive, foster or stepmother counterparts who are dealt similar cards. Perhaps when it’s your own you don’t have the luxury of attributing the problem to the fictive nature of the connection. The question becomes: is it the nature of a non-biological bond or is it the mothers who struggle to create primary relatedness that leave so many adoptees, foster or stepchildren vulnerable to further loss? Some adoptive, foster and stepmothers may need special help to finish their mourning of lost dreams, so they do not have to project their unresolved losses onto the child. Meanwhile adoptive, foster or stepmothers are not necessarily more likely to have ghosts in the nursery than biological mothers. It is incumbent on all mothers to tackle these ghosts to prevent the intergenerational transmission of trauma and loss, which will result in an insecure attachment at best, and a long-term bad object drama at worst. There are certainly as many tales of the triumph of the human spirit, where children are made to feel a special belonging via adoption, fostering or stepmothering, as there are situations where love cannot triumph over loss. The work of primary maternal preoccupation is to temper the unconscious power and charge of the child’s overwhelming feelings, suffering and torment, as they are lived with the adoptive, step or foster mother. The more such mothers can be coached about the bond-building meaning of such primitive communications, the more the children they claim will have the experience of being able to resume development rather than succumbing to despair because there was no container for early trauma and loss. A carefully built attachment can give the child a sense of safety and protection in the world. Similarly a mother who can hold her child’s mind – with all its anxieties, fears, hopes, dreams – in her own mind and heart gives the most essential gift of belonging to a child who may not

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have had such a center previously. The beauty of the gift of parenting – through birth or not – is that it offers us the opportunity to crack ourselves wide open by being willing to risk loving a new generation.

Note 1

Portions of this chapter were previously published in Waterman (2001a, pp.277–300).

4

Holding the Mirror, Holding Up the Ideal Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who’s the fairest of them all? (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

Mirroring and other building blocks for the self In the Snow White fairy tale, the stepmother Queen cannot bear the narcissistic injury of having her stepdaughter, Snow White, surpass her in becoming the fairest in the land. Consumed by envy, the Queen devises evil plots to destroy Snow White, whose youth impels the Queen into the terrain of loss and regret that accompanies aging (Schectman 1993). Sadly the Queen was too self-absorbed to be able to pass her baton of femininity on to Snow White by mirroring her stepdaughter’s bloom into womanhood. Instead the Queen craved all the flattering mirroring and raged when the mirror lauded Snow White’s beauty over that of the mid-life Queen. Through the loving gleam in my eye – which overflowed with orgullo [Spanish for pride] at their graduation from high school – my stepdaughters saw reflected a vision of themselves as young women who could be proud of their accomplishments. In fact one of the main maternal provisions, which my stepdaughters came to count on, was my willingness to reflect back to them who they were becoming, in order to discover themselves in the very act of being recognized and seen. Just as an infant discovers the essential experience of pleasure in interacting with the world by having his own excitement over grasping a colorful rattle matched by

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his mother’s thrill in their mutual play, so do all children need to discover the authenticity of their own feelings through such parental attention and reflection in order to create a ‘true self’ (Winnicott 1960). Often, one or the other of my stepdaughters would come home from high school feeling insecure about a particular exchange with a friend. Rather than minimizing or glossing over the struggle for self-confidence (‘don’t worry, be happy’) I would listen and reflect my understanding about how that interaction could make her upset or anxious. By conveying my empathy, my stepdaughter would feel seen by me. This ‘mirroring’ of the child’s inner being, conveyed in so many ways – through the mother’s eyes, through her body as she matches the child’s energy level, or through words – is one way that adoptive, foster or stepmothers can contribute to their children’s development of an essential Self. Maintaining the life and growth of a child’s self is at least as important as that of their bodies, as both are subsumed in the life-growth theme. There is an old adage about the ‘eyes being the window to the soul.’ One of my stepdaughters was performing well below her potential when I first met her, leading her to be caught in a chronic sense of defeat regrettable for someone so young. Not only did I reflect back my understanding of her talents, but I also began to challenge her inner image of herself by letting her know what – ‘vigour, greatness and perfection’ (Kohut and Wolf 1978, p.414) – I saw in her. Proffering my stepdaughter a new mirror permitted her to reclaim underdeveloped parts of herself, to have faith in as yet undiscovered potential and to grow more fully into the person I knew she was capable of being. The mutuality of gaze between parent and child can foster the creation of a connection. A friend of mine, Chinita, adopted a toddler who had been through several foster placements. She told me about the importance of his gaze in her choice. Chinita and her husband were an African-American couple who could not have children. Having decided to adopt, they found themselves in great demand as a family placement for the legions of adoptable African-American foster children (called ‘fost-adopt’ children in California). More ambivalent than her husband about becoming a parent, Chinita had met with several children but felt no connection with them, and so had deferred adoption. While the social worker warned about the traumatic history of this particular boy, fully expecting my friend to refuse this placement as well, Chinita was

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transfixed by the exchange of heartfelt eye contact with this boy. In fact Chinita was most touched by the boy’s courageous effort to maintain his dignity by not crying even as his longings welled up in his eyes. To everyone’s delight Chinita felt she had seen into the depths of his soul and that she could claim him as her own. Janis Cook Newman (2001) and her husband Ken had a parallel experience at a meeting for people considering adoption of children from Russian orphanages. Watching a video of various children, one of whom the speaker felt shared the same eyes as Janis, Janis and Ken were so haunted by the stare of little Alex that in time they gave up their plans to pursue in vitro and spent many months overcoming bureaucratic hurdles in the U.S. and Russia in order to finally bring 15-month-old Alex home with them. Another couple, whose son I have seen in psychotherapy, told me about having been sent pictures of two blond boys, the same age, from the orphanage in Siberia. Unable to choose because the boys looked so much alike, the couple decided to flip a coin. It was only when the ‘wrong’ boy was chosen through this method that the about-to-be-adoptive mother realized that ‘her’ boy had the eyes whose soul she knew she wanted to claim. Seeing the essence of a child and then being able to hold up a mirror for him is essential in fostering the life and growth of a previously forsaken child.

Mirroring According to Kohut and Wolf, the development of a Self with ‘cohesion, vigor or harmony’ (Kohut and Wolf 1978, p.414) is predicated on a child’s experience of certain kinds of caretaking functions. When the child can use his caretakers – mother, father or other kin – as emotional extensions of him or herself, much like a limb on the body, then the child’s healthy self-esteem is fostered. Kohut (1977) describes three specific functions – mirroring, idealization and twinship – which comprise essential ‘self-building’ provisions in both childhood and throughout life. By availing themselves of my mirroring, my stepdaughters could not only discover untapped aspects of who they were, but they could also revision themselves internally. Through my mirroring they developed more self-confidence in trusting their own feelings and intuition to guide them in dealings with people and in developing life goals in line with their strengths, talents and limitations.

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But parental mirroring is not limited to the reflection of positive feelings, as any mother of a two-year-old who yells ‘I hate you, Mommy!!’ can confirm. Many stepmothers I have met, both with and without their own children, complain about long periods of being cast in the ‘wicked stepmother’ role by stepchildren who leave them out, ignore them or treat them disrespectfully. A natural response on the stepmother’s part is either to try harder or to withdraw from the interaction when stepchildren are being so oppositional (Burns 2001). Often warming up to a stepmother takes a while because the child is protecting him or herself against another loss, after having seen his or her parents’ marriage disintegrate. One seven-year-old friend asked her new stepmother bluntly: ‘Will we still be girlfriends if you and Dad get mad at each other?’ A year or so later this same girl gave her stepmother a homemade card for mother’s day with the greeting ‘Happy Girlfriend’s Day!’ on it, clearly acknowledging her understanding of the stepmother’s caring role in her life, without elevating her to the status of ‘mother.’ There is a certain wisdom in the children’s resistance to investing their affection in a stepmother until a track record between stepmother and stepchildren, not to mention between stepmother and father, is established. For a time, therefore, mirroring the more negative or anxious feelings expressed by stepchildren may be the way to earn their trust, as the stepmother conveys she does not require ‘false love.’ One stepmother, Diane, who became involved in her stepson’s life at age three went out of her way to convey her understanding that she was a caring adult in his life, though not his mother, while respecting his need to compartmentalize his life at father’s home and his life at mother’s home. Over time her stepson, Tony, would accidentally call Diane ‘Mom.’ Seeing his chagrin about these slips Diane suggested he refer to her as his ‘spare Mom.’ In adolescence Tony moved in with Diane and his father, Shawn, nearly fulltime because mother’s health was deteriorating due to a chronic illness. At that point Tony told Diane that she was his ‘secondary maternal unit,’ which she delightedly felt was a graduation in her status from ‘spare Mom.’ Given that most stepchildren are likely to feel caught in a loyalty bind between mother and stepmother for some period of time, simply mirroring the ambivalence about the relationship with the stepmother may be enough. Or alternatively giving the child space to feel for themselves their attachment to the stepmother can go a long way to gathering a stepchild’s

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respect, because the stepmother is showing she is able to see the child for who and where he or she is. One of my daughters thought I expected her to call me ‘Mom’ after a couple of years of living together, and obliquely apologized for ‘forgetting’ to do so. As I neither had such an expectation nor felt it was her genuine wish to address me this way, I told her calling me ‘Barbara’ was just fine. A number of years later, for reasons that had an important meaning to her, she began to call me ‘Mom,’ which at that point felt real and authentic. Her sister, on the other hand, about four years into our relationship, would alternately introduce me as her mom, or her stepmom, depending on how much stepmother/teenager conflict we were engaged in at the time. Once out of the adolescent doldrums she decided on ‘Mama B.’ as a genuine term of address for the mothering place I had in her life. Jean, a friend who is a long-time stepmother, regretted not having better mirrored her stepdaughter when she was a little girl. Jean got quite close to her stepdaughter, Toni, then aged six, some years after the divorce of Toni’s parents. Toni’s mother, Shana, was quite threatened by the bond between Jean and Toni, feeling that it undermined the primacy of Toni’s loyalty to her ‘true’ mother. Jean, seeing the way in which Toni was being torn up by these dynamics, chose to take a step back in her stepmothering, so as to make the stepmother/mother contest less troubling for Toni. Before going off to college a decade later, Toni was finally able to tell Jean that this shift in their attachment had felt like a terrible rejection. With 20/20 hindsight Jean wishes that she had remained more present and mirrored Toni’s loyalty dilemma to her rather than putting her empathy into action by becoming more distant. This mirroring might have better served Toni in coping with the loss of her nuclear family and given her a feeling that there was at least one parent who saw her struggles to meet Shana’s expectations post-divorce. Another stepmother, Frances, had moved in with Dan, father of Arlene, 16, and Diane, 13. Early on in her stepmother/daughter bonding process, Frances fine-tuned her efforts to mother based on the reactions of these two teens. For example, one time Arlene, the more rebellious of the two girls, had a fit when Frances reprimanded her for screaming at Dan. A major shift occurred between Frances and Arlene after Frances wrote a note of apology to Arlene, acknowledging that she had jumped in as a co-parent ‘too soon.’ Here Frances’s recognition of Arlene’s separateness

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gave this adolescent an experience of a parent respecting her autonomy. Subsequently, Arlene became more open to an attachment with Frances, and began to use her for mentoring in the college application/leaving home process. Thus by showing empathy for her stepdaughter’s need to receive recognition for her adolescent growth toward independence, Frances showed her good faith in efforts to attune to Arlene. Diane, too, responded to this important exchange by including Frances in her teen fashion quest, using her increasingly as a positive mirror for her emerging femininity. Foster mothers and parents who adopt older children often have their hands full in terms of the suffering they need to mirror for their children. One African-American boy struggled with survivor guilt because he, unlike his sister who ended up in a group home, was about to be adopted by a solid family. In part due to gains he had made in psychotherapy that had taken him through foster care into this ‘final’ placement, the boy began to tell his parents what it had really been like growing up in a drug-abusing family, with garbage and excrement throughout the home one indication of the extreme neglect he and his sister had suffered. His about-to-be adoptive parents became so upset over the level of trauma this nine-year-old boy was sharing with them that they decided to end their plans to adopt him. It was beyond their capacity to bear witness to the import of their potential son’s suffering at the hands of his biological family. While the boy did end up in a decent foster placement with the minister of his church, his hopes for a family to call his own were dashed after this fost-adopt family fled from recognition of his pain (Gibbins 1999). Adoptive parents such as these would have benefited from the boy’s therapist’s help in handling their reactions to hearing the boy’s narrative about his life prior to the safety and protection of their home – which permitted him to recount the horror of his early-life experiences – especially since his story rekindled memories from the adoptive mother’s history which she preferred to keep buried. Similarly, the therapist might have helped the adoptive parents understand the meaning of the boy’s recounting of his trauma to them, for example in inviting their rejection out of his survivor guilt, and his need for them to know the ‘worst’ about him on the way to deepening his attachment to his adoptive family. Because of multiple placements, children who have come up through the foster care system may have suffered from many insecure attachments,

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followed by frequent losses. Thus they will often put their worst foot forward the closer a placement gets to finalization, in their effort to take control over another anticipated rejection. The foster, fost-adopt or adoptive parents need to be apprised about this self-emptying prophecy, so they can mirror back to the children their understanding of the fear and rage about previous losses which motivate these testing behaviors. Further, such parents need to be reminded about the bond-building aspects of providing empathy for these children, while they contain the child’s bond-rupturing behaviors, since it is progress for the child to be able to express old angry or abandoned feelings to a new and stable caretaker, thereby working through previous trauma. Similarly, social workers who carry these difficult cases need to be reminded that a child who rails against his foster placement may be trying to take control over another expected ‘boot’ with an ‘I’ll-leave-youbefore-you-leave-me’ strategy. Some years ago I consulted regularly with a group of foster care workers… A worker came to the group for help with John, a twelve-year-old boy, who was demanding to be moved from his foster home. During every monthly visit he would lodge complaints against his foster parents and threaten to run away if his worker didn’t remove him. Her question for the group was whether to shift him to another foster family or wait until he was old enough for placement in a group home. As we talked more, other pieces of the story emerged. He had been in several placements prior to this one. He had been threatening to run away for nearly a year and was planning his get-away for his eighteenth birthday – some six years in the future! [italics added]. At the time, the worker’s question about the planned move struck me as quite strange. If a troubled teenager living with his biological parents came to us asserting vehemently and angrily that he was going to run away, I wondered if our first – or second, or nth – thought would be to remove him from his home permanently. In this way ‘removing’ and ‘moving’ can too easily become the ubiquitous solution for problems encountered by children, parents, and workers in the foster care system. (Heineman 2002a, pp.6–8)

This social worker was joining John in the language of loss, which permeates the foster care system. While reacting to the ‘run away’ threat with a

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sense of needing to remove John, the social worker had thus far desisted, thereby implicitly recognizing the complexity of his feelings: There are various possible paraphrases and interpretations of John’s on-going commentary on his foster home, including: ‘You’d better get me out of here before I decide to leave. No rush.’ ‘Things are okay for now, but I know I can’t stay forever.’ ‘In case I get kicked out, just know I was planning to leave anyway.’ ‘Don’t think you can just dump me and forget about me – things aren’t perfect, you know.’ Or, ‘I know I have to leave when I’m eighteen – don’t think I’m planning to stay when I’m not wanted.’ When the social worker presented this case for consultation, it initially appeared that she had heard only John’s complaints and his requests to be removed from his foster home. Her explicit question was not whether to move him, but where and when… Over the year of his placement in this particular home she had not acquiesced in his insistence for a change of living arrangements. Apparently she recognized that John was not in danger, that this was not a situation that demanded immediate or even swift action. However, she did not perceive the inherent contradiction between her past actions and her future plans. Neither was she consciously aware that she was talking to John as if she heard only the complaining part of his message and acting as if she heard only the satisfied part of his message. When pressed about the reasons for planning to move John, she explained that he had run away before and she was worried that he would again. (Heineman 2002a, pp.15–16)

Often the original removal of a foster child out of a neglectful or abusive situation is in fact the appropriate intervention. Sadly, after several placements a foster child has learned that he cannot count on the fabric of a home, that people will disappear abruptly, and that he has to care for himself rather than having adults on whom he can count. Ending up in a placement where belonging may be a possibility is positively terrifying for such children. Rightfully they are wary of letting down their defensive, ‘I don’t need anyone’ stance, lest they foolishly trust, only to be emotionally dropped again. It is vital for a foster child, his parents, and even his worker, to recognize the enormous power of a child’s ambivalence about daring to hope for a loving bond in a system where most children are lost rather than found.

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In helping step, foster or adoptive children know they are understood in the complexity and ambivalence of their feelings, their ‘new’ mothers can convey a wish to understand the inner emotional experiences of their chosen children. By legitimating the expression of all authentic affects, good or bad, while setting limits on behavioral acting out of noxious feelings, these mothers invite their children to share the truth about their innermost feelings. By conveying their desire to recognize and empathize with the essential nature of their children as they rework old trauma, these new mothers enable their children to continue their growth and development.

Idealization The second self ‘building block’ for children is having caretakers, either mother or father, to look up to because they are seen as ‘bigger and better,’ and therefore a source of strength and calming. Children with biological or non-biological parents whom they can emulate – because of their success, power, beauty, creativity, intelligence or integrity – feel good about themselves by association. For a time having a parent who seems infallible or omnipotent permits the child to ‘merge’ with a source of calmness. By providing a larger than life soothing presence when life’s potential disillusionments or upsets threaten their children, idealizable parents cushion their children’s encounters with the harsher aspects of reality. For example, adopted children need to be able to lean on their parents’ greater strength for comfort as they gradually make meaning of having been given up for adoption. Then we were driving home and had gone out shopping for her fourth birthday. We were coming home, and she asked, ‘Why would a woman who grew a baby give that baby away?’ I said, ‘Well, sometimes a person who grows a baby is young, or she really did not plan to grow a baby. Perhaps the woman would really like to be a mother, but realizes that she is not prepared to be a mother.’ Virginia persisted, ‘But why would a mother give up a baby?’ I said, ‘I’ve told you several reasons.’ ‘But I want to know why.’ ‘Maybe you want to know why the lady who gave birth to you decided not to keep you and become your mother?’ ‘Yes, why would she give me up?’ I replied, ‘I’ve tried to give you some answers. But I really don’t know all of her thinking that went into her deciding not to be your mother. It is really hard to understand why a woman would grow

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a baby and then give it up.’ She said, ‘It’s awfully hard.’ And then I said, ‘You may not understand this now, but you might later on. It had nothing to do with you. It had to do with her life. I really don’t know all the reasons why, but if that is something you still want to know when you are older, we can try to find her and ask her about it.’ (Watkins and Fisher 1993, p.166)1

By helping cushion bereft feelings, adoptive and foster parents can help protect their children from a crashing disillusionment which might impair the growth of self as they gradually face the realities about their biological parents’ lives. Virginia’s adoptive mother, Faith, felt Virginia had a right to know about her history even if it meant she had to go through some pain around it. By divulging information in a fashion appropriate to Virginia’s age and development, Faith attempted to titrate the dosage of sorrow Virginia would experience in accordance with her daughter’s emotional capacity. By being an idealizable mother, Faith made it possible for Virginia to continue processing her sadness and loss until Virginia was able to make greater peace with her birthmother’s role in her life, about age nine. Throughout, Faith’s greater wisdom and experience guided her empathic responses to Virginia’s anguish, including showing great compassion for Virginia’s birthmother, so that Virginia could internalize both mothers. Then, as though speaking from a place inside herself where she is now assured of her own unique individuality, Virginia said, ‘She didn’t give me away. She had a baby. She gave birth to me. But she didn’t even know who I was. She gave up a baby. She didn’t give me up.’ I said, ‘Nobody could have given you away if they knew you.’ She asked how a mother can not grow a baby if the father plants a seed. ‘What happens if the lady doesn’t want to grow a baby?’ I explained that she had heard a lot recently about abortion, and that many women decide for different reasons that they can’t be mothers at a particular time and so they have an abortion. Virginia replied, ‘I guess it’s really good that she chose to let me grow. She was my mother while I was growing in her uterus, and you are my mother since I was born. You know which is the harder job.’

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Sure she would say mine was harder, I nevertheless asked her what she thought. ‘My birthmom’s, of course, because having a baby is so painful.’ I laughed inside, surprised by her answer, and then lightly defended the hard work of being a day-to-day mother. At the same time though, I was glad that she knows how wonderful it is for me to be her mother – that, indeed, it is not just a ‘hard job’ but a joyful one. (Watkins and Fisher 1 1993, pp.169–170)

By softening Virginia’s painful realizations about her birthmother, and remaining a soothing but truthful presence throughout, Faith has helped Virginia turn a devastating abandonment into a favorable outcome, where adoptive mothering is idealizable as the optimal route. In her moving memoir of her first year as a new foster motherbecoming-legal-guardian to her nine-year-old son, Mothering Without a Compass, Becky Thompson (2000) describes her struggles to be idealizable as a new mom in a transracial bond. Becky was asked to parent her son, Adrian, by his mother, Grace, who was caught in an abusive marriage. A gentle, extremely bright black boy, Adrian was abused as well, and Grace chose Becky – a long-time friend of Adrian’s older sister, Andrea – because she felt this white lesbian college professor could offer her son opportunities that she, as his biological mother, could not. In one of many conversations with Adrian about why his mother had sent him to her, Becky gives both Grace and herself credit for the fact that in handing him over to Becky, Grace was providing him with an idealizable parent. But last night, with Adrian asking, ‘Don’t you think that my mother took quite a risk to send me to you?’…I skipped trying to explain his mother’s logic or how Andrea fit into the picture. Instead, I turned to Adrian, who had snuggled up as close to me as possible, and said, ‘I am definitely not a risk. Not at all. I am the real thing. A sure shot. I can give you what you need. And I am. Intellectually. Spiritually. Emotionally. And more.’ Silence from his side of the bed. Big breathing. And then from him, ‘I miss my mother so much.’ Big sobs. I rocked him, feeling great tenderness in my heart. I said again it was good he was talking about it. That we needed to talk about it. Then I said, ‘When you came to me, I became able to pass some of the love your mother has for you to you. I can be a

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medium for her love. A part of your mother is in me.’ He said, ‘And part of you is in her, too.’ ‘Yes, I think that is true,’ I agreed. (Thompson 2000, pp.121–122)

Here Adrian is able to fall apart not only because Becky is bigger and better and able to soothe him. By reminding him about his mother net – comprised of both Becky and Grace – Becky demonstrates that she is idealizable as a mothering figure. Helping my teen stepdaughters with their disappointments about the arbitrariness of life was part and parcel of the coming-of-age stage in which they were when I became their stepmother. My husband and I had innumerable family dinner discussions about the issue of social class, helping our daughters face the fact that the class one was born into was often a greater determinant of success than whether one was a good person or tried hard. As they were attending a high school with many students from wealthy families, where even the street address of students was relevant to their status – ours being at the ‘lower’ end of the spectrum – a discussion of class origins was personally relevant to them. By tempering their disillusionment, my husband and I enabled our daughters to weather rejections from high school social or artistic groups they had been striving to join without having to resort to ‘sour grapes’ bitterness. Similarly, during college one of my stepdaughters wrote me an e-mail filled with rancor and disgust. She had cross-registered for a class on another campus near her all-women’s college. She felt really disillusioned with the male students in her seminar who held it against her that she had completed the reading and was prepared for class, dismissing her as one of those students from the women’s college, thereby casting her into the local stereotype. She had expected such treatment of women by male peers to be a phenomenon left behind in high school. In my e-mail response I tried to be the ‘older and wiser’ stepmother she needed. I shared a recent conversation I had with a very accomplished colleague over dinner, where we both bemoaned the lengths we had to go to at our universities to avoid being negatively stereotyped because our academic accomplishments would alienate men on campus (whether they were undergraduates or graduate students). Reading that two professional women whom my stepdaughter emulated had been through similar experiences, my daughter felt soothed,

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less alone, and could cope with another dose of facing life’s gender realities without having to turn all men into ‘reptiles.’ It helps children to have a mother and a stepmother (or birthmother and adoptive mother, foster and biological mother, grandmother and mother) whom they can idealize for different attributes over time (if the loyalty conflict can be outgrown), as in the case of my husband, who reveres his mother for her passion and intensity of feeling and his late stepmother for her integrity and artistic sensibilities; and each of them for their Nicaraguan and Norwegian cooking, respectively. Ann Hood (1998), in her story ‘Whose Child is This?’ about the unfolding of her relationship to her stepdaughter, worries that she won’t measure up to the idealizable mothering that, in her fantasies, the girl’s mother embodies. Nevertheless, Hood shows how over time her stepdaughter came to value and look up to the following attributes of her stepmother: her talent at telling stories, pursuing her writing upstairs in sweatshirts and boxer shorts, her joy in grocery shopping and fixing food for the family, and her pleasure in quoting poetry to the children – internalizing these as a part of her life, in the same way she probably identified with her mother’s strengths and soothing qualities.

When parental resources for self-building blocks are lacking Sometimes children are called upon to proffer mirroring or calming strength to their parents rather than the other way around and this can rush a child to grow up too quickly by being ‘parentified.’ Understandably during a divorce or for a time after, while the parents recoil from their losses, mothers and fathers may turn to the children for mirroring or soothing. If this trend continues too long, however, it can cost the children who are in need of these provisions themselves. When a stepmother or stepfather joins the family, she or he can help redress the balance, not by replacing the divorced biological parent, but by supplying these self-building blocks to their stepchildren, so that children don’t end up with holes in their self-worth because they are required to foster the life-growth of their solace-seeking parents, rather than the other way around. Thus by maintaining boundaries between the generations, stepparents can provide their stepchildren with a sense that at least one parent

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is in charge while biological parents are struggling to regroup post-divorce. For example, Regina met Ken when his daughter, Toni, was 15 and his son, Jonah, was 12. Toni was quite upset with her father for putting her in the position of having to take care of her devastated mother, Lydia, Ken’s stay-at-home wife of many decades, when he became involved with Regina, who was only 11 years older than Toni. Regina – who became a ‘friend-Mom’ over time in her stepmothering relationship with Toni – put a great deal of effort into helping Ken be a more idealizable father by coaching him to be more attuned to Toni and her overwhelmed feelings in the face of her mother’s suffering. By holding Ken more emotionally accountable to his children, Regina helped redraw the generational boundaries in the family, thereby calming some of Toni’s fury over feeling she had to pick up her father’s pieces. Similarly, in her study of African-American grandparents who have to take over the rearing of their grandchildren because of their children’s substance abuse, Poe (1992) describes the contradictory pulls on the grandparents in fostering the life-growth of their grandchildren. On the one hand, the grandmothers felt compelled to step in to parent in the face of their children’s abdication of responsibility for their grandchildren, thereby replacing a non-idealizable parent. On the other hand some of the grandmothers were so disillusioned by feeling betrayed by their children that they turned to their grandchildren to make up for an imaginary idealized past. Thus the grandmothers’ ‘bed of roses’ fantasies (Poe 1992, p.81) caught the grandchildren in a role reversal in terms of grandchildren becoming the purveyors of calming strength rather than being able to count on this self-building supply from their adult caretakers, whether parent or grandparent. Poe describes the value of the ‘grandparents as parents’ support group she leads in helping these women turn to others in the same situation for strength and sustenance so that they can feel less self-blame and persevere on behalf of their grandchildren without relying on them for shoring up. A student of mine, Dr. Tammy, had just such a grandchild client in her caseload at a local children’s mental health clinic. The African-American girl, Shaunisse, aged nine, had started her therapy with high aspirations and dreams of becoming a doctor. However, over the two years Dr. Tammy and Shaunisse worked together, the girl increasingly sacrificed herself for

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her paternal grandmother, Mrs. Toland, who had to take in another ‘grandbaby’ because Shaunisse’s aunt ended up living on the streets. Mrs. Toland alternated between striving to be the ‘bigger and better’ parent Shaunisse’s parents could not be – for example, getting Shaunisse help in therapy – and somaticizing her distress over disappointments with her own children and extra parenting responsibilities such that she would pull Shaunisse into ‘doing’ for her when stress turned to illness – like high blood pressure. Shaunisse’s coming of age as a pre-adolescent was filled with devastating rather than gradual disillusionments which would permit the development of self-structure (Kohut 1971). Thus, she reverted to grandiose defenses, while simultaneously giving up her dreams of accomplishment and joining her male cousin in coping through ‘hood’ mores. Mrs. Toland’s inconsistent ability to be an idealizable grandmother impacted Shaunisse’s regular attendance in both school and psychotherapy. Efforts to hold meetings with Mrs. Toland to support her as Shaunisse’s primary caretaker were hit and miss as well. As Dr. Tammy was leaving the child clinic, I suggested she give Shaunisse the parting gift of being the mentor-therapist who exhorts her charge to reach for her dreams despite environmental pulls to fail. Dr. Tammy and I hoped that by letting Shaunisse know that Dr. Tammy held her accountable to her own dreams that Shaunisse would feel recognized and perhaps internalize Dr. Tammy’s belief in her capacity to pursue excellence, a precious gift since Shaunisse did idealize Dr. Tammy throughout the two years they worked together.

Twinship In twinship, the third self-building provision, there is a reassuring sense of a parent, caretaker or sibling being an alter ego and just like oneself. In our family the twinship source for building self was quite central. Although they were fraternal (or should that be ‘sororal’?) rather than identical twins, my stepdaughters had very clearly weathered their parents’ separation, at age two, as well as they did by providing for one another as emotional self-extensions. In fact it took several years of living with their father and myself before they began to avail themselves of the mirroring and idealizing functions we provided as consistently as they had previously relied on the twinship emotional supplies between themselves. In social service departments dedicated to foster placement and adoption there is often a

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commitment to keeping sibling groups together. This policy reflects the understanding that children who can continue to gather twinship self-building blocks from siblings will have an emotional cushion when it comes to changing placements in order to become adopted or to survive a career in foster care. Since so much of non-biological mothering bonds are based on difference rather than on similarity, this source for self-building is less available between adoptive, foster or stepmothers and their children until identification with the parent becomes stronger. A single adoptive mother, Lee, has had an open relationship with birthmother, Clarisse, and birthfather, George, since before her two-year-old biracial son, Pat, was born. Clarisse herself had been in foster care until her parents adopted her at 14 months. George was also adopted. Lee described twinship moments of looking at Pat, and seeing the face of Clarisse, or watching him do a project and envisioning George, or being really funny and being reminded of her own sense of humor. Since Pat’s ‘entrustment’ ceremony a week after his birth – a ritual to mark Clarisse’s entrustment of Pat into Lee’s hands – both Clarisse’s family and Lee’s family have participated in Pat’s life. Thus it is built into his story (history) to have three parental sources, and innumerable grandparental sources for alter ego self-building supplies, all of which Lee will take care to remember for Pat and recount to him. Another single adoptive mother, Felicity, had had a son, Gus, during her first marriage. Several decades later she brought home 15-month-old Lara, who had been raised in a foster home – rather than an orphanage – in China. In large part because of her spiritual beliefs (to be discussed in Chapter 8), Felicity had no doubt that Lara had been predestined to come to her through adoption. But when comparing Gus and Lara in terms of how she bonded with each of them, Felicity emphasized the twinship aspects to her relationship with Lara; unlike Gus, Lara loved to sing, an avocation of Felicity’s for many years, which she had been unable to share with Gus. Singing to each other had very quickly been one way that mother and daughter had developed a mutual cadence and rhythm. Similarly, Felicity thought it was a sign they belonged together when finding out both she and Lara had been born in the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese astrological system, despite being told by a Chinese astrologer that this might mean there would be too much fire between them. For Felicity this twinship augured more Eros in the mother/daughter

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attachment, rather than a sense of potential overheating. Felicity was also amazed that she and Lara were both crazy about cats and that Lara would mimic her so completely in her gardening, not to mention liking foods similar to those fancied by Felicity. Finally, Felicity was thrilled by how much Lara was a girly girl – with a beautiful face and a penchant towards dressing up – with whom Felicity looks forward to sharing tea parties and doll play that she was unable to share with her son. Thus for Felicity alter-ego aspects to her bonding with Lara took much of the edge off their differences, such as culture, age and race. Far more than adoption, Felicity feels being single and an older mother is what makes mothering Lara different from mothering Gus. One of my favorite memories as a stepmother occurred when my girls had just graduated high school. At the fiftieth birthday party for the mother of a friend of theirs, my daughters were hired to help cater the party through a business I had helped them create called Serving Sisters. Another mother whom I had met peripherally at the high school came up to me during the festivities and complimented me on my daughters’ work. She then said that my daughter, whom she knew through her son, looked just like me. I laughed delightedly, and told her what a gift she had given me since I was a stepmother. She responded with amazement since in her mind my husband was the stepfather and I the mother. For that brief moment I could bask in the sense of being ‘just like’ my daughter and enjoy a brief internal moment of twinship, augmented by sharing it later with my stepdaughter who also reveled in this moment of ‘shared’ mother/daughter looks. But such moments tend to be more rare among non-biological mothers and their children because of the greater possibility of differences in appearance, temperament, ethnicity and so on. For many years after they first came to live with us, my husband and our daughters would spend long, kitchen-table conversations going over family genealogy, logging family members who were like the girls, along with underscoring the cultural influences (Russian Jewish grandfather and Nicaraguan Catholic grandmother) that would be their legacy from my husband’s side of the family. Not having the biology to be one more alter-ego source for our daughters, I was pretty much left out of these conversations. More recently, my husband has helped our daughters gather stepmother twinship supplies by pointing out similarities between them and me. After 12 years of stepmothering, he has become aware of and

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highlights the ways in which each of my stepdaughters is like me. For example, one daughter and he are procrastinators, putting off until the last moment many tasks, large or small. The other daughter and I both get totally panicked with such a way of accomplishing things and need to be organized and on top of a project well before the deadline. On the other hand, the ‘procrastinator’ daughter and I are – sometimes to my husband’s exasperation – the two members of the family who go over every interpersonal nuance, processing interactions to death, and taking many things extremely personally, carrying slights forward into the next processing event. By stressing these twinship supplies that my stepdaughters and I each share, my husband has helped bridge the differences which can become exaggerated in times of conflict. He is sometimes better able than I to notice our daughters’ identification with me, less obvious now that they are leaving home, and their propensity to mimic certain traits and tendencies of mine. Adoptive children in need of twinship supplies will rearrange reality in the most poignant ways. One three-year-old tan child wanted her mother to peel off her skin so she could look white like her adoptive mother. Another (three years, nine months) wanted her mother to paint her own skin brown, adding the proviso that if it rained God would keep the paint on (Watkins and Fisher 1993, p.75). As families are supposed to be like one another, children become very creative in bridging the differences or including birthparents in alter-ego fashion. At eight and a half, a new burst. Sitting at the kitchen table, testing spelling words, he asked, ‘Am I Indian?’ And I said, ‘Well, actually, we think you are part Indian. We think the man who planted the seed in the lady you were born from, your birthmother, was part Indian, maybe Mayan.’ He was one very excited boy. ‘Tell me about those Indians.’ So I told him all about the temples and the astronomy and the Yucatan, and he said, ‘Those people were very smart.’ ‘Yes, indeed.’ ‘Like me.’ A long pause and then he asked, ‘And my birthmother, where was she from?’ ‘Greece,’ I said. ‘A wonderful city called Salonika.’ ‘Greece!!’ He was now shouting. ‘That’s what Daddy studies!’ ‘Yes,’ I said, feeling rather solemn. ‘You come from two great cultures that have affected all our lives.’ ‘I’m going to tell my art teacher. She’s been wanting to know. I’m Indian and I’m Greek.’ He was very happy, deeply happy, and I was

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moved and impressed at what the knowing, with all its uncertainties, did for him. We have gone over all this many times. He often can’t remember. In the library one day, he said, ‘Hey, Mom, what am I again?’ ‘Mayan and Greek.’ Then I poked him and said, ‘And you’re ours. And you’re Jewish and American and Philadelphian and You. You’re completely You.’ A few things are new and clear. He has a birthfather in his consciousness for the first time. Two birthparents before us. What they give him in his present thinking appears to be a sense of ‘real’ connectedness to ‘place’ – but ‘place’ now means culture and body for him, and he is stirred by that. 1 And proud. (Watkins and Fisher 1993, p.141)

Culture and belonging On a more metaphoric level, Kohut (1985) contends that twinship self-building supplies can come not only from caretakers or siblings but culture. In fact cultural sources of belonging are vital for a sense of being part of the human race. Smells of ethnic cooking, the daily cadence that makes up a cultural fabric, and music, art or ritual that capture a cultural narrative are often a source of such supplies. Besides socializing their adoptive children into the family culture, children are aided if they can be linked up to place and race, body and culture even if it means highlighting diversity within a family. At a recent conference on unconscious transmission of trauma and loss, one of the audience participants brought up the trauma to the adoptive child when parents, in needing to claim him as their own, gloss over or actively strip the child of his birth culture. Many Korean children adopted in the 1950s by North American families were raised with no sensitivity to the fact that they were often the only non-Anglo children in their communities. Culture camps for children of Korean origin attempt to redress this omission (Alperson 2001). As more and more North Americans adopt from Central and South America, or republics previously subsumed in the U.S.S.R. – like Russia, Belarus, Ukraine – and China, or participate in transracial adoptions within the United States, it is becoming ever more commonplace for adoptive parents to help their children integrate a sense of culture of birth into their identity (Pertman 2000).

