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Madonna’s Kid Collecting
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Dr. Patricia A. Farrell
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ: Madonna has recently added to her growing single-mom family with the successful adoption of a little girl named Merci from Malawi, Africa. The child, of humble origins, as they say, was to be flown by private jet from Africa to her new home in New York City. Can you say culture shock?
Rumor had it that the desire for the Material Mom for yet more adoptions was one of the reasons for her marital difficulties with ex-husband Guy Ritchie. He, of course, had been quoted, correctly or not, as having said some pretty nasty things about Madge and her age, not about the burgeoning family. Be that as it may, Madonna may want yet more children. Her Madgesty hasn't spoken about that yet. But one has to wonder what makes some highly successful show biz women want large families.
Are we looking at a return to the Victorian Age when large families were the norm because today that isn't the case. In Victorian times, it was a matter of little birth control and high infant mortality that led to big families. Neither is a problem now, but last time I looked, the average family was something like 2-3, if that, and the U.S. Census indicates the family size is 3.14. Now does that mean two adults and .14 children? How do they do their math?
Angelina Jolie now has six kids, three adopted and three biological children. Will she adopt more and, if so, how many is enough? Is there something other than a need to "mother" or to save children from a life of poverty here? Does she share something in this with Madonna? No, I'm not even going to go near single mom or "Octomom," Nadya Denise Doud-Suleman Gutierrez, because she's not a showbiz mom and her children may have been unintended multiple births with no adoptions.
Show biz moms can afford lots of children because they can have lots of help, but their kids may end up like kids of people in the military; constantly shuffled from place to place without ever establishing roots in any community. Read some of the autobiographies of kids of famous people and you'll hear that they only saw their dad or mom for a few weeks or maybe a few months a year. You'll see how they were raised by a series of nannies and had to live in a body guard inhabited world.
I started to wonder if there's some commonality here between this and something akin to another form of hoarding that has as its intent the saving of living things. Are these women:
1. over 40 years of age, single, divorced or widowed, and living alone
2. have a wish for something to love and to love them
3. isolation from peers or relatives
4. experiencing a negative impact on their own health and well-being
5. a sense of the obsessive-compulsive with the thought that the
children won't be cared for properly if they don't care for them
6. an attempt to deal with loss of some type and to increase a sense of self-importance
Whatever it is, it's of interest to most people because it is so high-profile an activity. Is five enough or eight too many? The question really is, what's the reason behind it? True, it may have the most altruistic of purposes, but I contend that altruism may not really exist and everyone really gets something from it.
http://www.drfarrell.net
Rumor had it that the desire for the Material Mom for yet more adoptions was one of the reasons for her marital difficulties with ex-husband Guy Ritchie. He, of course, had been quoted, correctly or not, as having said some pretty nasty things about Madge and her age, not about the burgeoning family. Be that as it may, Madonna may want yet more children. Her Madgesty hasn't spoken about that yet. But one has to wonder what makes some highly successful show biz women want large families.
Are we looking at a return to the Victorian Age when large families were the norm because today that isn't the case. In Victorian times, it was a matter of little birth control and high infant mortality that led to big families. Neither is a problem now, but last time I looked, the average family was something like 2-3, if that, and the U.S. Census indicates the family size is 3.14. Now does that mean two adults and .14 children? How do they do their math?
Angelina Jolie now has six kids, three adopted and three biological children. Will she adopt more and, if so, how many is enough? Is there something other than a need to "mother" or to save children from a life of poverty here? Does she share something in this with Madonna? No, I'm not even going to go near single mom or "Octomom," Nadya Denise Doud-Suleman Gutierrez, because she's not a showbiz mom and her children may have been unintended multiple births with no adoptions.
Show biz moms can afford lots of children because they can have lots of help, but their kids may end up like kids of people in the military; constantly shuffled from place to place without ever establishing roots in any community. Read some of the autobiographies of kids of famous people and you'll hear that they only saw their dad or mom for a few weeks or maybe a few months a year. You'll see how they were raised by a series of nannies and had to live in a body guard inhabited world.
I started to wonder if there's some commonality here between this and something akin to another form of hoarding that has as its intent the saving of living things. Are these women:
1. over 40 years of age, single, divorced or widowed, and living alone
2. have a wish for something to love and to love them
3. isolation from peers or relatives
4. experiencing a negative impact on their own health and well-being
5. a sense of the obsessive-compulsive with the thought that the
children won't be cared for properly if they don't care for them
6. an attempt to deal with loss of some type and to increase a sense of self-importance
Whatever it is, it's of interest to most people because it is so high-profile an activity. Is five enough or eight too many? The question really is, what's the reason behind it? True, it may have the most altruistic of purposes, but I contend that altruism may not really exist and everyone really gets something from it.
http://www.drfarrell.net
Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D., LLC
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
