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[Subject changed from "Did Tatiana just delete another thread?" --PJ]
I've just made a search for the thread about your quest to help your friend, and I can't find it. If I'm just overlooking it, let me know and I'll retract this.
Otherwise, a lot of people spent a lot of time giving a lot of helpful, realistic advice concerning your friend. It seems kind of insulting to delete all of that every time anyone questions your actual, physical and/or legal maternity to a kid that you know primarily from chatting on the Internet.
And this isn't the first time it's happened. Am I the only person who finds this rude?
[ January 25, 2008, 03:24 PM: Message edited by: Papa Janitor ]
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Apparently the thread was deleted. It did become somewhat contentious at the end, though. I might have deleted it myself if it was my thread.
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I missed where the thread was becoming contentious, so I guess I'm just confused. But if it was getting mean-spirited, I can understand deleting it.
posted
It was rude. But it may have been necessary, from her POV, because of her emotional investment in Sasha and the thread itself.
I don't fault her for it.
edit: Perhaps contentious is not the right term-- I struggled for the proper adjective and that was the compromise I came up with.
Without rehashing the details, Tatiana said she was becoming uncomfortable about the discussion (the tone and/or the details?) Later TomDavidson put out a very frank appraisal (not mean-spirited, IMO) of her and Sasha's situation, parts I agreed with and parts I did not agree with. Some people agreed with Tom (2 or 3?) and then the thread was deleted.
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I read it right up until just before it was deleted, and I didn't see anything that may have resembled a personal attack. Tom made a reasoned post examining her relationship with Sasha, but he went out of his way to make it respectful. And that was the worst I saw.
There wasn't anything there I'd even consider worth whistling, let alone blindly deleting 4 pages of comments for.
It seems to me that Tatiana wants, more than anything, to be acknowledged as the legitimate mother of this person. If anyone degrades her by referring to her as this kid's "friend," or even "mother-figure," rather than conceding that she should have all the rights and priveleges of someone who gave birth to and raised this child, she will instantly delete the thread and anything else that went with it. It's almost Orwellian.
And again, it's not the first time it's happened, under very similar circumstances.
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I didn't read the thread, and have no idea what is going on. From an outside perspective, this thread makes no sense at all. Can someone please explain the situation?
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quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: I didn't read the thread, and have no idea what is going on. From an outside perspective, this thread makes no sense at all. Can someone please explain the situation?
The threads about Sasha? Her adopted internet son? Ring a bell?
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I don't believe the thread got contentious. Unless one's definition of contentious is "saying anything I don't want to hear."
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quote:Originally posted by Baron Samedi: It seems to me that Tatiana wants, more than anything, to be acknowledged as the legitimate mother of this person. If anyone degrades her by referring to her as this kid's "friend," or even "mother-figure," rather than conceding that she should have all the rights and priveleges of someone who gave birth to and raised this child, she will instantly delete the thread and anything else that went with it. It's almost Orwellian.
I agree, and am not surprised she doesn't want to take an unbiased look at her behavior in this situation.
I only hope she saved that post of Tom's on her hard drive before she deleted it, because it's one she needs to read and reread.
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And I can see why several people felt it important to point out that he's not adopted and not her son.
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I think it depends a lot on how Tatiana and Sasha view the relationship, and possibly on Tatiana's relationship with her own mother.
I have someone that "mother" is the closest word to describe our relationship, but I don't consider her a replacement or competition for my mother. Now that I think of it, I have such a father as well. I guess I have a few mothers, really, just as I have many sisters. The key is, would I be grateful for my own children to have such people in their lives, helping them along?
Keep in mind as well that the LDS church frequently says you don't have to be married or have born children to serve as a mother, to nurture and love people. Though I have gotten a different flavor than I describe from the discussion on Sasha, which I have generally avoided.
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There is a difference between a mother or a father and a mother figure or a father figure. There are plenty of people I look at as father figures or mother figures, but that doesn't make them my actual parents.
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quote:Keep in mind as well that the LDS church frequently says you don't have to be married or have born children to serve as a mother, to nurture and love people.
This is a gross abuse of the verb "mother," in my opinion. I nurture and love people just fine without ever mothering them.
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It's meant to be inclusive for people who haven't had those opportunities.
You have to take into account that LDS doctrine holds parenting to be a literal quality of God, whose perfection Jesus commanded that we emulate. And while God is our Father, we are also born again through Jesus and in a sense his children as well. Not figuratively, but of necessity. We must be born again in Jesus to become coheirs to God.