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In her book about taking her almost-five-year-old adopted daughter back to her hometown in China, Wuhu Diary (2001), Prager poignantly describes LuLu’s gathering of Chinese friendship figures who became ‘play’ family during their two-month stay at the Tie Shan Hotel. (An African-American expression for fictive kin uses the term ‘play’ as an adjective for someone who plays a kin role in one’s life. For example, a woman for whom I did a Workman’s Compensation evaluation told me of several women who supported her through her post-traumatic stress after being held up at her place of work because they were her ‘play’ sisters.) Idolizing the staff at the hotel, as well as her Chinese teacher and other Chinese children and adults, LuLu collects the cultural twinship supplies she needs to feel belonging to her ethnic roots, thereby reclaiming a fundamental part of her history and identity. With this essential piece of self in place, LuLu returns to New York with her Caucasian mother – who was synchronistically also raised for a time in Taiwan – with a sense of having reclaimed her bi-cultural Self. This journey home subsuming cultural twinship experiences permits LuLu to feel more whole, leaving behind a ‘big black ball of confusion’ (Prager 2001, p.236) about her standing in the world. Similarly in the old Simone Signoret film Madame Rosa, the ex-madam of a brothel who informally foster-mothers the children of prostitutes makes sure that each one gets contact with and instruction about his cultural heritage. The Algerian boy goes for Koran lessons at the local Mosque; the Senegalese boy spends time with his fellow countrymen in a local African ghetto, and so forth. Here again the cultural self-building experiences provide a sense of belonging to humanity as well as to a specific culture and history for the child. (Alperson (2001), in her sourcebook for multicultural families, Dim Sum, Bagels, and Grits, covers practical ways to find cultural resources for children in adoptive or foster family life.) By proffering the child the cultural sources of his identity the non-biological mother shows her willingness to develop other authentic twinship supplies based on being ‘family.’ In Madame Rosa it is the Algerian boy who hides his Jewish ‘Mom’ from the Nazis, as he returns her gift of cultural recognition and emotional belonging. Sometimes the birthparent can become idealized as the purveyor of the lost culture. In a moving and sensitive film, Catfish in Black Bean Sauce (Lo 2001), cultural loss becomes confounded with a family romance for

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the eldest daughter, Mai, of an African-American couple, adopted by her parents in early latency along with her younger brother when they were abandoned at an immigration and naturalization office after coming over with other Vietnamese boat people. (Family romance refers to Freud’s (1909) notion that latency aged children often fantasize that they were born to another family, usually that of a prince or some other royalty, rather than their own average family.) Mai, who has a special position of affection with her adoptive father, Hal, has always had trouble attaching to her adoptive mother, Dolores, because of holding on to the fantasy of her Vietnamese mother’s greater perfection in embodying her motherland. Married later to a Vietnamese man, Mai searches for and finds her Vietnamese mother and brings her over to the U.S. Mai’s brother, Dwayne (aka Sap), was very closely attached to Dolores, and out of this strong identification falls in love with an African-American woman whom he wants to marry. The family nexus is upended when Mai and Dwayne’s mother, Thinh, comes from Vietnam. Thinh mocks Dolores’s attempt to make a Vietnamese meal of catfish in black bean sauce to welcome Thinh. Mai and her husband know that Dolores has failed to bridge the cultural gap in her cooking. Dwayne, however, remains loyal to his adoptive Mom and her dish by refusing the Vietnamese sauce Thinh passes around to doctor up the meal. Following cultural tradition, Thinh moves in with her son, uses his Vietnamese name, Sap, and dotes on him, while treating Mai with casual indifference. Meanwhile, Dwayne breaks up with his sweetheart because he is so afraid she does not really love him, no doubt related to having lost his first mother at such a young age. Thinh treats adoptive mother Dolores with further contempt, until finally Dolores and Thinh get into a teeth-bared competition – tiger mom meets lion mom – about who has more rights as mother. In the wake of this conflict Hal, Mai and Dwayne’s adoptive father, has a heart attack. While both caring for Hal, adoptive mother and daughter are able to get closer, as Mai weeps on her adoptive mother’s shoulder with sorrow and loss, disillusioned by Thinh’s treatment of her (so much for the family romance). With Hal’s health at stake, Mai and Dwayne try to smooth over antagonisms between first and second mother. Dwayne reunites with his African-American sweetheart with Thinh’s help. Ultimately Dolores and Thinh manage an uneasy truce

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as the family reconstellates itself to include both mothers and cultures, to the benefit of their mutual children. Similarly, older children adopted from orphanages – often suffering from attachment disorders – may hold on to the lost culture/family romance as one more reason to resist the simple behaviors (mutual feeding, touching, rubbing, looking into one another’s eyes) out of which affectionate exchanges can be built. One mother (Zibart 2002), who adopted eight-year-old Tanya from a Belarus orphanage, described the precariousness of her attachment with her daughter until age 17. A family trip back to Tanya’s Belarus orphanage permitted this girl, who had so actively rejected her parents for so long, to face what her life might have been like had she not been adopted and given a home. At that point Tanya was finally able to take in her good fortune and embrace her family in the U.S. Much patience is needed on the part of these adoptive parents as they bear their children’s indifference or rejection until the miniscule steps towards a more loving interaction can be built through painstaking attunement. (See Jernberg and Booth (1999) for practical play exercises which promote attachment and attunement.) Again by letting their daughter gather her cultural resources, Tanya’s parents paved the way for her to co-create with them authentic family twinship supplies. By acknowledging differences with non-biological children, whether due to culture or other attributes, the family dialectic can shift to mutually discovering the ways in which parents and children are alike.

Self-building supplies and development When things are going well, children have biological or non-biological family members who provide them with self-building functions – mirroring, idealization and twinship – so that they do not have to face prematurely the reality that the world is not their oyster. Alternatively, an infusion of these resources to children who have had a traumatic start can help them belatedly create a sense of security and wholeness, whether they are offered by adoptive, foster or stepparents. The cushion of these self-supplies permits the development of self-worth and self-esteem, which enhances the life-growth theme of the motherhood constellation, ensuring the growth of the soul of the child, as well as that of her/his body.

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Many children do not originally have a home base out of which to hatch their souls. One seven-year-old adopted boy, Paul, with whom I do play therapy, was left post-birth at the hospital in Siberia by his middle-aged Russian mother. It was several months before there was room for him at an orphanage. By the time his adoptive parents were able to penetrate the Siberian bureaucracy to adopt him from the orphanage, Paul was 12 months old. Adversely affected by the lack of a primary attachment figure during the first months of his life, Paul had numerous developmental delays and language difficulties, which led to his being diagnosed on the autistic spectrum and placed in special education. By the time his behavioral pediatrician referred Paul for play therapy at age seven, Paul’s development had progressed tremendously, and he was no longer considered irremediable either psychologically or educationally. At my initial meeting with Paul’s kind and devoted adoptive parents – who also adopted a second boy from Russia whose beginning was not nearly as bleak as Paul’s – I had a strong hunch as to why Paul was able to heal so much of his early trauma to Self. Among other things about their son, the parents, Mark and Tai, mentioned Paul’s obsession with manholes, and his preoccupation with gathering electrical appliances and cords to plug into power strips. Further, he complained to them about a ‘noise in his head’ as well as a nightmare about a ‘rodar stick’ that was coming to attack him. Rather than talking him out of these fantasies and activities, Tai and Mark would engage with Paul in his electrical endeavors and discovery of new manholes, matching his avid play in these arenas without in any way trying to deflect his energetic pursuit of these interests. Recognizing that Paul’s play with power strips and manholes was perseverative, Tai expressed her wish to meet Paul wherever he was, even if the meaning of his play was unclear to her. Similarly, both parents were empathic with Paul’s night fears, insomnia, and terror of earthquakes, volcanoes, dark forests and being swept away to sea. They did worry about his aggressive outbursts, especially with respect to babies, and his tantrums in response to minor disruptions or transitions. I wondered with them if Paul’s hatred for babies had to do with his hating his ‘inner raging baby,’ and the obsession with electrical outlets and power sources with his determination to ‘plug into the source,’ namely a secure attachment. Whenever possible Mark and Tai took Paul’s terrors seriously, soothing them as best they could, often

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having him sleep with them through the night. I conveyed to them Paul’s good fortune for having parents who were so successful in helping Paul move forward developmentally by providing him so patiently and consistently with self-building mirroring, as well as reliable soothing for upsets that seemed to be connected more to internal psychological events than to external stimuli. Despite his grim history, Paul only took a short time to attach to me sufficiently to meet with me without having Mark or Tai present. Very quickly we began what I would call the ‘orphan game,’ where Paul would taunt me with enviable descriptions of his lavish home, including larger rooms, more electrical outlets, a bigger garden, more bathrooms, a pool; he counted on me to meet him by describing my ‘poor’ house, expressing my orphan devastation over the disparity between our fates. Further, he would threaten to burn down my house so I would have to live in a cardboard box, banish me into a dark forest which was cold and wet (reminding me of stories from the Russian fairy tale book I had as a child), meanly refuse to share food with me which he greedily took from my playroom larder, throw my basket of ‘creepy/crawlies’ on me to terrify me, awake from a ‘calm sleep,’ and in general make me feel the annihilation anxiety he had no doubt experienced as a baby. Not surprisingly a small snow globe in my office, inscribed with the saying ‘There is no place like home,’ intrigued him. But his thrill abounded when he found a second, larger, snow globe, which was also a music box. This sumptuous snow globe henceforth became ‘his,’ with the small, dispossessed snow globe becoming ‘Dr. Barbara’s.’ He just loved making me ‘cry’ about my pitiful orphan snow globe. Even with respect to our ages he turned the difference into his being ‘newer’ and therefore less deprived than me. Once, after he started longing for a kitten and he found out I had two (which he wanted to ‘borrow’), he became furious because I had one-upped him and had more resources than he had. His means of eliciting my reflection about his inner experience was to make me endure his suffering as an orphan. In the play it was my job to name what I surmised he might feel inside about such deprivation, homelessness, abandonment or terror. As I mirrored his feelings by letting him turn passive into active we could talk about how he had all the love in his heart and I had all the worries in mine. For a boy whose thinking was so concrete, having never had the containment that babies get at birth from a

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secure attachment, Paul was busy making links, first of affect and then of meaning, in the therapy (Bion 1962b; Segal 1957). Once he told me of a nightmare he had where a baby threw up all over a power strip, so that the electricity didn’t work any more. I wondered with him if he hated babies because he was worried the angry baby inside himself would destroy the source he was plugged into in his new family. While he never responded to this relatively complex interpretation, he subsequently began to ‘hate’ me actively in the most direct and enthusiastic way. His delight in actively and consciously hating me was a contrast to hate I have absorbed from patients who could not allow themselves to know their hate, so they projected it into me, making me the ‘hateful’ therapist, resulting in my becoming depleted while attempting to contain the unconscious communication of this dark feeling. With Paul I tended to feel a surge of energy by the end of sessions, signifying the aliveness (Alvarez 1992) of his hating me: what you saw is what you got with this boy. One of my most prized possessions as a child therapist is the postcard he sent me from a visit to his grandfather’s house with one phrase, ‘I hate Dr. Barbara,’ printed on it, letting me know he was continuing his transference work even while away. Another time he told me he hated me enough to throw me down a cold, dark manhole, into the sewer system, out to sea with the sharks, where I would be chewed into little bits until I ended up in New Zealand tossed into the volcano. Here I felt he was letting me know about a fear of fragmentation he still endured as part of his terror about being swept away into the abyss of nonexistence. Once in a while he would stop mid-drama and check in with me that this was ‘pretend’ (when he started play therapy he had not yet made this distinction from reality fully his own), and I would confirm that he could play out whatever he needed to with me since I would make sure no one got hurt or was destroyed. Reassured, he would return to his work. My indestructibility made me the idealizable therapist he could dismantle over and over without fear of my losing my power. For a while Paul liked to end his therapy sessions by having his father (who usually brought him to our meetings) come in so I could pass on the meaning of some of Paul’s communications to me via play. Paul needed me to share information about his hateful and aggressive feelings with Mark and Tai so that they would understand all of him. Over time, Mark and I

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had weekly phone contact to share information about internal and external events in Paul’s life in order to facilitate parental or transference conjecture about meaning, permitting me, Mark and Tai to make mirroring Paul’s feelings even more related to Paul’s experiences. As a consequence Paul told his parents over one Christmas holiday that his ‘brain was crying’, but that ‘it would stop at 11:15’ (only an hour after Paul’s pronouncement), a much more affective rephrase about the ‘noise in his head.’ I presumed he was internalizing the parental soothing function, and the containing aspects of having his therapist understand the emotional meaning behind what began as concrete communication in play therapy, so he could progress into the terrain of more symbolic expression. I am quite hopeful as he continues to gather self-building supplies at home, in therapy and in school that Paul will keep building ‘mental muscle’ (Gooch 1998) and fill in the holes in his emotional and cognitive development. I have gone into such detail about my play with Paul to illuminate the mirroring and idealizable self-building experiences that adoptive, foster or stepparents with children who had a difficult start may need to provide. Working as a team with Mark and Tai, I could coach them about the meaning of various play sequences, or they could coach me from their greater expertise as Paul’s parents of six-plus years when I was not sure about something. As parents have their responsibilities 24/7 it can be overwhelming to deal with this level of self-building on a momentto-moment basis. Thus for parents and children, psychotherapy may help infuse another source of self-building as the child struggles to overcome his trauma and deprivation. I felt with Paul that having a haven away from home in which to express dangerous or ‘bad’ feelings was important, since he obviously did not want to threaten the bond with his parents with the primitivity and intensity of these affects. Nonetheless, many parents are able to match their children so the children feel understood for their inner terrors, previous trauma and deprivation. Such parents can help their children take a peek at, and gradually face, feelings they dissociated in order to survive, once the safety of a home and the calming strength of idealizable parents are in place. Parents who can bear witness to fury and inconsolable grief as their children work through losses without feeling destroyed give an incalculable gift to their children by sharing their histories in all their richness and horror.

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A poignant story in the local paper described an eight-year-old urchin (Lara 1998) named Tommy who would visit two women, Carole and Marsha, his neighbors in a West Oakland warehouse neighborhood. As the two white lesbians became more attached to African-American Tommy they gave him baths, bought him clothes, taught him his colors, only to watch him return to his unpainted house where he was the seventh son of a substance abusing family. After four years of this friendship with and caretaking of physically abused, developmentally disabled Tommy, a compassionate child protective services social worker helped Carole and Marsha become official co-legal guardians of the boy (a legally permanent placement of foster children slightly different from adoption). The following vignettes capture the way in which Carole and Marsha’s mirroring and calming strength continue to help Tommy regain his emotional center, lost in having a family that was worse than no family: Tommy stiffens at the idea of going back to his old family, even for a visit, even for an hour. The other night Carole took him on a ritual parade through the house to show him he was safe, then lit a candle in his room. The other night as they watched a TV show about poor people getting tuberculosis, Tommy said, ‘I’m a poor person.’ Marsha said, ‘Tommy, you’re not. Not anymore.’ She says his whole body changed, as he relaxed into that thought, felt with his whole person. (Lara 1998, p.E-10)

Clearly adoptive and foster families, not to mention stepparents and grandparents, can make the difference between a child’s emotional growth or reduction to psychic oblivion. As more and more children are being lost in the cracks of the foster care system, or even within their own biological families, it is incumbent on those of us concerned about the next generation to facilitate the permanent or long-term placement of these desolate children by tweaking the system on their behalf. In the American Heritage Dictionary (2001, p.337) to foster means to bring up, rear, nurture, or cultivate. To these I would add: to mirror, to see, to soothe, to make feel safe, to encompass in calming strength, to hold up ideals for, to be infallible for, to share common traits with, to make feel human. Every child has a right to these building blocks of the self, and every child deserves parents or multiple caretakers whose mutual efforts can offer a particular child the experiences requisite to creating and fertilizing the self.

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Note 1

From Talking with Young Children About Adoption by Mary Watkins and Susan Fisher (1993). Used by permission of Yale University Press.

5

Love and Difference You were standing in front of me protecting me. Suddenly an arrow pierced you in the heart. (Dream told by a six-year-old girl to her stepmother)

I ran into the stepmother, Jean, whose stepdaughter, Deirdre, had told her about this dream at a conference some months after I had interviewed Jean about her experiences with two young stepdaughters. Jean was curious what meaning I made of the dream. She worried that it bespoke latent hostility on Deirdre’s part towards her, a characteristic fear on the part of stepmothers anticipating being cast in the wicked role. I had several reactions to Deirdre’s dream. First, I told Jean it seemed Deirdre felt the kind of safety with her that children feel toward secure attachment figures, who protect them. Second, I wondered if the arrow might have something to do with Deirdre’s hope that love for her would pierce Jean’s heart (à la Cupid) so she would be cracked wide open as a stepmother. Finally I wondered with Jean if it had to do with Deirdre’s sense that Jean was strong and firm enough to hold up against her stepdaughter’s intensity, in love or hostility, without having to worry that Jean would retaliate or fold. As Deirdre’s biological mother is someone who navigates less confidently in the nuances of unconscious feelings and their meaning, Deirdre may well need Jean to be available to help her integrate loving and hateful feelings. Also, children of divorce often do more testing by expressing their angry feelings toward the stepparent because they do not want to risk further loss of a parent than has already occurred through the break-up of their parents. The following story, written and illustrated by Deirdre for a school project, captures many of these themes:

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CHIPPY GETS ADOPTED Dedicated to my holl family One day a little chipmunk named Chippy came leaping along the trail. She was so happy because she was making a wildish ruckus. She was thowing the acorns everywere. She knew she was making a ruckus but she didn’t care. Then one day her mother called ‘Cchhiiippy.’ ‘Wh-a-a-a-t’ Chippy squeaked. ‘I have some good new’s and some bad new’s.’ said Mom. What’s the good new?’ asked Chippy. Mom said ‘The good new’s is you’re getting a brother and also a new mom. Yoll love them.’ ‘What about the bad news?’ asked Chippy. ‘The bad new’s is you’re getting adopted.’ said Mom. Wha-at wawawawa! That’s not fair cried Chippy. ‘You will get a new home that will be a better place for you I know you feel sad but say no more let’s go to the door.’ You’re not going alone I’m tacking you. It was after school when Chippy got adopted. She was sad but she had to go and she did a good job trying not to worry. When Chippy met her new mom she told her new mom that her old mom called her Chippy. OK I’ll call you Chippy too said Chippy’s new mom. It’s not OK yelled Chippy I wish I had my old mom back! I hate you you’re so meen and dum. Chippys new mom said I can see that you are sad and angry about leaving yor old family. I will do everything I can to mack things better for you chippy. 1

The End (‘Deirdre’ 2002)

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Here Chippy’s ‘wildish ruckus’ leads to the loss of her mom, but she is free to ‘hate’ her new mom. Both moms show empathy for Chippy’s sadness about ‘getting adopted,’ and her new mom weathers her anger while promising to ‘mack things better’ for Chippy.

Mutual recognition and creative destruction While it is my belief that my ‘primary maternal preoccupation’ (see Chapter 3) and parental self-building supplies (see Chapter 4) were what permitted my stepdaughters and me to belong to one another, it was another specific developmental step in parent/child conflict that enabled them to move on to ‘use’ me as an internal figure with whom to identify, and therefore to let in my legacy to a greater extent. Insofar as adolescence constitutes the second round of separation–individuation (Blos 1979), parents have to provide a firm container for a teenager ‘trying on’ various roles on the way to creating her own identity. Like the ‘separation–individuation’ process (Mahler 1979) of early childhood when the first underpinnings of core identity are created, adolescence is a time of great ferment. The way most young people accomplish separation–individuation is to swing between moments of resisting parental influence, whereby one asserts one’s autonomy, to moments of dependence where one expects one’s parents to take care of even the most rudimentary business. The parent has to be willing to let the buck stop with them, including weathering everything from (bad) attitude to aggression, without either abdicating or retaliating. This was the area in which I learned the most from my husband about parenting. Since my girls and their father already belonged to one another (his fatherhood constellation having cracked him wide open when the twins were born), his co-parenting contribution was crucial in this domain of parent/child conflict. In this developmental struggle, the child butts up against a firm though not necessarily all-powerful parent. Internally, the teenager, like the child in the ‘terrible twos,’ has to face the parent’s wholeness and otherness, shedding rose-colored glasses in the light of particular parental imperfections, and come to terms with the discovery that what the child and parent need at a given moment may be at odds with one another. While parents are weathering the expression of hateful feelings on their child’s part because of this gap in needs – I hate you,

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Mommy, for not letting me have my way – they have to make it clear that there are limits about how the young person conveys his/her emotions and impulses, lest taking the feelings out on the parent puts the child into an untenable generational role reversal where the parent has abdicated being in charge. With benevolent authority and clear limits on the parental end, the child is empowered to creatively destroy the internal godlike parent, who in the child’s fantasy has unlimited power, as she/he emerges as a person-in-relation to the real parent. The child or adolescent is not really destroying the parent, but freeing him or herself up from the projection that the parent is controlling him omnipotently, by risking the discovery of the actual separate parent who embodies strengths, vulnerabilities and needs of her/his own. This watershed developmental process is a necessary and sufficient condition for the young person to forge his/her identity and hatch out of the parental nest by carrying the real parents forward internally. Called the ‘creative destruction of the object’ in the psychological literature (Winnicott 1968), this process fosters the child’s capacity to use the parent internally as a figure for identification. While requiring the child to recognize her as a separate subject, the mother returns the child’s favor by recognizing his creative attempts to forge his identity through clashing with the ‘parental unit.’ If the mother can remember that being railed at is a temporary and valuable step in the creation of the child’s personhood, she can help contain the ‘hate’ she is absorbing from her children by responding with the confidence that there is enough love available to keep everyone from being damaged or destroyed. To return to my little client, Paul (see Chapter 4), two sessions – which also included his father, Mark, for a portion of time – capture his struggles to creatively destroy Mark and Dr. Barbara, while hoping against hope that his powerful hateful feelings would not be the reason he was banished from his family’s affections. In the first vignette Paul had had a bad day in both ‘beating on’ his brother, and in having hit a girl at vacation childcare. When they arrived at the session Mark was still put out with his son who had wanted to kiss and make up and be forgiven immediately. During his time with me, Paul alternated between telling me how much he hated his father who was ‘the worst father in the world’ and worrying that his father was still unhappy. I told him that his father was upset with what he did, but that Mark still loved him. Paul repeatedly wanted to leave my office to go

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to Mark, a wish I contained until the end of the session. Finally, Paul decided to draw for his father a picture of Mark hugging him. I felt this drawing was his effort to make reparation, as was his plan to bring Christmas candy canes from my office to his brother. Finally I did have Mark come into the session to relieve Paul’s increasing anxiety about losing his bond with Mark. I explained to Mark that Paul was worried that Mark was angry with him. Mark agreed that he had not been ready to hug Paul and make up when Paul wanted to because he did not want to convey the message that the problem of Paul’s behavior had gone away. Mark reiterated that he still loved Paul and would always love him, but that his hitting behavior was unacceptable. Paul volunteered to apologize to the girl at daycare, and his father responded he could start by apologizing to his brother. Here Mark maintained his separation from Paul without becoming vengeful or abdicating, modeling for Paul that there was enough love to overcome his hateful feelings in their relationship and in Paul’s relationships with his brother and peers. In a later session Paul was furious with his dad for refusing to let him have a kitten until his birthday. This carried over into our relationship: Paul had been so happy with the recycled cat calendar I had brought to the previous session that he became angry with me for not providing something about cats for him in this session. He got busy hating me, threatening to kill my cats and send them over a waterfall, down a long river into a cold, dark forest. At the same time he wanted me to bring him an electrical power strip from home for the next meeting (again his fear of losing his connection to the home source due to his fury). This time he hated both his parents for making his birthday kitten contingent on his improvement in hitting behavior. He didn’t want to turn eight years old because it meant he ‘had to grow up,’ but he was also disconsolate that he couldn’t have a kitten to love and kiss and sleep with right away. Alvarez (2001) has suggested that extremely deprived children and adults may develop a wholehearted relationship to a kitten as a transitional way to becoming more fully related to the analyst and other loved ones in life. When Mark joined us in the later part of the session we reiterated to Paul that he was not so powerful that his hateful feelings could cause him to get his way or to destroy us. Meanwhile I emphasized with both father and son that Paul could have any feeling he needed to express as long as he did not put it into action in a way that would hurt or harm another (me,

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father, brother, kitten). Having angry or hateful feelings, I continued, did not mean he was bad. Mark added that his family would love Paul forever no matter what, but in order to have a kitten he needed to learn other ways besides being physical to express his frustration or anger. (In the previous session’s play the kitten had been bad and got sent back to the vet – no doubt Paul’s deepest fear for himself.) In a phone call later that week, Tai (mother) told me that Paul’s hateful and loving feelings were increasingly close in their moment-to-moment expression, a sign of greater integration. Seeing the adults in his life survive his aggression was permitting Paul to weave together the capacity to love and hate the same person. In another session not long after this sequence, Mark had just come back from the East Coast due to the death of his own father, and had brought Paul a stuffed kitten. Paul showed me his new kitten, and I admired it avidly. He wanted to create a ‘rescue’ basket for the kitten. I got the first aid kit to put into it and he ‘took’ the kitten to the vet because he was very sick. Here the vet was benign and available to help hurt animals, not simply a storehouse for bad animals as in the session cited above, signaling Paul’s greater integration of positive and negative feelings towards caretakers. Paul administered juice, shots and a baby bottle to the kitten (identification with Dr. Barbara). Then he put blankets and pillows into the rescue basket, as well as string for the kitten to play with. He named the kitten after his favorite movie about a cat, Milo, who is helped to survive various adventures by his best friend, a dog. He asked, ‘What else does he need in the rescue basket?’ Paul gave Milo a prize for enduring the shot. Paul then left my office to ask Mark sitting in the waiting room to bring in two stuffed baby kittens from the car for our session. Meanwhile Paul put a stone with Kokopelli2 painted on it into the rescue basket, calling it a magic stone, saying that ‘Milo can have babies.’ When Mark brought the baby kittens into the consulting room, Paul put them into the rescue basket with Milo where Milo could care for them (identification with the nurturing father). We added food and eggs to the rescue basket at Paul’s instructions. One of the babies was ‘born’ from a big juicy heart egg. I told Paul that this baby were being born through love from a big heart, as I saw him showing me how love could midwife the psychological birth of a child, as was his gift from his parents. I invited Mark in at the end of the session to return to him the gift by recounting this play sequence, which in

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the wake of Paul’s grandfather’s death seemed so moving. While Paul listened, I told Mark he was clearly passing on his own father’s legacy to Paul, since Paul was able to be so caring with the kitten and babies, and ‘Milo’ was able to give birth to babies with the archetypal help of Kokopelli, whose significance I explained to Mark. Moreover I felt this play sequence demonstrated Paul’s concern for his father’s loss, and I used the opportunity to empathize with father and son about their feelings about Mark’s father’s death. Father and son left with kittens in tow. A while after this sequence of meetings Paul started to sit in my ‘comfy’ chair with its ottoman, asking me to put a blanket around him. He then wanted juice and ‘his’ big snow globe. He would sit there quietly, enjoying ‘cozy time’ until he was ready to move on to other play. One day he spent most of the session in cozy mode. Coincidentally his whole family was in the waiting room, and he asked if he could invite them in to see him ensconced so comfortably. I felt Paul wanted to share with his family that love and abundance had indeed triumphed over hate. Subsequently, Mark explained to me how much Paul needed to replicate features from the therapy space at home, and vice versa, in that his cozy time with me was quite similar to that spent with his Mom. Paul was busy gathering his resources, integrating love and hate, and recreating his inner orphan into a cozy boy with a secure pantheon of primary caretakers. Much like Collodi’s Pinocchio, Paul’s creative destruction of his caretaking objects – both within the therapy and at home – helped him to develop the capacity for concern (Winnicott 1963) for others, thereby humanizing this boy who had endured such inhumane experiences as an infant. Similarly, had Geppetto, the carver who created the famous wooden puppet, not survived Pinocchio’s rebellious adventures – Pinocchio’s ‘destruction’ – without becoming damaged or vengeful, Pinocchio could not have turned into a little boy.

Confusing creative destruction with failures in mothering Mind you, living through the ‘creative destruction of the object’ sounds much easier on paper than it is in reality. When I first met my own stepdaughters they ‘ran’ in a particularly alienated crowd at their junior high. At that point they were still living with their mother, whose parenting was more permissive than my husband’s. Simultaneously, their friends also had

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parents who often did not monitor them closely, so that slippage around accountability among their peer group was not uncommon. When things would go too far, and our daughters were in some way implicated, my husband would be brought in as the ‘heavy’ by their mother to handle things. Once they came to live with us – in large part because of the escalation of such out-of-control behaviors in their clique – they could not believe that I, their stepmother, required as much accountability as their father. From their previous universe of parents, they knew mothers and fathers who abdicated in the face of children’s out-of-control behavior, or who overreacted or became abusive in times of crisis, and so had assumed their own father was some kind of weird anomaly because of his consistency and steadfastness as a disciplinarian. It took them a number of years to adjust their worldview and take in the fact that they now had two parents who shared the same values about self-respect and accountability, not to mention respect of parents: they were just – and I quote – ‘blown out!!’ While initially they balked mightily about the encumbrances that resulted from such steady monitoring, I believe our daughters were also relieved to have the stability our parental presence offered them. One of our daughters is what might be called an ‘early-bloomer.’ Her adolescent testing and turbulence started in middle school, a full three years before that of her twin sister. Newly a stepmother in her early adolescence, I, along with my husband, immediately had to forge a parental team to deal with the intense trial-by-fire struggles we had with her. One year we grounded her for almost an entire semester and a half. Like a newly arrived foster child, she seemed to be testing whether or not we could provide her with a firm and safe container. Ironically, she seemed almost relieved to have our help as the ‘bad guys’ in preventing her from succumbing to relational pulls from some fairly self-destructive peers. Slowly but surely she shifted her identity from ‘loser’ in middle school to someone with the potential to accomplish as she herself described in her college essay: When she entered my life, Barbara helped me start gaining that self-confidence. She believed in me and saw my potential as a person. With this back-up in confidence I was able to accomplish things in my own life. During my sophomore year, I read an announcement about H.O.B.Y., a leadership seminar, offered to one sophomore student to be chosen out of the group who applied. I thought about it, but eventually

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said to myself that I would never make it. Barbara, a volunteer at the high school’s college center, came across the same announcement and brought it home for me and suggested that I should apply. I didn’t have any faith in myself that I could ever make it. ‘Leadership? Me? Someone deserves this more than I do,’ I repeatedly told myself while filling out the application and writing the required essays. When my school counselor informed me that I was the nominated sophomore that would attend the leadership seminar, I was in disbelief. How could this be? It was difficult to swallow because I had misjudged my potential. To be elected as the sophomore representative was a reality check. If I had not faith in myself but ended up accomplishing, I was definitely lacking something internally. This experience gave me insight as to what limitations were holding me back – a lack of self-assurance and self-esteem. (Lubin 1996)

Throughout this period this daughter’s most intense fury and direct conflict was leveled at her father. She did not really risk emotionally butting up against me, the way she felt secure enough to do with her father, until closer to the end of high school. It makes intuitive sense that a secure attachment is a necessary and sufficient condition for undertaking the risk to creatively destroy the object. The gamble for the child in premature aggressive acts towards a stepparent with whom they wish to bond is that the ‘tender shoot’ of a lasting connection might be ruptured. From the child’s point of view the attachment may not be as secure as it is in the stepmother’s mind. Thus, my later emotional inclusion in the parent–child individuation struggles was a testimony to my stepdaughter’s trust in the resilience of our bond to hold and contain the ‘destruction.’ By late adolescence I became an equal recipient of her aggressive and spirited ‘let the front door hit me’ separation behavior. Towards the end of her sojourn in high school we were both volunteering at a school-related function when another parent asked me how it was that this daughter of mine was so respectful with me (no doubt in contrast to other teenagers she knew). I quipped that I was the ‘good stepmother.’ A year later, I was at a college parents’ weekend to visit the same stepdaughter and endured from her the patronizingly dismissive treatment comparable to the fare of many of the biological parents at the event. In my better moments I understood this to mean that I had graduated to a new legitimacy as a mother – yes, creative destruction of the object was now my privilege alongside her

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father. In my worse moments I experienced this insolence as a sign of our lack of attachment and felt quite hopeless about the potential of creating a mother/daughter bond with this young woman so similar to me. Luckily I was reminded of a friend’s story when she was having major difficulty with her daughter during adolescence. Because she and her (biological) daughter were different, she was better able to reach her than her husband who temperamentally was wired so much more like their daughter. I had to use my mind to remind my heart that the stepmother/daughter clash of the college visit had to do with our both being intense, headstrong women, rather than to do with my failure in bridging the non-biological connection between us. Also, this daughter was ‘blowing me off’ as a maternal authority figure, along with a million of her freshmen-in-college peers. It just felt so bad to have finally ‘arrived’ as a mother!! As Oxenhandler (2001) suggests, it is a natural part of being a parent to experience ‘little deaths’ in the betrayal of one’s love with each step of a child’s growth and separation.3 In her chapter ‘Last Things’ (pp.137–143), Oxenhandler depicts the paradoxical relationship to the past that parents may develop whereby they gather memories from previous stages of development with their children by missing the ‘never again’ modes of relating that the children have shed. Stepparents are not always sure they are entitled to the same feelings of betrayal over the loss of stepchildren to age-appropriate development. Interpreting my daughter’s behavior as caused by our biological gap may have been my effort to take control of this loss (see Chapter 2) by blaming the nature of our connection, rather than sitting with the sorrow that all mothers and fathers feel as their children leave home. Still, I was jealous of a colleague who told me about going through photo albums of her infant (birth) sons in order to soften the loss of their affection during adolescence. I really regretted not having been a stepmother to my daughters for a few pre-adolescent years when I could have enjoyed all those cuddling moments (and taken pictures), holding them in memory to cushion teenage mother/daughter conflict. Like with any loss of love, the gathering of treasures and sorrows from the past leaves the nest of one’s heart full rather than empty. Lacking the resource of early affectionate moments captured on film to return to, it definitely takes more work for stepmothers of older children to weather their testing behavior without taking it personally and giving up in defeat. Thus, becoming a stepmother at or near the onset of adolescence can

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introduce both greater vulnerability and greater opportunity to the 4 stepmotherhood mindset. Taking the trouble to build the bond brings the stepmother more not less grief because of the developmental needs of the teenager. The irony of being included in ‘exclude-the-parents’ behavior is sometimes humorous only from a distance. Parenting our two adolescents involved a moment-to-moment distribution and redistribution of fathering and mothering behaviors between my husband and me (Ehrensaft 1987), in order to back one another up effectively, a rather crucial rule of thumb for maintaining parental survival and resilience in the face of the children’s creative destruction of the object. Even though we did not always agree about setting limits, we rarely undercut one another, although at times a parental discussion would result in a renegotiation of a decision about curfew or distribution of time spent on social life versus schoolwork. When either one of us would start to ‘lose it’ over the testing behavior with which our adolescents were confronting us, the other would temper the exchange (rather like hard cop/soft cop teamwork) until we could talk privately. In private we would often help one another contain irrational reactions to what we found in the moment to be outrageous teenage behavior, helping the irate parent to feel calmer by listening and understanding the other’s feelings. Here mirroring and soothing sometimes helped cushion recurrent differences in our reactions, based on his being a biological parent versus my being a stepparent. For example, after absorbing a belly-full of preverbal teenage rage I would often need my husband’s soothing affirmation that in fact I was a good enough mother, since it was so easy to attribute the intensity of the mismatch with a stepdaughter to a ‘blood is thicker than water’ explanation, rather than to the heat of a normal mother/daughter adolescent developmental conflict. At other times my mirroring for him his hurt at the hands of his daughters, who often under-appreciated his contribution to their well-being, would help to restore his self-worth as a dedicated and persevering father, whose role in their lives had been, and continued to be, central. Ann became stepmother to three children when she married a widower, Jeff, about a year after the death of his wife. With her first husband who had been 20 years older than she was, Ann had adopted a three-month-old baby girl, Phyllis. On joining with Jeff to create a blended family, Ann became stepmother to Gerry, aged 13, Dick, aged 11,

