The single adoptive mum
February 27, 2010
The single adoptive mum
Seven years ago, desperate for a baby, Jane Clarke went to India
Jane Clarke with her adopted daughter Maya
Penny Wark
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There is a dense blanket of snow outside and Maya, who is 7 and minus several front teeth, has just arrived in a grand English country hotel. She takes off her boots. “Hindus don’t wear shoes,” she points out.
“She’s going through a Hindu phase at the moment,” says her mum, Jane Clarke. Now Maya is unpacking her animals: Poppy the unicorn with the well-thumbed fur that denotes a favourite; Snowy the horse; three dalmatians; and Birdie, made by Maya and related to a parrot. Possibly. She arranges them on the windowsill, drains a glass of apple juice and asks if I’d like to see her scrapbook of India. “That’s when we saw people going to the river to get water, that’s in Calcutta . . .”
Seven years ago, aged 36, single, unable to have children and desperate to become a mother, Clarke travelled to India in the hope of finding a child to adopt. Or, more to the point, to love. Indian orphanages were not impressed and it was only as she was about to give up and go home that, in a grim cot in an orphanage in Pune, central India, she found a malnourished and sickly baby named Maya. Instantly Clarke knew that Maya was her daughter, which may sound odd, but she insists that the moment was that visceral.
For the next six months she fought like a tigress to get through the red tape that would allow her to take Maya home. She succeeded.
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Fast-forward to 2010 and you might expect that the next stage of this improbable tale is a smug-fest in which besotted mummy indulges spoilt princess. Not a bit of it; that would be to underestimate the redoubtable Clarke. Wearing a cloche hat on top of her tiny frame, she may look like a serene pixie, but this woman is a force. As one of Britain’s premier nutritionists, she ministers to sports stars and celebrities, and labours over food books. As Maya’s mum, she adores her daughter but also sets boundaries, encourages her to have warm and loving relationships with other people, and allows her to be independent. Maya is now tall and strong, confident and friendly, unassuming and relaxed.
Excuse me, I’m welling up. It took seven minutes of Clarke talking before we were both in tears. That’s what this story does to you. I suppose the obvious question is how Clarke has pulled off this mothering feat, and she has two answers. The first is that she has followed the parenting template that she learnt from her own parents, teachers from Nottingham. “If you didn’t want to eat what was on your plate, you didn’t have any supper. If you didn’t want to go on a walk, we’d still do it.” The second is that she has followed her daughter’s lead and that is why, when Maya was 6, she took her back to India.
“The first question she asked was why she didn’t have a father. I’d been planning for these questions, slightly fearing them because I knew how to answer them in theory, but then the moment comes. I said, ‘Well, your father was unable to look after you because your mother died when you were little. He wanted you to find a gorgeous family because he loved you.’
“India was a fairytale element of her life, the story of how I found her. Then she started asking why she wasn’t the same skin colour as me. She was 6 and I felt that it was the right time for her to go back and see this place that we’d talked about, to show her that dark skins are beautiful and normal, and for her to see some elements of reality.”
Clarke did it gently, starting in Kerala, “soft India”, as she calls it. There at the airport they were met by Navin Poddar, the Indian businessman who helped Clarke to adopt Maya and who visited her in the orphanage during the interminable six months that Clarke was in England waiting to secure Maya’s adoption. He held Maya, told her that her mum loved her, became Baba to her and has spoken to her on the phone every month since.
“I didn’t know how she’d react because he’d been a voice and a picture to her for so long. She had been travelling for 18 hours, we got off the plane, she just ran up to Navin, put her arms round him, and they walked off hand in hand. That was me gone.”
Me, too.
“For him to have that affirmation that he was still Baba to her was gorgeous, and for her to feel as comfortable as she did with him showed me that India is a happy place to her, not somewhere that’s been a difficult part of her past, just somewhere that is part of a jigsaw.”
Next came Calcutta. There they stayed with another friend and were generously absorbed into his family. “If I can build up an element of India that is about being part of a family, being part of people who adore her there as much as I adore her here, it will enable her to grow up being loved from both sides,” Clarke explains. “She has a sense of belonging in India, points of reference, just as I’ve made a real effort for her to have other key relationships in England — with Martin [Clarke’s partner of two years; she calls him her ‘paramour’], my parents, my brother, my sister. They adore her and she can see that within friendships, just because you’re not genetically linked doesn’t make any difference.”
