Mentionable

Adoption class can be very serious and intense at times. There are so many heavy issues to discuss. That’s why at our last class, in addition to the delightful — just delightful! — video about the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome, there was some welcome levity when we had a brief discussion of adopted boys who wear their mother’s underwear.

This was one of the things we had to decide if we could handle in an adopted child on the checklist they gave us. The checklist had quite a range, by the way, everything from a kid with a lisp to a kid with AIDS. When we saw “boy wears mother’s underwear,” we laughed and figured we could handle it. We figured that there’s a zero percent chance of that happening because Steve and I don’t have any bras or lacy camisoles in our drawers, just boring old utilitarian men’s underpants. In class, they asked us who would be OK with a kid who wore lingerie and we raised our hands and made a joke that, hey, if a kid in the foster system is showing a proclivity for this, bring him to our house. We’ll deal with it somehow. (Oh God, our weird sense of humor is going to get us in trouble as we go through this process. I know we’ll make some oddball joke during the homestudy and the caseworker will narrow her eyes and start scribbling on her clipboard. But anyway.)

As funny as this seems to us, in class they told us that the cross-dressing actually made some parents disrupt the adoption before it could be finalized. Of all the horrible conditions we read on that checklist that a child could have (like “starts fires”), it seems odd that women’s underwear was an issue. But I guess that’s why all this stuff was on the checklist: Because a parent had an issue with it before.

I don’t think I’d even care if it were possible that our kid could get his hands on women’s underwear. I’d probably tell him not to wear something lacy at gym class where people could see since I wouldn’t want him to get made fun of, but I don’t think I’d make a huge deal out of it (I imagine it could backfire if you react to this sort of thing wrong). Of course, I could see mothers getting upset about this because all their unmentionables would be disappearing.

Anyway, in class, they said the reason some boys like to wear their mothers’ undies is that they are soft and satiny, like the edge of a blanket, and it’s comforting to a kid with sensory issues. I had never thought of that before. I guess it’s adults who sexualize this stuff and to kids, it may just be fabric.

All that made me think of the idea some people have that if their kids play with toys meant for the other gender, it will affect their development and they’ll grow up gay or whatever. I never played with dolls or My Little Pony or anything as a kid. My brother and I both played with GI Joes and Transformers and the traditional male toys and I married a man and he married a woman. Other straight or gay kids may have played with dolls. It just shows me that sometimes there’s not much correlation with gender stuff and how you grow up. That toy may just be a toy and that bra may just be a bra.