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and Moya, aged eight, with Phyllis then aged six. Ann and Jeff subsequently also had a baby together when they had been married two years. Ann’s passage into her relationship with 13-year-old Gerry was tumultuous, in part because it was hard for Gerry to have her parentified role in the family usurped by her new stepmother. Gerry and Ann would clash and make up, clash and make up, especially through the adolescent years. By creatively destroying one another, only to turn around and resolve their differences through authentic apologies and recognition of differences, Ann and Gerry ultimately forged a stable mother–daughter bond. While treating Ann pretty respectfully, in contrast to his older sister, 11-year-old Dick made it clear that Ann was not a ‘mother’ to him, but rather a special older person. Even with Phyllis, Ann had not felt very secure in her mothering. Following in the footsteps of her own mother, who mothered from an intellectual rather than an emotional or visceral place, Ann read textbooks to know how to succor Phyllis. Naturally therefore, Ann felt the rejections or disengaged behaviors on the part of her stepchildren deeply, and experienced an erosion of her faltering self-confidence as an adoptive mother and as a stepmother. Meanwhile Jeff, who did not know how to help his children weather the loss of their mother, much less the adolescent watershed, basically handed the reins of parenting over to Ann, only stepping in to co-parent later with their newborn and when Phyllis reached adolescence. Yet the most difficult stepmother/child relationship for Ann was with Moya who was a highly physical child. In Jungian terminology there was a misfit between Ann’s thinking function and Moya’s sensation function, which were their primary modes of knowing and being in the world, respectively. As a stepmother, Ann did not feel she had access to her ‘inferior function’ (von Franz 1971), sensation, through which to attune to Moya. As Ann did not feel capable of attuning to Moya in a visceral way that would be of use to her, she increasingly felt like a failure as a mother to this spirited girl. Seeking professional help, Ann was told that there was basically nothing she could do for Moya, so that by the end of high school both Jeff and Ann had essentially abdicated their authority with Moya, who rebelliously set her own parameters for her social life with peers. I was saddened to hear this, to my mind erroneous, advice from Ann’s counselor, especially as Ann added that Moya, now in her thirties and married with children, still

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worries if there was something fundamentally wrong with her because Jeff and Ann did not stand up to her as a teenager in the way they did with the other children. My own guess from the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, as I absorbed Ann’s narrative, was that Ann’s despair and urgent need to feel like a better stepmother impelled the therapist into giving advice and problem solving. Instead I believe that Ann would have been better helped by the counselor’s bearing witness to the unbearable feelings Ann was weathering in becoming a stepmother-container to three adolescent journeys that subsumed the imponderable loss of a mother to cancer. As Fonagy (2000) suggests, adolescence is a key developmental stage for the resolution of attachment and loss issues that were not fully settled during the first phase of separation–individuation. Thus Moya could have experienced her parents’ detached response to her teenage tumult as her ‘success’ in destroying her parent-objects, who in her internal world could not bear up under her aggression. A major reason I’m writing this book is so that professionals will credit and empower stepmothers like Ann for their perseverance at ‘hanging in there’ with children whose need to engage in the creative destruction of the object is developmentally appropriate. I have no doubt that Ann, and probably Jeff and Moya, unnecessarily suffered because the counselor did not give the bond-building input I am advocating. A foster mother, Francesca, told me about her and her partner Adriana’s painful initiation into foster motherhood through the actual destructive behavior of twin 13-year-old brothers, with a long history of failed foster placements. Out as a lesbian couple with their Catholic-affiliated, state-funded foster-adoption agency, Francesca and Adriana were otherwise careful about being public with the romantic nature of their relationship in social spheres like their church, school and other community institutions because of the prevalence of homophobia. Soon after being placed with them the twins called the agency to expose their foster mothers as lesbians, and told everyone in school and in town as well. Disclosing this information to the Christian church community to which Francesca and Adriana were committed led the two women to ask their social worker to remove the twins from the home. Being ‘outed’ by the boys was too high a price to pay for being foster parents. Counting on the homophobia in the community where Francesca and Adriana lived and worshiped, these boys managed to take control over another ‘failed’ foster

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placement by finding their foster mothers’ Achilles’ heel and driving an arrow into it. Because of the potential consequences in their own lives, Francesca and Adriana chose to abdicate parental responsibility for these boys, rather than punishing them for their acting out. Francesca told me sadly that she and Adriana did not feel they could manage the risk of standing firm with these boys so that the twins could have their omnipotent efforts at destruction of another foster parental unit met with unyielding steadiness rather than with abandonment or retaliation. Because of ubiquitous prejudice against gays and lesbians, especially as parents, these two women were not prepared to sacrifice their privacy to impose on these boys the requirements of accountability that less socio-politically vulnerable ‘worthy-adversary’ foster parents might be able to manage. Francesca, as well as Adriana – who came from a Hispanic family where discipline and structure on behalf of the children were highly valued – found it unnerving to let the boys be more powerful than the parents by terminating their placement. In fact, the two women subsequently chose not to be open as a romantic couple, even within their own home, with their foster children. Because of a ten-year age difference, Francesca was called ‘grandma’ and Adriana ‘mom.’ While they found it a difficult sacrifice to be in the closet in their own home, Francesca and Adriana felt they would rather wait until their three foster children, aged 11, nine and eight, were adopted – a legal shift that would cement trust between parents and children – before divulging the real nature of their relationship to them, lest a repeat of the original loss of trust and then of placement with the twins occur with the children for whom they so wanted to provide a permanent home. In this instance, Francesca and Adriana keenly felt the ‘system’ got in the way of their being able to relax and parent fully in the manner they preferred because of delays in having their three children freed for adoption so their parental authority would have legal as well as moral backing.

Child omnipotence and parental abdication In her critique of current childrearing trends, Ehrensaft (1997) analyzes the effects on children when they have parents unable or unwilling to provide containment for self-destructive behavior, or behavior destructive towards others. Noting that middle-class parents raised in the 1950s, as a

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historical cohort, have tried to make up for their own parents’ mistakes by being highly child centered and committed to recognizing their children’s emotional experience in a way theirs was not, she contends that the parenting pendulum has swung from discipline to gratification and indulgence in the raising of children. Further, as the parent/child bond becomes the most enduring family dyad, given current divorce rates, parents fear the loss of love of their offspring, leading them to engage in a kind of ‘bartering for love’ (Ehrensaft 1997, p.151), rather than feeling the security to reprimand their children when they get out of line. Because they dread that if they ‘use the rod’ they will ‘lose the child’ (Ehrensaft 1997, p.178), many parents are reluctant to even discipline their children. In my experience as a psychologist and parent, consistent consequences for misbehavior, in the context of a loving parental bond, lead to a younger generation who respects and loves their parents. On the children’s side, a psychological loss is experienced in the face of this over-indulgent childrearing, as they feel the absence of the present parent. Many children escalate their testing behavior in an attempt to get their parents to show their presence by taking control, thus providing the parental authority that allows the child to relax and be a child. Without their parents in charge children have difficulty integrating their love and aggression toward the same person. Only by being able to butt up against a present ‘not-me’ can the child wield his aggression and find out that it need not be overpowering or destructive. That is, by being safely able to hate his parents, within a fabric of mother– or father–child love, the child learns to relinquish his fantasy of personal power and parental omnipotence in favor of internalizing a real sense of self and other, with strengths and flaws on both sides. By facing the fact that other people are outside of his control, a child can let go of the burdens of grandiosity and engage in imperfect but human relating, replacing blind faith and paranoia with the more nuanced complexity of feelings and meanings such as ambivalence. It is a qualitative leap forward in character development to acquire the capacity for ambivalence toward the same object, internally, and same person, externally. Post-divorce parental competition can result in exaggerated indulgence of children, who in turn end up with the mixed blessing of being overly powerful. Ruthlessly ruling her parents and splitting the two households may be a ruse on the

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part of a child who fears falling through the cracks between two self-centered families. In one extended gay and lesbian family I encountered, two fathers, Joe and Bob, were jointly raising Bob’s biological daughter, Gail, with the biological mother and her partner, Jane and Bonnie, by all living in a duplex together. Over time Jane and Bonnie separated. Jane then became partner with a second woman, Dina, who gave birth to her own biological child, Nick, in this family context. Unfortunately, these two women parted with acrimony. Subsequently Dina, who severed all kin ties postseparation, prevented Gail from seeing her ‘brother,’ Nick. Because of this occurrence, Bonnie, who has continued to be in her fictive daughter’s life since birth, attempted to get legal standing as an adoptive parent through the courts, both to legally legitimate her bond with pre-adolescent Gail and to ensure continued visitation to her home, since both she and Jane had repartnered anew. Finally, Gail had many grandparents from her various ‘mothers’ and ‘fathers’ as part of her extended kin system. Because of this complex landscape of parents and parent-like figures, each household outdid itself to attend emotionally to and gratify this girl, giving her an indefinite sense that the ‘world was her oyster.’ However, once Bonnie obtained legal parental standing as an adoptive mother, Gail was able to engage in age-appropriate rebellion in Bonnie’s household, since Bonnie was firmer than Jane and Bob or their partners about exerting her authority as a parent. Bonnie and her current partner did not always cater to Gail so that she was given the message that the two adults also had needs. Further, Gail had to live on her allowance for the whole week when she was staying at Bonnie’s, rather than having unlimited material means made available to her, as was more typical when she returned to the duplex shared by her biological parents and their partners. Gail also felt freer to express her aggression and attitude at Bonnie’s house without damaging or destroying anyone once her father became terminally ill and her other parents became preoccupied with caring for Bob, who was rapidly declining. Thus the stepfamily, newly created by legal adoption, gave a unique gift to this girl-becoming-woman in providing a the-buck-stops-here presence that was less available in the other households where she regularly participated. A foster mother whom I met at a grief and loss training I gave told me the following story about two boys whom she and her husband fostered

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from early childhood until early adolescence. The boys were abruptly removed from the home of these long-term foster parents and placed into another foster home because of some technicality that a new social worker enforced, having to do with their not having lived up to the letter of the law about the number of beds in each room. At their new foster mother’s, a single woman, the boys acted up, threw tantrums, had fits, refused to obey and so forth until the second beleaguered foster mother asked to have them removed from her home. In a phone conversation with their longer term foster parents, the oldest boy explained his and his brother’s conscious strategy of trying to get back to the parents they missed and longed for by getting kicked out of the new placement. Unfortunately, around the same time the boys’ birthfather applied for custody, so the brothers were sent back to Pennsylvania to live with him. The birthfather turned out to be a less than adequate parent, and in time the foster-savvy boys accessed the local foster system and got themselves placed in yet another home in Pennsylvania. The original foster mother told me that her ‘sons’ were still in touch with her, letting her know that because of how much they had learned from her and her husband, they were waiting it out in this last placement until they could become emancipated minors. Clearly these boys had internalized enough of the benevolent discipline from these beloved foster parents to behave constructively in later foster placements when it became clear they weren’t omnipotent enough to get the California foster care system to heed their wishes to return ‘home’ to their (foster) Mom and Dad. Elizabeth, the white great step-grandmother of Kumaya, an eight-year-old, Afro-American/Caribbean girl, told me about one spring when Kumaya stayed with her because Elizabeth’s biracial step-granddaughter, Kevinesha, was moving between various temporary living situations. While describing the way in which caring for Kumaya completely took over her life, Elizabeth explained that the most difficult aspect of this transitory grandmother/granddaughter arrangement had to do with her incomplete authority to discipline Kumaya when needed. When Elizabeth would set limits on her charge, Kumaya would sometimes rail at her that she was not her mother. Kumaya’s periodic fits in response to Elizabeth’s benevolent authority embodied both her fury at not being indulged, and disconsolate loss over not being with Kevinesha. From time to time Elizabeth felt that the partial legitimacy of her parental authority

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made it difficult to have the buck stop with her, thereby rendering Kumaya more powerful on occasion than was good for her. Nonetheless long after Kumaya was again living with her mother, she would often refer to Elizabeth’s house as our home when visiting her great grandmother, relating to small details about the house (the design of the fireplace, the worn-out couch, etc.) with great affection and a sense of ownership. Thus even with incomplete authority Elizabeth’s provision of a firm and loving transitional living space helped Kumaya locate herself in the world as someone who had a home. Given Kevinesha’s more turbulent life, this grandmotherly ‘haven in a heartless world’ (Lasch 1977), where conflict could not triumph over belonging, was invaluable for Kumaya. After John and Toni, adoptive parents, divorced, their son Chet spent time with each of them. Toni was much stricter than John and focused on structuring Chet’s life by creating consequences when his behavior was out of line. Unfortunately Chet’s father was much more lenient, such that John treated him more like a buddy than like a son. Naturally Chet chose to move in with his father fulltime during adolescence, since he could count on greater indulgence there than with his mother who held him much more accountable. Not surprisingly, Chet went through some tough times with drugs because of John’s inability to provide benevolent discipline as a father. Contrasting parenting styles between strict and permissive households can make it more difficult for children to get the consistency they need in order to grow and bloom. Chalyn’s mother married a man with five children, all of whom were older than Chalyn, a then three-year-old. Whenever Chalyn’s mother and stepfather would lay down the law about some infraction or other, the older stepbrother or sister affected would simply move into mother’s home rather than deal with the stepfamily disciplinary system. Thus Chalyn described her older siblings moving in and out of her home with great frequency, thereby preserving their omnipotence vis-à-vis their father and stepmother. Many foster mothers have expressed the related frustration about visitation with parents who indulge their children, but who are unable to provide consistent structure or rules. They complain bitterly about all the work it takes to retrain their foster children once they come home from such visits because of parental permissiveness passing as love.

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The life-growth theme and moral development According to Winnicott (1963) there are several aspects to the ‘good enough mothering environment’ which permit a child to develop the ‘capacity for concern’ – that is, to move out of a state of self-absorption in order to develop empathy and caring for others. First of all the child has to have enough opportunity to ruthlessly use the parent (or therapist) for his own emotional purposes (as an extension of self ) without any regard for the parent’s needs or individuality. While it may seem counterintuitive, having such a ruthless phase permits all children the cushion of mixing up me and not-me until they are emotionally and cognitively ready to face the existential fact that we are all separate beings. If a child has missed the world-is-my-oyster phase then she/he will be unable to engage in the creative destruction of the object as opposed to the destruction of fantasied omnipotent caretakers. Many foster or adopted children, enduring the uncertainty about whether or not they have the security of a home, may miss this more indulgent phase where they can ruthlessly depend on their attachment figures. Instead these children survive by taking care of themselves with a precocious independence leading them to grow up too quickly. When finally placed with a permanent family, such children, irrespective of age, may go through long periods of being greedy, engaging in hoarding or stealing behavior in order to belatedly partake of this ruthless phase which permits them to gather resources from the maternal holding environment. In Chapter 6, I will address how these normal developmental behaviors may often elicit negative responses from teachers or other helping professionals who do not understand the child’s effort to fill in his or her emotional holes resulting from early deprivation. Thus parents bonding with adoptive, foster or stepchildren are often called upon to tolerate regressive behaviors that may be more appropriate to a phase of development for a younger child, as the child fills herself up with emotional or concrete supplies that she missed prior to finding a permanent home. A seven-year-old boy, Tuan, whom I had seen in child therapy, is a case in point. Tuan had been born to a drug-toxic birthmother and was left alone in the hospital for two weeks before joining his mother in an Asian unwed mother’s home until he was four months old. From four months until two he lived with a Hmong foster family, which turned out to be a warm and loving placement. At two years his biological grandmother took

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him for two years until he was freed for adoption at almost four years and was placed in his adoptive home. The pediatrician referred Tuan to me, in large part because of behavior problems in school. Tuan’s adoptive parents were firm and loving and he was becoming increasingly secure in their home, where he also lived with a sister, half-time, from his father’s first marriage. When I met him, Tuan engaged in a number of hoarding, stealing and cheating behaviors. He would hoard grains of rice which were his treasures as well as pencils and other writing implements in his classroom to the annoyance of the teacher. He stole crackers out of the kitchen cupboard at night, whose telltale crumbs trickled out of his bed in the morning, as well as change out of his mother’s wallet, a behavior for which he was punished. In our play therapy games he cheated avidly in order to win, as well as hoarded popcorn, which then made its way home only to be strewn all over his parents’ house. I reassured the parents that while this behavior was regressive I felt Tuan was showing us his hope that his original deprivation would be remedied (Winnicott 1971b). Because of his multiple placements, I explained, this normal phase of development had been delayed. If we let him know we understood his need to gather resources, I predicted that these ruthless behaviors would pass in a natural fashion, as he was engaged in a vital developmental step to which he had not been privy before. During our termination process I was delighted to play an extremely competitive Monopoly game with Tuan. His buying-of-property behavior was highly strategic, neither reckless nor overly cautious, nor did he hoard his money or cheat (or I did not think so until a colleague explained the proper rules of Monopoly to me). Tuan developed an exceedingly rational strategy which resulted, conveniently, in my bankruptcy within the 50-minute hour. I could see the shift in his need to gather resources by devious methods – he just straight up beat the pants off me. The next day we had a second session due to rescheduling one of his final play therapy meetings around a school field trip. That day we played Pokemon. Here Tuan stacked the deck against me – choosing all the high-energy cards before giving me my half of the deck – changing the rules of the game significantly so that I had absolutely no chance of being a worthy adversary. At first, I worried that this cheating/stacking-the-deck behavior belied my sense of his progress from the day before. Later I realized he needed me to bear witness to how most of his life had felt to him by making me

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experience similar defeat during the game: all the cards were against me and there was no way to gather enough supplies (rock, water, electric, psychic, leaf or earth energies) for me to get a leg up in the game. I complained throughout the game about the predicament I was in, so that Tuan got to turn passive into active and feel understood for his previous deprivation, now in the process of being resolved as he wrapped up his therapy. Meanwhile he invited me over to his house for dinner, thereby affirming that Tuan was treating me as more than just an extension of him; that is, as a valued person in his life. Similarly, one year, to my amazement, one of my stepdaughters got really angry at me for not following through on something for her. As an extremely compulsive person, I knew I had probably been her most consistent parent in terms of not dropping the ball on promises I had made. Naturally, I became defensive in the face of her global accusation about my failing to come through for her. In time I realized she was using me to express her upset about experiences from long ago, after her parents’ separation, when she was neither prepared for parental comings and goings, nor felt life was predictable. By demanding perfect consistency and constancy on my part she was trying to fill in the internal spaces where she had felt so abandoned as a young girl. I tolerated her ruthless disregard of my actual mothering by not letting her distortion destroy me so she could begin to rectify her original deprivation (although internally I did anguish about what I was doing wrong). Helping foster, adoptive and stepparents stand back from the greedy, voracious, insatiable emotional hunger on the part of their children, so that they can bear witness to childish longings that belong to a previous time, is one way I hope to boost parental capacity to maintain balance in the face of what may feel like ruthless, covetous and grasping behaviors rather than normal needs or desires. In time, the foster, adoptive or stepmother will have to begin to set limits on the child’s callous tendency to treat the caretaker as if she were invisible or had no needs apart from the child. A child’s ruthless disregard of his/her mother (or father) is quite difficult to endure. Discerning when the child has filled the hole of his earlier deprivation enough is the subtle judgment call for parents facing such an onslaught. At that point the parent must lead the child from ruthless use of caretaker as simply a function, such as providing self-building supplies, to an acknowledgment of the separate existence of the person, mother or

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father, with needs of his/her own. One of the most difficult aspects to parenting is being willing to stand up to children, containing their aggressive outbursts or impulsive behavior by requiring their respect of others in the family while simultaneously helping them build self-respect. All parents, whether biological or non-biological, who are concerned with the life-growth theme, need to confront their children about self-destructive or ruthless behaviors, which include harming oneself or totally overriding the needs of others. Only with the sense that there is enough parental love to cushion and bound the normal hate of early childhood, through a creative destruction of fantasied omnipotence, will children be able to integrate their love and hate for the same person. By giving and receiving recognition for all aspects of themselves – the good, the bad and the ugly – as parents claiming their real children, step, foster and adoptive mothers and fathers can model the constructive aspects of assertion of self as a subject. Witnessing his mother’s or father’s agency as a parent permits a child to feel ambivalence toward his inner representation of his less-than- invincible parent, while treating his real mother or father respectfully. Such children can then tolerate disappointment without going into a rage or feeling obliterated, because they know that two people may have diverse perspectives, needs and ideas and that no one need be destroyed by these differences if an effort is made to reach across the gap to recognize one another (Benjamin 1995a). The various ideologies – political, religious, or prejudices about members of certain racial groups, social classes, genders or sexual minorities – that subsume a black/white, us/them, ingroup/ outgroup duality tend to grow in families and social contexts where resources of love are not abundant enough to overcome the hate. Thus the generativity of grandparents, foster parents, adoptive parents or stepparents who have the backbone to endure their own creative destruction by the younger generation is essential in a world where there is surely already more than enough hate to go around.

Notes 1

Some spelling and punctuation directly transcribed from original; some portions changed to protect girl’s privacy.

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2

3 4

Kokopelli is the name of a hump-backed, flute-playing God of fertility in the cosmology of various Indian tribes in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Kokopelli wanders from village to village spreading his seed among maidens who are honored to bear his children, as well as proffering villagers seeds to plant from the sack on his back and entertaining them with his haunting spiritual music. Thus he is an archetypal symbol of masculine nurturance and fertility. Portions of this paragraph previously appeared in Waterman (2002a, pp.99–109). Paraphrase of the ‘motherhood mindset’ from Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern (1998).

6

The Supporting Matrix DEAR ABBY: My stepdaughter is planning to be married next spring. Her fiancé has two children from a previous marriage. Will they become my grandchildren, my step-grandchildren, the stepchildren of my stepdaughter, or simply the children of the man who married my stepdaughter? My wife is teasing me about becoming an instant grandfather. I’m not so sure this marriage makes me one officially. I will, of course, treat them as my grandchildren, but I am curious nonetheless. Please advise. WONDERING IN INDIANAPOLIS DEAR WONDERING: If you are married to ‘Grandma,’ that makes you ‘Grandpa.’ Stop splitting ‘heirs’ and accept the honor graciously, or you may wind up being called a name that’s far less complimentary than ‘Grandpa.’ (Van Buren 2000)

It is a caring act to choose to adopt or foster a child as well as to mother stepchildren. With the current fragility of the nuclear family, not to mention the erosion of extended family life, people who are willing to parent non-biological children are making an essential and meaningful contribution to our society and will soon begin to outnumber the ranks of ‘traditional’ parents. Unfortunately, the social and ritual supports available to women giving birth do not always extend to mothers generously offering their nurturing to a foster, step or adoptive child. Parents in families created through adoption, fostering, extended kin care or in stepfamilies need networks and resources to support their efforts on behalf of the children they claim, especially since these families are still considered alternative even though they are revolutionizing the landscape of 138

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family life in this historical era. This is why Dear Abby’s response to Wondering in Indianapolis is important in affirming the value of kin ties that are created through extended stepfamilies. I was glad to see that in 2001 an entire CBS television special, A Home for the Holidays with Mariah Carey – sponsored by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, begun by the founder of Wendy’s (fast food chain) – featured entertainers and ordinary people who had been adopted or worked with children in need of adoption, who praised adoption and publicized the need for homes for the many children lost in foster care. Similarly, on Mother’s Day 2002, the movie Stepmom was aired on prime time television in the United States, suggesting that more than just nuclear families are making it into the cultural mainstream. A patient of mine, who had come from a very poor white background,1 chose to adopt her nephew, now in his twenties, because her brother and his wife were incapable of raising him. Had my patient not risen to the occasion of taking him in at age two, as a single mother, this child would have been relegated to a career in the foster care system (he’d already been through a few foster placements by the time my patient applied for ‘fost-adopt’ status). I was saddened to hear, as I bore witness to this patient’s bitterness and rancor, that many significant networks and social institutions undermined rather than supported her efforts to mother this young boy. While she pursued her graduate training, her son/nephew was attending the research-oriented daycare facilities available to staff and students at that institution. The boy was put under a psychological microscope by the daycare staff whose ‘expert’ opinions pathologizing the child did more to undermine my patient’s confidence as a mother than to support her. (I have no doubt this daycare staff was concerned with attachment issues on the part of the boy, whose early history was shaky at best.) Since being a single adoptive parent was not as ubiquitous back then as it is now, this woman also caught flak from the feminist community who questioned her ‘sell out’ choice to become a mother at the expense of her own identity and the women’s movement. When her son was diagnosed with a learning disability, public school personnel also stepped in to question my patient’s judgment and dedication in providing her son with adequate educational resources. Nor did her nuclear family back her up that well. Her sister kept predicting a negative outcome for the boy based on the genetic failings of the boy’s father, their brother, which led my

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patient to question her maternal instincts in the light of her own genetic predispositions. Even in her own previous psychotherapy, my patient was kindly told that she was replicating her family-of-origin dysfunctional patterns in her self-sabotage tendencies – interpretations that added to her burdened sense of inadequacy as a mother by heightening her awareness of the holes in her internal motherline. So while trying her best to enter the motherhood mindset – her own mothering having been quite dark and ‘crazy-making’ – this woman lived in a kind of emotional no-woman’s land with no supportive female counsel on the horizon. Sadly for my patient, familial input as well as institutional substitutes for maternal mentoring figures let her down by reinforcing her worst inner self-representations about her capacities to mother. As in the traditional mother–infant dyad, this lack of a supporting matrix will negatively impact the child and mother in the unfolding of an attachment, calling into question this primary bond (Stern 1995). In contrast, a stepmother, Sharon, who had raised both her husband’s children from his first marriage as well as their joint children by birth, shared the following encouraging story. Sharon was attending a conference where she sat next to another woman with whom she exchanged pleasantries while waiting for the keynote speaker to begin. The woman asked Sharon if she had children. Responding in the affirmative, Sharon nonetheless became nonplussed at the next question, ‘How many?’ After a pause she responded that she had four children, amending that two were her children by birth and two were her stepchildren in order to explain her awkwardness with the question. The other woman asked if they all lived with her, and Sharon affirmed that they did. ‘If they live with you then they’re your children,’ the woman affirmed with a knowing twinkle in her eye. Sharon, who also emotionally claimed both sets of children as her own, felt seen and acknowledged by this inclusive perspective on the part of a relative stranger. This is an example of a supporting matrix moment, which enables rather than impedes a woman’s effort to make a difference in her non-biological children’s lives.

Adoptive, foster and stepmother invisibility On joining my husband’s family, I moved to a new community, so that I did not even know the other mothers and fathers involved in the school where

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our daughters went. This meant that in addition to trying to step up to the plate as a stepmother, I was working very hard to enter a community where most women had known each other since their children were in pre-school. Thus, on many levels I tackled my passage into motherhood in isolation. Where was the group called ‘new stepmothers of adolescents’ when I needed it? While I solved problems with friends who had pre-teens and adolescents, the issues they struggled with were often different than mine because they had built the bonds with their offspring since birth, and I had only emerging stepmother/stepdaughter connections to launch me into the challenge of adolescence. Also, I have often wondered if my friends who became miffed at me due to my greater unavailability after becoming a stepmother would have felt the same way had I given birth to an infant. Although I did recite a Zuni adoption prayer to my daughters during the wedding ceremony to their father, the enormity of my life change remained hidden without social rituals to mark it publicly. In fact, I inadvertently hurt my husband’s biological mother when at our wedding I gathered up my husband’s stepmother and my stepdaughters for a ‘stepmotherline’ photo to signify our (stepmother) place in the family. After my long journey attempting to become a mother I felt true loss that in becoming a stepmother I never even had the ritual of a shower to share my entry into motherhood with my women friends and mentors, mothers or not. In hindsight, I wish I had been more conscious of my need for such a marker on moving in with my husband and my stepdaughters. More often than not a stepmother, in the early phases of creating a new stepfamily, has to sit on her longings for more inclusion and recognition, in favor of respecting and immersing herself in the family culture of her partner. For a number of years I felt quite sad sitting by like an onlooker during dinner table discussions about ‘the extended family.’ No doubt occasioned by my diffidence, my own roots were not included in the conversation, nor even inquired about. In my husband’s family, with the exception of his stepmother, all the women folk have followed conventional gender paths in life. In contrast, thanks to my maternal grandmother and my father’s sister, my family provided a strong legacy for me to step out of the traditional woman’s role. Because of these internal role models, I got into a prestigious doctoral program despite having college professors tell me that as a ‘girl’ I didn’t have much of a chance. Even though my husband very much valued my help in preparing our daughters for college

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(an opportunity unavailable to my husband and his sisters) the culture of his family did not appreciate the effort involved in such aspirations. Only after their first year of college, when I realized I needed to be more active in telling my own story to both daughters, did the stepmother legacy become woven into our family lore. As documented in the longitudinal NIH study of stepfamilies, it takes a number of years to ‘bridge the insider–outsider gap’ (Bray and Kelly 1998, pp.122–152) between biological and stepparents, and the children, in these newly assembled families. More often than not when I explain to people that my daughters are actually stepdaughters the initial response is usually, ‘Oh…wow…that’s really tough.’ Most ‘how to’ books on stepmothering start with the ways that the stepfamily fails to live up to the nuclear family ideal, attempting to tweak an ‘ain’t it awful’ system into something bearable. The movie Stepmom is a 1990s version of the classic stepmother fairy tale. The Step- in Stepmother derives from the Middle English steif, meaning bereaved, and was originally applied to orphan children. A Stepmother, then, is the mother of a bereaved child. Loss and grief are her milieu, her raison d’être. In fairy tales she arrives in the face of death, summoned by the family’s loss. Often, through her dark machinations, evil is turned upon itself and grief is finally resolved. She is the force that moves the bereaved child beyond tears and into action on his own behalf. But she is more than an agent of heroic growth and change; she is a creature of the grief in which she moves, a shadow figure rising not ex nihilo, but out of wrenching loss. To know this is to begin to understand her in ourselves. (Schectman 1993, pp.xv–xvi)

In Stepmom, because of the biological mother’s terminal illness, she is forced into passing the torch of motherhood to the stepmother. Only when her own fate leaves her no other option does she choose to mentor the stepmother who will be stepping into her shoes, since this is in the best interests of her children. In the face of death the two women can set aside their differences and provide each other with a mutual supporting matrix. Unfortunately this was only possible when one of the mothers was about to die, thereby turning the extended stepfamily back into a ‘nuclear-like’ family.

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In fact there is evidence that the Brothers Grimm rewrote various fairy tales where the mothers were less than perfectly self-sacrificing, effortless nurturers of the all good mother ideal, changing the mothers into stepmothers into whom all wicked, abusive, devouring, depriving aspects of motherhood could be projected (Tatar 1987). Thus on an archetypal level a stepmother feels like an interloper, having internalized the dark stepmother icon which continues to be culturally reinforced: In thinking of herself as a mother, every woman confronts powerful cultural imperatives: to be always available, to be all-giving, to do it all. It is the very impossibility of measuring up to this societal ideal, reflected in the splitting of ‘good mother/fairy godmother’ and ‘bad mother/wicked stepmother’ in the fairy tales, that introduced us all to what stepfamily life might be expected to be. Faulting themselves for not feeling or doing all that they assume real mothers feel or do, stepmothers often do not realize that being a mother forces every woman to accept her limitations. Women who are stepmothers without first being mothers base their maternal self-esteem on experience with stepchildren and have a harder time gaining a sense of themselves as ‘good enough’ mothers. (Bernstein 1994, pp.195–196)

Further, in order to remain loyal to their mothers, children will often cast the stepmother in the wicked role. The tremendous temptation to oversimplify both mother and stepmother in the extended kin structure of stepfamilies does not serve the children well, since neither mother is all bad or all good. The prolonged invisibility of stepmothers, because of their threat to mother/child monogamy, is part of what gives rise to the misery of these discredited and unrecognized mothers (Bray and Kelly 1998). Depending on the stepmother, these external pressures may coincide with internal forces (see Chapter 7) which lead her to inadvertently perpetuate the ‘wicked’ stepmother stereotype through her actions, by succumbing to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like the mother of an egg donor baby and the non-biological lesbian co-parent of a mutual child, the stepmother is the other mother, biologically, and often also legally (Murphy 1998). In order to create a sense of legitimacy, stepmothers need mentoring networks that help defuse their sense of being imposters. Again, a good supporting matrix – and, it is to be hoped, reading this book – can make this long phase of invisibility in relation to her stepchildren bearable, enabling a stepmother to feel less

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slighted by such omissions. Friedman’s (2000) Newsweek piece, ‘My Not-so-Wicked Stepmother: Though My Family’s Story has been Nothing like a Fairy Tale, We May Just Get the Happy Ending,’ offers a more complex long-term perspective about the meaning of having a stepmother in her life. Stepmothers are not the only mothers who are made invisible as they embark on the mothering journey. With more women delaying motherhood until their late thirties or forties – finding that they aren’t always able to conceive even with the help of reproductive technologies – increasing numbers of couples or singles are choosing to adopt. One colleague of mine told me the story of going to a baby store right before her adoptive son was to be born. Because she was not pregnant, she didn’t receive the same kind of joyful recognition from the retail staff that another mother might have. This seemingly minor event for this mother was enormous since she was rendered invisible just as she needed social support to relieve the normal doubts about becoming a new mother that all expectant mothers have, pregnant or otherwise. Another adoptive mother, Lee (see Chapter 4), who stayed with the birthmother, Clarisse, during and after the birth, had not felt her son, Pat, was really hers until the middle of one hospital night a few days after his birth. Pat began fussing, and after a long pause while Lee waited to see what Clarisse would do, Clarisse handed the baby over to her. Until this touching moment Lee had not felt Pat was hers to claim. About a year later Lee was over at the house of a friend who had given birth not more than 24 hours earlier, to help the sleep-deprived new couple, when her friend asked her, ‘So where does Pat’s real mother live?’ While Lee managed to retain her compassion for her spaced out friend, a mother for less than a day, inside she felt like she had been kicked in the belly. ‘Berkeley,’ she replied abruptly. ‘No, I mean his real mother,’ her friend persisted, ‘I thought she lived in Arizona somewhere.’ Long pause, until Lee said quietly, ‘I live in Berkeley.’ Sharing this vignette with me, Lee fumed that this barely off-the-bus2 new mother had the nerve to marginalize her as less than a ‘real’ mother (Smith et al. 1998) because she had not given birth – what a way to repay Lee for providing her friend with support and practical help post-birth! Ironically, after my interview with Lee I went to a nearby baby store called ‘Pickles and Ice Cream’ to pick up a book on the role of doulas (see below) in helping mothers-to-be and found that there

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was not a single book about adoption in the store. Given the adoption explosion in our historical era (Pertman 2000) – especially in Berkeley, California, where this store is located – the gap between family-building trends and what is commercially available for mothers on the adoption journey was shocking. Despite the lag in mainstream culture, it is becoming relatively commonplace to have showers for adopted babies, to join adoptive moms’ groups post-birth, and for extended families to welcome adopted infants into the family as one of their own. In his film Daddy & Papa, Johnny Symons (2001) movingly depicts the celebration ceremony when he, a white man, and his biracial partner, William, adopt their nine-month-old African-American son, Zachary, out of foster care. Present at the party marking this momentous change in their lives were not only other members of the gay community and Johnny’s mother, but also the community and kin of the fundamentalist Christian African-American foster mother, Dora, who was deeply attached to Zachary whom she had cared for from infancy. Because of her love for Zachary, Dora had struggled to overcome her religious prejudices and moral judgments about having her baby adopted by two men, because she knew it was in Zachary’s best interests to be placed in a permanent home. But not everyone is so lucky in finding support for creative alternatives to family building even when they live in the unusually progressive San Francisco Bay area where such showers crossing lines of race, sexual preference and religious affiliation are possible. One African-American woman I met while training C.A.R.I. program foster mothers (foster care for infants between birth and 36 months with the intent to reunify them with their natural mothers) had raised not only her own children but also some of her grandchildren. In addition to participating in the C.A.R.I. program she had had several foster children through other fost-adopt programs, including an African-American toddler who was later adopted at age four-plus years by two gay white men. As the training was about grief and loss, this woman brought up her loss of this boy to a permanent placement with a sense of pride, since the two fathers continued to keep in touch with her, making sure to maintain her foster son’s bond with her. Unfortunately most of the foster mother participants (white, Hispanic and black) heatedly insisted it was immoral for gay men and women to adopt, forcing her into the position of having to defend her tolerance of

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alternative families. Sadly, the group could not fathom this foster mother’s joy at not having to sustain yet one more loss of a foster child to whom she had become attached. The group’s prejudice against gay adoptions detracted from the foster mother’s gratification in having done right by her foster son who was now in a loving home with a family who still recognized the importance of her bond with him. At another foster mother training given by a colleague, a foster mother told this story. She had two latency-aged foster children, a brother and a sister, whom she had cared for since they were toddlers. She was hoping to be able to adopt them, in part because they kept telling her not to call herself their ‘foster mother’ in public. This woman felt her children were ashamed about having been remanded to foster care. I could not help raising my hand to tell this woman that I felt the children were claiming her as their mother, so that her use of the term ‘foster’ no longer registered for them emotionally. ‘Since they feel you are their mother, and you feel the same way, maybe they want you to make it public by simply calling yourself their Mom,’ I suggested. The woman sat up straighter and with dignity acknowledged that she’d never thought about it quite this way. I think she left the training feeling more determined to get the adoption of her children finalized, less to hide shame than to proclaim love. Returning to my interview with Francesca, the lesbian foster mother who (see Chapter 5) with her partner had three foster children, aged 11, nine and eight, the issue of invisibility about sexual preference and about becoming parents were both painful ones for these foster mothers. Having to pretend not to be sweethearts was by Francesca’s account one of the most excruciating aspects to waiting for the system to free the children up for adoption – a ubiquitous problem despite President Clinton’s Adoption 2002 initiative in 1996 ‘to move children out of the foster care system and residential treatment centers more quickly when there is no hope for reunification with their birthparents or extended family’ (Pavao 1998, p.115). Francesca and Adriana only felt comfortable being open about the romantic nature of their connection when the children were not around, lest they lose another set of foster children to whom they were attached (see Chapter 5). Meanwhile, Francesca also acknowledged that they had not really availed themselves of support from the lesbian community, since so many people they knew were not parents. They knew of no other lesbians who had chosen to become foster parents, and when I asked her if

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she and Adriana had had a shower to celebrate their rite of passage into parenthood she hooted with acid laughter. Rather than being supported for their decision to become adoptive parents by fostering children badly in need of a stable home, family and friends wanted to know why they wanted to have children, or why they were trying to adopt, seeing it as an onerous choice. Even Adriana’s mother, who herself had been a foster mother, was barely involved in her foster grandchildren’s lives. On the other hand, Francesca’s brother and sister-in-law, also parents, had become increasingly willing to offer back-up to these two women when they needed some respite from the challenges of caring for their three demanding children, whose traumatic backgrounds included multiple foster placements and child sexual and physical abuse. For gay men, invisibility as adoptive parents takes a different form, as Symons so poignantly shows in Daddy & Papa. When in the park or on the playground with their children it is assumed that ‘Dad’ is out with a ‘buddy’ so that ‘Mom’ can have a day off from being with the children. Consequently, a good deal of time is spent coming out to other fathers and mothers when out in public as an adoptive gay family. In the gay community, since fatherhood is not the norm, most men have no idea how demanding it is to parent. Add to these obstacles the fact that many gay men adopt out of foster care and participate in transracial adoptions, the potential mentors for new gay fathers shrink even more drastically. Rather than being extolled for their courage and generativity in undertaking the parenting project, these fathers – like Francesca and Adriana – are regarded with incredulity, and their isolation is compounded.

