This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: NoOfCourseShe\'sNotPregnant: From YKTTW
Sackett: Okay, I have a bone to pick here.
Why do people say that dumping a child at an orphanage or into a foster care system to be raised by strangers is the "gentle" choice, while having the child be raised by his grandparents is "freakiest"?
That is is just crazy. The raising of children by their grandparents is not bizarre, it happened all the time. Just because today single motherhood has lost it's stigma and is no longer concealed does not make the raising of children by their grandparents- particularly when the mother is unmarried "freaky". I would think that being raised by blood relatives is much preferable to being raised by someone who is not a blood relative. I would argue that this is the gentlest of the adoption versions. While the giving the child up for adoption is the more common version (I wouldn't call it freaky either).
But to avoid the moral judgments, lets just identify them as more common and less common.
I'll admit freakier might have been too strong a word choice, but raising the child by their grandparents when the child is aware it's grandparents is not bizarre. Raising the child by their grandparent when they think their grandmother is really their mother and the person they consider their sister is their mother is the less gentle variation, due to the child having grown up with the family lying to them. Hence the potential for Mind Screw. Speaking as a person who grew up in an abusive household, I'll have to respectfully disagree with that "better to have blood kin raise a child" statement.
bluepenguin: We have Are You My Mummy? already; that's where all the stuff about children thinking their grandparents are their parents should go (indeed, a lot of the examples on this page are already there). Can we get rid of any examples which don't specifically involve a young woman "going on a long vacation"(/"joining a convent"/"contracting an illness"/etc.) in order to cover up pregnancy, please?
Clerval: The article seems to confuse actual practice of this with its appearances in fiction... it's a discredited thing to do with your real life pregnant daughter, but it's hardly a discredited story element. Why should it be? No one has to write about exclusively nice stuff.
And to the above - while living in adoptive family that tells you the truth may be better than living with a blood family that lies to you, we've got options like "orphanage" there, and the foster system (which can be great, but also can not). I would think living with a blood family that are lying to you but love you, though not ideal, would usually be less traumatic than ending up in a situation where you aren't loved at all. I think we can reflect the potential for such arrangements to be very damaging without claiming it was inevitable.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Earth to whoever posted this example: "juvenile hall" = "juvenile detention center" = "prison for people under 18." (Or, since it's The '50s in that film, maybe people under 21.) No euphemism required. Cut this and put it here. Other
- The infamous classroom Public Service Announcement from The '50s, Girls Beware, refers to the final Anti-Role Model becoming "in trouble," and inexplicably having to leave school to go to juvenile hall of all places.
Sackett: People keep deleting it, but my grandfather was adopted by his maternal grandparents and raised as their child without knowing the truth for years. I don't get why it's not acceptable as a Real Life example.
ninjacrat: Sounds like something for Troper Tales.
Daibhid C: Pulled this:
- In "Survival" one of Ace's friends, surprised at her return, says she'd thought Ace had "Died or gone to Birmingham"
