Older Moms community: Adoptive Moms not welcome!

[marydell]

So, I saw the Older Moms community link on the front page of LJ under the featured communities.  The name says "OlderMoms" and the longer name says "35+ Moms with new babies."  Cool, I thought, that's me.  I read through a couple of entries and clicked "Join this community."

Silly me, I didn't read the user info page that explains what is meant by "Older Moms"  until I got the screening email from the community runner and boggled over what I thought must have just been insensitive phrasing: 

If you are interested in joining, you will notice that there is an approval process in place. The requirements for admission are pretty basic but one requirement I DO enforce is; a mother MUST have been PHYSICALLY pregnant and had a child AFTER turning 35 years old.

Wha?  I'm an adoptive mom, so I didn't do the physically pregnant thing, and that's WHY I'm an older mom...infertility and adoption consume your youth.  There are a lot of us older adoptive moms out there.  I figured this had to be a mistake. 

So then I went and read the user info page: 

While I've had numerous requests from those currently in the "trying to conceive" stage or the "we're adopting/we've adopted a child" stage unfortunately at this time, this community is not right for you. I agree wholeheartedly that those and other stages of a woman's life are important, they're just not what THIS particular community is about.

That's right, "adopted a child" is a STAGE OF LIFE, similar to trying to conceive or menopause or, oh, going to college or something.  It's not BEING A MOM, for heaven's sake.

I don't mind if fertile older moms want to have a community that's all about giving birth.  Woo! Giving Birth!  I'm a fan, albeit from the other side of the nursery window.  I'm delighted that there are communities for fertile women, as for every other subset of women and moms.  I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. If it had been named "BirthPast35" I would have thought "neat" and breezed on by.

But giving your community a misleadingly inclusive name that will draw in every type of over-35 mother, and then writing up an insulting dismissal of a whole group of women without even having the courtesy to call us mothers while you tell us to fuck off--well, that takes brass ovaries. 

I think my favorite thing is that the interest list for the community starts with "adoption," so if you search for communities interested in adoption, you find this community, which insults and excludes adoptive mothers.  BRASS FUCKING OVARIES, my friends.

Community is here: http://community.livejournal.com/oldermoms/profile. 

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

You see, you didn't have the sacred experience of morning sickness, nor the equally sanctified experience of having to pee twenty-five times a day because your bladder had been compressed to the size of a pea, nor would you be able to bond with other 'real mothers' over the truly holy experience of not finding a comfortable position to sleep during the last month of pregnancy. Those are the only issues mothers talk about, not, say, how to deal with the terrible twos, or teething, or what kind of nursery schools are best, or which paediatricians provide the best service, or how wonderful it is to see their babies smile, or take their first steps. Nor, say, how lazy husbands can get...

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly! Grrr. I'm so annoyed that LJ did a spotlight on this community. It'd be fine if it was called OlderBirthing or something (although I sort of get the feeling that birthmothers/firstmothers in adoption/surrogate moms etc are also not welcome).

(You've got a dup comment below so I'm deleting it, btw)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the duplication!

[splashiator.livejournal.com]

So, I googled "adoption" and just got confused. Then I googled a few other things. I'm trying to figure this out. I thin my biggest problem is linguistic: in the first place, you have two different words for parent, depending on the sex of the parent (which is reasonable, I suppose; the more distinctions one can make in language the better). Next you have a word that means, "person who inseminated another," and then you have a word that means, "person who gave birth to a child." But the word for "person who gave birth to a child" and word for the female parent are the same word. And the word for "person who inseminated another" and the word for male parent are the same. Doesn't this lead to some horrible confusion? Anyway, I wonder if this confusion isn't part of the problem here.
-Splash

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Hi Splash! Welcome to the journal. It's always nice to have off-planet visitors. :)

People in our culture tend to assume that everybody has the same kind of family. When your family is different, you either make up new words or try to use the old words more inclusively, or both. Some people think that's a problem...google "gay marriage" if you want to be really confused about Earth cultures!

Wikipedia defines "Mother" like this: A mother is a biological and/or social female parent of an offspring. Because of the complexity and differences of the social, cultural, and religious definitions and roles, it is challenging to define a mother in a universally accepted definition.

That's an understatement.

[splashiator.livejournal.com]

Okay, that helps. Thanks!
-Splash

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

hm. i think "useless fuckheads" is the phrase i'm looking for here.

wanna start a community called "beautiful babies" and then put in the info "but not any of those funny looking white ones"?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yes! "I'm sorry, we know that some 'babies' have blue eyes, and we understand that you think they are beautiful, but this is not the place for those 'babies.' If you google 'blue eyes' you will find many places where you can talk about your baby, Paul Newman, or whatever your interests may be."

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't that be pink ones?

BTW, that would have included one of my two children (the other came out a bit beiger).

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh, well in that case, hit the road, round-eye! Just kidding. No caucasian babies, let's say.

This is following on an earlier discussion Betsy and I had about the way people react when you say you're adopting a baby of color. Frequently they say something like "oh, squee, those babies [Chinese, Ethiopian] are so cute! I want one too!" (Except if you say you are trying to adopt an African-American baby in which case they look sad and say "ohhh, aren't you worried about drugs?" Because people SUCK.) Anyway I frequently want to respond "that's right, I don't want one of those ugly American babies!"

Of course, ultimately I did adopt an American baby, but at least I stayed away from the pink ones. ;)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I'm both the product of an interracial marriage, and a participant in, ahem, three of them. My children are the products of my first marriage (as a result they're German/Irish/Spanish/Black/Jewish/+).

[marydell.livejournal.com]

That's so complicated! Can't we just rely on 19th century theories of race to categorize everybody?

[/sarcasm]

Your kids have presumably inherited your coolness, so they get a pass from any of my rules anyway. :)

My son is actually not that different in color than I am, except when he gets really mad and red, his skin shows a yellowish cast contrasting with the red. Normally he's a little browner than me (snow is browner than me; I'm quite pale) but we have similar quantities of yellow. I'm fairly sallow for someone of my ethnicity (Irish/English/Scots)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

*snort*

We are, after all, in the 21st century. Most of us would like the human race to survive into the twenty-second.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

this community is not right for you

What the...?

If there is a community for older fathers, can one join if, while his sperm fertilized their wife's egg, the baby was brought to term by a surrogate mother?

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

So, can we start a community about Why People Are Stupid About Family Composition?

-Nameseeker

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Srsly.