In India, of necessity, some of the reference points are uncomfortable. “Being hurled around in the back of this car in Calcutta, across buses, cows, people, that was an affront of noise,” Clarke says. “As soon as the car stopped it was covered with faces, children, women begging. For Maya it was upsetting becaue this was raw India, but it was important for her to see that. Of course, through that we have conversations about ‘why aren’t you giving to these children with one arm?’
“That layer of the tapestry was tough for Maya. As soon as you got out of the car and tried to go to a market or temple you were mobbed because people were desperate, plus they found it fascinating that Martin and I were both white with this beautiful Indian girl. They would shout and I could see Maya retreating in to her shell because she didn’t really know what was going on.”
We have met at Hambleton Hall in Rutland, a house of Agatha Christie proportions that looks out over a sepia landscape lit by bright sunshine. Clarke and Maya live a few miles away in a village where the meat is delivered by a butcher in a white coat and Clarke is able to let her daughter roam with a freedom reminiscent of the Famous Five. A cheeky woodpecker lives in their garden because he knows that Maya is a nature lover, she tells me, and her tales of hedgehogs and bunnies and cycling to school behind her mum sounds like a 1950s idyll. Any racism? Not a whisper, Clarke replies. No princesses, competitive mummies or £50 party bags either; that’s why she left London.
It is a long way from the dark days 18 years ago when, after years of painful endometriosis, Clarke had a hysterectomy and grieved for the children she would never have. If she is a confident mother now, it is because she waited until she was mature enough to grasp the enormity of what she was doing, she believes, and she makes no distinction between herself and any other mother.
“Sometimes I ran from orphanages because I found it so overwhelming, travelling, trying to get an orphanage to acknowledge my desire to be a mum. When you’ve continually had the door shut in your face you’re bruised, battered, my protective shells came up. At that point I didn’t think I had it within me to be a mum.
“Then I met Maya. She was in this awful orphanage in the smart dress to try to make the child look beautiful. You don’t need to make a child look beautiful. I ripped her clothes off, just found her little body underneath. I fell in love with Maya, she was my daughter.”
SINGLE ADOPTIONS
233 Brits apply for foreign adoption every year
8 per cent of adoptions are by single parents.
There were 5,065 children adopted in England and Wales in 2008, a 17 per cent increase on the previous decade.
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Godfrey Grosstackle wrote:
It doesn't matter what way you dress it up Kate, it's still about 'ownership' and not a 'salaried job' as you put it yourself. From what I can see, you think it's fine to leave British children in 'care homes' to miss out on a parenting environment simply because they are likely to be too much trouble for a trendy professional single mother who has a career but wants a child too. In that case it's much easier to get yourself a shiny new baby from the third world that you can 'own' and not be bothered with all those behavioural issues the older children get.
"all kids deserve parents" you say, but not apparently, if they are going to be disruptive and interfere with ones social life they don't
A more shallow attitude is hard to imagine. (BTW I am a parent of two girls so you didn't get that right either.)
February 28, 2010 5:42 AM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Kate L wrote:
A further note on short term infant fosterers. The point of parenting is to love and equip your child through growing up, until they can spread their wings into independent life. Short-term fostering is a whole other role, and in no way comparable. They care for tiny babies, knowing that they will be taken away, adopted by someone else, and won't even remember their fosterer. To sneer that people doing a vital, unsung, yet heartbreaking job, protecting babies from extra emotional harm, are doing something anyone could is actually pretty unappreciative. I know I couldn't; the sense of loss many describe when placed babies move on to their forever families is painful.
You aren't a parent, Godfrey, are you.
February 27, 2010 8:44 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Kate L wrote:
An older child in the care system is almost always going to need a lot more skilled and intensive support and care than a baby, because attachment difficulties are environment-based. You're right that a 6 month old will probably have some emotional problems when adopted as well, but to compare a baby in a new home with a 12 year old in that situation is ridiculous. The younger the child is, the greater the opportunity of overcoming any existing harm, and avoiding attachment problems.