Everyone deserves a doula With a new baby, whether from birth, fostering or adoption, the mothering person has a need for the wisdom, input, advice and support of other experienced mothers. As described in The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever: Remember that motherhood is like a craft, and all beginning mothers need to apprentice with some kind of model or guide – a sort of master craftswoman – who has already been there. The role of the guide is not just to give advice and information. Much more, it is to surround you with

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a psychological environment in which you can feel secure and trustworthy, and encouraged to explore your parental capacities. Let us call this special psychological environment an ‘affirming matrix.’ (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998, p.131)

Traditionally a woman drew on her ‘motherline’ (Lowinsky 1992) such as grandmothers, aunts or other kin for the wisdom subsumed in old wives’ tales and mother wit (an African-American term for mothering wisdom) in order to be a better mother. With the shift in authority about parenting from kin to experts (Ehrenreich and English 1978) over the last century, mothers are increasingly joining self-help groups in order to create a supporting matrix where they can reclaim their wisdom. The longstanding friendships of many women are made around giving birth or adopting. One friend of mine was in at least three mothers’ groups after each of her sons was born, and these women make up the fabric of her community since she became a mother. Another adoptive mother whose son is ten has been in the same adoptive parent support group since his adoption at birth. In her group the parents meet to try to help one another tease out issues they think might have to do with adoption from those that are endemic to all parenting or related to the specific temperament or unique psychological needs of their respective children. Not only are these groups a source of affirming psychological support for parents, but mothers’ group leaders or the members themselves come to meetings armed with new information off the internet or research findings that might be of use to their peers. Increasingly grandmothers are availing themselves of support groups when they are needed to raise their grandchildren, if only temporarily until their children get their lives back on track either by going into rehabilitation or by ‘cleaning up their act.’ One Caucasian grandmother felt her isolation deeply even though she was completely committed to her choice to foster her grandchildren. Because her other grandmother friends were not embarking on another phase of childrearing, this choice was out of synch with the life stage of her cohort. Consequently she was beholden to a local children’s clinic where she could participate in a grandmothers’ support group, while her grandchildren joined a playgroup during the weekly meeting. This group provided an opportunity to share experiences and information with other grandmothers tackling similar parenting issues while bearing the ambiguity about whether their children would

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turn their lives around enough to resume childrearing. Further, because this grandmothers’ group required a yearlong commitment, the group could become more of an affirming matrix for its members, in contrast to grandmothers’ groups that operate on more of a drop-in basis (Poe 1992). Similarly, Parental Stress Service, Inc., a local non-profit agency serving families and parents in my county in California, has a program called FOSTER P(arent)A(dvice)L(ine) to provide support for the unique needs of foster and kinship parents so as to strengthen the care they give. This hotline is open seven days a week between 3 and 11 p.m. In the county next to mine, there is a program called Shared Family Care whereby at-risk mothers attempting to reunify with their children – often after substance abuse rehabilitation – live with a mentor family in order to learn the basics of good parenting (Bower 2003). Similar programs in various states provide around-the-clock role models for problem parents resuming a life with their children. Results from the small studies that have been done are promising: children whose parents complete the program are only half as likely to re-enter the child-welfare system as those whose families reunite after foster care; the number of participant parents (mostly mothers) with a job doubles after they have lived with a mentor; and living conditions for these families once they’re on their own are much improved. (Bower 2003, p.62)

Most of the mothers who benefit from this type of mentoring never had the experience of growing up with a stable attachment figure. As one mother who participated in Shared Family Care – after years of drug and alcohol abuse, followed by successful rehabilitation – proclaimed, ‘This program helped save my life … And helped me be a part of my kids’ life’ (Bower 2003, p.63). Despite the budgetary arguments against such programs, the human value can be priceless as these mothers are fostered along with their children while they develop their skills as more effective and responsive parents. In Greece, there is a special woman called a doula who takes care of mothers through the birth process and during the postpartum period. The doula’s role is focussed on the mother, not baby, providing individual nurturance, coaching, encouragement and support. Having this role built into community life has a certain wisdom that we have lost in our society.

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In fact a study done in Houston showed that low-income mothers attended by doulas through labor and post-delivery needed less anesthetic and were more affectionate with their babies two months post-birth than those not provided with doula coaching (McConnaughey 1998). If mothers who give birth can benefit so clearly from a ritualized member of the supporting matrix (Klaus, Kennell and Klaus 1993), then obviously step, adoptive and foster mothers would gain by having such affirming mentors. One doula told me about her experience in helping mothers through the ‘transition’ phase of birth. Transition refers to the shift in the labor process from contractions preparing the cervix for birth to actually pushing the baby out. This doula told me that this was the moment fraught with the most ambivalence on the part of laboring mothers. Because many mothers do not want to face the loss of their oneness with the baby in utero through the physical separation of birth, they unconsciously put off transition, to the detriment of a safe birth process. This is where the doula has to help a mother face the first of many betrayals (Oxenhandler 2001) by her child through his natural developmental separation from her. In contrast to mothers giving birth, adoptive, foster and stepmothers begin their relationship to their claimed children with separation built in. There is no transition from the fantasied child in utero to the real child to help the mother enter the motherhood mindset. This lack of the mythological paradise of biological oneness is part of what makes non-biological mothering so devalued compared to biological mothering. The unconditional biological link between mother and child gives such bonds more legitimacy than those created by parents choosing to mother children with whom they connect by other means. No matter how much is written by adoptive parents (Bartholet 1993; Pertman 2000) about the ultimate joys of parenting through adoption, society persists in viewing adoption, or worse yet adopting out of foster care, as second best or even the booby prize as a means to creating a family. This is why support groups have become so important and, in the age of the internet, so readily available. RESOLVE, a U.S. self-help organization for people going through the infertility journey, also helps organize support groups for couples and singles attempting to adopt. Through a variety of networks and organizations there are support groups for international adoptions, singles adopting, families with children adopted from

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specific countries, special needs adoptive families, transracial domestic adoptions and so forth to help inform and give support to parents during the pre-adoptive, finalization and post-adoptive phases of their journeys. The adoptive mother of a patient of mine told me she was part of an internet group of 4000 parents who exchange information and resources just in our local geographical area. These groups can be essential in supporting and guiding parents through the normal challenges of being an adoptive family or in helping them get to professionals who have training in the unique developmental and intergenerational issues (Bonovitz 2002) of extended adoptive family systems, called the ‘adoption constellation’ by Sobol (http://www.adoption.ca/sobol.htm), which may well include birth families, previous foster parents, social workers involved on a long-term basis with foster children and so on (Pavao 1998).

Having an affirming matrix to bear witness A lesbian couple had two very different sorts of adoption experiences: one through open adoption and the second through the foster care system. Joyce and Susan had met their son, Tommy, after they received a call from friends the night he was born at the local county hospital. Joyce had several long talks with Tommy’s birthmother, Sue, to be sure Sue was making a truly free choice about adoption, including giving Sue the adoption letter of heterosexual friends in case she was reluctant to relinquish her son to a lesbian couple. Sue ultimately chose Joyce and Susan to adopt Tommy because she had had her own experience of loving a woman in the past. Joyce and Susan were especially grateful to their network of friends whose material and emotional support carried them through their unexpected and abrupt entry into motherhood, and through the ambiguities of finalization, since Sue and the birthfather were hard to find and pin down about signing the final adoption papers. Like all mothers Joyce and Susan also wanted to share their deep joy and awe about entering motherhood with their affirming matrix, and I remember receiving many Christmas letters filled with delighted details about Tommy’s unfolding infancy and toddlerhood. In contrast to this open adoption experience, Susan and Joyce had an arduous journey adopting through foster care, since as lesbian parents they

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tended to be passed over by social workers (or so they were told by a friend who worked in social services covering their home county). To their and Tommy’s sorrow, Susan and Joyce had to relinquish their first fost-adopt daughter, placed in their home for several years starting as a toddler, because she went to live with her birthmother for the first time. Finally, when Tommy was five, another girl of two and a half years, Iris, was placed with them. Iris came from a family whose domestic violence, prostitution, substance abuse and incarceration in jail were part of her early experience. When Iris was first placed with Susan and Joyce she was under-socialized, not even knowing what a knife and fork were, much less how to speak. Iris’s capacity to attach to her adoptive mothers was minimal, her frustration tolerance low, her tantrums several hours long, her cognitive development delayed, and her tendency to indiscriminately attach to strangers, especially men, alarming. Susan, whom I interviewed, talked about her difficulty feeling like a good mother to this special needs child, especially since even by age six Iris could barely use Joyce and Susan as a home base. The ‘attachment specialist’ seeing Iris for psychotherapy provided minimal parental guidance, so little support was forthcoming from this quarter. Nor could most of Joyce and Susan’s friends understand why the mothers were so worn out in their attempts to help Iris catch up developmentally because when the family was with other people Iris was always so sweet and friendly to the adults. Finally, one evening Susan felt a good friend had the opportunity to bear witness to what she and Joyce had been going through with Iris. They were at a local theater seeing a play when Iris became irritable and restless. She began kicking the chair and talking. The person in front of her turned around repeatedly and asked Iris to be quiet. When her mother tried to set limits with her, Iris spat into Joyce’s face. Susan felt that their friend’s tune changed considerably about what they were up against after witnessing Iris’s out-of-control behavior in response to a minor aggravation, and Susan briefly felt exonerated in her failure to do better by Iris. Still, the lack of regular outside support for the vicissitudes of raising a child with as many strikes against her as Iris had was an ongoing source of frustration and despair for Susan and added to her burden. Without someone to regularly bear witness to her anguish as Iris’s adoptive mother, Susan was tempted to give in to a sense of futility about her maternal efforts to make a difference in Iris’s life.

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Not just adoptive mothers, but stepmothers too, may lack maternal figures to go to for affirmation and support around their mothering journeys. This is why organizations like the Stepfamily Association of America are so important in terms of providing education and resources to stepparents.3 Not surprisingly, stepmothers are more likely to avail themselves of these resources than stepfathers (Bray and Kelly 1998). Bearing witness for one another, a group of 30 stepmothers who met through StepTogether, an internet support group with 700 stepmoms, recently celebrated Mother’s Day by pairing up to exchange gifts on this holiday when stepmothers can be so overlooked (Peterson 2002). As previously noted, foster, adoptive and stepmothers experience the nature/nurture dimension of parenting differently than biological mothers. Since we cannot automatically assume similarity based on nature, the pressure on nurture to sustain the mother/child bond adds a new spin to non-biological mothering relationships. More effort is required to reach across the interpersonal differences that surface as you get to know your children. Because the differences are built in, the tension between the connection and the individuality of each person within the relationship is especially intense. An authentic encounter with a chosen child forces a mother to forge her own identity in order for the dyad to embrace two separate individuals. With the contradiction between love and difference built into all phases of development with foster, adopted and stepchildren, mother/child conflict can be used to enliven the bond. On the other hand, the downside for the mother is that the enjoyment of certain narcissistic benefits (‘she’s creative just like me’) may not be as abundant, in terms of helping the child develop into the potential person the mother envisions. I rarely felt I could take for granted the legacy of my nurture to my stepdaughters, much less a connection through nature. Often, the relief I felt in having my experience affirmed by a woman who had given birth to her own children clarified for me that stepmothering is both more similar to and more different from biological mothering than is understood in perfect-mother/wicked-stepmother lore. Again, the paradoxes of being similar to and different from a non-biological child have been illuminated by experiences with my stepdaughters. In a misunderstanding with a stepchild who is different, there is a tendency to reach for nature, and the chasm it requires one to bridge, as the explanation. When, despite the difference, one has a close moment,

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there is a lovely feeling of stepmother nurture being rewarded. In contrast, when a stepchild is similar and there is a falling-out one feels that stepmother nurture is the problem. A moment of understanding with the similar stepchild is of course harder to take credit for since the similar natures between stepmother and child are assumed to be the cause. These ways of making meaning of stepmother/child ‘misses’ are not very different than what mothers of children with differences attributable to temperament, spirit or life rhythm go through, in comparison to their ‘chip off the old block’ children whose similarity ensures an easier – or sometimes harder – mother/child bond. Where for biological parents bonding starts with similarity between parent and child and unfolds into difference between me and not-me, for non-biological parents bonding starts with otherness and moves toward sameness (Ehrensaft 2002). Like in the knitting of a cozy woolen sweater one can focus on the threads or the holes in the attachment. That is, we can emphasize what children have lost in being raised by other than birthmother or jointly raised by mother and stepmother, or we can emphasize what these children have found. Depending on which pole in the dialectic is emphasized by members of one’s supporting matrix, the kaleidoscope can shift from a half-empty glass to a half-full glass, or vice versa, in the most humbling task of parenting. Somehow, falling into the pit called ‘non-biological conditional connectedness’ – in contrast to the myth of unconditional biological love – makes the meaning of closeness and distance with non-biological children so much more laden with either joy or anguish, respectively. The supporting matrix can take the sting out of self-criticism on the part of a foster, adoptive or stepmother when normal misunderstandings with her children occur. By proffering a longer term view, the affirming matrix can help a mother shift the meaning about certain momentary struggles with foster, step and adoptive children, thereby empowering her and recognizing her for her vital contribution to her children. Without such a matrix to bear witness, developing an attachment and helping the child continue to grow and develop will be more difficult. If the creation of a supporting matrix is not possible, then a woman attempting to mother children has to draw from her inner resources. Relying on one’s own internalized experiences of how one was mothered can be complex, especially if one’s own mothering was not ‘good enough.’

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While some mothers may prefer to forge ahead without a supporting matrix, other mothers need sources of counsel and affirming input about their capacities to do well by their children. Stepmothers, adoptive and foster mothers have a unique need for this kind of positive input so they will feel less alone and ‘make it through the night.’

Support the mother, heal the child Along with support groups, foster, adoptive and stepparents may avail themselves of professional help for their children. Psychotherapy can boost a child’s healing, while offering support to parents who are struggling to help their child develop in a constructive direction. Because non-biological parents are often coping with what came before in the child’s life, rather than being there from the child’s inception and conception, they may need assistance facing the implications of the child’s history, and hope about the role they can play in his/her life. Psychotherapists can be more or less effective in enabling adoptive, foster or stepparents to hold the tension between possibilities and limitations in their capacities to affect the lives of their claimed children. I had an unnerving personal experience at the hands of a therapist whom I consulted around one of my stepdaughter’s adolescent crisis. In trying to discern what was due to a learning disability and what had emotional roots in her academic difficulties, my husband and I consulted with a testing psychologist. This young clinician, well meaning though she may have been, gave offhand input about the fact that one cannot ‘catch up’ and make up for previous losses in these circumstances. Despite being in the field and knowing better as a psychologist, as a stepmother I was devastated by this bogus ‘expert’ advice. I momentarily lost hope that I would be able to make a difference for my stepdaughter, and only with the aid of her regular therapist was I able to reclaim my confidence as a stepmother who could help her stepdaughter get back on track. Thus, for the stepmother, like any mother, to have the child pathologized by professionals, or to have one’s mothering efforts undermined or deemed fruitless, adds to the sense of having no supporting matrix. I once heard someone joke that no one ever dreams of growing up to be a stepmother. Thus it is essential for helping professionals to draw on a bond-building perspective to help despairing stepmothers, who come in

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to consult about whether they are adequate to the task of helping their children heal from the past, or move forward in the future. Especially given the rather dire (Wallerstein, Blakeslee and Lewis 2001) and not-so-dire (Hetherington and Kelly 2002) research about the long-term effects of divorce on children, many stepmothers are genuinely concerned about how best to help their stepchildren. A stepmother often needs support while coming to terms with the mothering of the other (usually biological) mother, as well as with the parenting idiosyncrasies of her stepchildren’s father. With a therapist’s guidance the stepmother may be able to steer clear of either a false sense of omnipotence about what is possible in her role as third (or fourth) parent or succumbing to a fatalistic impotence about her capacities to make a difference with her stepchildren. A colleague of mine who has a talent for working with ‘difficult’ young boys expresses only gratitude for the mothering efforts on the part of the stepmothers of his patients. In his caseload, it is typical that the entry of the stepmother into the family system creates the context for the struggling boy to be brought to therapy. The stepmothers’ fresh perspective and advocacy on behalf of their stepsons that ‘something is wrong here’ seems to enable the beleaguered biological parents to get their sons the attention they need. Thus psychotherapists, school counselors and so forth need to be careful about undermining the good intentions on the part of a stepmother. By crediting stepmothers who are trying to contribute to their stepchildren’s lives, professionals can support them in finding the courage to make emotional claims on their stepchildren, which may eventually create a mutual sense of belonging. An offhand comment can feel like a blow to a well-meaning stepmother, who urgently needs the helping professional to carry the hope for and about her stepchildren, especially when parenting difficulties seem overwhelming. Adoptive mothers need similar encouraging and realistic input from psychotherapists. A recent article by Zuckerman and Buschsbaum (2000) is an example of how psychologists who have not been trained to think about the mother’s experience in forging a bond with a child adopted out of foster care can be dismissive of an adoptive mother overwhelmed by her own and her child’s losses. An Afro-Caribbean woman, the adoptive mother, Adele, had decided to adopt her foster daughter, Lisa, because of her loss of a number of pregnancies through miscarriage after the birth of her son, and because of their common cultural roots. Lisa, aged nine, had

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been in foster care from birth to age three when she was adopted. Because of the loss of her biological mother, the loss of foster siblings, all adopted before her, and the loss of her foster parents upon her adoption, Lisa engaged in many self-destructive behaviors – attention-seeking and indiscriminant attachment, disruption and disobedience, stealing and destroying objects at home and at school, acting sexually provocative with boys and socially provocative in general – signaling her expectation of further abandonment when she came to live with Adele and her son. Further, Adele’s husband of seven years had died five years before she chose to adopt Lisa. In her account of working with Lisa the therapist is quite critical of Adele’s ‘harsh’ home environment and lack of empathy for Lisa’s struggles about adoption. The therapist blames the adoptive mother for Lisa’s irregularity at psychotherapy sessions, rather than seeing this erratic attendance as a possible communication about Lisa’s disorganized attachment behavior with her adoptive mother. As discussed in Chapter 3, foster children’s attachment behaviors can elicit complementary behaviors in their caretakers (Dozier et al. 2002). Thus the correspondence between Lisa’s disorganized attachment behavior (due to her pre-adoption trauma) and Adele’s inconsistent bonding responses might be informed by Craik’s (1943) notion of Lisa’s ‘internal working model’ pulling Adele into her daughter’s projective identificatory attachment drama (Seligman 1999). Adele definitely could have used some help reframing her understanding about Lisa’s behaviors as an effort to cope with previous losses, as well as guidance about how to contain her daughter’s provocations through parent/therapist meetings. Instead, Zuckerman and Buschsbaum cast Adele in the role of a parent who creates a negative self-fulfilling prophecy with her child. These authors omit any analysis of the parallels between countertransference that occurs between therapist and parent, and the feelings engendered in the parent by the child. Just as Lisa infuriates Adele, Adele incenses the therapist. The authors do not address the fact that Adele may be communicating her experience with Lisa to the therapist through projective identification. Most mothers when faced with a therapist who identifies with the child without also holding the mother’s subjective experience will become more guarded, wary and possibly hostile, especially if they anticipate blame about their mothering. Given the sensitivity with which the

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therapist describes her work with Lisa, illuminating many psychological thickets specific to children with her history of losses and insecure attachments, it was frustrating to read of her minimal compassion for this beleaguered mother who does not have the luxury of suffering her daughter’s projections and testing only an hour a week, but is living through them 24/7. With adoptive and foster parents, the work with parents is absolutely crucial for building the bond between mother and child, precisely because the mother needs the therapist to be part of her affirming matrix, since coping with primitive affects is more acute in these maternal journeys (see Chapter 3). Drs. Zuckerman and Buschsbaum’s condescending narrative about Lisa’s adoptive mother may emerge from a sense of impotence in making a difference in such a psychotherapy. Just as the therapist needs her supervisor to affirm her clinical skill in bearing the unbearable with Lisa, so the parent work needs to emphasize the strengths rather than the vulnerabilities of Adele, so that Lisa too can discover her resilience and master her losses. Like in infant–parent psychotherapy, interventions that help a mother gain confidence in her mothering will benefit her chosen child by supporting her efforts to forge an attachment. On the other hand, alienating an adoptive or foster mother will make the child’s road to healing much more arduous by undermining the mother’s self-assurance, thereby causing the mother/child bond to become more tenuous. In contrast, Tubero (2002) describes her work with Ms. D., the African-American adoptive mother of her 13-year-old client, Jessica, of African-American/Hispanic descent. Jessica’s birthmother was schizophrenic, so when Jessica was born she was immediately placed in foster care. At six months she was removed from this placement due to neglect, and placed in Ms. D’s home, who adopted her at three years, although Jessica was not made aware of her adoption until age six when another girl about the same age as Jessica was adopted by Ms. D. Ms. D. had grown birth children, in addition to having been a single foster mother. When Jessica was an adolescent Ms. D. brought her in to Ms. Tubero for a last-ditch therapy because of her ‘out of control’ behaviors, which had not improved through either group or family therapy. At this point Ms. D. was threatening to put Jessica out unless she made some changes. Jessica’s normal adolescent separation had intensified the fights between mother and daughter. Tubero compassionately suggests that Ms. D. was trying to minimize her

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pain about this loss and keep Jessica insecure about the nature of their attachment so Jessica could not be as free to separate. Meanwhile Jessica’s birthmother was seeking contact with her, so that Jessica felt wanted by the mother who had abandoned her, and cast out by the mother to whom she was attached. Like Adele, Ms. D. experienced her daughter’s therapist as a threat and began to sabotage the therapy, but over time, as Jessica tenaciously remained loyal to her therapist, Ms. D. and Ms. Tubero were able to effect a rapprochement to Jessica’s benefit: Ms. D. told me that Jessica had begged her to understand. She said that Jessica told her how she felt I was like an older sister and a friend. Ms. D. hesitated for a moment, seeming thoughtful, and then added that she assumed that I was even a sort of mother figure for Jessica as well. She continued, ‘She just loves you, she’s always tellin’ me that, how much she loves you and how much you understand her, and how you help her. And the truth is, I am happy she has found you, because she needs someone to help her and maybe if she loves you as much as she does, she will listen to you, and you can save her, ’cause I know I can’t. I tried, but I can’t do it.’ I replied that that was too much of a responsibility for me; I explained to Ms. D. that the reason Jessica seemed to love me so much was because I was not her mother. Ms. D. smiled, seeming to feel understood for a moment. I continued and said I could work with Jessica as a therapist, but that I could never be her mother as well. I told Ms. D. that she needed to be Jessica’s mother, and that I was willing to help with this. Ms. D. laughed and said, ‘Yeah, it’s a big job being her mother. People are always tellin’ me how strong I am for putting up with her.’ I explained to Ms. D. that in order to really help Jessica, we would have to work together because there was no way I could help her all on my own. Ms. D. seemed pleased by my admission that I could not handle the job of mothering Jessica alone and that I was asking for her help. She also agreed that the only way we could help Jessica was if we did it together. We agreed then to meet more regularly to begin the endeavor. It was the first time I felt close to Ms. D., and I believe she felt similarly. (Tubero 2002, pp.57–58)

Despite having been devalued and treated hostilely by Ms. D., Ms. Tubero is able to see the positive effects of her work with Jessica after a separation due to a change in the therapist’s agency placement. Ms. Tubero’s insistence with Ms. D. that they each had different jobs, while participating on the same team on Jessica’s behalf, helped Ms. D. reclaim her authority as

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Jessica’s mother. Here work with the parent supported the attachment between mother and daughter so that normal developmental conflicts did not turn into a spurious rupture, whereby Jessica might be remanded to a group home. I have had innumerable dialogues with students whom I train who feel it is futile to work with foster parents on behalf of their child clients, largely because of the high turnover of children in foster families. My consistent input to them is that the more the bond between foster mother and child can be strengthened, the less likely there will be a failed placement. In fact, a colleague who frequently works with children in the final stages of adoption out of foster care has learned the hard way that without active work with fost-adopt parents many adoptions are derailed just before finalization because the child’s testing accelerates the closer she/he gets to permanency. Many pre-adoptive parents do bring their children to psychotherapy with a ‘fix him’ mentality, thereby pushing the buttons of the therapist who holds the child’s emotional experience in mind. Even so, therapists need to contain this countertransference, since empathizing with parents in their struggles and empowering them to handle their child’s provocative behavior is as crucial to the ultimate well-being of the child as is the play therapy. Adoptive and foster parents deserve the same kind of respectful treatment as those whose legitimacy is guaranteed by a biological connection. A therapist who treats these parents with dignity and empathy will help them rise to the occasion of being more attuned to and empathic with their children. One of the founders of social work, Jane Hull, advocated teaching ‘right living’ to her clients. We need to be careful not to replicate this pattern of noblesse oblige in working with parents who participate in the foster care or fost-adopt system. Such a ‘holier than thou’ approach to those trying to parent children with multiple losses could backfire for the clients – the children – that social services, protective services, and mental health departments are meant to serve. Consequently, when we collaborate with some of these systems, and the social workers struggling within them, an approach that accords all involved their dignity, while advocating for parents on behalf of the child, is probably most fruitful for successful placement and family building.

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Institutional support for foster, adoptive and stepmothers Healing support for foster, step and adopted children and their parents can be available through psychotherapy. Meanwhile many other institutions are involved in the well-being of children in our society: schools, daycare, health facilities, police and other community agencies. How personnel within these institutions respond to the adoptive, foster or stepparents of the children in their care will also impact these parents’ contributions to their children’s lives. Similarly, institutional policies can enhance the supporting matrix of non-biological parents or detract from it. Two middle-class couples had adopted out of foster care. Both of them had devastating experiences when their respective sons were in grade school, because the boys’ teachers – knowing about their adoptive histories – stigmatized them for their high-spirited behavior. One of the boys (Afro-Caucasian), David, was in foster care for only a few months before being placed with his future adoptive parents. After a difficult kindergarten experience where David and a friend were singled out for their so-called disruptive behaviors, because of the teacher’s lack of tolerance for ‘high energy’ children, David’s adoptive parents decided to send him to a local Christian school in part because his cousins had gone there. Unfortunately, in fourth grade David again had a teacher who could not tolerate his high energy, visceral nature – or perhaps could not deal with a child who was less than totally compliant – and she began to pathologize him in the most egregious fashion. David’s adoptive mother, Celeste, who herself felt challenged by David’s liveliness from time to time, was devastated by the teacher’s negative input about her son, increasingly feeling inadequate as a mother over the year David was in this classroom. Ultimately the teacher convinced the school administration that David was behaviorally irremediable – right after David’s public protest about the injustice he experienced in the classroom – and he was asked to leave the school. For David this replicated his sense of being a ‘bad seed’ because of having been cast out by his birthmother, and he left the school feeling terrible about himself. Similarly, Celeste was devastated by the teacher’s low opinion of David and began to doubt her sense that David was a child who could be worked with so that he could develop in a constructive rather than a destructive direction. It took Celeste a full year to recover from the blows she suffered from the Christian teacher’s negative categorization of her son’s character, and the self-blame and disgrace she felt

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because of his so-called ‘out-of-control’ behaviors. While Celeste’s brother supported her in holding the teacher accountable for her narrow view of acceptable ‘boy’ behaviors, Celeste’s sister, whose daughter was the more compliant student preferred by the Christian school, was less empathic about the negative self-fulfilling prophecy being created for David by his teacher. Luckily, public school turned out to be a much better match for David. He was assigned a teacher who valued his vigorous spirit, and he got help channeling his energy into sports where he excelled. For Celeste, having a teacher who so completely pathologized her son intensified her struggles as an adoptive mother with a boy so energetically different from her. Meanwhile, I believe racial bias may have been a factor in the teacher’s negative view of David’s personality, given the all-white nature of the school and community in which he was being raised. The second couple had adopted Tuan (see Chapter 5) at age four. He too was sent to private school and ended up with a kindergarten teacher who had little tolerance for his ‘idiosyncratic’ behaviors quite typical of adopted children (like hoarding pencils and erasers). Tuan, who was both bright and energetic, quickly alienated the teacher, who, like David’s teacher, seemed averse to having to discipline high-spirited children in her classroom. The rigidity in this classroom was not a good match for Tuan. He began to perform way below his academic potential. Even after a notable improvement in Tuan’s behavior due to the start of play therapy, this teacher was unable to change her negative view of him as a problem student. Like Celeste, Tuan’s mother, Lily, became filled with worry about how to help her son do well in this school environment. When Tuan was ‘fired’ from the school, his parents were quite concerned that the teacher’s negative evaluations of him would both adversely impact Tuan’s self-esteem and follow him to other schools. Luckily, they found a Waldorf school whose regard for each individual student’s pace of learning was a better match for Tuan, especially because the principal, a compassionate woman, appreciated that Tuan had a spirit that could be channeled for himself rather than against himself. After a year in his new school Tuan’s academic performance improved markedly, and he was well on his way to becoming a valued member of the school community. Still, every time something came up for Tuan in class and the teacher contacted his parents, Lily would become anxious – like a post-traumatic response due to her

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experience with the previous teacher – anticipating that her son would again be torn down and her mothering efforts scrutinized and called into question. Teachers can sometimes unwittingly use their knowledge of a child’s adoption history against adoptive parents and children in a way that detracts from the children’s and also the parents’ capacity to become esteemed in their school environments. Thus teachers, and school personnel, can wield enormous power over the fate of adoptive children by being either inclusive or exclusive of them, fostering progress in the children’s self-worth or detracting from it, and by extension the self-worth of mothers who claim these children. Raised by her grandmother because of her mother’s alcoholism and her father’s death before she was born, Charlene, a Caucasian grandmother, found herself in the position of having to care for her Asian/Caucasian grandchildren. After child protective services removed her granddaughter, Maria, at age two from the custody of Maria’s mother and father due to their substance abuse problems, she was placed with Charlene. Maria’s mother, Shala, subsequently went into a rehabilitation program and a year later reunited with Maria and her younger brother, Kirin. It turned out to be more than Shala could manage to have both children, so at age four Maria came back to live with grandmother while Kirin stayed with Shala. Since Charlene was still working she enrolled Maria in a cozy nursery school a block from her apartment. As Charlene was probably the only grandmother-caretaker of a child at the school, she was not automatically included in the networks of younger mothers of nursery students. For many of the mothers, the age gap between themselves and Charlene was too daunting to bridge, leaving Charlene, and therefore Maria, somewhat isolated. After one broadminded young mother in her twenties made attempts to arrange play dates between her daughter and Maria, Charlene began to take the initiative with other mothers so that she and Maria could participate more fully in the school-related social scene. No doubt, Charlene found herself in the same predicament as I did when I became a stepmother. It was incumbent on us to initiate contacts through the mothering networks in the school communities we were entering since passively waiting for inclusion by other mothers was not an effective strategy for creating the kind of supporting matrix we each needed on behalf of our children around school issues.

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Unfortunately, Shala got back together with her husband and returned to her use of substances. As a result Charlene resumed her primary caretaker responsibilities for both Maria (aged five) and Kirin (aged four), going to court to get legal custody. Maria, who had sustained many moves and losses due to Shala’s substance abuse, had finally been placed in a bilingual school which she loved and where she was thriving. Nonetheless, because Charlene was not Maria’s mother or father – although she did have legal custody – the school would not negotiate with Charlene to arrange a fee schedule which would permit Maria to remain in the school. Here again, the school personnel showed no flexibility with regard to the family in which Maria was being raised, refusing to recognize the grandmother as head of household because it did not fit into their narrow view of the appropriate parental authorities with whom to deal. Because of her status as grandmother, rather than mother, Charlene could only sit by and watch her granddaughter sustain yet another excruciating loss at the hands of unaware school personnel. In contrast an acquaintance of mine, Ms. Johnson, who is a grade school teacher in an elementary school, where the majority of children are from African-American, Arab-American, Asian-American or Hispanic backgrounds, told me the following story. One little girl, Talia, had entered their school in kindergarten when she was still living with her mother. The mother, who was in and out of jail because of a substance abuse problem, was so neglectful that Talia came to school hungry and filthy. By second grade Talia was so far behind in her reading, writing and arithmetic that she had to repeat a grade. Finally Talia went to live with her auntie, until they became homeless. By the time she entered Ms. Johnson’s classroom in third grade she finally had a permanent placement with her grandmother, Mrs. Sanchez, who had stepped in as caregiver so Talia would not have to live on the streets. In the near-year she had been living with her grandmother, Talia had put on weight, learned to read, and was clean and well groomed. Ms. Johnson described her gratitude towards Mrs. Sanchez for how she had turned Talia’s life around. Whenever there was a parent–teacher conference or back-to-school night, Ms. Johnson consciously treated this grandmother as Talia’s parent and involved her in helping the girl continue to improve academically whenever possible. Ms. Johnson affirmed Mrs. Sanchez’s important role in her granddaughter’s life by including the grandmother in Talia’s educational team.

