BECOMING A PARENT – A DIFFERENT WAY OF SEEING LIFE AND PREPARING FOR IT
FILIATION: ALWAYS A QUESTION OF THE HEART Danièle Starenkyj© 2015 www.publicationsorion.com
You can weave a child in your womb. But you can also weave a child in your heart.
And there was a time when, whether the child was adopted or conceived by his parents, they both had the same status, simply that of a legitimate child enjoying the same privileges and responsibilities without any restrictions.
Today, science speaks of blood lineage (biological lineage) and heart lineage. And, driven by a culture that diminishes the authenticity of heart lineage, it sees a difference. Easy access to paternity tests is undermining the belief that once held that the father was the one who considered himself as such and who lovingly raised another's child.
Our era favors filiation by blood—the one that transmits one's genetic heritage to the child—to such an extent that some couples are prepared to turn to extreme solutions to have "their" child. We speak of the "right to a child." It follows that "the inability to give birth is suffered as a narcissistic wound, experienced as a personal failure." It is as if the child, "one's" child, were a supreme value indispensable to the fulfillment of the procreative adult. Filiation by the heart, which can only transmit to the child the values specific to the parents—but not their genes—no longer seems to satisfy the need for children in an eminently individualistic and increasingly egocentric society.
This excessive need is perplexing, as it is often accompanied by a fragile attachment between parents and their child, who are quickly cut off from their presence for long, long hours each day – in some countries from the first weeks of their life. And this is all in the name of the personal development of the father and mother.
Certainly, filiation by the heart – adoption – always presupposes, beforehand, a deliberate or forced detachment of the biological mother from her child, and an involuntary detachment of the child from his mother. This detachment, according to one author, is "the primitive wound2" which marks the adopted child with a hot iron, and which will make a later attachment difficult, but not impossible. Disinterested parental love which has the good of the child as its motivation, through persistence, constancy, consistency, and time, always triumphs over mistrust. One day - it may have taken years - the miracle occurs: the child adopted by his parents - often at first sight - finally adopts them in turn. His attachment is then powerful and irreversible .
As much as attachment is a miracle, detachment is a tragedy. A drama that is sometimes sordid, sometimes magnanimous. I remember this old lady, known in my childhood, who was called Trouvée. She was a painter, and one day, when I was interested in what she did, she told me why she had such a name. As original as it seemed, this one was not. A baby found on the steps of a church, she had been taken to the Public Assistance where she was given a first name, Alice, and a last name, Trouvée. There were several "Trouvé and Trouvée" in this institution, all abandoned without any identity clue. She had never been adopted, but married late in life, she had been delighted to finally have a real name, that of her husband.
While some authors speak of the wound caused by the child's detachment from his mother, others speak of resilience, the power of "an outstretched hand" that reestablishes the child's attachment to a human being concerned with giving him the certainty of being loved 3. For humanity only flourishes when it is pulled from its abyss with "bonds of humanity and ropes of love." Thus, filiation by blood or filiation by the heart, what difference is there? In both cases, it is the love of the other, stronger than the love of oneself, that makes the difference, leading sooner or later to a grateful and happy attachment for all.
Danièle Starenkyj ©2015
1. Kahn Axel, A good guy doesn’t do that…, p. 135, NiL editions, 2010.
2. by Newton Verrier Nancy, The Adopted Child – Understanding the Primitive Wound, De Boeck, 2007.
3. Starenkyj Danièle, Reflections for a Better Life, Orion, 2015.
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