My daughters are not mine -- an adoptive mother's story

Santi W.E. Soekanto, Contributor, Jakarta santi_soekanto2001@yahoo.com

"She is so beautiful, and she looks so much like you!" a colleague exclaimed when I took my youngest child to the office recently.

"Does she like reading, too? Do you think she will want to be a journalist, too, when she grows up?"

I looked at Baby, now four years old, and for an instant felt a faint stirring of parental pride. In the next instant, however, reality intruded and I was jolted into the realization that I had no genetic right to be boastful about my baby's big, luminous eyes, her perfect nose and sweet, gap-toothed smile.

Instead, a confused giggling fit overcame me because, you see, I did not give birth to her.

Whenever somebody praises Baby because she looks healthy and because of her love for books, I luxuriate in it because I feel it is a testimony to my hard work and competence as a working mother.

But whenever people praise her good looks (and believe you me, this is the God's truth, Baby is the most beautiful child on the planet), I am almost always taken aback and never know how to respond.

No credit for me there -- just as there is no credit whenever people praise my eldest daughter, a 13-year-old named Sister, because she has managed to elude baby fat and acne while entering puberty gracefully.

I did not give birth to Sister, either. I am an adoptive mother of two girls whose religion decrees that while fostering, supporting, raising and providing for deserted children and orphans is commendable, it is haram (unlawful in Islam) to give them your name and claim them as your own.

I am a mother whose husband is prohibited from giving our "children" all the entitlements, like inheritance (I mean, if we were ever rich enough to leave an inheritance when we die).

The biggest difference between Muslim adoption and non-Muslim adoption is that the first allows no concealing of the truth. My children knew from early on that we were not their birth parents because we told them so. They knew who their "real" parents were, even if they had not met them.

And as heartbreaking as it is to think about this most of the time, my husband and I have to accept the fact that one day, circumstances permitting, it would be their right should they choose to "return" to the women and men who brought them to life.

In fact, when our daughters marry one day, circumstances permitting, we will do our best to ensure that their birth fathers give them away. (Needless to say, my husband and I plan to apply the most stringent criteria of suitability for any young men wishing to come any closer than one hundred meters to either of our daughters when they are grown up.)

I am a mother but I must not lie whenever curious women ask me about my experience during labor. I may have the right to remain silent, but not to false pride, so I must never invent any stories to mislead people into thinking that I have had any labor experiences.

Should I choose to speak, I would have to say that my daughters came through the wombs of two other honorable women -- to whom I am forever indebted for two of the greatest sources of happiness in my life.

My husband, too, tells his friends and colleagues with no less pride than a "real" father would that he safeguards two "gifts" who came to him "from sources he never could have imagined", as the Koran says in Sura Attalaq 65:3.

He usually quotes the Koranic verse, because people who do not know Arabic are sometimes too proud or embarrassed to ask what it means, thereby saving him from having to explain further.

They are our children but we cannot say they are ours. (On second thought, what parent can claim their children as theirs when they know that they owe their existence to God?)

Both my husband and I have come to realize that our stance is unorthodox, because we know that there are countless adoptive parents who choose to hide the truth about their children under a thick cloak of secrecy.

Why not keep the truth about their lineage a secret? Because there is no legal adoption in sharia. If a person adopts a son or a daughter, sharia does not confer on the adopted person the status or rights of a natural son or daughter.

According to the Koran, if a person is not someone's real son, he does not become his natural son merely by virtue of declaration.

It does make for stilted conversations, though. Explaining the real situation causes discomfort to me and my children, especially Sister, so I do not usually volunteer to tell people unless I really have to. I mean, people do not usually introduce their offspring saying, "This is my biological son, Iwan," do they?

It also makes for "strange" conversations when Baby blurts out that she has two mothers. I could have established the "Beetroot Anonymous" support group for all the occasions she caused me such embarrassment.

The downside of recognizing my children's true lineage are the darts of pain shooting through my heart -- wise people would call it "jealousy" -- when Baby is angry over being denied something and threatens to "go home" to her other mother.

Or when Sister, whom we bring regularly to meet with her biological mom, is sick and cries softly for the other woman. Not me. If I could cry tears of blood then, I would. If I could, I would blot out all her yearning for her other mother, and replace them with a yearning for me. Only me.

Another downside is for me to have to absorb the pain of my eldest daughter having another family who is not as "happy" as ours. Following a recent visit to "Mama", she simply wilted. When I gently asked, she began sobbing as if her heart would break.

Haltingly, she spoke of the suffering of an abused mother, of abject poverty, of an ailing little sister, of a brother who always goes to sleep hungry and of an abusive, unemployed stepfather who glowered at Sister but was no longer able to beat her the way he did years ago, before I invited her to come into my life and be my child.

I wept with her, my heart broken to pieces, because my love for her could never protect her from the harsh realities that are her birth family.

On the other hand, the honesty of Muslim adoption makes for an easier life. I have seen parents who kept the truth from their adopted children, and who later had to endure the ugliness of secrets being revealed too late.

Over the years, I have encountered many young girls who went into shock and "lost their minds" after their 17th birthdays or weddings turned into nightmares because their parents chose those happy occasions to deliver the truth about their identities.

"I could have killed my mother when, shortly after my high school graduation, she told me that Dad was not my real father," says "Salmah" (not her real name). "Instead, I tried to kill myself."

She was briefly placed in a mental hospital because she acted out her rage by hurting herself and those closest to her. It took her, and her family, years to rebuild their lives, and for her to finally forgive her parents, both biological and adoptive.

Granted, not all adoptive parents are able to take such a stand; there is the stigma of having to admit to other people that you are unable to have your own children.

On the other hand, the biological parents may find it equally difficult to ever admit they have given away the children they gave birth to, for whatever reason.

But there are countless pluses of telling the truth to your children from the beginning. First of all is the comfortable feeling of being honest and the absence of fear of having your secret revealed before you are ready.

Children, adopted or otherwise, are sources of much pride and feelings of inner peace. We can love adopted children as much as a person can love any other human being, no question about it, despite not having given birth to them, because love is not a genetic thing.

We learn to love, and love well, from our children.

Sometimes, some dim-witted person asks whether I want children of my own, "because a woman is a complete woman only if she gives birth". I usually tell them, "But they are my children!"

"Oh, but you know, ones that you give birth to," the person stammers.

"I would have liked to have given birth to my children, but I am no less a mother for never having given birth, and my husband no less a father, if not an even better father than most men," I say bravely.

We do not care what people say: we are the real parents to our children.