Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood

Resisting Monomaternalism in Adoptive, Lesbian, Blended, and Polygamous Families

Shelley M. Park

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781438447162, 9781438447179
• eBook ISBN: 9781438447186
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy
• Index: Social Sciences

Bridging the gap between feminist studies of motherhood and queer theory, Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood articulates a provocative philosophy of queer kinship that need not be rooted in lesbian or gay sexual identities. Working from an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates feminist philosophy and queer, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, Shelley M. Park offers a powerful critique of an ideology she terms monomaternalism. Despite widespread cultural insistence that every child should have one—and only one—"real" mother, many contemporary family constellations do not fit this mandate. Park highlights the negative consequences of this ideology and demonstrates how families created through open adoption, same-sex parenting, divorce, and plural marriage can be sites of resistance. Drawing from personal experiences as both an adoptive and a biological mother and juxtaposing these autobiographical reflections with critical readings of cultural texts representing multi-mother families, Park advocates a new understanding of postmodern families as potentially queer coalitional assemblages held together by a mixture of affection and critical reflection premised on difference.

PART I

Triangulating Motherhood

1

Querying a Straight Orientation

Becoming a Mother (Twice, Differently)

It matters how we arrive at the places we do.

—Sarah Ahmed (2006)

I begin this book by examining my beginnings as a mother—once through adoption and then, shortly thereafter, through pregnancy and birth—as my journey toward querying and queering motherhood began with the juxtaposition of these two different routes to “having” children. As I subsequently argue, adoption is a potentially queer form of motherhood. Ironically, however, I did not recognize this fully until I had experienced biological motherhood. More specifically, it was not until after I had experienced an unintended pregnancy that I came to see adoptive motherhood as requiring openness toward another woman with whom I shared a child. Moreover, it was not until after I had experienced postpartum depression following the birth of my second child that I came to query my own status as a “good” mother deserving of approval as a parent. It is, thus, as a straight married woman undertaking biological reproduction (as a “breeder”) that my perspectives on motherhood took their first queer turn, as I began to resist the ideology of monomaternalism and its closely affiliated practice of maternal profiling. Here I frame this queer turn in terms of phenomenologist Sara Ahmed's (2006) notion of queer orientations, suggesting that what she terms “oblique” or “slantwise” perceptions may sometimes emerge from rather straight positionings.

Prior to examining my own beginnings as a mother, however, I return briefly to the more distant past of my own childhood. It is here, after all, that my desire to become a mother begins to take shape. And it is here that my later sense of entitlement as a consumer of adoption services becomes intelligible.

The Inheritance of Privilege

In her Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Ahmed (2006) explores provocatively the ways in which our orientations to objects and other subjects both shapes and is shaped by that which is within our bodily horizon. Arguing that orientation is “a matter of how we reside in space,” she suggests that what we are oriented toward, as well as what we are oriented around, is a function of what is “behind us” (1, 62). This is to say that our inheritance shapes what is “before us” or “within our reach” by giving us a certain direction (126). For example, if our childhood home features wedding photographs, baby pictures, and family portraits (as mine did), we inherit a heterosexual orientation, thus increasing the likelihood that in our own future we will become wives and mothers. If our family of origin is white and middle class, then one's childhood home may feature (as mine did) objects such as classical (European) music, books, and magazines (featuring white faces and heroines), photo albums of vacations to places like Disneyland, and so forth. In inheriting a white middle-class orientation, I also inherited a presumption of “belonging” in the world.

In the small town in which I grew up I encountered few non-white faces. Some years ago, my mother recollected, with embarrassment, the time I first encountered a black man; apparently I pointed and asked my mother to “look at that man with no face!” She told a similar story—also embarrassing to her—of the first time my sister encountered a Hutterite woman dressed in traditional garb, including a polkadotted head scarf, and asked “why is that woman dressed like a clown?” My mother's embarrassment did not stem, I think, from our lack of knowledge about difference (as I don't recall her ever educating us on the differences between us and these rare “others” we encountered), but instead from the fact that we were—as small children are apt to do—showing a lack of middle-class decorum by pointing, staring, and speaking audibly about differences that we were supposed to pretend not to notice. We later learned to talk in hushed tones about difference or to ignore it altogether. Although my sisters and I never did fully inherit our mother's concern for what “the neighbors might think,” we did inherit the white, middle-class ethos of colorblindness—which we, raised as good liberals, identified with a lack of racism.

