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The Other Mother A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter de Nancy Abrams | ||||
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The lesbian baby boom of the 1980s has, unfortunately, spawned child custody battles in the '90s, as partners have uncoupled and biological mothers have refused to cede custody to non-biological mothers. Abrams became one such "other mother" when she and her partner, Norma, broke up. Although Abrams contends that she continued to support their three-year-old daughter, Amelia, over the next year and a half, Norma retained custody and eventually denied Abrams access to the child. In a narrative that's part memoir and part reportage based on interviews with other lesbian mothers undergoing custody battles, Abrams tells a harrowing tale of love, loss and reclamation. After reluctantly accepting the role of co-parent when the two women were in their early 20s and had been together for only a year, she grew to revel in the position, only to suffer the pain of losing Amelia. Abrams launched a legal fight to get her back and, just as she had given up all hope of being reunited with her daughter, made contact again, nearly five years after losing her. According to Abrams, Norma had suffered powerful depressions and suicidal feelings before they got together, which she portrays as influencing Norma's decision to bar Abrams from Amelia's life. Equally irrationally, according to Abrams, Norma called five years later to apologize. The downside of lesbian and gay parenting has gotten little play Abrams's bookAunevenly written though it isAprovides one woman's perspective on what can happen when the law lags behind social change. (Sept.) A foreword addressed to the daughter Abrams has not seen since June_ 1993 prefaces the painful story behind why she can no longer be a mother to the child. In the beginning, when she met and fell in love with Norma, and during their early months together, it was easy to dismiss Norma's shifting moods and desire to have a baby. After a year, Nancy deferred, against her misgivings, to Norma's insistence that they remain a couple and began to assist in preparing for a baby, even comparing the firing power of a syringe and a turkey baster for artificial insemination purposes. The pair shopped for baby things and attended childbirth classes, but their union foundered. They separated when their daughter was a toddler. Eventually the adults' differences multiply, and Abrams, judged by the courts "a biological stranger" to four-and-a-half-year-old Amelia, loses custody of her in a wrenchingly told, heartfelt tale examining the societal and legal implications of gay lesbian parenting. Whitney Scott | ||||
