‘I condemn all violence in the education of tender minds which are being trained for honour and freedom. In rigour and constraint there is always something servile, and I hold that you will never achieve by force what you cannot achieve by reason, intelligence and skill.’

Michel de Montaigne. ‘On the affection of fathers for their children’. c1580-1590

In the back of the car S- was absorbed in pulling off her socks and shoes and studying her feet. ‘Cough cough,’ she said, ruminatively.

A little later she perked up a bit. ‘Daddy?’

‘Yes, S-’.

‘-eay.’

It took me a little while to get it but eventually I cottoned on.

‘Ready,’ she’d say.

‘Steady,’ I’d add.

And ‘Go!’ she’d say.

And then I’d have to cough, which made her chuckle.

And so we went on, down the motorway, for about an hour.

• The child will know the birth parents care
• There will be a direct link for information if something important happens in the birth family or if there’s a need to know more about, for example, appropriate medical history
• The child will have no illusions about their birth parents
• The child will know that adoption and their birth parents are not taboo subjects and that their origins are accepted, at least by their adoptive parents

[UPDATE 14.07.08] After meeting X- and Y-, G- and I have decided not to go ahead with plans for direct contact between S- and her birth parents as it would be in nobody’s interests, least of all S-’s.

This was partly our own decision but also based on advice from social workers. X- and Y- have just not accepted the fact of S-’s adoption, and it’s unlikely that they ever will. We feel terrible for them as they feel – with perhaps some justification – that they’ve been badly treated by social services, but we really can’t afford to get involved with their problems: it’s S- we’ve got to think about now.

Having said all that, we’re glad to have met the people who brought S- into the world. Now we can at least tell S- a little bit about them and try to give her a clearer idea of why they couldn’t look after her, despite the fact that they loved her with all their hearts.

We’ve promised to write to X- and Y- a letter saying how pleased we were to meet them, and we have also committed to writing to them once a year with news [and, possibly, photos] of S [so called indirect contact]. Will we hear back from them? Who knows? At the moment that hardly seems the point.

As so many people have said, the theory of direct contact is all well and good but in practice things always seem so much more complex and difficult.

Was it my imagination or could I see the question in the girls’ parents’ eyes? Were they looking at S- and comparing her big blue eyes and light features with my own green eyes and G-’s brown hair?

To be different in some way is to feel exposed, at least sometimes. It’s how you deal with it that’s important. When S- evaded the excited 5-year-old’s grip and hightailed it for the open front door, I was up and out of my seat and legging it after her as quick as any biological dad.

I am her dad, and G- is her mother. This may sound obvious but sometimes obvious facts need repeating.

An article in a recent issue of Eve magazine explained how a mum by adoption did not and could not love her child for a year after bringing her home. It’s a decent, honest article – though it rather skips over the difficulties of the adoption process and the emotional problems that can occur soon after you adopt a child. I guess it was commissioned to tie in with the recent mini-controversy over claims that adoptive and biological parents love their children differently.

Reading between the lines of the article it seems to me that the woman in question did love her new child, but she couldn’t feel the bond. The trauma of IVF and the loss of fertility instill a certain numbness – at least, that’s my perspective. And there’s a natural tendency to protect yourself against being hurt.

It takes some time for an attachment to become secure. It took the best part of a year before S- was completely secure with G- and I, and therefore I guess G- and I with S-. During that time some things that social workers suggested might take some getting used to happened, and some didn’t. For a while I found myself worrying away at the feeling that S-’s smell was wierd, among other slightly incongruent .. not exactly events but ‘happenings’.

This doesn’t mean that we didn’t love S-. We loved her more than anything – we still love her more than anything. It’s just that the bond between us was formed slightly differently than the attachment that usually occurs between biological parents and their children.

Whatever that means. All I can say is we have never tried to protect ourselves from loving S-.

So anyway – getting back to the here and now – X- and Y- are on the scene again and seem to have a degree of willingness to engage with us. We’ve arranged to meet with them in early July. G- and I are both apprehensive about this – of course we are. But we’re not doing it for ourselves. (We’re certainly not doing it for X- and Y-.) We doing it for S-: in the long term so that we can tell her a little about the man and woman who conceived her, and in the short term so we can decide whether we think S- should meet them.

