on Aug 5th, 2006Should I tell my kids about my Illegitimate Child?
The past, at times, represents a giant suitcase that somehow got lost at the airport and never found its way back to the owner. Humans have an enormous capacity to create sitations they spend the rest of their life trying to ignore, bury or make disappear.
Here’s an advice column story that points out the other side of human behavior: a sense of guilt. The dark days of adoption presented a horrifying attitude of shaming pregnant mothers into giving up their child in order to enforce a strict code of religious morality. Forget about whether it was in the best interests of the child to never know his or her mother or father. What had to be maintained at all cost was the religious moral code.
Thankfully those days of shame are pretty much over. Feminism has told religion to get lost and mind its own business within the legally defined limits of its church. The aftermath of those days, though, is still present and real.
Our advice: ditch the shame and embrace the feeling. Don’t let religion intervene between you and your being. Human nature is far too complex to put in the hands of dogma and patriarchal belief structures that find it acceptable to denigrate and devalue the very people who worship within its pointy confines.
I fathered a child when I was 15 and the mother was 22. The child was put up for adoption. I grew up, got married (yes, my wife knows), and had children. We decided we would tell the children when we felt the time was right. That time never came and they are now adults. I’m certain I don’t want a relationship with my first child but I must admit to a strong curiosity.
Dear Prudence
The Truth Will Out: Should I tell my grown children now something they should have known years ago?
Slate, August 3, 2006