{"id":196,"date":"2009-10-01T16:44:51","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T16:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/10\/child-adopted-then-returned-did-anita-tedaldi-do-the-right-thing.html"},"modified":"2009-10-01T16:44:51","modified_gmt":"2009-10-01T16:44:51","slug":"child-adopted-then-returned-did-anita-tedaldi-do-the-right-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/10\/child-adopted-then-returned-did-anita-tedaldi-do-the-right-thing.html","title":{"rendered":"Child Adopted Then Returned: Did Anita Tedaldi Do The Right Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, boy do I not want to blog about this. Talk about a topic where I know not whereof I speak&#8230; Anita Tedaldi, who first posted an <a href=\"http:\/\/today.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/33089578\/ns\/today-parenting_and_family\">essay about her experiences<\/a> as the adoptive mother of baby &#8220;D&#8221; in the <i>New York Times<\/i>&#8216; <a href=\"http:\/\/parenting.blogs.nytimes.com\/\">Motherlode<\/a> blog, went on the <i>Today Show<\/i> to further elucidate what made her decide to give up the child she&#8217;d adopted after 18 months of trying but failing to bond with the boy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Uncomfy as I feel opening such a squirmy can of worms when I&#8217;m not a mom myself, I do think parenting ethics ought to be covered by this blog, so I&#8217;m going to throw the story out there to you all.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Watch the <i>Today Show<\/i> clip and then weigh in&#8230;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"339\" width=\"425\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/22425001\/vp\/33116911#33116911\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;\">Visit msnbc.com for <a style=\"text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\">Breaking News<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032507\" style=\"text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;\">World News<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032072\" style=\"text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;\">News about the Economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b><i>Would you make the same choice?<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<div><b><i><br \/><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<div>Personally, while I had a very strong reaction when I first read this essay a few weeks back in the <a href=\"http:\/\/parenting.blogs.nytimes.com\/\">Motherlode<\/a> blog, my own feeling was more of a legal outrage than a lack of sympathy for her predicament. Ms. Tedaldi signed a contract. She shouldn&#8217;t have done so if she couldn&#8217;t hold up her end of the bargain. Biological moms don&#8217;t get to hand back their unsatisfactory children; why should adoptive ones?&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Then again, we make &#8220;forever&#8221; vows about marriage too, and so many of us divorce&#8230; but in that case, one of the parties isn&#8217;t a helpless minor we&#8217;ve agreed to parent.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;m glad she did due diligence finding &#8220;D&#8221; a new family, but who is to say they&#8217;ll be able to bond with him any better?&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>My bottom line: I&#8217;m feeling judgmental about what Anita Tedaldi chose to do; mostly because I don&#8217;t think she was emotionally prepared to handle the worst case scenario of an adoption, no matter what counseling she had leading up to it. (I also can&#8217;t help wondering if a book deal is in the offing, considering that the essay was so controversial for her in the <i>NY Times<\/i> a few weeks ago, and now she is following it up with a TV appearance&#8230;. I smell a publicity stunt somewhere in here, and that doesn&#8217;t do much to arouse my sympathies.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But in the end, while I judge her, I don&#8217;t judge her to the point where I want to throw stones and\/or burn her at the stake. I&#8217;m sure the decision wasn&#8217;t arrived at lightly, and I&#8217;m grieved for the pain suffered all around.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><i><b>What&#8217;s your take?<\/b><\/i><\/div>\n<div><b><i><br \/><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<div><b><i><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; \"><strong>Subscribe to receive updates from Everyday Ethics or&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EverydayEthics\" style=\"text-decoration: underline; \">follow us on&nbsp;Twitter<\/a>!<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, boy do I not want to blog about this. Talk about a topic where I know not whereof I speak&#8230; Anita Tedaldi, who first posted an essay about her experiences as the adoptive mother of baby &#8220;D&#8221; in the New York Times&#8216; Motherlode blog, went on the Today Show to further elucidate what made&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-parenting-responsibility"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Child Adopted Then Returned: Did Anita Tedaldi Do The Right Thing? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/10\/child-adopted-then-returned-did-anita-tedaldi-do-the-right-thing.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Child Adopted Then Returned: Did Anita Tedaldi Do The Right Thing? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Oh, boy do I not want to blog about this. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}