That’s the most important thing. Forget the fact that the social workers are telling us that we should meet with X- and Y-. Forget the fact that S-’s adoption order suggests that we should consider contact with X- and Y-. We need to look X- and Y- in the eye and think about it and then do what’s best for S-.

Because that’s what parents do.

This last sentence explains I think why I’m happy that S-’s birth parents, X- and Y-, have recently contacted social services and seem to be keen to start making contact with us, with an eventual view to seeing S- in the flesh.

There is a huge part of me that wants to hold on to her and not let her go, not chance the fact that she would choose them over G- and I, not allow X- and Y- to come anywhere near us.

But love is not a closing off. It is an opening out. S-’s happiness is more important than anything, and she has to have the chance of some relationship with the people who brought her into the world.

And I guess I’d like to know that X- and Y- have accepted the situation, too.

Whether anything will come of this, and whether the theories about contact making life better for kids in adoptive families are accurate, only time will tell. Watch this space.

The steward didn’t have any Hula Hoops [or oolas, as S- calls them], but he did have some Mini-Cheddars. Within seconds S- was sitting down and munching away happily.

The boy sitting in front of us with the nice Welsh parents was a bit older than S-, and almost as excited. His attention span was slightly greater: he was diverted for a little longer with the colouring books, the toy animals and very flash DVD player. Nevertheless he’d keep popping his head over the back of the seat every few minutes to see what S- was up to.

On one occasion when he looked over S- saw him, smiled and in that sweet way she has offered him an ‘oola’. He was a bit shy to begin with but some gentle encouragement from his mother soon sorted him out.

As we were chatting with mum, dad called the steward back – the trolley had gone a little further down the aisle – and got him to bring the boy his own packet of Mini-Cheddars. And of course the boy was then encouraged to offer one to S-. Which, to be honest, I thought was a bit pathetic!

My problem was that the boy’s father just couldn’t let things be. His son wasn’t permitted just to accept a small offering and in the process engage with somebody else. He had to own the snacks himself, and he had to achieve equality in the conversation by offering something in return. So dad, who I’m sure was operating through the best of motives [paternal pride and also through what I'm going to call the jealousy of self-reliance], managed not only to turn a friendly encounter into a commercial transaction but also to give his son the lesson that whatever he wanted can be obtained with a snap of the fingers and a flash of the wallet.

One of the hardest lessons in life, I think, is to learn how to take gracefully, precisely because it involves learning to let go of your pride. Giving is easy by comparison.

To be brutally honest with myself, I guess these opinions about the family had already been formed by the sight of the DVD player. The boy was only two-and-a-half, for crying out loud! The event of the Mini-Cheddars – half of which were now on the floor, roughly a quarter around or in S-’s mouth, and the rest in her tummy – actually confirmed the lurking suspicion in my mind.

So, what do you think? Do I have a point, or am I just a miserable old so-and-so?

On our previous trip abroad, in Sicily, G- and I had spent time discussing Happiness, the book by Richard Layard which I believe I’ve mentioned before on this blog.

Happiness is the coming thing – there is a whole new science developing, apparently. It’s key principles seem rational enough and for a while I was something of a convert. However, in hindsight, there was always something nagging away at me about it.

On our most recent family holiday abroad, in Menorca, I came to the conclusion that happiness is too much of an outcome. You can’t guarantee outcomes in human reality: we’re too instinctive, too passionate, too driven by our emotions. Happiness simply can’t be obtained by everybody. There are always winners and losers, and like its guiding principle or philosophy, utilitarianism, happiness lies open to the tyranny of the majority.

Having said that, Layard does spend quite some time discussing the importance of morality to happiness. Morality is not something we as a society are overly familiar or particularly comfortable with. Perhaps it’s time we lost our inhibitions about the subject.

In Menorca I spent some time pondering the concept of eudaimonia. It’s a classical Greek word, which can be crudely translated as the happiness that results from attempting to live a virtuous life.

Virtue was a much more complex subject for the Greeks than it seems to be for us, and it had a great deal of relevance to all areas of human learning and action.