It is possible, of course, to fail to return our familial inheritance, to abandon the sexual, ethnic, class, or other orientation we have been given, to take a different direction. But typically this is not the case as the familial objects around which we are raised frequently obscure other possibilities. As Ahmed puts it, queer objects—say same-sex objects of desire, Muslim prayer mats, or something else that would shift our direction—“may not even get near enough to ‘come into view’ as possible objects to be directed toward” (91). Of course, what “comes into view” is not simply a matter of what enters our horizons, but of what and how we learn to see. If we learn to ignore that which is non-normative, we will not see it even when it is in our midst. Only in retrospect, having learned to see queerness, do I now recognize that many of the male friends of my (now deceased) mother—fellow musical theatre performers—were queer. But this, like issues of race, was never revealed or spoken about in my childhood home. Nor was it spoken about in the larger community in which I lived—a small town in which “don't ask, don't tell” seemed the key to harmonious living.

Taking seriously the spatial (and temporal) connotations of the term “straight,” Ahmed investigates the ways in which certain bodies are viewed as being “on-line” or “in line” as a function of their alignment with the directions and directives of heteronormativity and whiteness. Bodies that are well aligned with normative spaces are able to “extend their reach” as a function of their inheritance. The heterosexual body, for example, takes up its place within the family by directing its desire toward marriage and reproduction of the family line, thus extending its normative reach into the future. The white body inhabits the world readied for it by colonialism with ease, finding most objects within reach and, in extending that reach, reproduces whiteness. The middle-class body inherits resources that enable the accumulation of material and cultural capital, thus propelling it both forward and up and, in following this direction, extends the reach of bourgeois values. Exploring the relation between what is “behind social action” (our inheritance) and “the process of social mobility,” Ahmed uses Merleau-Ponty's example of the blind man's stick (131). The blind man extends his reach by means of the walking stick and thereby increases his motility and mobility. In using the walking stick habitually, moreover, the stick ceases to be an object for him, becoming incorporated into his body. Similarly, Ahmed suggests, heterosexual, white, middle-class bodies expand to incorporate “objects, tools, instruments and even ‘others’ ” (132). In this way, what is within reach as a function of our inheritance (i.e., the privileges to which we have become habituated) further extends the reach of normative bodies. Like the blind man who stays on the well-worn path, navigating with his walking stick, heterosexual, white, middle-class bodies that remain “in line,” typically have their “bearings”; they know “what to do to get to this place or to that place” (1).

Although my orientations will subsequently change, it is as a well-aligned heterosexual body that I pursue the project of motherhood as I enter my thirties and it is as an acquisitive white, middle-class body that I pursue a particular route to motherhood—a route that includes incorporating a child of color into our family.

Becoming a Mother: Adoption

April 30, 1992: Spring classes are over and I am tallying my final grades—already feeling that sense of deep freedom that comes from summer vacation stretching itself out in front of me—when I receive the phone call. “Congratulations! We have a baby for you. She was born yesterday—a healthy, biracial baby girl. Can you pick her up at Princeton Hospital tomorrow?

As a heterosexual, white, middle-class couple, my husband and I were not thrown off-line by discovering we were infertile. Having a family remained a future goal and infertility did not put having children outside of our reach. We knew exactly what to do in order to make a family; we would simply adopt children. Thus, upon receiving the phone call from the adoption agency, congratulating me on the child we have been awarded, I continue to have my bearings. Matter of factly, I turn in my grades, explore class rolls for a baby name (deciding on “Tomeka”—a variation of “Tamika” that will allow for the gender-neutral nickname, “Tomi” rather than “Tami”), call my husband to give him a shopping list (we will need a bassinet, a car seat, diapers, some basic infant clothes, bottles and formula for tomorrow), and leave the office to attend an end-of-the-term women's studies dinner to which I have been looking forward. When I announce my impending motherhood to my feminist colleagues, they raise their glasses in “congratulations,” remarking on my apparent calmness.

