Books, Arts & Manners: When Mother Meets Son

AS A COLLEGE student once I had a conversation of the type where the boyfriend tries to convince his girlfriend that even if, despite all precautions, she did get pregnant, everything would still be fine. “We’ll just put the baby up for adoption,” I said. When she countered that she could hardly imagine putting her own baby up for adoption, for a moment I could think of nothing to say. To me, adoption seemed the perfect, obvious, easy solution to undesired pregnancy. “After all,” I reminded her, “I was adopted, and look how well things turned out.”

I’ve thought of that conversation more than once lately as Americans have debated the merits of adoption—is it a cruel and unusual practice?—and for another, personal reason. About the same time as the recent cohort of celebrity adoptees (Jessica DeBoer, and the girl who wanted to divorce her biological parents, and Joel Rifkin, the serial killer) came to inhabit the front page, as President Clinton’s long-lost half-relatives began piping up around the country, as Mr. Rifkin’s attorney hit on the idea of an insanity defense based on “adopted-child syndrome,” and as a new book by adoption expert Betty Jean Lifton, Journey of the Adopted Self (Basic), floated the notion of “cumulative adoption trauma,” I had decided to find my birth mother.

About the Author

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer, a former literary editor at NR, is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and co-author of The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath, and other books.

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AS A COLLEGE student once I had a conversation of the type where the boyfriend tries to convince his girlfriend that even if, despite all precautions, she did get pregnant, everything would still be fine. “We’ll just put the baby up for adoption,” I said. When she countered that she could hardly imagine putting her own baby up for adoption, for a moment I could think of nothing to say. To me, adoption seemed the perfect, obvious, easy solution to undesired pregnancy. “After all,” I reminded her, “I was adopted, and look how well things turned out.”

I’ve thought of that conversation more than once lately as Americans have debated the merits of adoption—is it a cruel and unusual practice?—and for another, personal reason. About the same time as the recent cohort of celebrity adoptees (Jessica DeBoer, and the girl who wanted to divorce her biological parents, and Joel Rifkin, the serial killer) came to inhabit the front page, as President Clinton’s long-lost half-relatives began piping up around the country, as Mr. Rifkin’s attorney hit on the idea of an insanity defense based on “adopted-child syndrome,” and as a new book by adoption expert Betty Jean Lifton, Journey of the Adopted Self (Basic), floated the notion of “cumulative adoption trauma,” I had decided to find my birth mother.

About the Author

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer, a former literary editor at NR, is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and co-author of The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath, and other books.