This post was originally published on Leave the lights on.
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There are some television programs that are evil.
Most of these skulk at the fringes of the mainstream, available only on subscription channels, sometimes not available at all except on DVD or the Internet. In general, this blog ignores truly evil shows.
There is one evil show that I cannot ignore. On first impression, its cutely alliterative title, The Baby Borrowers, made me blink and say, "No, they didn't."
They did.
When I first heard about the show a few months ago, I tried to put it out of my mind because it hits very close to my emotional life as an adoptive mother. But I cannot put it out of my mind. As a member of the adoption community, I have a stark perspective on this program, for it recreates the most tragic parts of the complexity that is adoption.
The book The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier helped open eyes on the fact that separation of a child from her mother is always a tragedy. The parts of Verrier's position as it relates to The Baby Borrowers are devastating:
Every child who is separated from his or her biological mother will experience abandonment and loss.... There will be a difference between the environment of security and safety of being with the mother with whom an infant was prenatally bonded, and the anxiety and uncertainty of being with biological strangers (who [the child perceives] may also leave at any time).... The experience was real. That he does not consciously remember the event should not detract us from this truth. It wasn't a concept to be learned or a theory to be understood; it was a traumatizing experience....In her writing, Verrier emphasizes the point that the separation of a baby from her biological mother is a traumatic experience. A later reunion, whether years later (as with some adoptees) or just days or weeks later (as with The Baby Borrowers), does not erase the experience. History cannot be undone, and babies remember with their emotions even if they are not conscious of it.
Jan Hunt of The Natural Child Project uses similarly forceful language in her open letter to NBC producers:
Sudden removal from their parents and placement with strangers for long periods of time is from a baby's point of view no different than a kidnapping.... Babies do not have the mental capacity to anticipate the return of a mother who has gone.... As traumatic as this experience will surely be for these babies and children, the effects will not end when they return home.The choice of adoption is merely the least of several evils in a situation that a mother in crisis finds impossible. The Baby Borrowers performs this evil with two very different purposes: to draw revenue through entertainment, and to promote an agenda born of the culture of death (consider the promotional slogan: "It's not TV, it's birth control.")
Most evil television programs exist on the fringes because our society will not suffer them to enter the mainstream. I am utterly dumbfounded that The Baby Borrowers will air on a major network at prime time.