Both my colleagues' congratulations and my own calmness illuminate further Ahmed's notion of straightness as being “on-line.” The fact that I am congratulated on my forthcoming motherhood—first by the adoption agency, then by my colleagues, and later by family members, friends, and others—connotes motherhood as a measure of success. When we congratulate someone, we communicate our pleasure, approval, or praise for her actions. It is commonplace to congratulate people on the occasions that mark certain points deemed significant markers of a successful life journey, for example, on the occasion of their Bat or Bar Mitzvah, their confirmation, their graduation from high school or college, their promotion at work, their engagement, their marriage, buying their first home, their birthdays and anniversaries, and the arrival of children or grandchildren. Whether or not these are occasions of accomplishment, (good or bad) luck, or simple inertia, these occasions are celebrated as milestones in a normative life. A life that follows this straight line is praised and commended as a life well lived.

My calmness, in turn, on which my colleagues comment, reveals that this straight line marking a normative life journey is presumed by me to be my inheritance. There is, after all, nothing shocking about the phone call I receive. I have assumed all along that my husband and I would be given a child, as we fit the profile of good parents. We are a well-educated, middle-class, married couple who come from intact middle-class, educated families. Indeed, today's phone call was not the first offer of a child that we have received. Within the past three months, we have received two others: one offering us an infant with a cleft palette and another offering an infant with a potential heart problem. My husband and I declined both previous offers of parenthood—primarily out of fear that unknown medical costs would be beyond our means (or at least this is what we tell ourselves). We have thus made clear to the adoption agency that although we are prospective parents for a “special needs” child, we do not desire to adopt a child with potentially major medical difficulties. Of course, this is ridiculous—there is no guarantee that any child might not require special medical care during her or his life and if one were to have a child the “natural” way, one would simply cope with whatever difficulties arose. Yet, as adoptive parents, we have been presented with a menu of options and this is what we have chosen: physical disabilities acceptable, but no major physical illnesses, no major cognitive impairments, no children over the age of three, sibling groups acceptable, any race or ethnicity welcome.

Adoption here reveals itself as a consumer choice. As David Eng (2010) suggests in his analysis of lesbian adoption, “family is not only whom you choose, but on whom you choose to spend your capital” (99). Arguing that adoption is a form of “consumptive labor” that “serves to produce and to organize social community as a supplement to capital,” Eng highlights the ways in which the boundaries of the white, heteronormative, middle-class, nuclear family are expanded by the reproductive labor of less privileged women and consolidated by the affective labor of adopted children (108–09). This is a point to which I later return. For now, however, suffice it to say that for those accustomed to having what we want within our reach, the asymmetrical processes of economic exchange through which we benefit from the exploitation of others' labor is rarely noticed. Indeed, in going to pick up Tomeka at the hospital, my husband and I do not see ourselves as purchasing a commodity at all; instead we view ourselves as providing a stable and loving home for a child in need. Thus, when “our” baby is brought to us in the hospital waiting room on May 1, 1992, we take her home joyfully—without ever considering the possibility that we have expanded our family through the appropriation of a child who is the product of another woman's labor.

As a new mother, my direction does shift as I must reorient myself from a planned summer of research to new and competing responsibilities. Paying attention to the needs of the small, fragile, dependent body we have brought into our home consumes most of my attention and my time. Tomeka is a delight during the day—looking into my eyes while she has her morning bottle, falling contentedly back to sleep, enjoying the world around her during her waking afternoon periods, alert to sounds and sights and tactile sensations. I cannot ascertain, however, why our lovely infant transforms into a screaming banshee around five o'clock each evening. It does not occur to me, in trying to inhabit my daughter's perspective, that she has been separated from what was familiar and familial territory before birth. Marking her beginnings in this world as more-or-less simultaneous with my own beginnings as her mother, I do not consider the possibility that this infant may be experiencing loss as well as the shock of the new. Thus, my husband and I simply learn to adapt to her daily transformations (as we will later do again, less successfully, when Tomeka metamorphoses into a teenager). One of us cooks supper while the other attempts to soothe her. Then we switch and take turns eating, each orienting ourselves toward our child rather than toward each other. After dishes are done and bottles sanitized, we take shifts walking and rocking our daughter until she finally collapses from exhaustion around midnight. This daily routine makes a concentrated focus on my research feel impossible; thus I make a conscious decision to turn my back on my desk in order to be present in the nursery.

