Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (20 page)

Adoption is on the rise!

I
t used to be bad manners to ask people whether they were adopted—even if you were a census taker. For years adoption was considered such a private matter that census takers didn’t keep track of the number of adoptions in the United States. In fact, adoption agencies used to just place children without consulting the birth parents.

It wasn’t until the late 1970s that adoption agencies allowed open adoptions, where biological and adoptive parents could establish a relationship with each other. As adoption came further out into the open, curious researchers were standing at the door, eager to finally ask questions. They got surprising answers. Adoption was far more common than anyone had guessed, adopted families were on the rise, and the numbers would likely keep going up.

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute ran a significant national poll about adoption in 1997 that amazed even adoption professionals. Fifty-eight percent of respondents declared a “personal experience’’ with adoption—meaning that they, a family member, or a close friend had been adopted, had adopted a child, or had placed a child up for adoption. Ninety percent had a positive view of adoption, and a third had “somewhat seriously considered
adopting.” Adoption was far more common and accepted than the experts had ever suspected.

In 2000, for the first time the U.S. Census calculated how many adopted children lived in U.S. households. They learned that there were 2.1 million adopted children at that time in the United States, which constituted about 2.5 percent of all children in the country. The census did not ask, however, if participants themselves had been adopted, so the number of adopted persons in the United States could be much higher. Will there be a much higher percentage by the end of the decade? Seems likely.

Given the numbers, that’s hardly surprising since the estimated total number of adoptions has more than doubled in the last century. In 1944 there were a recorded 50,000 adoptions that year. Fifty years later that number had almost tripled. There were approximately 120,000 annual adoptions in the 1990s!

So what’s up with these upward trends in adoption? Statisticians point out that women in developed countries are delaying their plans for motherhood until they are older. And older would-be moms have a greater likelihood of infertility, problems conceiving, and difficulties in carrying a child to term. In the United States almost one third of childless married women who had problems becoming biological mothers were in the 35–44 age group. About 6.1 million American women had impaired fertility in 1995—that’s over a million more than in 1988.

Infertility is the common motivation for adoption. In one survey, more than 80 percent of the respondents gave the inability to have a biological child as the reason they
chose to adopt. With more women delaying marriage and motherhood and facing biological problems with pregnancy, there are also more potential moms searching for a child to adopt and raise.

Luckily, adoptions are a good thing for everyone involved. The Search Institute, a nonprofit research organization, concluded after a four-year study that most teenagers who were adopted as infants “show no signs that adoption had a negative effect on their identity development, mental health, or well-being.” Adopted or biological—loving mothers have an equal chance to produce healthy children.

I
n the second part of our literature quiz, we’re taking a “novel” approach to the question, “What’s a mom to do?” Multiple choice for you again—read closely and don’t peek at the answers before you’re through!

1. The Novel:
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy, 1875–1877

The Plot:
Anna, the beautiful and spirited mother of Seryozha, is bored and restless in her marriage with the dull Karenin. She has fallen in love with the dashing Count Vronsky.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Introduce Karenin to a charming, but conventional, woman and hope they fall in love and let you off the hook.

__ B. Run off with Vronsky and then tire of him.

__ C. Jump in front of a train.

__ D. None of the above.

__ E. Both B & C

2. The Novel:
Moll Flanders
by Daniel Defoe, 1722

The Plot:
Moll’s mother “pleads her belly” (pregnancy) to avoid being executed as a thief. Her baby remains in England while she is transported to the colonies (the United States), where she prospers. Moll is raised by others and has many adventures, lovers, and husbands. Eventually, she marries an American sea captain and travels to his home in Virginia. After bearing the captain two children, Moll meets his mother and then discovers they have more in common than she thought. She’s shocked to learn that she is married to her half-brother.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Leave your husband, return to England, and remarry.

__ B. Jump in front of a train.

__ C. Kill your husband and his/your mother so no one will ever know.

__ D. Become a prostitute.

__ E. Both A & D.

3. The Novel:
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

The Plot:
In Puritan New England, Hester Prynne gives birth to a daughter whose father is not Hester’s husband. She is forced to wear a scarlet “A” (for “adulteress”) and is publicly shamed.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Blame your youth and the man who led you astray.

__ B. Rail against the hypocrisy of the town’s so-called solid citizens.

__ C. Wear the scarlet letter proudly and raise your daughter with tenderness and good values.

__ D. Become a prostitute and jump in front of a train.

__ E. All of the above.

4. The Novel:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

The Plot:
Eliza, a slave, overhears her owners talking about selling her five-year-old son, Harry, to another plantation owner.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Move to a cottage by the woods, become a prostitute, and then jump in front of a train.

__ B. Grab your son and run away to Canada.

__ C. Plead with your owner’s wife and appeal to her Christian values.

__ D. Ask kindly Uncle Tom, who is to be sold along with Harry, to take good care of him.

__ E. Both B & D

Answers on
page 300
.

We’re not bluffing. Be sure to bet on this poker-playing mama.

I
n the never-ending quest of working moms to find the best way to raise a family and earn a living, moms have moved into such traditionally male-dominated careers as steel workers, firefighters, and investment bankers. But card sharks?

You can bet on it. Today’s working mother can just as easily be a professional gambler who ambles up to a green-felt poker table as an office worker who spends the day with a computer in a cubicle. Just ask Annie Duke, a working mother of four and one of the top-rated poker players in the world.

The Bellagio, a luxury hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, features an 8.5-acre lake and more than a thousand fountains; it houses luxury stores, art masterpieces, botanical gardens . . . and, oh yes, slot machines and poker tables. Thirty to forty hours a week, Annie Duke takes leave of her husband, Ben, and her kids, Maud, Leo, Lucy, and Nelly. Then, often clad comfortably in jeans and a T-shirt, she heads off to the cushy casino, where she is one of but a handful of women who are serious contenders in the world of high-stakes poker.

The origin of the game of poker is somewhat in doubt. Some say it began in China, some say Persia, others Egypt or even India. The version played in the United States
probably came from a “bluffing and betting” card game called “poque,” which French settlers brought to New Orleans. Poque was likely the origin of the game that card sharks used to fleece travelers on the steamboats of the Mississippi River. By the time of the Civil War, poker and draw poker were popular pastimes—for men.