Babyworld

By Vanessa Nolan

Welcome to Babyworld. The fun, easy way to start or grow your family, ease your infertility pain, and forget about your worries and insecurities for a while. At the start of the game, you’ll be provided with one or two children to make your own. If you want to splash the cash, you can import additional infants, available in a range of ages and colors at different price points. Or why not go for our premium product endorsed by celebrities—the rainbow family?

Will you take your chances with “potluck”? Your potluck children will be selected by the algorithm, written by our in-house team of experienced social workers. There’s no guarantee that they will pass as your natural children, and they may have additional needs of their own you are unprepared for. Or will you take time to follow the detour and visit the Build-A-Child workshop? There you will get to choose from a variety of physical, intellectual, and temperamental attributes. Your Build-A-Child will then be matched as closely as possible with a child from the pool of those available. Be aware, though, that it may not be possible to find you a match. Plan your strategy. Wait for a product that more closely meets your needs or take the first available child.

In Level 1, you have up to 18 years to play with your new family. If, during that time, you collect enough points you’ll earn bonus years of gratitude and servitude. Points are earned for giving them a “good home” and for loving them so much because you “chose” them. No need to tell them what kind of “choice” it really was; that before you “chose” them you tried for years and failed to have children. This is because you control the release of information and can use this power to your advantage.

If your children do suspect they were not your first choice, you can lie because they are dependent on you and will believe what you tell them. You can even play with their minds and suggest that they “chose” you. Or you can tell them it was “God’s will” which indicates strong game play and all but guarantees compliance and acceptance.

In Babyworld, your children will love you back, but be wary of this love. It can be from fear of losing you, rather than a child’s natural love for their parents. Because they have been torn from their mothers, they will not know that love isn’t supposed to hurt. Once you understand this, you can use it to your advantage in one of two ways. You can make them more dependent on you by telling them how special they are and letting them remain unnaturally attached into adolescence and adulthood (this works particularly well with boys). Or you can treat them badly so they never develop any self-esteem and (bonus!) don’t believe they deserve to have information about themselves.

Your first task is to name—or rather, rename your children. You can give them your surname and even a name that helps them feel part of your family so they will not show interest in their origins. If you wish, you may completely erase their identity by giving them an anglicized name if they are not from an Anglo family. This is known as the “color blind” play. An alternative strategy that’s popular these days if you have taken children from another culture is to allow them to stay connected by learning about the language and culture together. This can be superficial—who doesn’t like dumplings at Chinese New Year?—and makes you look progressive and open-minded.

Some players go all in and choose a high-risk strategy: not telling the children you are playing Babyworld. This is likely to fail sooner or later, and is not recommended, but it is within the rules of the game to do this if you so wish. Remember, the release of information is under your control.

If, during the course of the game, your children present challenging behavior, you have several options. First is the “warrior parent” card. You can go to battle with Social Services and schools in order to obtain the additional resources you need. This will remind you and those around you that both you and your child are different and special. You can also play the “victim” card which has two benefits: it allows you to remain blameless and it draws attention to the sacrifices you are making. All of these strategies keep the attention on you. If you have played these cards and are still not winning, you can play the “rehoming” death card which will take you out of the game but keep you alive. As a reward for taking part, you will be allowed to take the “victim” card with you to use outside the game. So even if you lose, you win!

Indeed, the cards are stacked in your favor. You can earn social capital from having “saved” a child and sympathy for having to deal with their behavior. If your child “thrives” and “succeeds,” then it is down to your parenting; if they “fail,” then blame can be laid at the feet of birth parents, who at this stage are not even permitted to join the game unless you invite them to. You can even invent stories about the birth parents, if you need to make yourselves look better.

Sometimes the game throws you a curveball and you discover you were fertile after all. This is hard because you have entered Babyworld and now you will get to experience what those outside Babyworld already know: that nature means something. All we can say is—good luck.

If you make it to the time your children turn 18, congratulations! You will move up to the next, more challenging level. The aim in Level 2 is to live to old age with your relationships to your children intact, so they will feel obliged to look after you when you need it. You may even want to play for grandchildren!

The obstacles in Level 2 are harder to overcome. As adults, your children may start to think for themselves and may want to know more about their origins. This is a danger point because they may discover that Babyworld is only a game. They can move away from your orbit and control and may meet other people who came from Babyworld and compare their experiences. They may stop blaming themselves for any problems they have and notice that Babyworld has given them a set of lifelong issues to tackle.

If you do have grandchildren, both the stakes and the danger level are raised. More so than for themselves, your children will want the best for their children. They may be upset that their children lack family medical history, do not know their genetic origins, or are divorced from their own culture. They may be seeing a genetic relative for the first time when they have their first child and feel the difference between that and the relationships they had with you. In other words, they are half out of Babyworld already. You may need to use different tactics to maintain their loyalty. Showing that you are, or would be, hurt by them meeting their biological family is one way to play it. The more guilt you can generate, the more you will be able to get them to neglect their own needs and service yours. The risk in this strategy is that the conflicts within them will eventually lead to a crisis. In dealing with the emotional problems they have, the truth may be revealed.

They may eventually awaken from the game, emerge from the fog, understand they were made to play the game without choosing, and know that they were both game piece and reward in this fantasy. They may even try to get play stopped altogether. Which would spoil everyone’s fun, wouldn’t it?

Vanessa Nolan is a UK-born adoptee and a founding member of Adult Adoptee Movement. She edits and publishes blogs for the AAM website. You can follow her on Twitter at @essix_girl.