Actually, the best translation of the word eudaimonia I’ve come across is: ‘human flourishing’. What a wonderful description of a process [rather than a goal] that we could and perhaps should strive toward. You can imagine a society that truly encouraged its citizens to flourish in pursuing virtuous endeavours as being rather happier than the one we have now.

Or, on a smaller scale [and thinking just as a parent], what better ambition for your child or children?

You may think I’m being hopelessly idealistic. Well, I did say I was on holiday!

A few years ago, when we were slightly younger and definitely more energetic, we’d have found Menorca a bit tame. I’m not saying we’d rather have spent our time queuing for nightclubs in Ibiza, but we’d have had a few later, some [moderately] wilder nights – and probably would have tried to take in a bit of culture, too.

We made a point of offsetting our flights to Menorca. Yes, I know all the arguments against it: the ducking of responsibility, the fact that it’s a scam, and so on. And I know that a few years ago I would have been on your case had you talked to me about offsetting.

But a life of grand gestures can be a pretty empty one. While we are doing our best to reduce our carbon emissions to the 3 tonnes per person that will save the world, there are times where we need some fun.

We bought our credits from eforests. I like this site because it seems low on the bullshit factor. You can see exactly what your credits are going to get you, and it seems to provide local benefits.

It has other advantages. I gifted my Mum and Dad 5 wild pear trees, which have now been planted near to Dad’s birthplace in Devon – and my parents were chuffed to bits. There’s also a carbon calculator that’s pretty simple to use and doesn’t seem to take ages to chew it’s way through the figures.

But even here, even with the best will in the world, it’s not entirely clear that this is the right thing to do. Is the calculation eforests came up with [£15, or 3 trees] the best, most accurate one, or will using another [eg those provided by the airline companies themselves] provide more bang for your buck.

You just have to take it on trust, I guess. And that can seem difficult when you read stories such as the headline article in The Guardian today.

She’s so tiny and cute, and stubborn – but I’m not actually thinking about that. I’m actually thinking about what H-, one of our friends, said recently in a similar situation: ‘Of course, the idea of a path only comes a lot later.’

I hadn’t seen it in that way before, but now it seems blindingly obvious. S- doesn’t know that we’re following a path. She doesn’t understand, and nor does she care, that we’ve actually decided to go in this direction.

The world these days has reference points that she recognises: the ‘svings’, the moooos, the car, and so on. But beyond that she doesn’t yet think in straight lines – she’s an explorer, not a traveller – and it’s simply puzzling to be asked, with increasing sharpness, to ‘hurry up’ or ‘come this way’. [Not to mention amusing to run off in the other direction and to have daddy come chasing after her!] She needs to be guided, not force-marched.

I crouch and hide behind the pushchair. ‘Boo,’ I say, reappearing from the other side. ‘Boo,’ I say again, and then I wait a minute. Then I say, ”Hello S-’, and I wave. Her face breaks into a big, joyous smile, and she lurches off her heels and comes tumbling towards me.

I was at the computer, typing. I had nearly finished what I was doing. Soooo nearly.

The thing was, I knew that with another 5 minutes I could get what I was doing completed and then go into S- and not have to think about the essay again …

It’s amazing how 5 minutes can turn into 20 right under your nose!

When I started writing this blog it was suposed to be just a diary of my time, and I was very concerned that it didn’t interfere with family life or my burgeoning relationship with my daughter.

Later, when friends and other people started commenting on the blog I began to think of it differently.

‘It’s for S-,’ I’d say. And in a way that’s true. I hope that when she’s older she does have the opportunity to read it and understand a little of what this unprecedented time was like.

But in a sense it was an evasion, too. I may have been writing for her, but the writing was beginning to take up more and more not only of my time but also of my mental energy. I was getting shorter and more impatient with S-, regretting my reaction, apologising and then starting to think about how I could include the whole exchange in the blog.

The so-called ‘diary’ was taking over our time together.

I’ve written before about the difficulty of remaining selfless when you are a stay-at-home dad [or mum] with a toddler. I had planned to say more. But I think this sums it up.