Selfish vs Selfless - Birthmother Thursdays!

Birthmother Thursdays!

Selfish - (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.

Selfless/Unselfish - concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one's own.

When it became clear that I was going to have to choose between the options of becoming a single mother or becoming a birthmother (giving my child up for adoption), the first question and concern I had was determining what was selfish and what was selfless.  With my own logic I came up with two different ways to think about my situation and how I should respond to it:

1.  Adoption is selfless because it benefits my child and not myself?

2.  Adoption is selfish because I avoid my own responsibility?

Determining what was right and wrong for myself was difficult.  I would of done just about anything to keep my child but I also wanted my child to have all of the advantages this life has to offer.  Because the biological father, or sperm donor, was a big flake (to say the least) I knew that even if I had chosen to keep my child, I was going to get him to sign over his rights.

Age?  Second of all, I thought that my age somehow factored into how I was going to be counseled.  That because I was older when I became pregnant (25) it meant I was better qualified to be a single mother, that it somehow changed how I would approach my decision.  IT DIDN'T!  I would be no better qualified to be a father whether I was 25 or 65...  I may be a Mann, but I'm just not cutout for the role of being a father.

I found an article that had this quote in it:

"Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity."

I believe that with all my heart and it was the answer to all of my prayers.  So simple, direct, and logical.  Not even my own mother would be able to dispute it, and she didn't.

After mulling over those questions I came to the conclusion that in order to feel right about what I decided, I was going to have to take myself out of the equation.  Asking myself "is adoption selfish or selfless?" was not the right question.  Asking myself "what's the right thing to do for my unborn child?"  That was the right question and lead to the conclusion that adoption was the selfless thing to do for my unborn child.  "I" had nothing to do with what was right and what was wrong.  If I had put my own wants of having children ahead of the well-being of my unborn child, that would have been selfish.