My outraged sister-in-law sent me a link to the Teleflora "America's Favorite Mom" contest yesterday and I was stunned to see that along with military mom, working mom, and single mom, they had a category called The Non-Mom Mom which included mothers to adopted children. Non-Mom?!!! No freaking way. Are these people out of their minds? I actually surfed around on the site for minute expecting to find that it was a joke. Incredibly, it was for real.
They must have been flooded with irate complaints, because minutes after I took the screenshots at left the category name was changed to "The Adopting Mom." I think an even better route would have been to scrap all of the categories. In any case, "Non-Mom" is burned into my brain and my heart.
The ignorance behind that phrase is staggering. And more insulting than I have words. Who on earth thought that up, how many idiots in high places signed off on it, and how frightening is it to think that phrase represents at least some percentage of public opinion?
It's beyond distasteful to me, hateful even, but I can handle it. The bigger problem is that someday this type of mentality will actually hurt my children. Somewhere, someday this type of ignorance will make my two precious daughters cry. I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I won't be able to prevent it, and that makes this very real mom feel very sad.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
A message from a very real mom
My outraged sister-in-law sent me a link to the Teleflora "America's Favorite Mom" contest yesterday and I was stunned to see that along with military mom, working mom, and single mom, they had a category called The Non-Mom Mom which included mothers to adopted children. Non-Mom?!!! No freaking way. Are these people out of their minds? I actually surfed around on the site for minute expecting to find that it was a joke. Incredibly, it was for real.
They must have been flooded with irate complaints, because minutes after I took the screenshots at left the category name was changed to "The Adopting Mom." I think an even better route would have been to scrap all of the categories. In any case, "Non-Mom" is burned into my brain and my heart.
The ignorance behind that phrase is staggering. And more insulting than I have words. Who on earth thought that up, how many idiots in high places signed off on it, and how frightening is it to think that phrase represents at least some percentage of public opinion?
It's beyond distasteful to me, hateful even, but I can handle it. The bigger problem is that someday this type of mentality will actually hurt my children. Somewhere, someday this type of ignorance will make my two precious daughters cry. I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I won't be able to prevent it, and that makes this very real mom feel very sad.
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