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Ignorance on the part of school personnel is changing in classrooms where assignments about drawing one’s family tree are now becoming assignments where children get to draw their ‘family orchard’ instead (Pertman 2000). In Daddy & Papa, the film tells the story of the filmmaker’s friend, Kelly, who adopted a pair of Afro-Hispanic brothers as a single gay white father. Kelly is shown participating in the classroom with his son, Jesse, helping him to explain to the class that before he had this forever daddy he had a birth mommy and birth daddy, as well as a foster mommy, all of whom are part of Jesse’s family orchard. Still, it had to be at Kelly’s instigation that this presentation about an ‘alternative’ family occurred at his son’s parochial school, no doubt in part because he was the only gay parent there. In contrast, another local private grade and middle school regularly has programs about different lifestyles. This kind of school support for the increasingly diverse landscape of families in the U.S. not only helps the children in such families to feel included, but allows the parents – adoptive, foster, grand or step – to feel legitimized and normalized as well. It also educates the other children in the classroom, spreading the notion of a variety of families into the everyday interactions among the children. After one of their school exercises about diversity in families, a third grader told her parents that she wished she had been adopted because her friend (adopted from China) was so special that her parents went halfway across the world to get her. Like adoptive and foster mothers, stepmothers also have to work at creating a sense of legitimacy in the face of institutions that do not accord them the same rights as natural parents. One stepmother, rarely acknowledged by staff at her stepchildren’s school, would nonetheless be called to pick up a sick child when father or mother could not be located. Despite my greater involvement than my husband at the high school, I could not sign class trip permission slips because as stepmother I was not a ‘legal guardian.’ Fortunately, the recognition I received from my daughters’ high school guidance counselor – who let me know very early on in our college-related exchanges that he fathomed the enormity of the stepmothering task I was taking on – helped legitimate me in my mothering efforts to get my daughters launched from high school. Again, when the stepmother is the only parent available following a child’s injury or accident, the situation gets even more complicated in the

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emergency room, where insurance and hospital procedures require written consent from ‘legal’ parents. Once early on as a stepmother, I took my girls and a friend to the waterslides about an hour out of town. Because of the physical risks involved in such an adventure, my husband had to write a letter granting me authority to sign medical consent, should an unexpected accident require me to provide ‘his’ daughters with medical attention. Later, I was often the parent who accompanied my daughters to pediatric appointments. I found myself embarrassed and chagrined when asked questions by the doctor about my daughters’ medical history, since I was not privy to family genetic histories or childhood illness experiences on the part of my stepdaughters. In hindsight I should have set aside a time with my husband or our daughters’ mother to take down information about their medical histories. Not too long ago, one of my stepdaughters was unexpectedly diagnosed with a bone tumor. Because I could not legally adopt my stepdaughters – an option that stepparents can pursue only if a parent relinquishes their rights – my husband was the parent who flew down to her college to accompany her to various health professionals on an emergency basis. I did my part by finding a leading orthopedic oncologist closer to home and the extended family, so my stepdaughter could come home for surgery and post-operative treatment. Still there were many moments in consultation with medical personnel – until the nature of the tumor (happily benign) could be determined – when I had to explain my non-blood relationship with this daughter. To their credit, the surgeon and his staff were quite inclusive of me during my stepdaughter’s hospitalization. But I felt most included when our daughter needed a number of units of blood, donated by family members for her surgery, and we found I had the same blood type as her, her sister and father, whereas ironically her natural mother was not a match. Through this scary circumstance, I actually became related by blood to my stepdaughter, who has one unit from me now coursing through her veins. Adoptive mothers, too, have to bear slights from medical personnel. Tomi, an adoptive mother, told me about how the head midwife at Stanford University Hospital attempted to shoo her and her husband out of the labor room. The birthmother, Shelly, who was a very determined young woman, told the midwife that she refused to push until Tomi was permitted back in the room. Tomi declared that despite the change in rela-

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tionships between birth and adoptive mothers through open adoption, medical personnel still felt discomfited by having all the members of the adoption triad in the labor room. She was adamant that hospital staff and physicians sorely needed education to enable them to be more sensitive in these situations. Another woman told me that after waiting hours at the hospital for their birthmother’s interminable labor to move into transition, she and her husband had decided to go out for a meal. As luck would have it when they were several miles away from the hospital their beeper went off, and they did a quick illegal u-turn in order to return to the labor room immediately. It took the adoptive parents extra time they did not have to persuade the policeman who had stopped them to give them a ticket that they were in fact having a baby and needed to ‘fly’ back to the hospital. To put it mildly these parents were disappointed to make it back to the labor room minutes after their daughter was born. The manner in which medical, school, community and other professionals treat adoptive, foster, step and grandmothers can make an enormous difference in how legitimate they feel as caretakers for their children. It is vital that all people who serve the children in our society become educated about the changing demographics of the family so that a more inclusive perspective about new extended family systems is applied by social institutions which purport to have the best interests of our younger generation in mind. The nuclear family of mother, father and biological child is an anachronism and it is time that schools, health care, the legal system, communities and their guardians like police, social services and politicians as well as mental health professionals shift their models of service to be more applicable to the diversity of families joining the mainstream. As all the women and men who embark on the non-biological parenting journey know, it is an arduous task and we deserve steady doses from a supporting matrix to remind us of the value of our care for our children.

Finding support within the new extended family A good friend of mine believes a dramatic shift in family structure is taking place, as evidenced most immediately in her daughter’s life. Her Caucasian daughter, Leslie, had a baby girl, Alicia, as a single woman. Alicia’s

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birthfather was Afro-Caribbean. Not long after the birth of Alicia, Leslie coupled with another African-American man who was a single father to his daughter, Ashanta, creating a stepfamily together. Subsequently, Leslie met the mother of Alicia’s half-sister, a biracial woman. A toddler, Alicia then began to spend time with her sister, Kumaya, even though Kumaya was seven years older. At one point Kumaya taunted Ashanta, the stepsister, by saying that she and Alicia were sisters, whereas Ashanta was not. My grandmother friend suggested to Leslie that she handle this drawing of bloodlines by including stepsister Ashanta as one of three sisters. At that point Kumaya wanted to know why she did not get to live with her other sisters. These girls are part of a very intricate biracial extended family, which includes stepparents, grandparents, step-great grandparents and various other fictive kin. I met Kumaya’s step-great grandmother (see Chapter 5), who has a special bond with Kumaya, at my friend’s thirtieth wedding anniversary party, attended also by Leslie, Alicia and Alicia’s stepfather. This kind of kin system based on links which radiate from the child, rather than from a marital unit, has long been prevalent in the African-American community (Stack 1974), and is now becoming common in various ethnic groups. Another friend of mine who is both a mother and longtime stepmother told me the following touching story about her move into a new house three years after she and her husband separated. Quite spontaneously the people who came over to help her pack up her kitchen were her stepdaughter, the stepdaughter’s mother and mother-in-law. My friend, who naturally was experiencing much grief about the turn of events in her family life, felt emotionally and practically supported by this unexpected help from the co-mothers in her extended stepfamily. A third family I know has also managed to create a well-functioning extended stepfamily. On separating from her husband, Liz partnered with another mother of two children, Naomi. Nonetheless, Liz’s ex-husband and she remained the primary parents to their children – Cheryl, aged 11, and Brad, aged seven, at the time of the separation – sharing parental decision making and amicably spending short periods of time together with Cheryl and Brad on holidays until after the children went to college. At school events, Liz’s children and her stepchildren, Tina and Shawn, could expect their respective fathers and stepmothers, as well as mother and stepmother, to attend, not to mention grandparents from any and all

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parents’ sides. Liz is able to relate to her stepchildren’s father and other stepmother with minimal tension. Since the birth of Tina’s daughter, Liz feels delighted to have entered the grandmother portal. At the second birthday party for Liz’s step-granddaughter, Lena, almost the entire clan with the exception of Liz’s ex-husband and new wife were in attendance. Along with Liz and Naomi, Tina’s father, Jim, and his new wife, Audrey, came. Audrey’s son by a previous marriage, and his wife and child – who are close with Tina and her partner (Lena’s parents) since they have a children about the same age – were also in attendance, along with Tina’s step-siblings, Cheryl and Brad, her brother, Shawn, and various friends of all three generations. While a far cry from the traditional family, this clan of parents and grandparents is raising children who know the value of having mothers and stepmothers. The fact that the two fathers – Liz’s and Naomi’s exes, respectively – have both partnered with women who have their own children reduces some, though not all, of the competition between mothers and stepmothers about who should have the final input about their shared children’s lives. Embodying the cutting edge of kin structure, mothers and stepmothers in this extended family can participate in a mutual supporting matrix for children and grandchildren. Several years ago a glitch between my stepdaughters’ mother and me took me by surprise. One of my stepdaughters had been grounded because her grades were way below her potential, a self-sabotage pattern of hers we were determined to help her change. In part because of her focus on studies, and to some extent because of age-appropriate efforts to differentiate herself from her mother, she was not getting together with her mother as regularly as in other periods in her life. At one point I got a card from her mother asking me where this daughter was. I responded – by way of a Hallowe’en card – suggesting that the reason our daughter had not been in touch was her determination to better her grades, due to our grounding her. Later communications from their mother, repeated to me by both of my stepdaughters, indicated that she had taken my comments to mean that my husband and I were preventing our daughters from seeing her. Meanwhile, my other stepdaughter had been written up and photographed for inclusion in a recruitment catalogue from her college. I had taken the liberty of color Xeroxing two copies of this spread about my stepdaughter in order to frame one for my husband and me, and one for her mother as a Christmas gift. When both girls were out of school over

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the holidays and went to visit their mother, it became really clear that she was harboring hard feelings about being (she thought) squeezed out of her daughters’ lives by our stepfamily. Luckily I had my holiday present for their mother ready, so I decided to deliver both my stepdaughters and the gift to her house myself on Christmas Eve. In person, I reassured her that I would never get in the way of her relationship to her daughters. To my surprise, I nearly burst into tears as I imparted how beholden to her I felt for having had the opportunity to help raise ‘our’ girls. A week later, she returned the gesture by generously giving me a tape made by my stepdaughters when they were little girls – speaking, singing and yelling into a tape recorder together – so that I would feel more a part of their life before I came onto the scene. Naturally, our daughters were touched by both of our motherly efforts to reach across and repair the misunderstanding, restoring our ‘cooperative enough’ relationship with one another. On another level, I believe I was able to proffer her a supporting matrix moment in the face of the necessary, but also painful, mother/daughter rift accompanying our one daughter’s developmental reach for autonomy. I shared this personal experience with an associate who herself was raised in a stepfamily. Her reaction was both respectful and skeptical about the capacity of most stepmothers to handle things with their children’s mother in this fashion. I disagree. Within a good supporting matrix most stepmothers are able to rise to the occasion of doing right by their stepchildren, by cooperating with the mother and vice versa. Recently Louise Oxhorn and Lynne Oxhorn-Ringwood who are ‘stepwives’ – Louise married Lynne’s ex-husband – started the CoMamas Association with Dr. Krausz (Oxhorn, Oxhorn-Ringwood and Krausz 2002), based in San Diego (Witchell 2002). The organization sponsors seminars and support groups and provides a workbook to help stepwives set their differences aside and co-mother their mutual children more effectively. Their slogan, ‘Step into her shoes,’ helps women move from turfing as stepwives to cooperating as co-mamas. The Co-Mamas website (www.comamas.com) has registered more than 10,000 responses since it was founded in 1999 (Witchell 2002). Lee (see above) sees it as her mission to be a doula to other single women who want to create families through open adoption. As merely a decade has made it much more acceptable to adopt as a single woman than when I was attempting it in the early 1990s, Lee will no doubt be in great

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demand as a mentor with her common-sense perspective about the ways those who would follow in her path will absolutely need a supporting matrix to make it viable to parent solo. As a semi-retired hairstylist Lee got most of the information that led her to choose open domestic adoption from women whom she had as clients. Thus Lee is steeped in an old and venerable tradition of women’s networks from the beauty shop. Clarisse, Lee’s biracial son’s birthmother, and Clarisse’s adoptive parents, who live nearby, are an important part of her son Pat’s life. As Lee lives in a cottage behind her mother’s house, her mother is also quite involved with Pat, as is Lee’s uncle (brother of Lee’s father who is long divorced from her mother). Finally Lee’s au pair, siblings and some friends are vital members of the single mother/son extended family. This past year Lee and Pat attended Clarisse’s out-of-state wedding, one of the ways they continue to stay involved in one another’s lives. In Lee’s extended adoptive family, she is Pat’s primary caretaker, with secondary attachment figures including adoptive, biological kin as well as friends who are going-for-kin. As family demographics in our society keep changing to include the variety of emerging adoptive, foster and stepfamilies, it is vital that such mothers and fathers not be isolated because they are different. Not only will these parents need to spearhead new directions in public consciousness about fresh family forms, but they will have to be sure to avail themselves of affirming peers and professionals within the various institutions which serve their children, and to find personally supportive resources within their uniquely created families for their uncharted journeys into parenthood.

Notes 1 2

3

Portions of this paragraph were previously published in Waterman (2002b, pp.114–128). A slang term in North America alluding to the African-American exodus from the U.S. southern states to work in the shipyards on the west coast or northern factories during World War II. Newcomers, usually from a rural background, were often naïve about how to cope in the big city. Thus they were mockingly referred to as off the bus. Although to my dismay when I went on the internet recently the website for the Canadian Stepfamily Association turned out to be defunct like the website for children trying to find their foster parents, discussed in Chapter 1.

7

Becoming a Mother Every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother, and every woman extends backward into her mother and forward into her daughter. ( Jung 1968) He who obtains has little – he who scatters has much. (Lao Tzu)

An adoptive mother of two children, Sarah, who was also a visual artist, had incorporated this saying of Lao Tzu into a number of her pieces, especially those about her family life and large community of long-term friends who comprised her supporting matrix. Sarah expressed only gratitude for the gift of her two children, matched for religion and ethnic background (Protestant, English-German and Irish-Swiss) by the local county adoption services, when she found herself unable to conceive in the early 1960s. Despite the sacrifices Sarah had to make as an artist turned stay-at-home mom, she felt her children permitted her to transcend the pain of not being able to get pregnant by enabling her to become a mother.

Mothering and identity When women become mothers by giving birth to a baby, their lives are changed forever (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998). But coming into one’s mothering identity takes place over a period of time, rather than at any specific moment. Pregnancy permits a woman to prepare for a huge change in self-definition. As she ascends the generational ladder in her motherline (Lowinsky 1992) the woman shifts from being primarily

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daughter to becoming a mother. This crucial shift in the woman’s identity is completed when she replaces her internal mother–father–daughter connections with the new triangle of mother–child–grandmother, which takes emotional center stage on becoming a mother (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern 1998, pp.146–147). The brand new grandmother becomes central as the woman entering the motherhood mindset has to draw on her inner mother – the internal version of her own mother – in order to nurture her newborn. This inner mother is a combination of internal representations of attachment experiences, memories of good and bad mothering interactions with one’s own mother along with feelings about these interactions, identification with characteristics of one’s mother whether evaluated positively or negatively, as well as dreams of carrying on or transcending one’s maternal legacy. The inner mother is to be distinguished from one’s actual mother, although the two are related in that shifts in the inner mother can result in changes in one’s relationship to one’s real mother or vice versa. Thus, the change in identity for the woman entering motherhood takes place on two levels: externally in her developmental movement through the life cycle from ‘maiden’ to ‘mother’ in the creation of her own family with a mate, and internally in having to reevaluate and come to terms with her relationship to her own mother, past and present. In describing what they call ‘the birth of a mother,’ Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern (1998, p.146) claim that ‘the mother–baby–mother’s mother triangle becomes the hidden work space for much of a new mother’s psychological energy.’ Giving birth is an initiation into womanhood through the creation of life and can be a defining event for a woman. For a time, motherhood may eclipse other facets of a woman’s identity as her energies become focussed on the new little being who is totally dependent on her. Work, friends and her sweetheart may all become lower priorities for the new mother as she surrenders to her immersion in the caretaking role. Thus much of a mother’s shift in identity upon entering the motherhood mindset has to do with growing into her place among women (her mother, grandmothers, aunts) in the cycle of life. A woman’s partner may also participate in the miracle of birth and experience a parallel shift in identity. If things are going well, a reappraisal of the couple relationship is unnecessary post-birth, with the focus of mother on the baby, while father’s steadfast caring (or co-mother, in the

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case of lesbian couples) can be taken for granted in service of the baby’s well-being. (In the gay and lesbian community people prefer to call the secondary parent the other so that the role need not be gendered.) In fact, traditionally the father’s primary role was to hold the mother–child dyad so that the mother could devote herself to bonding with her baby and ensuring the life and growth of their newborn (Winnicott 1956). This parental role division has changed over the past few decades with many fathers (not to mention co-mothers and co-fathers) becoming involved in the day-to-day care of the baby from birth. Whether or not her partner joins her in co-parenting from birth, the biological mother has an elemental lifeline to the baby just as her mother did with her because of women’s bodily connection to Eros, the life force. Embarking on the foster, adoptive or stepmother journey can transform a woman’s identity as much as biological parenting. Just as biological mothers have the opportunity to come to grips with their inner mother upon stepping through the portal of motherhood, so do adoptive, foster and stepmothers have the chance (and perhaps the obligation) to face their own mothering stories. Here a woman’s inner mother proffers her resources – whether more or fewer – to draw on in the creation of a sense of belonging with a new and biologically unrelated child. If a woman carries a positive legacy from her own mother, she may be able to rise to the challenge of stepmothering with an internal cushion of loving memories from her own childhood to help her through the tough times with her stepchildren. On the other hand, if the adoptive mother had depriving experiences herself as a child, then reaching across the divide to a fost-adopt child may be more demanding. Key to shaping her capacity to mother are the step, foster or adoptive mother’s inner images about mothering – past, present or future, historical or current, actual or imagined, fantasized or in reality. For example, two stepmothers had completely different reactions to their stepdaughters’ acts of borrowing their clothes without first asking permission. The first stepmother felt violated, and like her boundaries were being disrespected in yet another arena by her stepdaughter, perhaps because her own mother had communicated to her how demanding and overwhelming having children was. Because of other problems in her stepfamily and the burdened legacy from her mother, this woman made meaning of this teen testing through the lens of deprivation. The other

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stepmother had a more joyful response to this adolescent behavior in that she saw it as the girl’s identification with her as stepmother, something the girl had to keep secret because her mother felt threatened by this stepmother/daughter bonding. This second stepmother – knowing how it felt to be caught in a loyalty conflict from having had a stepmother herself – used a lens of abundance to interpret the clothes borrowing, since she felt her stepmothering surpassed the caretaking her own stepmother proffered her as a child. How a woman perceives the many small moments of stepmothering, for good or bad, will be colored by the mothering or stepmothering she had as a child. Some women repeat the legacies of their mothers without giving it much thought. Others are quite conscious about what parts of their mothering legacies they want to replicate with their own children, and which aspects they prefer to do differently. Another possibility is to ‘give birth to one’s mother’ (Chernin 1998), whereby a woman transforms her inner mother, or creates a new connection to her actual mother. According to Chernin several stages precede this resolution about one’s relationship with one’s mother where a woman may idealize, revision, blame, forgive, identify with, or let go of her mother on the way to giving birth to her (Chernin 1998, pp.23–37). As for all women who become mothers, resolving one’s issues with one’s own mother permeates the step, foster and adoptive mother experience. Despite an austere legacy from her mother, Evelyn used her arduous stepmother journey to ‘give birth to her mother.’ Evelyn had made the life choice not to become a mother because her mother’s message to her had been that children were noisy, dirty, demanding – in short, a burden. The eldest of five children, Evelyn spent less and less time at home during her teen years because there was nothing there for her. Still, her parents had provided the basic necessities and structures for survival for her and her siblings, even if a loving gleam in her mother’s eye was missing. For many years Evelyn consciously chose not to date men who had or wanted children. When she finally met her husband-to-be, George, later in life, she became involved with him even though he had full custody of his stepson, Caleb (age 17), and his daughter, Beth (age 14). George – who willingly took full responsibility for parenting his children when his wife left him and the children to follow her dreams elsewhere – had been raised by a father who erred on the side of militaristic discipline. Having suffered from

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his father’s authoritarianism, George was determined to raise his children differently, swinging to the other extreme of almost no discipline and structure. Not long after Evelyn moved in with George, their house burned down, possibly caused by one of the children’s carelessness. Because of this awful circumstance, and because she wished to be a nurturing presence to her stepchildren, who had essentially been abandoned by their mother (Caleb by two mothers), Evelyn chose to take a leave of absence from her professional training program. Not surprisingly, Evelyn became the receptacle for Caleb’s and Beth’s aggression in response to her efforts to tighten up parental structure vis-à-vis the children, because her mothering was such a contrast to George’s permissiveness as a father. When George proved unwilling over time to join Evelyn in providing more discipline or holding the children accountable to her authority, she finally retreated emotionally from her efforts at stepmothering. Sadly, Evelyn’s internal effort to extend herself beyond her mother’s legacy that children cause misery turned out to be futile, as her stepchildren were unable to move to a new stage of respect or connection with her. After Beth went to live with her mother across country, and Caleb moved into his own apartment, this thwarted stepmother was still sad about her inability to affect her stepchildren’s lives. Instead, Evelyn worried that Beth and Caleb would remain ‘lost’ and filled with rage, since the lack of parental limit setting had left their childlike self-absorption and sense of omnipotence intact. Out of this experience Evelyn came to appreciate her mother much more for the building blocks of structure and discipline that she had provided for her. Here, Evelyn’s full entry into the stepmother mindset was unsuccessful, but still furnished her with the opportunity to reappraise her inner mother. Out of disappointment with her stepfamily, Evelyn could alter her previous simplistic view that her mother had ‘failed’ her, replacing this sense of her history with more complex emotions about her mother’s strengths and shortcomings. Listening to her story, I was glad this gift of inner reconciliation with her mother came out of the experience. I believe it took Evelyn much personal courage to risk entering the stepmother role. Her willingness to expose herself to the vicissitudes of being a stepmother made it possible for Evelyn to leave her previous simplistic view of her past behind, gathering resources from a mid-life

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reweaving of her childhood memories of her mother. While Evelyn’s identity was not transformed by becoming a stepmother because of the family limitations placed on her full assumption of the role, she nonetheless came away with greater wisdom about her own life through the choices she made about stepmothering. Thus Evelyn could ‘give birth to her mother’ (Chernin 1998), thereby shifting her internal sense of her own maternal capacities and desires, by discovering the value of, and her gratitude for, her mother’s legacy.

Instant and disorderly gestation through adoption Unlike the many women who have a nine-month gestation period to gradually transition into motherhood, many adoptive parents wait endlessly to be matched with a child out of foster care or international adoption, only to be given little to no warning about when they will take full responsibility for the child. Similarly in open adoption, depending on when a connection is made with a birthmother, parents may have advance or no warning about when to expect ‘their’ baby. Grandmothers, too, may be called upon at the drop of a hat to take in grandchildren when their children are unexpectedly incarcerated or the social service system steps in to remove their grandchildren from abusive or neglectful parenting situations. Thus entry into fulltime (grand)parenthood for many of these parents can be precipitous and chaotic, creating extra sources of anxiety about entry into the motherhood mindset. The procedure to get set up with the county adoption services took Sarah (see above) and her husband Tom about a year. Returning from a camping vacation, Sarah and Tom received an unexpected phone call from their social worker informing them that there was a baby for them. Having absolutely no gear and being totally unprepared, Lily and Tom rushed around to get organized for their unexpected six-day-old son. Like any new mother Sarah was quite overwhelmed with the enormity of taking care of a newborn and acknowledged having no idea what she was doing. While signing up with county adoption provided her with some sort of gestation phase, Sarah’s entry into motherhood was extremely abrupt, even 40 years ago. With their second child, a daughter whom they took home at eight weeks, Sarah and Tom had a month’s notice as unfortunately the birthmother did not sign the papers right away and everyone felt the

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placement had to wait until this formality was behind them. The variation in time between when there is a baby available for adoption and placement makes the preparation phase for adoptive mothers quite arbitrary. At least Sarah had Tom and a built-in circle of intimate friends with whom to share the overwhelming changes in her life once each of her two babies, 18 months apart in age, arrived. In contrast, Evy had decided to adopt as a single mother in her mid-forties after unsuccessfully pursuing infertility treatments. A British woman, Evy had lived in Spain for several decades. For a single woman her age, the only option for adoption in Spain was out of Latin America. After three years of pursuing the paperwork for an adoption out of Colombia, Evy was offered an eight-year-old girl who had been sexually abused. In her heart of hearts Evy did not feel up to the task of mothering a child with this level of trauma in her background, even though she was told she would have to start the whole process in Colombia over again if she did not accept this child. Through a friend of a friend Evy heard about a group of lawyers in Guatemala City who might be able to help her find a young child to adopt. Young peasant girls in the Guatemalan countryside who accidentally got pregnant, but whose families could not afford another mouth to feed, knew about these lawyers in the capital city, who would have their babies cared for until they could be adopted by ‘gringos’ from North America and Europe. A network of foster families took care of the children until they could be matched with a permanent family. Again because of bureaucratic delays, Evy chose to fly to Guatemala with only a picture of ‘her’ ten-month-old child in her hand in order to facilitate the international legal paperwork. Barely off the plane from Spain, Evy was called by her attorney, who gave her half-an-hour’s notice about the arrival of the foster mother, Lupe, who would drop off Evy’s soon-to-be daughter, Rosa. Dressed like a doll, Rosa sat between Evy and her foster parents through the poignant encounter. With tears streaming down her cheeks, Lupe made it clear to Evy – who was trying to gather information about the feeding, sleeping and other habits of her daughter-to-be, as well as inquiring about her temperament – that she loved Rosa and hated to be losing her. Evy carries a biting image in her head of Lupe weeping as she walked down the hotel driveway with her husband’s arm around her in an attempt to offer comfort, while Rosa sat screaming in Evy’s lap. Left with a

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mother who spoke, smelled and looked differently than she was used to, Rosa was inconsolable. Evy described her own desperation as she attempted to comfort Rosa by holding her tight and rocking her on a swing in the hotel garden for several hours. Only later did Evy find out from other adoptive parents in her situation staying at the hotel that the typical transfer of Guatemalan children to their adoptive parents involved a gradual and orderly transition from foster parents to adoptive parents, including adoptive parent visits to the foster home, visits by children to the hotel for a few hours and then overnight, and so forth to help the children become familiar with their adoptive parents as they were weaned from their foster parents. Due to the more ruthless style of her attorney, Evy and her foster family, not to mention Rosa, were subjected to a much more abrupt and traumatic relinquishment from Lupe to Evy. In addition, for the next two weeks Evy was in a constant state of anxiety about whether or not the adoption would actually be finalized while she tried to speed up the local paperwork. Therefore while she had an interminable gestation period waiting to be assigned ‘her’ child, Evy had no time at all to prepare and adjust to the fulltime responsibility of having Rosa, stripped of everything familiar, placed in her care. Thus the leap of faith in becoming a mother through adoption requires a labor of love which can be quite as arduous as the physical labor of the birthing process. In her account of adopting the first of two boys from Peru, Elizabeth Bartholet (1993) describes the midnight ‘choice’ she had to make, 24 sleepless hours after arriving in Lima, between two infant boys. Honoring the stirrings of a bond with the older boy whom she held first for a number of hours, Bartholet nonetheless felt horrible about ‘returning’ the second, a newborn, as if he were a commodity. Even though Bartholet had a teenage biological son, she was unprepared for the apartment in which she found herself ensconced, without basic hygiene and equipment for feeding a baby. Like Evy, Bartholet panicked about how to care for Christopher when she took him ‘home’ to the apartment, merely a day after her arrival in Peru. Bartholet describes a period of time where she felt she was play-acting as Christopher’s mother. Similarly, a colleague of mine told me about feeling like a fraud with her first (adopted) son with whom she felt she was ‘acting’ the role of mother, rather like an imposter. Poignantly, with the birth of her second biological son she felt a kind of ‘retrospective entitlement’ to the title Mother with her adopted son. Evy, too, described

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her primary vulnerability as a new adoptive mother, worrying about whether she was being the best or ‘right’ mother for Rosa, given that Rosa might have been placed with any number of other parents who might have done better by her. Jana Wolff (1997) is also quite explicit about the ambivalent emotional process she went through in order to feel like a mother to her African-American son, who joined her family via open adoption. Nonetheless, Elizabeth, Jana and Evy are all clear that once they took the trouble to become mothers to their adopted children, they felt as deeply attached to them as they imagined – or in Elizabeth’s case, knew – biological mothers feel once they have bonded to their newborns. In fact, with Rosa now aged seven, Evy spontaneously asserted she would absolutely not be able to go on if anything were to happen to her. In the next breath she also ruefully admitted that she would never be able to endure the particular entry into motherhood that was her lot again, much like a woman who blithely ‘forgets’ the pain involved in birthing her child. In Daddy & Papa, Johnny Symons chronicles the placement of their first son, Zachary, with him and his partner, William, beginning with their signing up with the local foster care system. Johnny and William sit for hours going over the histories of various infants and children who are available on the foster-adopt list before choosing Zachary because of his health and young age. (Johnny told me in an e-mail that Zachary’s willingness to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables also made him stand out from the other children.) Through a gradual visitation process, whereby the foster mother, Dora, brings Zachary to Johnny’s (Papa) and William’s (Daddy) home, Papa and Daddy get to know Zachary before keeping him permanently at ten months of age. In my interview with the couple, Johnny expressed his envy of women who have pregnancy through which to work up to the entry into parenthood. As the more ambivalent of the two men about becoming a parent, he wished gay men did not have to invent their unique journey in becoming fathers. While William rather quickly surrendered to the upheaval of his identity in becoming father, Johnny took more time to gather his fathering identity. Johnny described the moment he was called to fully enter the fatherhood portal. The two fathers and son were on a plane to join Johnny’s family for a reunion. William left Zachary with Johnny to go to the restroom. With ‘Daddy’ out of sight, Zachary began to weep inconsolably, and Johnny found himself impotent

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to soothe or comfort his son. At that point Johnny realized he had to become more of a father to Zachary so that he, too, could provide his son with a holding environment. Subsequently, Johnny made it a priority to deepen his attachment with and attunement to Zachary. The payoff for his efforts became evident when Johnny and William received an unexpected phone call, captured on film, from their social worker offering them Zachary’s half-brother, Kenyon, as a second fost-adopt son. This time it was Johnny who spearheaded the couple’s parenting efforts, with a mere week’s notice, while William felt overwhelmed with this short gestation period and took a fathering back seat until he could taper off the professional responsibilities in which he was immersed. Again the sudden arrival of a child can leave adoptive parents bewildered, uncertain and ill-prepared, requiring a catch-up phase where they devote themselves to the identity reorganization that entry into parenthood requires.

Mothering: entering adulthood Many step, foster and adoptive mothers I interviewed told me spontaneously about their entry into motherhood forcing them to grow up. As described in Chapters 5 and 6, Francesca and Adriana had chosen to become foster mothers in order to adopt children. Francesca was in her early fifties when she became a foster mother. Francesca acknowledged that until she became a mother she did not really mature. One of the gifts her foster children gave her was in needing her to become a responsible and consistent adult. Moreover, they challenged her to become more of a steadfast disciplinarian than her mother had been with her. Francesca’s mother alternated between indulgence and fury, and in her late-blooming efforts to grow up Francesca was determined not to repeat her mother’s legacy of yelling and generating conflict with her children. A colleague, Darlene, told me about becoming a stepmother at age 24 to her partner’s son, Jack, and his two sisters who were already in their teens (see Chapter 3). Only Jack, aged 13, lived with Darlene and her 42-year-old partner, Randy, because Jack’s mother had basically detached from him as a son. Darlene described how loving Jack as a mother helped her to snap out of her college self-absorption and anomie, to stop partaking of drink and drugs so commonplace in the self-indulgent 1970s.

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Entering motherhood Darlene felt impelled to create a constructive identity by mattering as a stepmother to whom Jack could look up and be accountable. Before Darlene, Randy’s parenting was not as firm with Jack as it needed to be, but with Darlene’s lead more limits and structure became woven into the stepfamily. Feeling needed by another human being and recognized as a parent, Darlene gained a sense of her own substance as a person once she entered the stepmother portal. Similarly in The Velveteen Father (1999), Jesse Green describes how his journey into fatherhood changes his identity by giving him a rite of passage into adulthood. Jesse meets and falls in love with a man, Andy, who is just about to finalize his adoption of Erez. Having unsuccessfully attempted to create a family biologically in tandem with a lesbian couple, Andy had finally taken the plunge and adopted a son through an out-of-state agency. With the liberalization of laws in New York, Andy was able to adopt as a single man. As they create a family together Andy takes the lead in adopting a second boy, Luke, with whom Jesse can bond from the beginning. Jesse movingly describes how his identity changes in his gradual entry into the ‘fatherhood mindset.’ Growing up, both Jesse and Andy had inhabited the family role of ‘designated daughter’ (Green 1999, p.3). That is, each had a brother who, upon creating his own family, moved into adult status, thereby leaving his family of origin. In contrast, Andy and Jesse, by virtue of their sexual preference, were never expected to enter adulthood, spending their lives indefinitely attached to their families of origin, especially their mothers, for whose well-being they were held emotionally responsible. Marginalized as part of the gay community, where participation in parenthood was rare, Andy and Jesse remained in limbo rather than passing through stages of the life cycle like other adults. On a twigless branch of the family tree, merely an uncle, I would never achieve that kind of adulthood; I’d just keep aging. My hair might fall out, my gums might retreat to the bone and beyond, but all it would make me was old. Without a child you were always a child: a hanger-on, an exile, a zero. But for a gay man, even a gay man living in Greenwich Village, this sensation of superfluity was by no means novel. How often I’d felt it at the bank, at the laundry, where I’d impersonate maturity but feel weightless, invisible. (Green 1999, p.96)

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Formulated this way, adulthood becomes a tricky concept for those who don’t procreate, or who wait longer and longer to do so. For gay men especially – but for more and more heterosexual women, too – the question of what forms a mature identity has been left, since the first days of the sexual revolution, unanswered. And often unasked. Throughout my twenties I contented myself to observe the obvious: No matter how much I doted on my niece and nephew, no matter how many godchildren I might walk to school, I felt more like them than like their parents… Only later did I realize that this observation implied a challenge: I was going to have to create some ideal of adulthood without the idea of parenthood to give it form – or not become an adult at all. (Green 1999, 1 p.104)

In the company of his children, Jesse’s identity at the bakery, on the street, at temple, on holiday, and most importantly with his parents, changes to that of adult. The fact that he is gay recedes in importance (as when the rabbi grabs him to be the last man in the minyan – a quorum of ten adult males who must be present to make a Torah reading proper – when he drops off the children at the temple pre-school). Jesse’s attachment to the boys collides with his ambiguous emotional and legal position as stepparent (friend, second daddy, etc.). He decides to legitimate his role as father, especially now that the oldest boy Erez is no longer asking for mommy, by pursuing a ‘stepparent adoption,’ as New York State calls them. Green sensitively describes how becoming a father enabled him to enter adulthood. Further, he and Andy are demarginalized as they enter the ranks of parents (exchanging delighted looks with other parents – gay or straight – at Baby Gap). That is, parenting permits them to reconnect with a broader community than their cohort of gay men, becoming one of many different family forms in the liberal mainstream. Finally, while Jesse’s self-definition as a writer is still essential, he increasingly adds father to his central sense of Self as the children crack his heart open. In Margery William’s classic story, a velveteen rabbit, made real at last by a child’s true love, stays real forever. (Green 1999, p.99) To be real! – the phrase from an old gay disco tune haunts my parenthood. A child makes you real, if you meet him halfway: if you come to him when he comes to you. Which isn’t to say there aren’t other methods of inhabiting one’s outlines… Finalizing Luke means finalizing me. Becoming a

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parent – the pun can’t be helped – means becoming apparent. Not to the law; the law can never make you real, though it can make the process easier or harder. Apparent to myself, I mean. (Green 1999, p.213)1

Thus, loving and being loved by his adopted children permits Jesse to leave behind his invisibility due to being gay and therefore the ‘designated daughter’ in his family without a rite of passage into adulthood, as well as due to his own fuzzy edges of self. It is also true that for certain stepmothers a reluctance to grow up keeps them from fully entering the stepmother mindset. One 32-year-old lesbian woman, Pat, who did not intend to have children, had coupled with a 41-year-old mother, Joanne, whose children, Ariel and Nicolas, were aged 18 and 14, respectively. Pat was quite open about not wanting to take responsibility for co-mothering Ariel and Nicolas, because she didn’t want to have to risk their rancor should she discipline her stepchildren or in other ways hold them accountable. The fact that she was midway between the children’s cohort and their mother’s also seemed to lend itself to her remaining more in the caring older mentor role, as did the fact that Pat’s home was three hours away from the community where Joanne was raising Ariel and Nicolas. As the ‘baby’ in her family, Pat was still financially taken care of in many ways by her parents, and she resisted giving up her freedom by taking on the full responsibilities of being a stepmother. Thus Pat was more comfortable letting the mothering buck stop with Joanne, while she only took on a peripheral role in decision making related to the children’s well-being. Coupling with a mother did not impact Pat’s generational identity as she remained in limbo between adult and child.