You cannot compare fostering with adoption, because a fosterer is not a parent. Adoption is better for a child because it is secure, and the adopter unpaid so the child doesn't feel like a salaried job. You are also ignoring the fact that the same difficulties with caring for that child remain, whether you foster or adopt. If you believe that anyone would be able to handle faeces smeared on walls, belongings smashed, threats made, and no apparent affection or attachment shown, while remaining consistent, firm and loving, then by all means, continue to believe that. The reality is that not everyone has what it takes to foster OR adopt a troubled older child, yet could be an excellent parent to an adopted younger one (which in itself carries issues having a birth child probably will not.) This is a complex issue, and facile soundbites don't scratch the surface.
I happen to think that Jolie's adoptions are reprehensible. She isn't trying to ensure that each new child is the youngest, or even spacing the arrivals long enough to allow them the time they need to feel stable. She's also changing their names when, in one case, the child enough was old enough to care, which is hardly fair when they were losing everything they had ever known. I am not saying that every adoption is a good idea. There are issues with cultural/racial identity for the child, as much as anything else, in foreign adoption. I am saying that ANY successful adoption is a gift. All kids deserve parents.
February 27, 2010 8:34 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Godfrey Grosstackle wrote:
So, what was wrong with fostering a British baby.? The prospect of ownership no doubt. Much nicer when you can say its yours than simply fostering someone else's. Adopting a baby that is discovered 'in a grim cot in an orphanage that is 'malnourished and sickly' is hardly a wise choice is it.? What if the child has mental health issues, or diseases that require a lifetime of care and expense?. No one in some far off orphanage is going to know (or care).
Adopting a sickly baby from a poor remote third world orphanage is as risky as taking on a child from a childrens home in the UK. But the difference is you don't 'own' the UK child, you just foster it.. That's what this is really all about, ownership, and why celebrities adopt these poor little fashion accessories from far off countries. Because they have the money, and they can...
February 27, 2010 7:00 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Kate L wrote:
Godfrey, if you had troubled to read my comment, you would see that these "damaged goods" (your phrase for the victims of some dreadful suffering, not mine) are at risk of MORE harm if adopted by someone who then finds they can't cope, and the placement breaks down. This already happens far more often than anyone would like. I can assure you that it is very much in their interests that prospective adopters recognise their own limitations, and don't adopt a child whose issues need more than the adopter can give. Your sentimentality is well-meant, and I applaud your concern for the children in question, but it is misplaced. You do not help an older child by adopting them without having the emotional resources to cope.
Frank, newborns and babies are not in childrens homes now. They are fostered. I don't know how old yours are, but babies are always cared for in a home setting - it's the preferred setting for all children, if at all feasible in the circumstances, or for that child. There is also a gulf between a modern children's home and an orphanage, thank God. They aren't a family, and they can't offer the security and love a decent family can, but real efforts are made to prevent them being too institutional, and they aren't housing hundreds, either.
Looked-after children deserve families, absolutely, but they deserve a family who won't be forced to return them to the care system because they genuinely can't cope.
February 27, 2010 6:03 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Godfrey Grosstackle wrote:
Kate L wrote:
Godfrey, we don't have orphanages in this country any more, and there are so few babies available for adoption that young married couples, healthy non-smokers, have next to no chance of adopting one. An older single woman would not be considered for a moment.
Yes of course Kate, and who on earth would want to bother with the 'damaged goods' you claim that are all that's available in the UK. Much nicer (and more fashionable)to have something a little different, like Ms Jolie and Madonna.. How very shallow.
February 27, 2010 4:05 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Frank Taylor wrote:
Yes we do Kate, only we now call them Children's homes, I have adopted four children in the UK, all under 6 months old when they were placed in our family.
February 27, 2010 2:44 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Kate L wrote:
Godfrey, we don't have orphanages in this country any more, and there are so few babies available for adoption that young married couples, healthy non-smokers, have next to no chance of adopting one. An older single woman would not be considered for a moment.
There are indeed many older children who need adopting, but they are generally very scarred by their experiences. Almost half of the older-child adoptions break down even after careful matching with adoptors, and that harms them even more than remaining in foster care. There is nothing wrong with someone accepting that they are not able to meet that challenge before risking causing that damage - it takes a special person or family to do it successfully.
This baby needed a mother and this mother needed a baby. Does it matter, where they are from?
February 27, 2010 12:23 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Godfrey Grosstackle wrote:
and what of all the children in UK orphanages..?
weren't they good enough..?
February 27, 2010 6:28 AM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Cate Steele wrote:
Beautiful.
February 27, 2010 5:29 AM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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