Making such a choice is, of course, a privilege. As a university professor, I have an extended summer vacation and I make enough money to be able to support a stay-at-home husband working on his PhD. Hence, we can give our new baby the attention she needs, enjoying her, caring for her, napping with her, and staying gentle with her when she is inconsolable. I don't know how people with other responsibilities—daily work routines, other children, or other caregiving responsibilities, and no around-the-clock helpmate do this. It occurs to me that this is the situation faced by many birth mothers who relinquish their children for adoption—mothers who are young or poor or single and who face the impossibility of balancing the demands of full-time motherhood with the demands of full-time wage work (if they are fortunate enough to have such work). This is but a fleeting thought, however, and I quickly turn my attention back to my daughter, relegating her birth mother, along with half-written philosophy papers, to a filing cabinet that is rarely opened.

By August, as we near the completion of our probationary period as potential adoptive parents, however, Tomeka's birth mother once again enters our line of vision. We are anxious and uneasy as the obligatory notice goes in the paper alerting any interested parties to our intention to adopt Tomeka—hoping that her birth mother or birth father or other family member won't come out of the woodwork to claim her. No one does. Thus, on October 13, 1992, my husband and I joyfully adopt the four and a half-month-old baby girl who has lived with us since her third day of life. After the court proceedings, we take numerous photos of ourselves, baby in arms, and celebrate. Tomeka Guyana Park-Ozee, a beautiful brown-eyed, ebony-haired, olive-complexioned infant, is now finally ours.

Tomeka's birth mother was not present at the proceedings that day, nor had we previously met her. Indeed, at that time, we knew little about our new daughter's birth mother save that she was dark-skinned and beautiful (we'd been shown a photo), was twenty-one years old, had no known medical difficulties, and was of Guyanese heritage (we'd been provided with her medical history, which contained this minimal personal information). We were equally uninformed concerning the specific circumstances that led her to relinquish her infant into our care, knowing only that she was single, had no continuing relationship with the birth father and hoped to go to college. However, none of this bothered us at the time—we were entirely focused on our baby.

In thinking about neoliberal narratives of kinship, Eng argues that the logic of neoliberalism renders queer diasporic figures “ghostly” through a process of racial forgetting and colorblindness. The enjoyment of liberal rights and freedoms—including the rights to parenthood sought by both heterosexual and same-sex couples through adoption—is haunted (“ghosted”), however, by these forgotten queer and diasporic subjects. Tomeka's birth mother is just such a ghost during much of the first year of my motherhood. This ghost haunts the hospital where we pick up “our” three-day old child. (Perhaps she is still there? Certainly, she has been there recently. What happens if we encounter her?) She lingers, as a generous angel, behind the placement decision itself as someone who has approved us as her daughter's prospective parents. She floats ominously around the adoption proceedings as someone who might “come out” of the woodwork (as what? as a mother?) and disrupt our direction as parents. It is not that I never consider her existence; both before and after the adoption is final, I send photographs and notes about Tomeka's development to the adoption agency on a monthly basis to forward to her. But I do not know where or how she lives nor what she feels when she receives this correspondence. I rarely ask about her life; nor, when I do, does she answer. For some time, I do not even know her name. She remains thus, an abstraction, a ghostly exotic O...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood
• PART I: TRIANGULATING MOTHERHOOD
• PART II: RESISTING DOMESTINORMATIVITY
• Epilogue
• Notes
• References