Gathering one’s mothering legacy Returning to Tomi (see Chapter 6) who is Sansei (third generation Japanese-American), becoming an adoptive mother put her more directly in touch with her mother’s experience as a Nisei woman and single mother. Tomi described how adopting boys who are Japanese/Arab/German/ Native-American (Jon) and Chinese/Vietnamese-American (Chaz) completely shifted her cultural awareness about the United States. Prior to becoming a mother Tomi had been very achievement oriented and had worked hard to assimilate into Anglo culture, including marrying Luke who is Irish-American. When the 9/11 World Trade Center bombing

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took place Tomi was in Chicago on business. The very first reaction Tomi had was worry about her part-Arab son, Jon, and his birthmother, Shelly, who had just become Tomi’s au pair the month before and was caring for the boys at home. Tomi immediately called Shelly, who practices Islam, to tell her to stay in the house and to warn all of her Arab-American community to do the same, because of Tomi’s concern for their safety post-bombing. For the first time Tomi understood the import of her parents’ incarceration in the Japanese camps in California during World War II. Tomi felt that becoming a mother made it impossible to ignore the deep levels of racial discrimination that exist in the U.S. No matter how hard she has worked all her life to fit in, Tomi now knows in her bones that North American society will always define her as ‘other’ because she is racially different. Out of this awareness she developed more compassion for her mother who had been a hardworking, but not very affectionate, single mother to her and her brothers and sister. While Tomi goes out of her way to give Jon and Chaz the affection she longed for as a child, she also believes that subsequent to her separation from the boys’ father, she has been drawing internally on her mother’s strength. Still, Tomi is beginning to question whether the drive embodied in her Japanese work ethic is not a bit one-sided. Having adopted children is permitting Tomi to reevaluate her life priorities, to reclaim more harmony and balance as subsumed in the teachings of the Buddhist faith in which she was raised. Charlene, the grandmother (see Chapter 6) who became legal guardian to her two grandchildren, Maria and Kirin, in the wake of their parents’ substance abuse, also felt she was carrying forward the best of her own grandmother’s legacy, while trying to do some things differently. Charlene was very committed to providing the children with lots of structure and a stable environment, as her grandmother had been with her. Thus Charlene, Maria and Kirin had a nightly family sit-down dinner when they would all listen to classical music. She actively encouraged the children’s artistic projects because Charlene had learned from her ex-father-in-law painter that ‘if you can create, you can heal yourself.’ Unlike Charlene’s grandmother who had been depressed and thus very reserved, Charlene went out of her way to hold her grandchildren physically and emotionally so they would know they were loved and therefore safe. Charlene also tried to make their bedroom aesthetically pleasing and cozy so they would feel soothed. Despite financial sacrifices,

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exhaustion and lack of solitude due to taking care of the children, as well as her greater isolation from peers, Charlene felt that raising the children, if only on an interim basis, brought her many gifts and made her grow. Since Charlene has been the primary caretaker for Maria, though not Kirin, who is more attached to his mother, Charlene feels especially pierced by Maria’s love because of their deep attachment and common tendency to reach out and seize life.

Transcending one’s mothering legacy For some adoptive, foster and stepmothers, entry into motherhood permits them to overcome holes in their inner mothers, or consciously to mother differently than they feel they experienced. One adoptive mother, Betty, had lost her own mother to cancer when she was seven. Her father remarried rather quickly, but neither he nor her new stepmother ever helped her grieve the loss of her mother. In fact her stepmother was a very ambitious career woman, and like her father so identified with her work that Betty and her brother were left to their own devices emotionally. Betty is aware that she consciously chose to be a stay-at-home mother to her two biological sons because she wanted to mother in the way she wished had been her experience. Betty and her husband, Jeff, lost their first son, Neal, at 16 months due to his congenital intestinal disorder. Luckily, the boy’s younger brother, Drew, grew out of a much milder case of the same disorder. This devastating loss gave Betty the opportunity to finally grieve the death of her mother. Betty and Jeff were in a grief support group called Compassionate Friends for a number of years, later helping other parents who had lost their children to death. About five or six years after their son’s death, Betty and Jeff were at the home of a foster mother whose biological son had been killed in a gang war. The foster mother was temporarily caring for babies who might be reunified with their parents. Although they had had no plans to adopt, Betty and Jeff fell in love with one foster son, Ward, who was then six months old. Betty admitted that when looking into Ward’s eyes she felt for the first time that her heart had healed enough from Neal’s death to be willing to risk loving another child. Ward’s social worker was eager to help Betty and Jeff adopt him, until unexpectedly some friends of the birthfather decided to take Ward. Because of policies at

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her agency committed to reunification, the social worker switched gears and placed Ward with his father’s friends, in the hope this might stir his father to reclaim him. Not only was Ward not reunited with his father but he also endured a couple more foster placements before the social worker recontacted Betty and Jeff to find out if they would still be open to adopting him. Ward became part of their family when he was 15 months, and Drew was almost seven. Naturally, because of all of his losses Ward became controlling, destructive and angry, after a long honeymoon period in his new home (he had remembered coming to the family’s home during the earlier plan to adopt him). Although pretty wrung out by trying to contain Ward’s out-of-control behavior, Betty was determined to help him grieve his losses in a way that no one had helped her with the loss of her mother. Participating with Jeff and Ward in therapy, Betty would watch Ward regress to baby behaviors both in therapy sessions (playing with a milk cow – symbolic of mother’s milk) and at home where they bought a cradle and a bottle for Ward at the therapist’s suggestion. Ward’s behavior improved with his parents’ support, since it made his losses seem more bearable. Still, when the pre-school Ward had attended for three years shut down, he again reverted to destructive behaviors. Despite her weariness Betty hoped that she – with help from Jeff who was a very calming presence for his sons – could facilitate Ward’s passage through his grief. In transcending her maternal legacy through this generative act of helping Ward heal his losses, Betty is no doubt also further healing herself. Depending on her experiences as a child, a stepmother may discover many gifts in the give and take with a stepchild, just like in any mothering experience. Frances (see Chapter 4) had grown up in a rather rigid and reserved Northern European Catholic family, who did not appreciate her fierce independence once she entered adolescence. While Frances regretted the lack of warmth, openness and communication in her family which led to her unhappy teenage years, she nonetheless felt that her mother’s legacy of setting firm limits with her and her sister had stood her in good stead. Continuing to build on her youthful independence, Frances had flourished professionally and felt happy and fulfilled in her career. To her regret, Frances had not met the right partner in time to have children, and had chosen not to pursue single motherhood. For Frances, the fact that her sweetheart Dan had children was a bonus, although she wished they

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were younger than teens so she might have more time to mother them before they left home. Becoming a stepmother put Frances in touch with her sadness about not having had her own children earlier, especially as her maternal side became fulfilled by the relationships to Arlene, aged 16, and Diane, aged 13. Upon entering her new stepfamily, Frances found herself longing for acceptance by Dan’s teenage girls. In the process of taking a creative writing class Frances was made aware by her instructor, who gave her feedback about a piece concerning her relationship to her stepdaughters, that she seemed to be looking for acceptance as a teenager, not simply as a stepmother, by these young women. That is, Frances expressed her unconscious adolescent longing for acknowledgment of her strivings toward independence, in writing about her encounter with her stepdaughters. Meanwhile, Frances felt she could give Arlene and Diane, even if more briefly than they could use, the recognition of their right to privacy and independence as young women coming into their own which she had wanted so much as a teenager. Tumultuous though it was to mother adolescents – with intense shifts between attachment and autonomy compressed into such a small window of time during which their stepfamily all lived together – Frances felt she made a difference to her stepdaughters, and they to her inner teenager, by recognizing and respecting one another’s separateness. In working out her difficulties with her stepdaughters differently than had been her youthful experience, Frances could lay to rest the unrequited longing for her mother’s acceptance of her as a teen. The bonds arduously and mutually created by Frances with her stepdaughters went a long way to filling the holes in recognition Frances had felt as a child and adolescent. Frances used her exchange with her stepdaughters to give birth to herself as a stepmother, while laying to rest unresolved struggles from her youth. To return to my own situation, the mothering I received as a child loomed heavily when I finally was able to put on the mantle of stepmother for my daughters. As a little girl I bore the burden of much of my mother’s post-war trauma – she had lived in Europe during World War II – and early family tragedies, including loss through death and illness. Because I was unsuccessful at holding or easing my mother’s distress from these unresolved traumas and losses, I came to believe that I was the source of the problem. The ghosts in my motherline contributed to my unconscious but

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deep sense of myself as a ‘damaging daughter,’ haunting me even after I left home. While I always knew I wanted to have children, I waited for several extra decades to become a mother, because I felt so strongly that I had to heal myself inside lest I pass on these ghosts to a child. In my more despairing moments while struggling with infertility, not to mention adoption, I worried that perhaps I wasn’t being chosen to mother because I could not overcome this legacy from my past. Thus, as a new stepmother, I often felt like a fraud. When I first became involved in volunteer work at my stepdaughters’ high school, and other mothers would ask me ‘whose mother’ I was, I would experience this inner lurch of illegitimacy as if I were ‘passing’ as a mother. Only at our daughters’ graduation from high school did I feel I had finally earned my wings as a (step)mother. After five years of steady work on creating attachments with my stepdaughters, not to mention helping them come into their own as young women, I knew I was the major force in preparing them for this rite of passage. Despite my inner battle with the dark parts of my early mother–child drama I was beginning to grasp that I was making a difference in my stepdaughters’ lives. Once I could absorb that, in fact, I had been generative rather than ‘damaging’ in my helping them envision and bear fruit in creating their dreams as young women, an enormous internal shift occurred for me. Here was the culmination of a long process of having my identity transformed as I gave birth to myself as a stepmother. Not only did the attachment with my daughters benefit them in building on their early childhood experiences, as well as in enabling them to traverse adolescence constructively, but I too was healed in the loving exchange with them. Because we were willing to be touched and transformed by loving one another, my stepdaughters and I each carry new sources of emotional abundance inside of us. Previous losses in our lives – mine and each of my daughters’ – are made more bearable by the additional source of belonging we have been willing to risk creating together. If and when my daughters have their own children, I believe they will draw on me as one of their inner mothers in order to care for their children. Jesse Green also describes his surrender to the piracy of his heart by his boys: It is true; I was smiling. There wasn’t very much in the world more satisfying than showing a child a good time. Of course, you connect to a child

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differently from the way you connect to an adult; you engage directly and unblinkingly and in a kind of privacy too scary otherwise. You stare, make faces, chase, manhandle, sing nonsense songs quite publicly; things you’d be considered mad for doing if you did them to anyone else. They would be intrusions, presumptions upon separateness. But a child’s best gift (and his threat) is the piercing of that separateness. (Green 1999, pp.232–233)1

Jesse’s world is upended, perfectionistic streaks eroded, heart exploded as he lets in this direct source of belonging from his sons. This is the gift that can emerge when we claim step, foster and adoptive children as our own, even as we grapple with them as individuals in their own right. Mothering is a transforming experience if one is willing to surrender to having one’s heart pierced.

Obstacles to stepmothering Ambivalence Mothers who adopt or foster children usually do so by choice. In contrast some stepmothers are ambivalent about participating in the raising of their stepchildren. Not every stepmother is able to or interested in getting close to her stepchildren. For women who have chosen not to have children, but who marry fathers, a change in identity may be particularly essential in order for the stepmother to engage in this mothering role. Wrestling with the potential entry into the stepmother mindset may involve becoming more aware of one’s conflicts about commitment to children and maternal ambivalence. Exploring one’s maternal legacy, or inner mother, can help a woman in ‘coming to terms, often regretfully, with the meaning and implications of…detachment from the role of stepmother’ (Campbell 1999, p.6). A stepmother story shared by a colleague is illustrative: A client of mine, widely loved for her warmth, charm and giving, adaptable nature, married a man with a 3 year old daughter with whom he always had a difficult relationship. When he and his daughter fought my client typically left the house, since it was ‘not her problem.’ In effect, she had defined herself as ‘not mother’ and continued that identity even when she married a man with a child. As the marriage continued, he began to resent her detachment from his daughter, and their fights began to center on her ‘rejection of the maternal.’ Because in many ways she felt

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herself (and was perceived) as a very ‘maternal’ person, she was deeply disturbed by this accusation and entered therapy. She began to look at the connection between her ambivalent relationship with her mother, her adamant refusal to even consider having a child, her unwillingness to identify herself as an important person in her stepdaughter’s life, and her dissatisfaction with her husband, who in many ways failed to open his heart to her. She began to experiment with calling herself a stepmother, began to take a limited but clear role in the child’s life, and began a dialogue with her husband about his parenting. (Campbell 1999, p.6)

Here the husband’s insistence that his wife enter the stepmother role led to her examination of her childhood experiences of mothering which had shaped her maternal desire, or lack thereof, in psychotherapy. Once the stepmother understood more about herself and what truly mattered to her, she could respond better to the child’s needs. While she did participate in her stepdaughter’s life and growth by giving parental input to her husband, she never wholeheartedly embraced the stepmother mindset like other women who want children and end up devoting themselves to stepmothering. Another stepmother, Judy, who had also not wanted to give birth to children, felt that becoming a stepmother legitimated her in the eyes of the broader community, so that she no longer had to feel defensive or odd for not wanting/having had her own children. Stepmothering gave her a compromise role that permitted her to meet society’s expectations for women, while maintaining her integrity around her preference to be childfree. When Judy married Tony, he had been separated from the children’s mother, Elaine, for several years. Tony and Elaine and her husband, Frank, already had a cooperative co-parenting relationship. When Judy joined her husband’s family, she was included in parental discussions about her stepchildren, two girls – Katie and Alexandra – aged eight and 11, respectively. Judy and Tony had the girls mostly on weekends, so that Judy experienced little pressure to build a bond with them, letting the stepmother/daughter relationships unfold naturally. When there were problems with either Katie or Alexandra, the four parents would get together to discuss how to handle things. Later during Alexandra’s adolescence, Judy would gripe to Elaine and vice versa when teenager/(step)mother dynamics were getting each one down. Thus Judy felt included by both the mother and father of her stepdaughters.

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Nonetheless, Judy did not feel especially transformed by her relationships to Alexandra and Katie. She felt less that her ‘heart was opened, than it came out a bit more.’ Regina, a two-time stepmother, felt she was mourning the loss of the opportunity of having her own child when I interviewed her. While married to the father of her first stepchildren, Ken, she had a miscarriage, and later after her divorce from Ken she chose to have an abortion rather than commit to single parenting. Regina met Ken (see Chapter 4) in her twenties, after he left his long-time wife, Lydia. As Ken’s helpmate, Regina facilitated the father/son and father/daughter relationships between Ken and his two teenagers. Through this go-between role Regina became a ‘friend-Mom’ to Ken’s daughter, Toni, who was only 11 years younger than she. Later, it was Regina rather than Ken or Lydia who painstakingly saw Toni through a depressive episode in her twenties, after Ken and Regina had divorced. As ‘friend-Mom’ Regina felt fulfilled in her close connection with Toni, especially as she joined Lydia at the hospital when Toni had a child many years later, playfully bantering with Lydia about who was ‘grandmother # 1.’ More recently, Regina has coupled with another father, becoming stepmother again to a young woman in her early twenties. Regina felt that as a stepmother she had the privileges of mothering but not necessarily the accountability that biological parents had. Regina was open about enjoying the pleasures of mothering without having to carry all of the responsibility. For example, while her new stepdaughter was struggling with illness, Regina felt that when ‘the going got rough’ she could bow out and hand the reins of parenting back over to her stepdaughter’s parents. By Regina’s description, ‘friend-Mom’ bespeaks a stepmother lost in the intergenerational interstices, without the full immersion in responsibilities that joining the parental unit entails. Not surprisingly Regina described her own role as a parentified child, who needed to furnish her own parents with emotional provisions in order to maintain a connection with them. In fact Regina continued in this parentified slot of a nurturing friend-Mom, belonging neither with the parents nor fitting into the child cohort, caught in a familiar niche as a stepmother between the generations.

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Problems in the stepfamily hierarchy In stepmother/father couples the father, by virtue of having contributed his seed to the child, has the more direct connection to his progeny. For the stepmother to join the mother and father in contributing to the lives of the children, the father/child dyad has to expand into a father/stepmother/ child triangle. Similarly cooperation between stepmother and mother facilitates the stepmother’s entry into the stepmother mindset. However, if the father does not include the stepmother in a working parental unit, with boundaries between generations clearly set, it will be harder for the stepmother to fully cross the threshold of the stepmother portal and enjoy the privilege of joining other women whose identities have been changed by becoming mother. A gay man, John, who had partnered with a father, Lee, described his struggles as stepparent when his partner could not co-create a working parental unit.2 Both John and Lee were raised in Mormon families, which is primarily why Lee had initially married a woman based on the advice of a church elder. John, who entered the stepparent role when Tyler, Lee’s son, was about three, had been in either the military or law enforcement since adolescence. In his mid-twenties John came out to his family, who eagerly embraced Tyler as a grandchild once John and Lee became a couple. After initially being devastated over Lee’s sexual preference which caused the divorce, Tyler’s mother, Sharon, set up a visitation schedule for Lee and Tyler, attempting to maintain a working structure for Tyler at both households. Unfortunately, Lee in his guilt over coming out was unable to take the reins of authority as father, and instead bargained for love with Tyler by acting like a pal. John often found himself in the role of disciplinarian because of Lee’s abdication, feeling like the ‘bad guy’ vis-à-vis Tyler. Not only were his limit-setting efforts as a stepfather undermined by Lee, but John felt he regularly had to coach Lee to step up to the plate of fathering, so that Tyler would not suffer the consequences from Lee’s lack of authority as a parent. For example, when Tyler had one of his frequent ear infections, it was John who coordinated a medication regimen with Sharon, because of Lee’s irresponsibility in this level of care for his son. Because Lee repudiated his need to co-create a ‘parental unit,’ John would oscillate between stepping into the gap by disciplining or structuring Tyler, versus staying in an advisory role with Lee about managing Tyler.

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John regularly felt put in a double bind by the ambiguity of his authority as stepparent to Tyler, and had considered leaving the relationship because of Lee’s refusal to develop from buddy to father. As he alternated between feeling peripheral and central in handling crises for father and son, John did not feel he could risk more caring for Tyler. John openly acknowledged this ambivalent attachment to Tyler created by Lee’s abdication of his rightful parental position in the stepfamily hierarchy. Without the structure of father/co-father authority in place, generationally differentiated from son, John found his role as stepfather futile. John had always wanted to have children. Since attending professional school in the human services during his twenties, John had become more aware of those parts of his childhood which left him with holes in his own development. During his latency age period, John’s parents separated. He knew firsthand the losses that accompany divorce. Also, John felt he got less attention than his brothers, so his empathy for Tyler’s needs was deep. Before Lee and John moved to the West Coast from their hometown, John tried consciously to mirror Tyler when the boy would confide in him, a luxury he himself rarely enjoyed as a child. Unfortunately, the hierarchical strain between him and Lee finally led John to detach from this level of intimacy with Tyler. Because of Lee’s fathering style, John was not hopeful that he could do right by Tyler as a stepparent. Many stepmothers who find themselves picking up the pieces of their husband’s lackadaisical parenting experience a similar futility, as in the earlier vignette about Evelyn. Thus structural problems in a new stepfamily can create obstacles for a woman (or man) attempting to stepmother her/his husband’s children. Father/child bonds, which indefinitely take precedence over the co-parent relationship, or blur the distinction between generations in the family, will impede a woman’s ability to fully enter the stepmother mindset. A major plot line in Trollope’s (1998) novel Other People’s Children concerns a man who loses a wife and later a girlfriend because he cannot find it in himself to back the former, with whom he has a son, or the latter, who longs to become the stepmother of his son, when their wishes are in conflict with those of his daughter by his late wife. Out of guilt about his daughter’s childhood suffering, this man cannot create a parental unit with either woman that will accord his daughter her rightful generational place in the family.

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Sometimes it is difficult for the father to include the stepmother in father/child/stepmother kinship ties because his place as the father post-divorce is tentative or insecure. In one situation (see Chapter 2), Jim had left his wife, Connie, because of his experience of a 20-plus year empty marriage, and minimal shared parenting. Jim’s children, Tom and Cindy, were 17 and 14, respectively, at the time of the separation. Connie blamed Jim for the divorce, despite her part in the marital and parental estrangement. Expressing her rage and abandonment directly to the children, Connie required their loyalty, undermining their connection to Jim and to the woman he subsequently married, Ginny. Seeing the loyalty bind Tom and Cindy were in, Ginny fathomed that until the bonds between Jim and his children had been firmed up, there would be little room for her as a stepmother. Thus initially, Ginny spent most of her energy supporting Jim as a good father. Like the father who holds and contains the mother post-birth, so that she can rise to the occasion of entering motherhood, Ginny became Jim’s supporting matrix for reclaiming his role as a father, the fatherhood mindset never having been fully his during the marriage. With Ginny available to bear witness to Jim’s experience of rejection by his children, he could rise to the challenge to make claims on Tom and Cindy as their father, even in the face of their antagonism toward him. While struggling to rebuild his bonds with his children, Jim’s role as father took center stage, with Ginny’s potential entry into the stepmother role off in the future when time had healed more of Connie’s sense of betrayal into which she enfolded the children. While Ginny very much wanted to be a stepmother rather than merely an older mentoring person to Jim’s children, she was not sanguine that the children would tolerate Jim’s setting any limits on them in order to back her stepmother authority, much less risk their mother’s rancor should they become attached to her, an insight that made her alternatively sad and bitter. Since Ginny had never had children of her own, she knew she had to come to grips with her disappointment about not feeling included in a stepfamily. To summarize, either the internal residues from one’s maternal legacy or external obstacles to joining the father in the parental unit can impede a woman’s passage into the stepmother mindset. For some women, the lack of maternal desire prevents them from being willing to be cracked open by

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the stepmother journey. In these situations it is unlikely that a relationship between stepmother and child will unfold into an attachment which can be used by each to heal old wounds. In other stepfamilies, the father has never quite taken the reins of fathering in hand, either expecting the stepmother to provide the structure and consistency children need, or having such a different parenting style that parental discord obstructs the formation of a working father/stepmother unit. Naturally the more the children’s mother requires absolute emotional loyalty, because she is threatened by the children benefiting from stepmother nurturance, the less likely the stepmother legacy can be woven into an extended stepfamily. Further, stepmothers who also have their own children may have different inclinations about parity of involvement with step versus biological children. Finally, for some stepmothers, an inner reluctance to become a mother, including the identity reorganization to which the stepmother mindset exposes them, converges with their choice of a father-partner where there are obstacles to their entry into a working parental unit. That is, it is my impression that women who are more conflicted about becoming mothers often unconsciously choose situations where there are built-in safeguards from a full immersion into the stepmother role. Nonetheless, in a continuum of stepparent involvement, ‘lower levels of involvement may be in the best interests of the child within the context of a particular stepfamily constellation and reflect an attunement to the child rather than disinterest. In other cases, higher levels of involvement may be needed’ (Svare 1999, p.25). Given the diversity of stepfamilies, therefore, a range of stepmothering roles may be possible depending on the unique needs of a particular collection of family members.

Conclusion Like the shift in identity for women who become biological mothers, step, foster and adoptive mothers experience external and internal changes when they give birth to themselves as mothers. Even if it is not immediate, at some point the father has to include the stepmother in the parental unit, otherwise she will live on the periphery of stepfamily life. Depending on whether a woman tackles the legacy from her mother, she will be more or less able to utilize the adoptive, foster or stepmother/child bonds to expand her identity. Women whose relationships to their own mothers are

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difficult, conflicted or unresolved have to grapple with their inner mother as they enter the motherhood mindset. If a foster, step or adoptive mother holds back from risking her heart with her children because of the normal obstacles along the way to creating a meaningful attachment with her children (see Chapters 2–3), then she will reap less from the exchange. As a stepmother who’s been on a uniquely created motherhood journey I can personally attest to the payoff for hanging in through the more difficult moments as a stepmother. While it is true that the lack of a supporting matrix, as well as my own negative inner mother, hampered my confidence as a stepmother, my entry into the stepmother mindset and its subsequent healing of certain holes in my identity as a woman have been an incredible gift. Being able to turn losses in my life into an experience so generative as becoming a stepmother is something I would never have wanted to miss. As one expression of the triumph of the human spirit, loving my stepdaughters and being loved by them have unquestionably given my life deeper meaning. The reward of parenting – biological or not – is that it gives us the opportunity to pass on the torch of Eros to the next generation. On the adoptive, foster or stepmothering path, mothers and children can heal from previous losses in their lives by using the newfound attachment as a resource if they so choose. With a willingness to stretch oneself as a woman (or man) while creating new sources of belonging by means other than biology, anyone who really wants to give birth to herself as a mother can do so. If not for love, how could the human urge to reach across the spaces that separate us express itself ?

Notes 1 2

From The Velveteen Father by Jesse Green, copyright © 1999 by Jesse Green. Used by permission of Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Portions of this vignette were previously published in Waterman (2003, pp.59–76).

8

Mothering as a Spiritual 1 Commitment I am your merciful mother and the mother of all nations of the earth who would love me, who would speak with me, who would search for me, and who would place their confidence in me. There I will hear their laments and remedy and cure all their miseries, misfortunes and sorrows. Am I not here, your mother? Are you not under my shadow and my protection? Am I not your source of life? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle where I cross my arms? Who else do you need? Let nothing trouble you or cause you sorrow. (Nican Mopohua – Nahuatl poem/Gospel of La Virgen de Guadalupe, Elizondo 1997, pp.8, 16)

The spiritual call to illuminate the way of the next generation I don’t often have the opportunity to watch the Oprah Winfrey show because of my work schedule. I did manage to catch a show when Ms. Winfrey was interviewing Caroline Myss, author and workshop leader, whose work (Myss 1996, 1997) I had found quite meaningful. The audience was engaged in a lively debate with Ms. Winfrey and Dr. Myss about whether spirituality was the same as religion. Some members of the audience took offense at Ms. Winfrey’s personal/spiritual philosophy, which guides her on the show: in particular her notion that Divinity expresses itself through the spirit of individual people, permitting them to touch others and to make a contribution to humanity. People in the audience resisted this perspective because they felt Ms. Winfrey was 198

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pushing religion on the show. As I personally agree with Ms. Winfrey that the Divine Spirit manifests itself through the lives, work and commitments of certain people, I want to be clear, here, that what follows is in no way meant to be proselytizing or to tell people what to believe. There are many spiritual/moral routes, and I have no desire to impose my way on others. Still, I cannot complete this work on adoptive, foster and stepmothering without addressing the spiritual power subsumed in the act of claiming and loving a non-biological child. Some time ago I watched a very moving program on PBS about the foster care system (‘Foster Care: An Invisible Crisis,’ Take this Heart, Sunday, March 1, 1998). A major theme of the program was the fate of various children whose journey to find family was dependent on the good faith of administrators, social workers and the foster parents working within this complex and often less than perfect system. One foster mother and the home she provided for ‘last ditch’ foster teens stand out in my memory. This dedicated and faith-filled African-American woman felt that caring for such unwanted and discarded children was her mission, at the level of a spiritual call. Because of her faith in God, she felt compelled to give something back to the community. The children whose lives she had to turn around were hard-core foster kids. They had lived through so many losses that they were jaded almost beyond repair. One Latino boy talked movingly about how his (foster)Mom had refused to give up on him, which permitted him to regain hope that he could finally belong to a family. Even through the TV screen I could feel that this woman was bringing more to her foster parenting than herself and her personal capacity to care and have compassion for these children. It was as if her life force was lifted up and magnified by spiritual energies flowing through her in order to enfold these children with the love they so desperately needed. Since she was also savvy enough not to be conned by her kids, she took no guff from them, leading them to respect her as a parent who could provide containment and structure for the previous painful experiences they had had in the foster care system. In short, the kids knew that there was enough love in her home to contain all the hate they might be bringing forward from their parents’ failures and other placements. For this woman parenting other people’s children – including compassionately caring for the parents of these disenfranchised kids, who could not parent their

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offspring themselves because they were barely grown up – was not only a personal commitment, but a spiritual one. Sitting in the waiting room one day to see my doctor, I came across an article in a magazine that was quite disturbing. The author was attempting to explain why more and more young girls in the U.S. were getting pregnant, telling no one, giving birth secretly, and then throwing the babies into trash cans, down toilets and laundry chutes so they could go on with their lives (Ehrenreich 1997). A photo and caption adorned one page: Debi Faris (above), a 42-year-old mother of three, has named and buried 12 children abandoned in Southern California over the past 14 months. She started the Garden of Angels after hearing about a dead newborn found by the side of a freeway. ‘That this child had no name, no one to love him, nothing – it just wouldn’t leave me,’ says Faris, who asked the coroner to release the body to her if no one else came forward. ‘After that first burial, I knew other children would follow.’ (Ehrenreich 1997, p.76)

Like the foster mother cited above, Ms. Faris feels compelled to care for the discarded children’s souls, praying over them in her Garden of Angels graveyard. Both of these women find that their ‘soul’s code’ (Hillman 1996) requires them to follow a spiritual call to care for the children of others who are unable to or choose not to parent their own. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with Wolves (1992), recounts her call from the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Divine Mother of the disenfranchised and orphans in the Americas. As she narrates her entry into ‘the path of the broken heart,’ via an encounter with ‘Her Guadalupe,’ she is led to be in contact with inmates in immigrant jails, juvenile facilities, men’s prisons, battered women’s shelters and homes for unwed mothers (Estes 1996). My own call from La Virgen de Guadalupe has to do with healing orphans of the soul – that is, people who are belatedly in need of good enough mothering because life circumstances deprived them of the experience of belonging that should come naturally in childhood. Threads of this personal, clinical and spiritual commitment have appeared in my life since I was quite young. But only recently when La Virgen came to comfort me in the ‘dark night of the soul,’ while I weathered my infertility and adoption journeys, did I understand that my path ‘was written’ – or mektoub, the term for the Moorish belief that each of us has a destiny which

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has been preordained by Allah. I believe my own spiritual call by La Virgen de Guadalupe has everything to do with my becoming a stepmother. Without La Virgen de Guadalupe coming into my life after the age of 40, I doubt I would have been able to heal many ‘potholes’ (Benjamin 1995b) in my maternal legacy as well as I have, in order to tender a different type of mothering to my stepdaughters than I received. As the patroness of the downtrodden and orphans in this hemisphere, one gift of La Virgen de Guadalupe is her extension of the mother/daughter or mother/son mantle to non-biological bonds, or any sphere where generative care of the young takes place. In the September 6, 1998 Parade there was an article entitled ‘How You Can Help a Child,’ putting out a call for the millions of children in the U.S. in special need of support, guidance, encouragement and love (Callahan, Shepard and Zibard 1998). Clearly there is an endless array of La Virgen’s work with the lost and forsaken children needed in our own era. In writing this book I hope to help step, foster, adoptive, grand and godmothers, among other non-biological mothers, rise to the occasion of compassionate and firm parenting in becoming ‘second’ mothers to their chosen children. La Virgen de Guadalupe, mother of the forlorn and abandoned, helps me do the same by giving me a spiritual source of belonging. With her as my source I am able to bear witness to the suffering and joys of my stepdaughters as they unfold as women. Similarly I can offer the parents and children in my clinical practice empathy and containment, and a sense that they need not bear their pain and losses alone as they build a mutual home base. Because of the legacy from slavery, not to mention West African culture and spirituality, the African-American community in North America values the ideal of collective responsibility for children. Thus children are often raised or ‘adopted’ by kin from the extended family network while the natural mother may still have contact with her child (as in the case of Lynn in Chapter 3). Similarly in la familia Latina, young children may be adopted within and across families, with madre de crianza, or ‘childrearing mother,’ being the term of address for the mothers who make this loving contribution to the next generation (Smith et al. 1998). Families whose connection to the land (here or in their homeland) is strong because of roots in a tribal tradition are also more likely to provide a village to raise the younger generation – for example, in the Hmong tribe from Cambodia (Fadiman

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1997). Among American Indian tribes, children may not be adopted out of tribe unless the tribal council approves, even if the child is only half or one-eighth Indian. This is an effort to make up for the history of Native American children who were torn away from their people and raised outside of their own spiritual and cultural tradition. Francesca (see Chapters 5 and 6) had partnered in her forties with another woman, Adriana. Adriana’s grandmother immigrated to New York to make a better living for the family, leaving Adriana’s mother, Carmen, to be raised by her aunt in Puerto Rico. While Carmen still resented her mother for this family choice, she herself has chosen to foster and subsequently adopt a number of children placed with her through the New York foster care system. Thus when Francesca – who was too old to give birth – and Adriana – who had medical problems preventing pregnancy – began to discuss having children, Adriana suggested adopting children through the foster care system as Carmen had done. Although Italian-American, Francesca’s family did not have the notion of a madre de crianza built into their tradition the way Adriana’s motherline did. Within three years Francesca and Adriana had 12 children in and out of their home. Because so many of the children had been through innumerable foster care homes, combined with the fact that so few of them were actually freed for adoption by having both parents relinquish them legally, it took Francesca and Adriana several years to settle into what became their long-term family. One sibling pair whom Francesca and Adriana very much wanted to adopt was pulled out of their home because they were to be reunited with another sister in a supposedly permanent placement. Francesca described her and Adriana’s devastation at losing this brother and sister, aged nine and six respectively, through the arbitrary workings of the foster care system, whose workers refused to let them stay in touch with these children, much less find out if in fact they did finally succeed in being placed permanently. Francesca was clear that what permitted her and Adriana to work through these losses, and to raise the traumatized foster children whom they hoped to adopt, was their faith in God. When I spoke to Francesca they had two boys – Tony, aged nine, and Lincoln, aged eight – along with Tony’s sister, Celia, aged 11. Lincoln had had better experiences in his previous placements, and was still in touch with his father, so that he did not have the significant behavior problems that Tony and Celia did. Celia was extremely manipulative, and Tony, a

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sexual abuse victim, had been diagnosed bipolar and was on medication (it was believed that their birthmother had been psychotic throughout the time she cared for them). Francesca and Adriana were very involved in their Christian church, which was not only a spiritual container for them as parents, but for the children as well. Subsequent to a several month mental hospitalization, Tony had been able to articulate to Francesca how much it helped him to have a better day at school when the two of them prayed together in the morning. Thus Bible study, daily prayer and Friday family nights at church all helped these fost-adopt mothers explicitly draw on spiritual backup in their efforts to attach to and care for their challenging children. Similarly, Susan (see Chapter 6), who along with her partner, Joyce, had adopted her son, Tommy, at birth, and her daughter, Iris, at two and a half out of foster care, emphasized how being a parent to these two children with such different starts made her wrestle with questions like: ‘What does it mean to love somebody? Do I love my kids? How do they know that?’ With her children, though particularly Iris, Susan felt she both claimed her power, authority and influence over affecting the children’s growth, while at the same time acknowledging her limitations in being able to shape who they would become. Both a challenge and a relief, Susan felt she had no choice but to surrender to a higher flow of things spiritually, placing special-needs Iris in the hands of the universe, in the hands of the Great One. Humbled in the struggles and rewards of parenting the children she claims, Susan drew on a divine presence in the universe to help her with her fears about how her children’s destinies might unfold. By surrendering her mothering to God, Susan felt she could better accept who her children actually are, rather than being burdened by a grandiose sense of what she ought to be able to provide them. Especially among the less privileged in our society, the extended family’s willingness to ‘take in’ their own is an essential alternative to other options for these potentially ‘lost’ children, such as drugs, gangs, crime or prison. In this day and age, most parents – whether white or of color, privileged or disenfranchised – fear these untoward social influences which might negatively affect the life and growth of their children (Hewlett and West 1998). Along with the dangers of street culture, most parents are understandably anxious about the impact on their children of television and the internet, not to mention other facets of popular culture,

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which promote ‘explicit sex, gratuitous violence, and aggressive materialism’ (Hewlett and West 1998, p.127). According to Poe (1992), African-American grandparents have long been the ‘support pillow of the family.’ In many African-American families it is a strong spiritual commitment on the part of the grandparent ‘matriarch’ that permits the family to weather hard times, including sharing throughout the extended family the raising of children whose natural mothers may not be in a position to do so (Resch 1997). One such matriarch who raised 11 children in a public housing project in Pennsylvania regularly goes to church, reads from a large-print Bible every night and believes: ‘God answers prayers, don’t nobody tell me he don’t’ (Resch 1997, p.6A). Because of her unshakable faith, her 31 grandchildren and the fledgling brood of great grandchildren have a solid base, not to mention an enormous kin community, to give them a sense of belonging and direction. This spiritual grounding in extended families is often the only thing that keeps the younger generations from being lost to the shortcuts of street life that tempt poor youth. Sadly many grandmothers, white and African-American, Asian-American or Latino, explain the reason for their change in status from grandparent to parent in terms of substance abuse by an adult son or daughter, followed by child abuse and neglect, teenage pregnancy and divorce (Hamburg 2000). It is often only the faith and effort of grandmothers that make it possible for their grandchildren to overcome early childhood traumas, and resume their life and growth. Thus grandmothers, too, may be the only spiritual buffer between their grandchildren and the waste of a young life.

