More on Real Housewives of D.C. - An Amendment to the First

In my Friday post about the Real Housewives of D.C., I wrote about Stacie's search for her birth mom, and I was kind of annoyed, so I was a little scathing. I was thinking about it today when I was looking for information about the Salahis, and I thought I would do a quick expansion of what I was thinking.

This is what I wrote:

"She's selfish," say Stacie's friends, and Stacie says that it would "rock" her birth mother's world if people knew she had a black child. But Stacie has a right to know, dammit. Everyone cries about the selfishness of this woman who didn't get an abortion some time in the 1960s and just wants not to have her husband get mad at her.

That sounds really harsh.

I still mean that for whatever reason, Stacie's birth mom carried a baby she knew she couldn't keep to term and gave her to an obviously amazing family - Stacie received an expensive education and seems to have started life with all the possible gifts of family support, culture and strong priorities.

And I do understand Stacie's desire to meet both her birth mother and birth father.

However, I have to say that my respect for Stacie's feelings does not equate to agreement with her stance. It no doubt feels to Stacie that her mother is being selfish in not telling her family about Stacie and not revealing Stacie's father's name.

That said, Stacie's mother already has made clear what she was willing to do for her daughter. What she was willing to do was carry her to term and give her to another family.

There were issues that caused this woman to give up the child: perhaps issues with race, with her relationship with the father, with the times, and with her own future. They are perhaps issues that might not matter if the pregnancy happened today - people had different value systems back thirty or forty years ago.

However, the issues might matter; who is to say whether this was a case of forbidden love or something different altogether? We aren't standing in that woman's shoes.

Stacie found her and the woman was willing to talk to her. I don't really know whether Stacie likes this woman at all; it sounds as if she is only reluctantly keeping her secret. Obviously, the woman was curious about the daughter she gave up.

However, she has repeatedly told Stacie that she doesn't want to reveal the name of Stacie's birth father. Perhaps she is concerned that he will step in and wreak havoc in her own life. Perhaps she is worried that her husband will find out. Perhaps she is worried about the life of the birth father? Perhaps there is another story that no one knows about?

I just think to label someone as "selfish" for keeping her part of a bargain made all those years ago and expecting other people to also keep that bargain is a bit unfair. She made a deal that worked for the conditions of her life and for Stacie's life many years ago, and to expect her now, in her old age, to uncover this to other people whose lives would also be damaged seems unfeeling in itself.

Stacie "wants," but she has no right to "expect." It would be a wonderful thing if her birth mother felt comfortable opening her life to Stacie and giving Stacie her full history. She's not required to do so, though - and berating her (albeit as an unknown entity) on television seems mean and unfeeling - despite the fact that Stacie herself said that it would be a "scandal" for her mother.