At least, I think that's what the Bible says.
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How ever you may choose to describe Tatiana and Sasha's relationship, what is evident to me is that Tatiana loves Sasha and is heavily emotionally invested in his well being. The word she and Sasha feels is most appropriate to describe her relationship to him is "mother".
As someone who, like Tatiana, has no biological children of her own and is unlikely to have any, I can fully understand why she would find it offensive when people imply that she doesn't feel the way a "real" parent feels and doesn't understand what its like to be a "real" parent. Such statements are condescending, presumptuous and insulting. First off, not all parents have the same kinds of relationships with their children. There are parents who abuse and neglect their kids and even among those who don't I find it hard to imagine that all of them have exactly the same feelings toward their children. Just because someone hasn't given birth or been responsible for an infant, doesn't mean that they haven't experienced the kind of genuine selfless love that parents often feel for their children.
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quote:Keep in mind as well that the LDS church frequently says you don't have to be married or have born children to serve as a mother, to nurture and love people.
This is a gross abuse of the verb "mother," in my opinion. I nurture and love people just fine without ever mothering them.
Note that pooka used the word 'mother' as a noun, not as a verb.
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quote:I can fully understand why she would find it offensive when people imply that she doesn't feel the way a "real" parent feels and doesn't understand what its like to be a "real" parent.
I didn't see anybody say nor imply that.
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quote:Note that pooka used the word 'mother' as a noun, not as a verb.
Specifically, she said, "to serve as a mother, to nurture and love...." I reject the assumption that nurturing and loving constitutes serving as a mother.
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quote:It's meant to be inclusive for people who haven't had those opportunities.
That's actually one of the reasons I consider it an abuse of the word.
According to the OED, the word "mother" has been frequently used that way for over 400 years. It seems more than a bit self-righteous to accuse people of abusing a word when they are using they are only using it in a centuries old, well established way.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: As someone who, like Tatiana, has no biological children of her own and is unlikely to have any, I can fully understand why she would find it offensive when people imply that she doesn't feel the way a "real" parent feels and doesn't understand what its like to be a "real" parent.
And I find it deeply disturbing that some random stranger on the internet can convince a child and herself that she is his mother.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Specifically, she said, "to serve as a mother, to nurture and love...." I reject the assumption that nurturing and loving constitutes serving as a mother.
Then you are rejecting the English language.
from the OED
quote:
mother, n,
f. abstr. Freq. with the. Womanly qualities (as taken to be inherited from the mother); maternal qualities or instincts, esp. maternal affection.
mother, v,
4. trans.
a. With it. To act or behave like a mother.
b. fig. To protect, as with maternal care.
c. lit. To bring up, take care of, or protect as a mother; to look after in a (sometimes excessively) kindly and protective way. Freq. in pass.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: According to the OED, the word "mother" has been frequently used that way for over 400 years. It seems more than a bit self-righteous to accuse people of abusing a word when they are using they are only using it in a centuries old, well established way.
But Anne Kate isn't simply saying that's she has mothered Sasha. She's claiming that she is his mother and that he is her son. There's a huge difference there.
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quote:As someone who, like Tatiana, has no biological children of her own and is unlikely to have any, I can fully understand why she would find it offensive when people imply that she doesn't feel the way a "real" parent feels and doesn't understand what its like to be a "real" parent.
Rabbit, I think the experience curve actually goes the other way: as someone who has no biological children of her own, you're unlikely to fully understand why Anne Kate is not a "real" parent to this young man. On the other hand, as someone who has cared about people without being their parent, I probably have a pretty good idea of what it's like to wish I were someone's parent.
quote:It seems more than a bit self-righteous to accuse people of abusing a word when they are using they are only using it in a centuries old, well established way.
When you're using the verb "mother" to describe taking care of somebody, especially if you're meaning to imply certain overprotective connotations, I'm not going to complain about it. When you're calling someone a "mother" because they took care of somebody, I will. I think any use of the word "mother" that's intended for the use pooka describes -- to make people who are not mothers feel like they are in fact mothers and not caregivers -- is a cheapening of actual motherhood.
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She said, as near as I can recall, "I am his mother in every possible way except for legally."
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I found it more odd when he was a minor living under his parents roof. Keep in mind that unlike many of our faith, Tatiana believes in "families" of choice and that the church will some day come around on gay marriage. Regardless of who may be right, that is her view when it comes to the elasticity of family terms and so I don't think this incident shows she is mentally ill and must be confronted.