Ana: spiritual and personal sources of mothering One evening, I accidentally turned on a PBS travel show where the narrator was talking to a Turkish woman who offered the following translation: Ane in her language means biological mother. Ana on the other hand refers to any woman who acts as a ‘good enough’ mother to a child. Anatolia therefore means ‘land full of mother,’ along the lines of what the indigenous peoples in North and South America call Mother Earth. Two synchronistic encounters with other-than-Ane mothering in my childhood left a profound imprint on my being. Both of these experiences prepared me for the call I received from La Virgen de Guadalupe in my

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forties. As a girl I had the opportunity to live with my family in Rome, Italy, for four years while I was in grade school. During that time I auspiciously had a meeting of the minds with our live-in maid, coincidentally named Anna, who offered me among the few moments of unconditional love I experienced as a child. Her caring quietly became internalized as my Ana or good enough mothering. Naturally the warmth and passion of Italian culture, in contrast to the reserve (‘children should be seen and not heard’) of the German Lutheran and English Episcopalian backgrounds of my parents, helped as well, laying the groundwork for my affinity with Latin and Meso-American culture. In junior high I had the good fortune to live in Beirut, Lebanon, then known as the pearl of the Middle East, before it became a war-torn country. My family traveled throughout the Holy Land, which was revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. A second seminal event occurred when we visited a canyon that is now in Jordan, called Petra. This is a very special site, with temples carved into the crimson and red rock on the sides of the canyon. As an 11-year-old I was transfixed by the spiritual feeling of the place. One temple was built to the Egyptian Goddess, Isis (Macaulay 1964), a predecessor to the Dark Madonnas of Europe, such as the Black Madonna of Einsendeln, Switzerland, and Our Lady of Czestochowa, Poland. I believe, with adult hindsight, I was experiencing ‘land full of mother’ since I constructed a highly intricate fantasy about gathering all the orphans in the Middle East – where the poverty and suffering distressed me deeply as a girl – to bring them to live in the container of this awesome canyon. Having the spiritual resource of Mother Earth, I believe I was in touch with my own inner orphan and knew even then that my destiny would be to care for others who, like myself, could not take a feeling of belonging for granted. Even at my young age I had an inchoate sense that I needed the nurturing of the pre-Christian tribal Mother Goddesses, later fused with the Christian Virgin Mary, of which La Virgen de Guadalupe is one embodiment (Wallace 1998). During my long journey on the way to becoming a stepmother, La Virgen and her ‘land full of mother’ in the Americas made all the difference in providing holding for my heart. Fortunately, I took my first trip to New Mexico during this painful time, and it turned out to be a profound spiritual experience. Not only did the red/coral Anastazi cliff dwellings in Bandalier National Park put me directly in touch with my ‘inner Petra,’ but

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at the sanctuary in Chimayo, which draws many pilgrims during Holy Week, La Virgen responded to my prayers by holding my heart and letting me know everything would be all right. I came home and painted the feeling of this experience on paper large enough to be a bedspread, and indeed I wanted to be wrapped up in this holding proffered me by Mi Guadalupe. Thus both the land of New Mexico and La Virgen de Guadalupe made it possible for me to withstand the message from my critical inner childhood voices about my capacity to mother. Instead I could maintain hope that some way, somehow, I would reach my dream of giving my love to a member of the younger generation by becoming Ana to a child. Even though it took me another year or so to give up the dream of adoption, La Virgen was right: something else was written about how I would become a mother. For those of us whose mothering legacy has been self-emptying – I wasn’t sure I deserved to be an Ane, or biological mother – we have to access the archetypal mother for help in recreating the inner motherline. ‘We all carry deep in the unconscious an archetypally determined image of a nurturing mother that represents our archetypal need and predisposition for experiencing the nurturing mother’ (Weinrib 1983, p.158). I was blessed to have La Virgen claim me and bequeath me this spiritual gift. A few years ago I had the privilege of bearing witness to a most spiritually moving stepmother story. What made the journey of this stepmother, Joan, seem like more than the outcome of human choices – as opposed to divine intervention – were the many moments of synchronicity that filled her narrative. Synchronicity (or synchronistic event) – A term coined by Jung to designate the meaningful coincidence arising out of an acausal connecting principle, for example when an outer event coincides with an inwardly perceived event (dream, vision, premonition, etc.). The inner image or premonition has ‘come true.’ Neither the one nor the other coincidence can be explained by causality. A synchronistic event produces awe and a numinous feeling in the subject. (Weinrib 1983, p.164)

Joan had a very difficult relationship with her mother, who openly preferred her two younger brothers. Joan left her family of origin to join a religious order where she made a home for several decades. As she began to experience the vows of celibacy as curtailing the natural expression of her

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Eros, she struggled with her commitment to God through this particular venue (e.g. the convent). Eventually Joan left her order, continuing her work in the helping professions on a secular basis. After taking the time to integrate the loss of the ‘cloth’ in her life, Joan felt ready to shift from being a ‘bride of Christ’ to becoming a bride in relation to a man. To foster this dream, she began to look in the personal ads in the city where she lived. One Sunday Joan circled a number of advertisements that appealed to her, but never followed through in making contact. By the next Sunday, these same ads were long gone, and only one ad, written by a man who clearly conveyed his commitment to fathering, attracted her attention. As fate would have it Joan did choose to meet the author of the advertisement, Tom. They were a loving fit as man and woman, and they did marry. On his end, Tom was also quite unique. He and his ex-wife had not had children together, and decided to foster-parent a girl, Sheila, who was removed from her mother’s home as a one-year-old due to significant neglect (malnourishment being the most concrete example of the lack of nurturance that Sheila was enduring). Before the fost-adopt parents had been able to finalize Sheila’s adoption – around age four – Tom’s wife decided to leave the marriage. On the condition that she did not jeopardize the finalization of the adoption, Tom agreed to her request for a divorce. While Sheila does periodically see this adoptive mother, in essence this girl lost yet another mom. Nonetheless, when her adoptive father got together with Joan, it was not long until Sheila rather eagerly asked her stepmother if she would be her mother, anxiously wondering if it would be all right to call her ‘Mommy.’ A resilient girl, who had not given up the hope for belonging to a family with a mother and a father despite losing two mothers, Sheila is now using Joan to repair old wounds. Joan has her own sorrows about the mothering she herself received, and she came to me for a consultation because she was worried whether she was up to the task of being a good enough mother to this feisty girl. For a good portion of our meeting we highlighted together the ways in which she and Sheila were each highly spirited in their pursuit of life: Joan in making sure she didn’t miss out on all realms for expressing love; Sheila in being determined to find an Ana despite twice being dealt a poor hand in this regard. As a result of our dialogue, Joan began to feel up to the task of bearing witness to her stepdaughter’s suffering, as well as to find the backbone to set limits on her stepdaughter’s acting out behavior, so the

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girl could mourn her losses and heal. Throughout our discussion, the spiritual opportunity for both stepmother and daughter was in the forefront of our consciousness. Joan knew exactly what I meant when I suggested she was finding the courage to give the spiritual gift of belonging to Sheila. She also left our consultation with more than an inkling of how this girl was returning the spiritual gift in letting her ‘Mommy’ experience an intensely alive ‘mother–child unity’ (Neumann 1966), which might permit the stepmother to transcend wounds from her unfulfilled longings for closeness with her own mother. At the end of the meeting I had no doubt in my heart that this ‘Mommy’ and her stepdaughter had been destined to meet one another, and that Joan’s call to be Sheila’s Ana was no less spiritual than her earlier call into a religious order. In a wonderful French film, Ponnette, a little girl (aged four or so) whose mother has just died is followed through her various stages of grief. Like Sheila, Ponnette is resilient and energetic in her determination to get spiritual help with grieving the loss of her mother. Drawing on the Catholic icons in the school chapel (Christ, the Virgin Mary), as well as the faith of a Jewish friend, she rages at God while gathering the strength to hold onto her mother internally rather than succumbing to ‘frozen grief.’ Without a spiritual source of Ana, however, I’m not sure Ponnette would have succeeded at internalizing her Ane – via good and bad memories – thereby keeping her mother alive inside so that she could begin to live again. Another moving story also set in France highlights how a child’s reaching for Divinity can enable her to hold onto a temporarily or permanently lost Ane. In her memoir Doors to Madame Marie, Odette Meyers (1997) tells the story of being hidden by the concierge (Madame Marie) in her family’s apartment building in Paris when the Nazis came knocking at the door looking for Jews to round up. Soon thereafter Odette was sent off to the French countryside to live with a sympathetic French family, willing to hide her while her parents made arrangements for their own safety as persecuted Jews. Alone without her mother for a time, Ms. Meyers turned to the Virgin Mary for succor, describing from her little girl perspective how Madame Marie and La Vierge blurred into one internal Ana that helped her through the separation from her family. Later when she and her mother got living quarters together in another village, passing as Catholics, Ms. Meyers turned to poetry to help hold on to her father

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internally – who by then was incarcerated in a prisoner-of-war camp which he thankfully survived. For Ms. Meyers as for Ponnette, the turn to the Virgin Mary embodied a very personal connection to a spiritual Ana to tide her over during a traumatic time, in the absence of her Ane. Many years later as an adult, Ms. Meyers went on a pilgrimage to Madame Marie’s village of origin to pay homage to her memory for all that this Ana had done for her. Another woman, Felicity, who had had her own son, Gus, in a first marriage, was a stepmother in her second marriage as well as trying to conceive again. Sadly, miscarriages and the issue of infertility derailed the second marriage. After numerous creative attempts to have a child as a single woman, Felicity ran into a colleague with her newly adopted daughter from China at the grocery store. By now in her late forties Felicity was so touched by her colleague’s happiness that she decided to pursue adoption from China as a single woman. Comparing her experiences as a biological mother and an adoptive mother, Felicity described her feelings about Gus being placed in her arms as a baby: ‘It was like a heavy stone being dropped into water and just sinking so far, far down’ – realizing that the feeling of love for him was so much deeper than she ever conceived it would be. Before meeting her Chinese daughter, Lara, Felicity had a dream about a social worker showing her Lara’s picture, even though the worker was not supposed to do so, in which Lara radiated beauty. (Prior to meeting the real Lara, Felicity had had worries about what her future daughter would look like.) In the dream the social worker turned to Felicity and told her she had broken the rules because she knew Felicity needed to see the picture. Later, after talking to the adoption worker on the phone about Lara, Felicity and a friend sat together at the computer waiting for the picture of Lara to arrive, and Felicity was stunned to see the face of the girl from her dream. When she finally picked up Lara at 15 months of age, Felicity felt she was journeying to encounter her daughter, a meeting destined at a soul level. In China it is believed that if it is the destiny of certain people to be together, they are connected by a red thread, and that no matter how long it takes or how far they must travel, they will eventually find each other. Felicity firmly believes this to be the case for her and Lara, who came into her family through adoption rather than being born to her.

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Long before her adoption journey to China, Felicity had been interested in Buddhism because she had not been able to find a spiritual home in the faith of her Protestant upbringing, although she did regularly sing in a church choir. Felicity had done some Shambhala training and developed a meditation practice. Later after moving from the Rocky Mountains back east, Felicity had joined a Unitarian Fellowship where she met a group of women who became her circle of midwives for her second child. While in China, Felicity, along with five other spiritually progressive families who adopted daughters the same trip she did, arranged for Lara to receive a Buddhist blessing by a Chinese Buddhist monk. Synchronistically the blessing was arranged for sunrise in a Buddhist temple on Christmas morning, which Felicity felt captured the two spiritual threads, East and West, which would comprise Lara’s upbringing. Later in the spring, on Mother’s Day, Felicity had a dedication ceremony for Lara at her Unitarian community, where the commitment to the child is to educate her in all the major faiths of the world. A beautiful brass mobile hangs above the altar with an Earth symbol, a Star of David, a tree for pagan rituals, a symbol from the Koran, an Eightfold Path wheel and so forth. Long having embodied this integration of spiritual traditions, Felicity feels it was Lara’s karma to belong with her so that Lara could have a home where the spiritual streams from her motherland and her mother’s family would weave together. Despite all the obstacles along the way, Felicity feels it was predestined that Lara’s spirit seek and find her adoptive mother’s soul in this lifetime, a belief subsumed in the Buddhist tenet of reincarnation. Sandplay process is a technique, both psychotherapeutic and spiritual, which was created by Dora Kalff (1980), a student of Carl Jung, with contributions by other European clinicians (Mitchell and Friedman 1994). Using the sandplay technique the participant journeys to his/her innermost Self by creating a series of ‘worlds’ with little figurines in an open box filled with sand. With a therapist bearing witness over a number of sessions, adults and children can express their deepest soul struggles as well as tap into inner archetypal/spiritual resources on the way toward transformation and healing (Amman 1991; Bradway and McCoard 1997; Weinrib 1983). For example, just before I married my husband I did a short sandplay series (I thought) to prepare for the marriage. As it turned out, I believe I was gathering spiritual energies for the stepmothering task ahead, since in my trays I had churches, a ‘mother’ and ‘baby’ mosque,

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Tara, the Tibetan female Buddha of Compassion, not to mention feathers, rocks and shells from Mother Nature. The pieces from the natural world reminded me of the time I was between the ages of seven and ten, when I used to spend time in the park behind our apartment building in Rome, creating little altars from the gifts of nature (pine cones, feathers, leaves, stones). Completely unconsciously, I was availing myself of Mother Earth for solace as a child. Thus in this sandplay series, I was accessing my inner Divine Mother in order to be able to make manifest my call from La Virgen de Guadalupe by becoming Ana to my stepdaughters. Along with verbal therapy, I use the sandplay process with my patients because I believe it can help people tap into their deepest inner resources, both personal and archetypal. One dimension I’ve been trained to look for in a specific sandplay series, done by my child or adult patients, is signs of mother–child unity. Images in the sand depicting resources from this matriarchal phase of development can be as varied as a mother pig with her babies suckling, Madonna and Christ child, a ‘mother’ and ‘son’ cowrie shell pair, a Guatemalan doll holding her baby and so forth. For children or adults fortunate enough to have experienced belonging, such images appear naturally in their sandtrays, depicting their personal or spiritual foundation in a state of undifferentiated wholeness (Weinrib 1980), in connection to their mothers or Divinity, respectively. For people without the base of good enough mothering, the sandplay process can help them access and activate the inner archetypal Ana. The sandplay series of two adopted children, one seen by me in psychotherapy and one by a colleague, come to mind. I first began seeing Emma – adopted domestically at birth – when she was six years old. Emma’s birthmother came from a subculture where reprisal for an illegitimate pregnancy even in the United States would have been severe had her condition been discovered by her community. Thus Emma carried forward in her psyche not only the primal loss of her birthmother – and an accompanying sense of worthlessness – but also the trauma of her birthmother – who was terrified about having her secret pregnancy ferreted out – communicated to Emma in utero on the bodily level. In her early sandplay scenes Emma’s use of water (flooding the sandtray) was a manifestation of her preverbal experience of being swept away by primitive feelings of annihilation. Along with working in the sand, Emma utilized me in the transference to create her most elemental shape as a human being. She

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needed to invade my body so that I could provide her with the right shell/membrane/envelope out of which to hatch like the baby turtles whose eggs are laid and abandoned by their mothers, left buried in the sand until they are ready to emerge and race down to the sea (Waterman 2002a, p.101). Over time her sandplay scenes included various symbols of birth: an egg buried under the sand, enclosed in a fetus shape drawn in the sand; Humpty Dumpty standing next to an oven (apropos of the saying ‘she has one in the oven’); stuffed animals in baskets wearing crowns (alluding perhaps to the Infant of Prague, one version of the Christ child); sperm-like clay figures randomly placed in the sand; a goose (who laid the ‘golden egg’?) in a basket of straw with three eggs. Further the primary relatedness theme was also depicted by Emma in the sand: a gumdrop-covered wet sand volcano (breast?) later transformed in sandplay into a bejeweled sand breast with a pink flag on top; a breast-shaped birthday cake with candles; a ‘Dr. Barbara’ ox pulling a basket with an ‘Emma’ ox in it; and containers – pots, baskets, pails – upon containers. Meanwhile from within the first few months of a long-term play therapy on, Emma chose figures from the Hindu pantheon (Krishna, Ram, Shiva, Ganesh, Durga, Vishnu, and so on) along with Tara, the Tibetan (female) Buddha of Compassion. Although she was being raised by liberal, secular parents, Emma unconsciously chose these spiritual figures from cultures in Asia as in some inchoate way she knew she needed the aid of spiritual forces in order to heal. At New Year’s as well as around her birthday each year, she often filled the sandtray with lit candles, including using Star of David candles and a menorah. Clearly Emma availed herself of spiritual/ archetypal healing in addition to the psychotherapeutic process in order to fill her internal holes due to a precarious prenatal container. Similarly a colleague (Wallace 1998) described a moving sandplay series done by a five-year-old girl, Samantha, who had lost not only her Ane but had been placed in three different foster homes. In her final foster placement the foster parents had intended to adopt Samantha, but the major struggles involved in parenting her, as well as Samantha’s facility at provoking rejecting responses, led to the failure of this pre-adoptive placement. By the time Samantha was matched for another adoptive placement just before five years she had developed difficulties in her ability to form relationships and there was concern that Samantha might be unable to attach to her new adoptive parents. Again spiritual resources

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gleaned from her sandplay process, in a three-year biweekly therapy, enabled Samantha to begin healing from the many losses she had sustained in her young life. After initial sandplay scenes which were barren and disorganized, utilizing vulnerable animal figures, Samantha started to test the consistency and firmness of both the new adoptive home and the therapeutic container. As she began to trust the safety of both environments, Samantha was drawn to Christian spiritual figures to depict her ‘inner journey from feelings of isolation and abandonment to a sense of connection and belonging’ (Wallace 1998, p.122) in her sandplay scenes. Three sand worlds capture Samantha’s quest for archetypal resources to support her in her new home: (a) a shepherd and Virgin Mary frame baby Jesus, while a dark Virgin of Guadalupe looks on; (b) angels watch over infant Jesus with dark-skinned St. Martin de Porres and three Virgin figures, including Guadalupe, nearby; (c) Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Martin de Porres form a Holy family with the baby Jesus, joined by angels, wise men, nativity animals and a dancing ballerina. Through her work in sandplay, Samantha was able to discover and use the inner Divine Mother, along with her therapist, for holding while she mourned her losses. Using the infant Jesus with archetypal/spiritual parents – La Virgen de Guadalupe and St. Martin de Porres – Samantha could express her hope that her status as orphan would be transformed into the belonging for which she so longed. One Sunday afternoon I watched a recent film version of The Secret Garden. In this beloved children’s story, Mary, the girl whose parents died in India, comes to live with her uncle and ailing cousin, Colin, whose wife and mother – twin of Mary’s mother – died in childbirth. Mary discovers the secret garden with the help of the son of servants, a boy deeply connected to nature and animals. As she and her servant friend replant and tend to the garden together Mary finds solace in the beauty of nature. After accidentally meeting her invalid cousin, Mary draws on the healing powers of the secret garden to slowly woo Colin out of bed, into light, outdoors and into the garden, where miraculously he learns to walk for the first time after watching an orphan goat stumble to its feet. The children summon the uncle, who chooses to avoid his grief by living elsewhere most of the time, through a Druid ritual, and he arrives back at the castle to meet his son in his fully ambulatory state. In his joy, the uncle lets Mary know that she has brought him and Colin back to life. Without the

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backdrop of Mother Earth in the secret garden, Mary would not have found the resources to move through her own grief over being orphaned, and foster the recovery of Colin and his father. This story no doubt speaks to the inner orphan in all of us, who hopes against hope to belong to an Ana, whether woman, man, or grand, foster, step or godmother. Only upon returning to, or finding for the first time, an emotional/spiritual home can a child continue to grow and develop. The miracle of love is that it can help people find grace even amidst human suffering. This is the legacy of both Christ and Buddha, not to mention the Virgin Mary in all her embodiments (Dalai Lama 1996; Jenkins 1997; Thich Nat Han 1995). In her moving memoir about how having a Down’s syndrome baby transformed her and her husband, Beck cuts to the essence of life: ‘I have been blessed with love both human and divine, and I believe that there is no essential difference between them. Any person who acts out of love is acting for God. There is no way to repay such acts, except perhaps to pass them onto others’ (Beck 1999, p.296). A step, adoptive or foster mother who has grieved her own losses can transform her suffering into compassion for herself. As she passes this compassion onto her step, adoptive or foster children – which doesn’t mean she’s never angry with them, though she may forgive them – she makes possible the mutual exchange of spiritual and personal love which can foster the triumph of the human spirit. In order to be able to experience joy, one has to face suffering, especially loss and regret. In the Ana bond between non-biological mother and child, both may draw on the numinous energies that accompany a hard-won and authentic exchange of love, using this abundance to further themselves and the community at large.

Note 1

Portions of this chapter were previously published in Waterman (2002b, pp.114–128).

9

Conclusion There is something formless and perfect, Before the universe was born. It is serene, empty, solitary, unchanging, infinite. It was never born, thus it can never die. It is the mother of the universe. It flows through all things, It has no desires for itself; Thus it is present for all beings. (Lao Tzu) It’s not God I want, it’s someone in skin. (Child overheard in conversation with his mother, Oxenhandler 2001, p.16)

The modern orphan People have different qualities and quantities of life force with which to embrace life. For some, characteristics from birth – genes and temperament, compromised prenatal environments, insecure attachment experiences – lead to psychological vulnerabilities throughout life. For others who have more innate ‘fight’ or spirit, the capacity to make use of relational experiences for healing and growth despite a poor start gives them an extra inner cushion in the face of life’s adversity. The recent film about Antwone Fisher’s journey through foster care is uplifting precisely because ‘it lets kids see that just because you are in a bad situation, that doesn’t mean you have to turn out bad yourself ’ (Clemetson 2002, p.A14). Fisher – who was given up by his mother after she gave birth to him in prison – is

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able to use his relationship with a Navy psychiatrist to heal himself by working through the trauma of physical and sexual abuse endured in long-term foster care. As Fisher triumphs over his past suffering he is able to shift his inner orphan to find the courage to seek his father’s birth family, whose warm welcome permits him to finally belong to a family. According to Fosha (2000, p.60), ‘The roots of resilience…are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-possessed other.’ Thus it may be a nurturing foster, adoptive or stepmother who will make the difference between a child who has an internalized home base and one who feels lost and forsaken like an orphan. While there are biological children who are left with a legacy of feeling like an orphan of the soul (Punnett 2002), adoptive and foster children, given their beginnings, are naturally more prone to such feelings. Note the contrast between Stephanie and Ashley – two teenagers who lived in kin and non-kin foster homes, respectively – in their experience of being kept in mind while living with foster parents: ‘I guess you could say my grandparents are cool,’ Stephanie says. ‘They are wiser than most parents. But personally, I’d rather live with my mom. My grandparents are really old-fashioned and strict, and they want to do things like they used to be back then.’ ‘My dad has always been in prison. He never played the father role. My grandpa’s always been like my father. But I know I’ll always have a home here and not go to jail.’ Stephanie has wanted to be a psychologist since she was six. ‘Just because I feel I have so many problems, and it’s been so weird for me. I feel if I could talk to kids like me, they wouldn’t have to go through life feeling alone.’ (Hamburg 2000, p.4)

Stephanie did not know whether to call her grandfather, who raised her from babyhood, ‘dad’ or ‘grandpa.’ Stephanie is lucky to have at least grandparents to whom she must be accountable, permitting her to dream about sharing someday her hard-won wisdom with other children. In contrast, children who are not kept in mind by their kin or non-kin caretakers are psychological orphans because they are ‘nobody’s children’ (Bartholet 1999):

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Ask Ashley Rodes-Courter about Rilya Wilson, the 4-year-old Miami girl who vanished more than a year ago from Florida’s child welfare system, and she replies with much of the regret that others have voiced, but none of the shock. ‘I heard about Rilya and thought it was unfortunate but not uncommon,’ said Ashley, 16, who lived in 14 foster homes before she was adopted four years ago. ‘In my records there is a period where I was unaccounted for myself,’ said Ashley, a dark-eyed, pony-tailed redhead who lives in Crystal River north of Tampa. ‘There were times when I didn’t even have a caseworker. No one knew or cared who or where I was [emphasis added]. The problem has always existed.’ (Canedy 2002, p.A1)

John Madrid, a 21-year-old Stanford University junior, lived in 19 foster care homes, had 10 different social workers and two lawyers after his mother was killed by a drunk driver 12 years ago (McCormick 2002b). One foster mother had him leave when she became pregnant; another couple kicked him out because of a squabble he had with their son. Moving nearly every six months, John was helped by a junior high school principal – who saw how bright this boy was – to get a scholarship to a local private school. Luckily John had internalized enough from his immigrant Honduran mother’s hardworking legacy that he was also able to find a scholarship mentor through the nonprofit United Friends of Children out of Los Angeles. Had he not had the early attachment years with his mother he might have been unable to make the shift from homelessness to university after leaving foster care at age 18. Victims of maltreatment who manage to do well despite early problems usually have had at least one major supportive presence in their early lives (Bartholet 1999, p.97). As the officer-of-the-day in community mental health during the 1980s I was responsible for emergencies and patients without appointments. Two interviews I had with walk-in patients taught me about the dilemmas of the modern orphan. An African-American man had just been released from prison and along with needing help applying for temporary assistance, he expressed fear about his inner pull to be a repeat offender so that he could go back to the safety of prison. An ex-foster child, this young man had spent more time in institutions in his life than on the ‘outside.’

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Multiple foster placements gave way to group homes, followed by juvenile hall and the penitentiary. I believe he felt relieved when I acknowledged his need for the external structure of these ‘total institutions’ (Goffman 1961), which served as a sort of ‘auxiliary’ or borrowed ego for him. Similarly, a 16-year-old white girl I interviewed had been in group homes for many years and worried anxiously about how she would manage when she exited foster care at 18 years. As she described her experience in these homes I could feel her comfort in being surrounded by others almost all of the time, while feeling no pressure to attach to anyone in particular. For Antwone Fisher the solution was to enlist in the Navy, once he could no longer stay at the orphanage – where he had been sent by the abusive foster family – because he was a legal adult. During my growing up years, a family friend adopted a boy who joined the monastery when he came of age. He, too, seemed to feel relief in having his life completely regimented for him. Similarly, I have met several nuns who joined the convent in order to secure a holding environment, lacking in their biological families, where the daily rituals of their orders provided emotional regulation and containment. Unfortunately, people who rely so heavily on institutions for direction and regulation cannot ‘make it’ on their own, and are thus vulnerable to recidivism. Increasingly, interdisciplinary evidence from fields in science and social science are linking the lack of secure early childhood attachments with psychopathology, neurological disorders, impulse control problems, attachment disorders, somatic expressions of distress, learning problems, and tendencies toward violence (Schore 2003a, 2003b). As the ranks of maltreated children swell (Bartholet 1999), with infants entering foster care having the greatest potential for abuse (Wulczyn and Hislop 2002), child welfare policies which work at cross-purposes to one another – especially in the permanency vs. reunification controversy – urgently need to be revamped. The earlier the better for a child to be placed in or returned to a home – via adoption or legal guardianship in kin or non-kin foster care – where she or he can have a permanent stable attachment figure. Infant–parent interventions yield better prognoses psychologically and socially when they are designed not only to prevent maltreatment of children, but to build attachments1 where children have the experience of being kept in the mind of a caretaker. When reunification with the family has been reliably determined to be unsafe, it is more advantageous for the

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child that parental rights be swiftly terminated so adoption is possible (Barth and Berry 1994). Naturally international adoption from orphanages where children have been warehoused can only benefit the children. It was precisely the plight of such orphaned children that gave birth to attachment theory (Bowlby 1969). Parental divorces where the child’s experience of conflict between parents is minimal and custodial arrangements are consistent and predictable – including support for the custodial parent if necessary – create the best outcomes for the children suffering through a family breakup. Especially since the commodification of modern life has extended even to children (Ehrensaft 1997), a wholehearted change in values and social policies is urgent so that our most valuable social resource, the new generation, is not treated as if it were expendable like the environment. Changes in our economic system and family life over the last century have exacerbated social problems such as poverty, crime, psychological depression, homelessness, substance abuse, and violence. For some time, the institutions of marriage and the nuclear family have been unable to assume the functions of reliable caretaking for the new generation, either economically or emotionally (Coontz 1997). As the family undergoes a profound social and cultural transformation we face a period of individual, family and societal stress because the old understandings and practices are being eroded before new ones have been created (Skolnick 1993). During this period of flux it becomes all the more urgent to develop collective as well as individual solutions to the problem of modern-day orphans since ‘children, like the environment, are a public good’ (Folbre 1994). One individual solution came to my attention unexpectedly in my recent auto insurance magazine. From the department entitled Giving Back, a one-page story about a retired Farmer’s Insurance agent and his wife described their call to foster special needs children and raise them – one at a time – until they could be permanently adopted (Schreiber 2002). On a more collective level, Hope Meadows is a multigenerational and multiracial community, housed on part of an ex-airforce base in Rantoul, Illinois, targeting difficult-to-place foster children who are or will most likely be freed for adoption (Barovick 2001). The children tend to be older, in sibling groups, or have been severely abused or neglected, exposed to drugs and multiple placements, and have numerous emotional problems or difficulty forming attachments. Adults who are willing to

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adopt up to four children and seniors willing to volunteer a certain number of hours a week to work with the children get subsidies to live in this pioneering program promoting fictive intergenerational kin relationships. Hope Meadows’s adoption rate between 1994 and 1999 was three times the Illinois state average for adoption of children out of foster care. University of Illinois sociologist Brenda Krause Eheart, who notes that the cost per child is more than traditional care but half the cost of institutional homes, spearheaded the development of Hope Meadows through Generations of Hope, a nonprofit organization. While seeking a daunting endowment to help support Hope Meadows, Eheart notes that 80 percent of the Illinois prison population grew up in foster care. Her vision includes such multigenerational communities devoted to caring for deserted and disenfranchised foster children in each state in the nation. We now know with certainty that in growing up without the experience of being kept in mind and emotionally claimed by at least one attachment figure, children are at risk for health, psychological and social problems. Until broader social policies – social welfare, childcare, flextime, paternity/maternity leaves and so on – change to support new family forms, the individual choices of women and men who foster, adopt, grandparent or stepparent provide an invaluable resource to the next generation. These non-biological or extended kin parents may be the only safety net for children who might otherwise be abused, neglected or abandoned. This book has attempted to breathe life into the theoretical insights of psychological development, by passing on the hard-earned wisdom from such parents in their relatively uncharted journeys toward primary relatedness with their children. This wisdom, I hope, will help new mothers (and fathers) joining the ranks of non-biological parents make meaning of some of their chosen children’s most difficult behaviors. Foster, step and adoptive mothers have to build a bridge across the differences between themselves and their claimed children in order to forge an attachment. While non-biological mothers may need to proffer building blocks of psychological life-growth which are similar to those in biological mother/child bonds, the means for providing them may be different because connections based on genetic, temperamental or cultural congruence cannot be presumed. In order to prevent the myth of perfect (biological) motherhood from continuing to be the standard against which foster, grand, step or adoptive mothering is measured, I offer this text as a

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supporting matrix to all the families in the borderlands (Anzaldua 1987) between the old and new historical family – including tendering to those mothers who would use them spiritual resources for bearing the unbearable and bearing witness to their chosen children’s past suffering. The joys of entering the motherhood portal via adoption, fostering or stepmothering can far outweigh the agonies if such mothers’ generativity on behalf of the new generation is valued and recognized from within the family and from the broader community. While societal changes in socio-political structure are needed to reduce poverty, to interrupt the intergenerational cycle of abuse and neglect, and to make children a public, not merely a private, priority, individuals and families willing to claim children as their own can provide a bridge to the future for those who might otherwise be abandoned. Meanwhile a new extended family of kin and going-for-kin ties is emerging.

