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Date Posted: 15:42:09 05/01/02 Wed
Author: Islandgirl
Subject: "William"

Well. . . I didn't watch this past Sunday's XF ep, but since several people seemed to feel a need to inform me about it (not any of you; my brother and a fanfic friend) and since it deals with an issue in which I have
a deep and very personal interest, I'm going to comment on it anyway.
Okay, so Scully decided the only way to protect William was to place him for adoption. I won't argue that placing a child for adoption is almost always a loving, anguishing decision on the part of the birth mother.
I might question whether he might not be safer with a mother who: 1.) is a trained FBI agent and 2.) knows, more or less, who and what is posing a danger to him. . .rather than adoptive parents who, I'm assuming, don't have a clue. I'm also wondering exactly how much anguish CC plans to put this character through in the next three eps and subsequent movies, considering that in the past nine years he's had her lose her sister, her daughter (Emily) and her son. . .not to mention having her best friend/lover/father of her baby being either alien abducted, missing or "dead" for most of the past two years. . .plus having virutally all her *other* friends (i.e. Agent Pendrell and the Lone Gunmen) die. . .and, of course, being alien abducted and nearly dying of cancer herself. IMHO, it has reached soap opera proportions. It's simply over-the-top and not even that interesting any more.
In any case, since my brother is adopted and my best friend is an adoptive mother, I do know quite a bit about this issue. For adoption to remain a loving decision it has to be a PERMANENT decision.
There's been some suggestion that Mulder and Scully may eventually "reclaim" William either in the series finale or in the next movie. If it happens in the series finale. . .okay. I'd still feel REALLY sorry for the adoptive parents, but in most states there is a certain time window (usually about 90 days) during which
the biological parents can change their minds and adoptive parents do know this before a child is placed in their home. And, since William would have only have been away from Scully for a relatively short time, and would have been well-cared for during that period, he probably wouldn't suffer any kind of long-term
psychological damage from the brief stay with his "other parents".
But if Mulder and Scully go get him two or three years from now, what we'd have is this: William spends the first eight months (or however old he's supposed to be now) of his life with Scully as his Mommy, getting to
know her and bonding with her. Then he spends the next two or three years with his adoptive parents, gradually forgetting Scully and bonding with them. Then, when he's about four, two strangers show up and take him away from the only parents he has any memory of, telling him that they are his "real" Mommy and Daddy. This would be a pretty good way to turn him into one of those serial killers Mulder used to profile!
It's also simply not the way adoption works; once an adoption has been finalized, the biological parents have *NO* legal relationship to the child. Even if the adoptive parents die, the child doesn't return to the system to be readopted; he's placed in the care of whomever his adoptive parents have named in their will as guardians, generally their relatives.
So. . .I know what it would have done to me, my brother and my parents if his birth mother had shown up and tried to "reclaim" him after he'd been part of our family for several years. I know what it would do to my best friend if her daughter's birth mother showed up and tried to reclaim her. I can only guess the anguish her three-year-old daughter would go through if some women she'd never seen showed up and tried to tell her that the mother who has been bathing her, reading to her, playing with her and rocking her to sleep every day for the past three years isn't "really" her mother.
Rant's over. I will now take a deep breath and remind myself of what my brother told me: "These are *FICTIONAL* characters. Who's to say that the "reality" CC constructs for them is any more valid than the much happier world, generally speaking, of fanfic?"

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