P.S. Another note on "actual motherhood" is that LDS understanding is different. We all existed before we were born. What this means varies widely to different people. In some ways, my birth mother is acting as a proxy for God.
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quote:But Anne Kate isn't simply saying that's she has mothered Sasha. She's claiming that she is his mother and that he is her son. There's a huge difference there.
Let me repeat once more, unless you are claiming that biological parentage is the only real form or parenting, then you are being condescending, presumptuous and rude.
I don't know whether Tatiana's feelings toward Sasha are comparable to those you feel for your son, but neither do you. I don't know if the level of nurturing and care she has given him over the years qualifies her as a mother, but then neither do you.
Exactly how much care must a person give before they deserve the term mother? Is the parent who neglects and abuses their child not really a parent? Is a foster parent who cares for a child but never legally adopts them not a parent. Is a step-mother who never cares for the children at all a mother.
Where exactly do you draw the line, what gives you the right to be the one who draws that line and what makes you so sure that side of that line Tatiana is on?
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I've never accused Anne Kate of mental illness. (Edit: this sentence was in response to Rabbit's original post, which has since been edited.) I've "confronted" her on this issue mainly because I'm concerned that by pushing the issue in this way, she's creating divisions within Sasha's actual family where none are necessary. If this adoption were necessary from a purely financial standpoint, there are other ways to obtain funding; Hatrack alone has donated thousands in just the last year to various charities, and I'm absolutely confident that we'd pony up for Sasha's surgery as well.
I don't think sundering the family who birthed and raised him is worth the short-term benefit, especially since that benefit is still purely a hypothetical one.
quote:Let me repeat once more, unless you are claiming that biological parentage is the only real form or parenting, then you are being condescending, presumptuous and rude.
Again, my claim is this: if you have raised someone, you are their parent.
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So when people say "adopted internet son", are people implying Tatiana and this boy have never met?
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Well, the sense I got that she's competing with the birth parents is something that concerns me as well. She can't replace them, and if she covets their role, she'll only come to unhappiness, in my opinion. If we can covet our posessions we already have (as some preachers say), I think it's possible to covet our children.
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I think that teenagers often benefit from having caring adults other than their parents to talk to. Especially at the age when they are pulling away from their parents and trying to develop their identities as independent almost-adults. It can be tempting for the teenagers (and their adult friends) to think “why can’t my parents be as understanding/cool/kind/wonderful as [non-parent adult].” What they are missing is that it is the fact that the non-parent adult is not the parent that makes that relationship possible at that point. They don’t have the baggage, they don’t have the family dynamics to deal with, they don’t have the responsibility and fear and worry. They can just be a friend. And the teenager doesn’t feel the need to test and defy and differentiate from the adult friend. They have no memories of the friend treating them as anything other than the adult they so desperately want to be.
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I find it bizarre we're seeing open speculation and comments about Tatania in this thread that people probably would have not been willing to vocalize in her thread had she not deleted it.
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quote:Note that pooka used the word 'mother' as a noun, not as a verb.
Specifically, she said, "to serve as a mother, to nurture and love...." I reject the assumption that nurturing and loving constitutes serving as a mother.
How about the assertion that a mother nurtures and loves?
It is true that not everyone who loves and nurtures is a mother; mother being defined as one's female parent; parent being defined as one's direct, biological progenitor.
People keep throwing out the qualifier "real" though-- "real" parent, "real" mother. What's "real" is being debated.
Tom's adherence to a strictly literal terminology would probably do a lot to make certain that this very personal debate is framed within terms that can be easily understood, and less divisive.
I'm willing to go along with Tom's terminology, honestly. I think. Maybe I'll change my mind if someone offers me some cookies...
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Maybe I'll change my mind if someone offers me some cookies...
I'm tempted to offer you some cookies just to be a troublemaker. Anything to avoid actually working, you know. Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I'm certainly considering she may one day read it, but not particularly hopeful that she will.
dkw: I think it's possible for parents of teens to have a hard time letting them grow up. I remember last year thinking if I wanted my child to move on to middle school or if we should home school.
I think God may have worked his hand in my getting a job so that wouldn't be an option. How odd.
P.S. Awww... doggie cookies.
I have some peanut butter bars with butterscotch chips right here under my desk. You are so close and yet so far, Scott.
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