Multiple parents: primary attachments In a cartoon a woman tells a peer: ‘And this is our extended family room’ (Ziegler 2002). The caption describes a huge room with 13 easy chairs and six couches – two of which are opened into beds – occupied and empty, arranged to face a TV, with bookshelves along another wall. Meanwhile around Christmas time the New York Times featured a piece, which began as follows: Ameena Meer, a writer who lives in Manhattan, will celebrate the holidays this year with a cast of (practically) thousands. There is her immediate ex-husband, James. And her first ex-husband, Andrew. There is her 9-year-old daughter, Sasha, by her first husband, and her two children by her second husband, Zarina, 6, and Jahanara, who is almost 3. At a Christmas Eve dinner Ms. Meer is planning in Washington, Andrew will bring Stephanie, his girlfriend, and one of Ms. Meer’s ex-boyfriends is also coming. Her brother, his wife and their new baby – the sole concession to the traditional nuclear family – will also be a part of the celebration. ‘Sometimes I need a flow chart to keep everyone straight,’ she said. (Kuczynski 2001, p.1)

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As family structure undergoes profound historical changes, each family creates its own unique ‘latticework of connections, sympathies, and famil2 iarities’ (Kuczynski 2001, p.1) with filaments extending between ex-husbands and wives, their mutual children, and stepparents; birthmothers, adoptive parents, foster parents, and their mutual children, and so on, whether or not family members see each other regularly or live together. With the ever more frequent disbanding of households through divorce or separation of cohabitating couples, rearrangement of kin emotional bonds, and reassembling of new households based on fictive and blood ties, more and more parents and stepparents are becoming part of children’s lives: Andrew Simonet could be the poster child for the generation coming of age in the era of multiple divorce… Simonet, 33, has to take a deep breath before describing even the closest branch of his family tree: ‘First there are my parents, then they got divorced and each remarried, so there is that set of stepparents. They had children with the stepparents, then they each divorced, so now I have ex-stepparents who are parents of my half-siblings. My mother married again, and my father is in a long-term relationship; so that’s a third set of “parents” in my life.’ Maintaining relationships with his many parents has at times been frustrating and upsetting, he says. He credits his former stepmother with persevering, by phone calls and visits, in order to have a relationship with him and his sister even after she split with their father when Andrew was a teen. His relationship with his ex-stepfather has been rockier. But after 10 years of estrangement, the two have recently taken the first moves toward reconciliation, exchanging letters and planning a visit. (Dickinson 2002b, p.A2)

Often these former stepparents who make the effort to maintain the attachment with their stepchildren are the ‘unsung heroes’ in new extended families according to Margorie Engel, president of the Stepfamily Association of America (Dickinson 2002b, p.A2). Clearly a pantheon of parents or parent-like figures does not necessarily guarantee that a child has a secure primary attachment or is being kept in mind by any particular parent. In the 1960s children were often left to grow themselves up like weeds in the experimental communes of the time. The danger of multiple caretakers diluting the sturdiness of parent/child attachments in new extended families is that more children

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might feel like psychological orphans, a potential pitfall in these new family systems. Every child needs to feel ensconced in the threads of a powerful connection, much like the colorful strings tied together to make an Oaxacan hammock have the strength to hold a human body. For the newly created extended families to work on behalf of the next generation, it is vital that all parents – biological, step, adoptive, foster or extended kin – take bonding with their chosen children for the sacred trust it is, rather than simply passing the buck to a broader group of generic adult caretakers. Every child ought to have the right and opportunity to experience the co-creation of Eros (Oxenhandler 2001) with a primary attachment figure, as well as subsequent secondary attachment figures. A stepmother colleague, Denise, told me about her journey as second mother to her biracial stepson, Art, whom his parents had adopted at birth. Becoming involved with Art’s father, Howard, when Art was two and a half years old, Denise did not meet Art for six months after beginning to date his father. When Denise moved in with father and son after a year of involvement with Howard she was still ambivalent about making a commitment to a child. Meanwhile, Howard remained quite possessive of his son, and Art’s mother, Bonnie, resisted Art’s attachment to another woman. Initially, therefore, Denise remained in the position of ‘older friend’ to Art. Over time as her bond with Art deepened, Denise took on more of a stepparent consultant role, helping Howard contain himself in response to Art’s spirited acting out about previous losses (namely his birthmother, his adoptive nuclear family). About six months after Denise began living with father and son, Bonnie gave her a gift on Mother’s Day to thank her for being a positive influence in Art’s life, since Bonnie could see the difference that Denise was making for Art. At that point Bonnie began to encourage Art to attach with Denise, shifting into a ‘more mothering is better for my son’ outlook. Bonnie would help Art make cards for Denise and vice versa as the two women developed a mutual investment in their now three-plus-year-old son. When Bonnie and Howard went for co-parenting counseling, Bonnie wanted to include Denise, whereas Howard did not. All three parents participated in birthday, sporting and other school events on behalf of Art. When Howard and Denise separated because Howard continued to have trouble wholeheartedly letting Denise be a co-parent, Art was seven. Sadly, Howard made it unpleasant for Denise to continue her involvement with Art

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through him. While Bonnie wanted to continue to include Denise in Art’s life, Art let it be known that it was too much of a betrayal of his Dad to see Denise at Bonnie’s home; for example, by having Denise pick him up there. Over time Denise kept in touch with Art by sending him cards and calling Bonnie periodically to catch up on news about her stepson. By the time Art was 14, Denise began to run into him at a local gym. Art would go out of his way to greet Denise and talk with her briefly, leading Denise to hope that once he is more autonomous as a young adult that they will be able to resume their relationship. Clearly both stepmother and stepson carry the attachment with one another internally. In fact Art has refused to attach to either subsequent girlfriends or Howard’s new wife, since his loss of Denise. As Howard and Bonnie are still in touch with Art’s birthmother on a yearly basis, Art seems to have decided that three Moms is enough: birthmom, adoptive mom and stepmom. As the UC Berkeley Stepfamily Research Project has found (Svare 1999), in extended stepfamilies where cooperation between natural mother and stepmother is ‘good enough,’ stepfamily life on a number of measures is qualitatively better than for those where stepmother/mother conflict persists. Especially if the stepmother is sensitive to the concerns and fears of the mother, so that the mother need not feel her attachment to the children is threatened, two women can parent the same children in relative harmony, whether or not they like each other or are intimate in any way. This co-mothering is ultimately in the best interests of the children. For those who believe in open adoption this same notion of co-mothering can be applied to adoptive and birthmothers. Tomi (see Chapter 7) and her husband, Luke, adopted two boys. Shelly, the birthmother of the oldest boy, Jon, lost both of her parents as a preadolescent when they each died. Although Shelly’s brother and sister were taken in by a grandmother, Shelly was not because of her intense adolescent crisis, and she ultimately got herself placed in a foster home. After the first placement failed, Shelly worked with her social worker to replace her in a good foster home. In part because of these experiences Shelly seemed aware that she was not prepared to be a mother so told Tomi after, Jon’s birth that ‘I gave birth to him, but I’m not going to mother him.’ Nonetheless, about a year after their second adoption Tomi and Luke separated, and Shelly became the au pair for Jon and his younger brother, Chaz. Tomi told me that she and Shelly have a very intimate relationship,

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including normal conflict, around taking care of the boys. Sometimes Tomi feels she gives Shelly the mothering she missed as a teenager, for example in insisting Shelly go to college as a condition of continuing as au pair to the boys. At the same time, Tomi was quite emphatic that she, not Shelly, was her two sons’ primary attachment figure. When I visited their home, it was clear that Shelly was quite attached to Jon, as well as to Chaz who is not her birthson. Shelly, who chose Tomi as an adoptive mother because of their shared Japanese heritage, is now married to an Arab-American, and in fact Jon’s birthfather was Yemeni-American. By having Shelly in his life he has the option to learn about all the cultures of his family orchard, something to which Tomi is highly committed for both boys. Chaz’s birthmother, Linda, while willing to have Tomi and Luke at his birth, wanted nothing to do with her baby or Tomi post-birth. Linda felt forced into giving Chaz up for adoption because of her fear of telling her patriarchal Chinese father about her having become pregnant by a Vietnamese boy (Linda’s family had emigrated from Vietnam to the U.S.). Tomi is hopeful that over time as Linda mourns her loss she may be willing to reconnect with the adoptive family. On the other hand Tomi received a surreptitious call from Chaz’s grandmother who would like to maintain contact with her first grandson, a highly valued child in Chinese culture. Again, because she believes it will be advantageous to her sons, Tomi is eager to establish contact with the extended birthfamilies of Jon’s and Chaz’s birthmothers. Meanwhile Tomi is also hoping to meet Shelly’s aunt, because this woman also married an Arab-American and took in two children from his extended family in Jordan, even after she and her Jordanian husband separated. Tomi would find it supportive to meet another Japanese-American woman with Japanese/Arab children like Jon. Here again, Tomi (adoptive mother) and Shelly (birthmother) are co-creating a complex family landscape, which includes Tomi’s mother, sister and brothers, to a lesser extent Luke, who takes the boys periodically on weekends, with Shelly’s and Linda’s extended kin periodically joining this inclusive family in the future. Once a primary attachment is in place and the child has a home base, she/he is free to bond with a variety of secondary attachment figures who will enrich his or her world. In extended family systems where mother and stepmother, adoptive or foster mother and birthmother, or grandmother

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and mother can help the child hold onto all his caretakers internally and use them externally, so that ‘good enough’ mothering is shared, the children fare better, and everyone benefits. Increasingly all parents are struggling to find ‘quality time’ to give their children (Coontz 1997; Hewlett and West 1998; Hochschild 2001) because the economic demands on families have decreased leisure time (Hochschild 1997; Schor 1992) in our historical era. Too many children are being lost through the cracks after a divorce. While it is perhaps a tired phrase at this point, it does take a village to raise a child. Having two mothers or fathers may actually provide more resources for a child, especially if the parents require accountability in coordination with stepparents, grandparents or foster parents. As each parent has a unique set of talents and failings, the children have more opportunities to interact with various mothers and fathers and learn about human strengths and vulnerabilities. If one parent is momentarily emotionally unavailable, another may be present in the way the child needs. This kind of abundance is reminiscent of the traditional extended family, which has been all but eroded in most subcultures within our society. If current trends in the disassembling and reassembling of families continue, most children in the United States will be living in some sort of extended stepfamily system. Similarly as adoptions proliferate – to the benefit of the children lost and forsaken in foster care – birth families and foster families will become part of the larger landscape of extended adoptive family life. Rather than perpetuating the notion that such systems are outside the norm, these new extended families need to be acknowledged as the emerging form of the family in the new century. A recent play therapy session moved me deeply since the patient, Amanda, who had been adopted from an orphanage in China, cut to the essence of what matters to children – that is, having someone in skin with whom to belong. Amanda is almost eight years of age, and was adopted within her first year of life. She has a younger sister, also adopted from the Far East, though from a different country. In her play Amanda gathered a whole variety of animals from my stuffed animal/puppet basket. As the caretaker of a ‘nature preserve’ she was taking the animals in because they had each in different ways lost their mothers. A lobster named ‘Crusty,’ a dragon named ‘Fire,’ a camel named ‘Bumps,’ a giraffe named ‘String,’ a lion named ‘Butterscotch,’ a skunk named ‘Stripes,’ and so forth were all staying at the nature area because their mothers had died. A panda,

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‘Domino,’ was given a Chinese New Year’s dragon puppet to comfort him by reminding him ‘about his culture,’ since ‘his mother had been killed by a hunter when he was two months old and he was still very sad.’ A teddybear named ‘Cocoa’ had lost his mother when ‘they were fishing in the ocean where she was eaten by a shark.’ Luckily Cocoa had been swept to shore and he joined the animals on the nature preserve ‘where he could fish in the river’ (i.e. carrying forward his mother’s legacy). Amanda spent lots of time learning all the languages (e.g. ‘alligator-ese’) so she could speak with each of the orphans and make them feel at home. Only one child at the preserve, a bumblebee named ‘Glitter,’ had a mother. The mother bumblebee Amanda named ‘Mother Nature.’ Instead of using her stinger as a weapon for self-protection, Mother Nature secreted milk out of her stinger, so that all the orphans, as well as Glitter her birthchild, could be fed. A leopard named ‘Dot’ then arrived. Introduced by Mother Nature and Amanda around the circle of other animal orphans, Dot was very shy. Because of the tender sensitivity with which Mother Nature cared for him, Dot survived the rough and tumble welcome of some of the other animals who were not always in tune with his vulnerability in having just lost his mother and entering a new clan. At this point it was time for our play therapy session to end. Because of her own good experience in being taken in by a family where she feels belonging, while also being able to hold onto her culture and history from another land, Amanda would empathize compassionately with the orphans’ losses (of their birthmothers) while also knowing that Mother Nature would protect and console the children from so many different species. Having had the personal experience of healing within her adoptive mother–child and father–child bonds – which is not to say she is finished healing – Amanda can tap into the archetype of the Mother of the Universe (Lao Tzu) and proffer her nurturance – via bumblebee breast – to the orphans in her care. As members of society it is incumbent on us to develop rituals and community support for adoptive, foster, step and grandmothers whose contribution to children often goes undervalued. In our society where motherhood implies an exclusive, biological bond, despite demographics to the contrary, non-biological mothers and extended kin who step in to raise family offspring need and deserve more public attention and family recognition for their willingness to rise to the challenge of building an

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attachment with their chosen children. As Amanda inchoately knows, this is where the milk of human kindness begins.

Notes 1

2

See the April/May 2002 issue of Zero to Three, Bulletin for the National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families, ‘Agents of Change in Foster Care: For Infants and Toddlers,’ a collection of articles about attachment-based intervention on behalf of foster children, whether through therapy, infant–parent work, consultation with child welfare agencies, child advocacy, expertise in court, and so on. Dr. Albert Bergesen of the University of Arizona lectures to his sociology students about what he calls ‘filament families,’ a term borrowed by the Stepfamily Association of America.

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Subject Index abortion 48, 79, 96 child’s traumatic memory 67-8 mourning rituals 36-7, 39-40 abused/neglected children 92, 94, 97, 112-13, 152, 164, 202-3, 215-16, 218 increasing numbers 18 acting out 63, 74, 76, 95 as sign of trust 20, 60 see also creative destruction; projective identification adolescents 20 ‘bad boy’ projections 80 contrasting parenting styles 132, 175-6 creative destruction 117-18, 122-8 and the inner teenager 188 pathologizing of 155 projective identification 61, 76, 81 psychotherapeutic support 158-60 stepmothers and 44-5, 52-3, 61, 79-81, 90, 91-2, 122-7, 141, 155, 174-5 adopted children attachment legacy 65 birth culture 105-8 creative destruction 118-21 play therapy vignettes 109-12, 118-21, 134-5, 226-7 psychosomatic memory 67-8, 211 regressive behaviours 133-5 sandplay vignette 211-12 self-building supplies 95-6, 104-5, 109-12 adoption and belonging 67-74 ‘comfort zone’ 51-2 incidence and types of 16-17 instant and disorderly gestation 177-81 older children 84, 92 parent/child gaze 88-9 ‘perfect baby’ fantasies 51, 56-7 as ‘primal wound’ 28, 73 and resolution of loss 46-52, 54-7 spiritual aspects 48-9, 202-3, 209-10 support groups 52, 148, 150-1 unsuccessful attempts 11, 47, 49-51

Adoption 2002 initiative 18, 146 Adoption and Safe Families Act (US, 1997) 16, 18 ‘adoption constellation’ 151 ‘Adoption Rollercoaster Stress Disorder’ 50 adoptive fathers 70, 107 and creative destruction 118-21 see also gay adoptive fathers; single adoptive fathers adoptive mothers ‘98 rounds’ of mourning 54-5 expression of gratitude 172 idealizable 96, 97 institutional support 161-3, 166-7 invisibility 144-5 mothering legacy 174, 184-5, 186-7 projective identification by 68-9 psychotherapeutic support 156-60 relationship with birthmothers 27-9, 102, 151, 166-7, 224-5 twinship 102-3, 104-5 see also lesbian adoptive mothers; single adoptive mothers African American community adoption and fostering in 69-70, 88-9, 92, 145-6, 156-60, 199-200 ‘mother wit’ 148 exchange of childrearing resources 30 extended kin systems 168, 201 grandparental ‘matriarchs’ 204 international adoption 106-8 modern day orphans 217-18 ‘play’ kin 106 ambivalence 190-2 Ana 204-14 annihilation anxiety 68, 110 artistic expression 38-9, 44, 48, 49-50, 172, 185 attachment 20-4, 59-84 adoption and 55-56, 67-74, 108 ambivalent (resistant) 64, 65, 77 avoidant 64, 65, 77 disorganized 65, 78, 157 and fostering 74-8 insecure, and psychological vulnerability 215, 218 and multiple caretakers 221-8 stepmothers and 12, 21-2, 26, 52-3, 78-84, 115, 123

247

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supporting matrix and 140, 154, 160 theory 219 typology 64 Attachment and Behavioural Catch-Up (ABC) program 77-8 attunement 22, 108 Australia number of looked-after children 18-19 number of stepfamilies 15 number and type of adoptions 16-17 Baby Boom women 16 Baby It’s You (film) 39-40 ‘bad introjects’ 62, 80 ‘bad objects’ 62, 63, 72, 73-4 bar mitzvah 73-4 biological and birthmothers 26-33 ambivalence over adoption 52 compassion for 52, 95-6 as cultural purveyors 106-8 idealization and 95-7, 99 mourning 83 problems following visitation 76, 132 projective identification by 63-4, 72-3 real/imagined babies 53 reclaiming babies 47 relationship with adoptive mothers 27-9, 102, 151, 166-7, 244-5 relationship with foster mothers 29-30, 77 relationship with grandmothers 29-30 relationship with stepmothers 26-7, 53, 83-4, 91, 141, 142, 168-70, 191, 192, 223-4 reunification programs 74, 76-7, 149 sameness/otherness dimension 13, 26, 154 transmission of psychosomatic feelings 67-8, 211 birth adoptive mothers’ presence 144, 166-7 doulas 150 fathers’/partners’ role 173-4 as initiation into womanhood 40, 173 and marginalization of adoptive mothers 144 Birth of A Mother (Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern) 147-8

Britain incidence of infertility 16 number of looked-after children 19 number of stepfamilies 15 number and type of adoptions 17 Buddhism 36, 37, 49, 185, 210 Canada number of stepfamilies 15 number and type of adoptions 16-17 C.A.R.I. program 145 Catfish in Black Bean Sauce (film) 106-8 Census 2000 17 Central America 34 child omnipotence 128-32 childlessness 40-6 traditional women 45-6 transformative women 41-2 transitional women 42-5 closed adoption 27, 46 co-mothering 19 biological and adoptive mothers 224-5 biological and stepmothers 27, 53, 83-4, 170, 224 CoMamas Association 170 ‘comfort zone’ 52 Compassionate Friends 186 containment 61-7 and physical holding 71-3 primary maternal preoccupation and 61-7 countertransference 157, 160 creative destruction confusion with mothering failures 121-8 and mutual recognition 117-21 culture 105-8 Daddy and Papa (film) 145, 147, 165, 180-1 Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) 39 death rituals 39 demographic change 14-20 ‘depressive position’ 67 developmental delay 109 differences 60, 153 and attachment-building 85 confusion with expression of unresolved loss 60-1, 84 spanning 13, 21-2 Dim Sum, Bagels and Grits (Alperson) 106 Divinity 49, 198-9, 208

SUBJECT INDEX / 249

spiritual commitment 202-3 supporting matrix 151-2, 156-7, 158-60, 161-3 transcending mothering legacy 186-7 foster children attachment legacy 65 modern orphans 215-18 ‘outing’ by 127-8 regression 133 search for lost foster parents 30-2 self-building resources 92-4, 112-13 Eros 40, 43, 71, 102, 174, 197, 223 waiting for adoption 18 extended families foster mothers collective childrearing 201-2, 203-4 coping with loss 47 erosion of traditional 32-3, 138 and creative destruction 127-8 gay and lesbian 130 entering adulthood 181 primary attachments 221-8 idealizable 97-8 support from 167-71 invisibility 30, 145-7 mirroring 92-4 familia Latina 201 relationship with biological mothers ‘family orchard’ 165, 225 29-30, 77 family romance 106-7 and spirituality 199-200 fantasy babies 51, 53-4, 57 understanding misbehaviour 20 ‘fatherhood mindset’ 182, 195 see also lesbian foster mothers fathering vs. mothering behaviours 24-6 FOSTER P(arent)A(dvice)L(ine) 149 fathers 60 foster parents co-parenting contributions 117, 122, benevolent discipline 130-1 125 importance of 30-2 importance of support from 14, 84-5 fostering less than adequate 27, 83 attachment and 74-8 permissive 175-6, 193-4 failed placements 23 relationship with stepmothers/stepfathers incidence of 18-19 175-6, 193-5 and resolution of loss 47-8 role at birth 173-4 ‘frozen grief ’ 34-5, 38-9, 70, 208 see also adoptive fathers; gay adoptive fathers Garden of Angels 200 feminism 42, 49, 139 gay adoptive fathers 14, 130, 145-6 Fertile Crescent 49 abrupt entry into role 180-1 ‘filament families’ 222, 228n entering adulthood 182-4 fost-adoption/adoption from foster care 88, inclusive ‘showers’ 78, 145 150, 207 invisibility 147 abrupt entry into 180-1 single 165 attachment and 74-5 surrender to connectedness 189-90 celebration ceremonies 78, 145 gay and lesbian community children waiting 18 extended family 130 facing loss 46-7 prejudice 145-6 fantasy/reality discrepancy 56 support from ‘other’ parent 14, 84-5 mirroring suffering 92 173-4 the ‘other mother’ 27-8, 30 see also entries under gay and lesbian single women 16 divorce 34, 156, 194, 195, 207, 222, 226 and anger towards stepparents 115 incidence 15 minimizing harm 219 parental competition 129-30 parental solace-seeking 99-100 Doors to Madame Marie (Meyers) 208-9 doulas 149-50

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gay step-parents 193-4 gaze 88-9 gender stereotypes 98-9 Generations of Hope 220 ‘ghosts in the nursery’ 38, 64, 85 ‘good enough’ mothering 133 Ana 204 Gospel of La Virgen de Guadalope 198 grandmother-caretakers abrupt entry into role 177 discipline issues 131-2 grandmothering legacy 185-6 institutional support 163-4 lack of self-building resources 100-1 number of 17 relationship with biological mothers 29-30 spiritual aspects 204 support groups 148-9 Greece 149 grieving see ‘frozen grief ’; mourning Hinduism 49 Hmong tribe 201-2 Home for the Holidays with Mariah Carey, A (television special) 139 Hope Meadow 219-20 idealization 95-9 identity reorganization theme 13, 172-7 impaired fecundity, extent of 15-16 infant-parent psychotherapy 64-5, 218 infertility 11 effects on subsequent adoption 55-6 extent of 15-16 need for ritual 36-40 spiritual resources 23-4 suicidal feelings 35 inner mother 173, 174 inner teenager 188 institutions as holding environments 218 support for parents 161-7 international adoption 46, 150-1, 219 abrupt entry into motherhood 178-80 and belonging 70-1, 71-3 cultural issues 105-8 importance of gaze 89 incidence of 16, 17 institutional support 102-3

letter to birthmother 28-9 mothers’ doubt 57 ‘nature reserve’ play 226-7 self-building supplies and development 109-12 spiritual aspects 209-10 twinship 102-3 internet support groups 151, 153 introject, concept of, 62 Isis 205 Japan 36-7 Jewish tradition 38 Jizo 37 Kokopelli 120, 121, 136-7n Labyrinth: A Day of the Dead Exhibition 38 learning disabilities 62, 109, 139, 155 lesbian adoptive mothers healing containment 71-3 need for witnesses 151-2 lesbian foster mothers/guardians 47-8 entering adulthood 181 idealizable 97-8 invisibility 146-7 ‘outing’ by children 127-8 providing self-building resources 112-13 spirituality 202-3 lesbian stepmothers 184 life-growth theme 12, 108, 220 and moral development 133-6loss of birth culture 105 and bond-building endeavour 20, 59-86 of first love 34-5 need for ritual 36-40 and regressive behaviour 187 resolving 46-58 and self-blame 50 see also mourning Lutheranism 49 Madame Rosa (film) 106 magical thinking 50 Mass of the Angels 37-8 medical consent 165-6 medical personnel 166-7 mektoub 200-1 mentoring 149

SUBJECT INDEX / 251

Mexico 34, 39 Middle East 49, 205 mirroring 87-8, 89-95 by children 99-100 miscarriage 40, 48, 54 mourning rituals 36-8 ‘miscarriage box’ 38 mizuko kuyo ritual 36-7 moral development 133-6 mother/child bond divine nurturance 24, 201 mutually attuned interaction 22 nature/nurture dimension 23, 60-1, 153-4 sameness/otherness dimension 13, 26, 154 therapeutic help 64-5, 158 see also attachment mother/child unity 208, 211 motherhood, need for change in conception 19-20, 227-8 Motherhood Constellation, The (Stern) 12-13 ‘motherhood mindset’ 12, 61, 140 mothering entering adulthood 181-4 vs. fathering 24-6 and identity 172-7 spiritual and personal sources 204-14 mothering legacy 72-3, 154, 173, 174-7 gathering 184-6 transcending 186-90 Mothering Without a Compass (Thompson) 97-8 ‘motherline’ 148, 172-3 mourning ‘98 rounds’ 54-5 and acceptance of childlessness 43, 46 grief support groups 186 importance for attachment 20, 53, 55-7, 58, 59, 66-7, 70, 83, 84 and resolution of loss 46-58 rituals 36-40 spiritual help 208, 213-14 transcending mothering legacy 186-7 see also ‘frozen grief ’ multiple parents 221-8

Native Americans 202 nature/nurture dimension 23, 60-1, 153-4 New Mexico 205-6 New York Times 221 Newsweek 144 non-maternal generativity 43-4 nuclear family 33 anachronistic nature 167 decline 19 fragility 138 ideological primacy 32 object, concept of 62 online adoption 16 open adoption 16, 27, 46, 54, 102, 151, 166-7, 177, 180, 224 Oprah Winfrey Show 198-9 orphanages 57, 70, 89, 108, 109, 219 Other People’s Children (Trollope) 78-9, 194 Parade 201 ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ 67 parental abdication 128-32 ‘parentification’ 99 Petra 205 physical contact 71-3 Pinocchio 121 play therapy 55, 109-12, 118-21, 134-5, 226-7 Policy Studies Institute 15 Ponnette (film) 208 popular culture 203-4 pregnancy ‘imaginary babies’ 51 as rite of passage 12 and shift in identity 172-3 unwanted 200 primary maternal preoccupation 79, 81, 85-6 and containment 61-7 primary relatedness theme 13, 35, 59, 61, 85, 220 private adoption 16-17 professionals empowering 14 pathologizing by 139, 155, 161-2 as supporting matrix 60 views on open adoption 27 projective identification 59, 60, 157 by adopted children 68, 71-2

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by adoptive mothers 68-9 by biological mothers 63-4 containment of 61-3 distinction from mother/child differences 84 and the stepmother 78-84 provocation and creation of attachment 22-3 reacting to 22 psychoanalysis 25, 49, 62, 66 psychotherapy 42, 55-6, 71-3, 76, 92, 100-1, 155-60 infant/parent 64-5, 218 unhelpful 140, 126-7, 152, 155, 156-8 see also play therapy; sandplay process public adoption 16-17 racial bias 162, 185 regressive behaviour 62, 133, 187 reproductive technologies 15, 35, 37, 51, 54 effects on attachment capacity 55 RESOLVE 52, 150 rituals of loss 36-40 Roman Catholic Church 37 Samhain (All Soul’s Day) 39 sandplay process 210-13 school personnel 139, 161-5, 217 Secret Garden, The (film) 213-14 Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother (Wolff ) 51 self-building supplies 87-99 culture 105-8 and development 108-13 parental resources lacking 99-105 self-fulfilling/‘self-emptying’ prophecies 34, 35, 57, 73, 74, 75, 80, 93, 143, 162 self-harming 75 sensation vs. thinking functions 126 ‘separation-individuation’ process 117 sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) 16 Shared Family Care 149 sibling groups, twinship 101-2 single adoptive fathers 165, 185 single adoptive mothers 16 abrupt entry into role 178-80 doubt and fantasy needs 57

spiritual aspects 209-10 supporting matrix 139-40, 170-1 twinship 102-3 ‘single parent households’ 14-15 skin ego 71 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 87 social class issues 98 social workers 47-8, 93-4, 113 ‘special needs’ children 16, 17, 113, 152, 219 spirituality 23-4, 48-9, 198-214 stealing 74-5 stepfamilies extended 167-70, 222-4 hierarchy problems 193-5 number of 15 ‘Romantic’ 53 Stepfamily Association of America 15, 153, 222 Stepfamily Research Project, UC Berkeley 44, 224 stepfathers 153 Stepmom (film) 139, 142 stepmothering from doing to being 26 entering the ‘motherhood mindset’ 11-12, 61, 197 nature/nurture dimension 23, 60-1, 153-4 obstacles to 190-6 resolution of loss 52-4 spanning differences 21-2 spiritual aspects 206-8, 210-11 stepmothers acknowledgement of 140 archetype 143 and creative destruction 121-7 entering adulthood 181-2, 184 ‘hatred’ towards 115-17 idealizable 98-9 institutional support 165-6 invisibility 140-4 maintaining generational boundaries 99-100 mirroring 87-8, 89-92 mothering legacy 174-7, 187-9 projective identification and 78-84 psychotherapeutic support 42, 155-6 and regressive behaviour 135

SUBJECT INDEX / 253

relationship with biological mothers 26-7, 53, 83-4, 91, 141, 142, 168-70, 191, 192, 223-4 relationship with fathers 190-1, 194 support groups 153 transformative 42 transitional 44-5 twinship 103-4 ‘wicked’ 90, 115, 143 StepTogether 153 stillbirth 40, 48 mourning rituals 36-8 strange situation paradigm 64 suicidal feelings 35 support groups adoption 52, 148, 150-1 grandmothers 100, 148-9 grief 186 internet 151, 153 stepmothers 153 supporting matrix theme 13, 60, 138-71 survivor guilt 75, 92 synchronicity 206 Take This Heart (television program) 199 Talmud, The 11 tantrums 71-2 thinking vs. sensation functions 126 ‘total institutions’ 218 touch 71 transference 111, 211-12 transracial adoption and fostering 104, 105, 97-8, 151, 161-2, 184-5 twinship 101-5 United Friends of Children 217 unmarried partner households 15 ‘unthought known’ 61 U.S. absence of death rituals 39 changing household patterns 14-15 grandparents as caretakers 17-18 incidence of infertility 15-16 number of abused and neglected children 18 number of children in foster care 18 number of grandparent-caretakers 17 number and types of adoption 16 U.S. Census Bureau 14, 33n

Velveteen Father, The (Green) 182-4 Virgen de Guadalupe, La 200-1, 204-6, 211, 213 Virgin Mary 205, 208-9, 213, 214 ‘Whose Child is This?’ (Hood) 99 witnessing 151-5 Women Who Run with Wolves 200 World Trade Centre bombings 184-5 World’s Religions (Smith) 49 Wushu Diary (Prager) 106

Bower, A. 149 Bowlby, J. 60, 71, 219 Bradway, K. 210 Bray, J. H. 15, 53, 142, 143, 153 Brittain, C. 18 Brooks, D. 16 Brothers Grimm 143 Bruschweiler-Stern, N. 12, 51, 53-4, 61, 137n, 147-8, 172, 173 Bumpass, L. L. 15 Burns, C. 90 Buschsbaum, B. 156-8

Name Index Adelson, E. 38, 64 Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) 18 Adoption and Fostering Information Line 17 Ainsworth, M. D. S. 64 Alperson, M. 105, 106 Alvarez, A. 61, 111, 119 Alvarez, J. 43 American Association of Retired Persons (AAP) 17 American Heritage Dictionary 113 American Psychiatric Association (APA) 50 Amman, R. 210 Anzaldua, G. 221 Anzieu, D. 71 Appelman, E. 55 Arms, S. 68 Aron, L. 13 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 17, 18-19 Balint, M. 62 Baran, A. 16 Barovick, H. 219 Barth, R. P. 16, 219 Bartholet, E. 18, 19, 51, 150, 179-80, 216, 217, 218 Beall, L. 60 Beck, M. 214 Benjamin, J. 61, 136, 201 Bergesen, A. 228n Bernstein, A. C. 12, 53, 143 Berry, M. 219 Bialosky, J. 36, 38 Bick, E. 71 Bion, W. R. 62, 110 Blakeslee, S. 156 Blehar, M. C. 64 Blos, P. 117 Blum, H. P. 55 Bolen, J. S. 40 Bollas, C. 61 Bonovitz, C. 27, 38, 53, 55, 56, 151 Booth, P. B. 108

Callahan, T. 201 Campbell, N. 42, 90-1 Canadian Health Networks 15 Canedy, D. 217 Casper, L. M. 14, 15 Center for Disease Control (CDC) 15 Chernin, K. 175, 177 Chodorow, N. 24, 25 Clemetson, L. 215 Clinton, President 16, 18, 146 CoMamas Association 170 Compassionate Friends 186 Coontz, S. 19, 33, 219, 226 Craik 157 Dalai Lama 214 Daly, K. J. 17 de Bianchedi, E. T. 67 ‘Deidre’ 116 Dickinson, A. 222 Dozier, D. 65, 77, 157 Dozier, M. 65, 77, 157 Dunlea, Marian 39 Eheart, Brenda Krause 220 Ehrenreich, B. 200 Ehrensaft, D. 24-5, 26, 27, 33, 56, 57, 125, 128-9, 154, 219 Eigen, M. 67 Elizondo, V. 198 Elkind, S. N. 36, 66 Engel, Margorie 15, 222 Estes, C. P. 200 Etchegoyen, R. H. 62 Fadiman, A. 201-2

254

NAME INDEX / 255

Feigelman, W. 16 Fein, E. B. 37-8 Fertility Site for Men 16 Fields, J. 14, 15 Fisher, Antwone 215-16, 218 Fisher, S. 27, 28, 95-6, 104-5, 114n Folbre, N. 219 Fonagy, P. 66, 127 Fosha, D. 216 Fraiberg, S. 38, 64 Freely, M. 15 Freud, S. 107 Freundlich, M. 15 Friedman, D. 144 Friedman, H. S. 210 Gabis, R. 40 George, C. 77 Gergely, G. 66 Gibbins, J. 92 Goffman, E. 218 Gooch, J. 112 Green, J. 51, 182-4, 189-90 Grotevant, H. D. 16 Hamburg, L. 17, 204, 216 Hardacre, H. 36-7 Healy, Ann 38-9 Heineman, T. V. 31-2, 93, 94 Hesse, E. 65 Hetherington, E. M. 156 Hewlett, S. A. 19, 203-4, 226 Hillman, J. 200 Hislop, K. B. 218 Hochschild, A. R. 226 Hood, A. 99 hooks, b. 43 Hudnall, C. E. 17 Hull, Jane 160 Hymowitz, K. S. 56 Ireland, M. S. 40-1, 43-4, 46 Iyer, S. 16 Janowitz, T. 31 Jenkins, E. B. 214 Jernberg, A. M. 108 Jung, C. G. 172, 210 Jurist, E. L. 66

Kalff, D. M. 48, 210 Kaplan, N. 77 Karen, R. 23, 64 Kelly, J. 15, 53, 142, 143, 153, 156 Kelly, S. 17 Kennell, J. H. 150 Klaus, M. H. 150 Klaus, P. H. 150 Klein, M. 61, 67 Kluger-Bell, K. 36, 40, 58 Kogawa, J. 44 Kohut, H. 62, 88, 89, 101, 105 Krausz, M. V. 170 Kuczynski, A. 221, 222 Langer, Mimi 34 Lao Tzu 172, 215 Lara, A. 48, 112, 113 Lasch, C. 132 Lawrence, A. R. 56 Lewis, J. M. 156 Liebowitz, L. 43 Linder, V. 41-2, 44, 56 Lo, C. M. 106-7 Loewald, H. 59 Lowinsky, N. R. 148, 172 Lubin, H. 122-3 Macaulay, R. 205 McCoard, B. 210 McConnaughey, J. 150 McCormick, E. 217 McDaniel, N. 18 McMann, J. 39 McRoy, R. G. 16 Madrid, John 217 Mahler, M. 117 Main, M. 64, 65, 77 Makepeace, A. 39-40 Manni, M. 65, 77, 157 Martin, S. 15 Merkel-Holguin, L. 18 Meyers, O. 208-9 Mitchell, R. R. 210 Morales, Candido 39 Murphy, M. 143 Myss, C. 198

256 / THE BIRTH OF AN ADOPTIVE, FOSTER OR STEPMOTHER

National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (NAIC) 15, 16, 33n Neumann, E. 89, 208 Office of National Statistics (ONS) 17 Ogden, T. 62, 63, 67, 68 Oxenhandler, N. 13, 22, 71, 134, 150, 215, 223 Oxhorn, L., 170 Oxhorn-Ringwood, L. 170 Pannor, R. 16 Pavao, J. M. 27, 146, 151 Pertman, A. 105, 145, 165 Peskin, H. 34 Peterson, K. S. 153 Piontelli, A. 63-4, 67 Pizzigati, K. 18 Poe, L. M. 17, 100, 149, 204 Prager, E. 28-9, 106 Public Health Laboratory Service 16 Punnett, A. 216 Raley, R. K. 15 Ratner, R. 42, 58n Resch, P. 17, 204 Rilke, R. M. 34 Roche, T. 18 Rossi, A. 35 Schectman, J. 87, 142 Schor, J. B. 226 Schore, A. N. 22, 24, 62, 66, 218 Schreiber, L. M. 219 Schulman, H. 35, 36 Segal, H. 62, 110 Seligman, S. 157 Shapiro, V. 38, 64 Shepard, E. 201 Siegel, B. S. 50 Silverman, A. R. 16 Sink, M. 16 Skolnick, A. 219 Smith, B. 12, 144, 201 Smith, H. 49 Sobol, M. P. 17 Solomon, J. 77 Spillius, E. B. 62 Stack, C. B. 30, 66

Steiner, J. 66 Stepfamily Association of America 33n Stern, D. N. 12, 13, 22, 51, 53-4, 59, 60, 61, 64, 137n, 140, 147-8, 172, 173 Surrey, J. 12, 144, 201 Svare, G. 224 Sweet, J. A. 15 Symons, J. 145, 147, 180-1 Target, M. 66 Tatar, M. 143 Thich Nat Han 214 Thompson, B. 97-8 Trollope, J. 78, 194 Tubero, A. 158-60 UK Census 19 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (U.S.DHHS) 16, 18 U.S. Department of State 16 Van Buren, A. 138 Verrier, N. 28, 68, 69, 73 von Franz, M. L. 126 Wakefield, L. N. 35 Walker, B. G. 48 Wall, S. 64 Wallace, M. 205, 212, 213 Wallerstein, J. S. 156 Waterman, B. 12, 33n, 58n, 86n, 137n, 171n, 197n, 212, 214n Waters, E. 64 Watkins, M. 12, 27, 28, 95-6, 104-5, 114n, 144, 201 Weinrib, E. L. 206, 210, 211 West, C. 19, 203-4, 226 Wetzler, C. M. 16 Winnicott, D. W. 24, 43, 61, 62, 67, 75, 81, 88, 118, 121, 133, 134 Witchell, A. 15, 170 Wolf, E. S. 88, 89 Wolff, J. 51, 180 Wulczyn, F. 218 Zibard, R. 201 Zibart, R. 108 Ziegler 221 Zuckerman, J. R. 156-8