Born to a barmaid and adopted into a Southern Baptist home at the age of 6, Bob struggled with forming attachments. At 74, Bob reflects on the unconventional pathway his life took and what it took to find himself.

Bob (00:00):
And I have been very, very fortunate in that I had met the people who adopted me. But no doubt about it. Being adopted is better than trying to raise yourself when you're 13 years old. One of the toughest things for me, everybody tries to make you fit. But sometimes that makes you fit less. And it thins out over time, but it never goes completely away. People try to reassure you, 'you're family', and the older I get, kind of the more offensive that is.
Nandita Bajaj (00:41):
That was today's guest, Bob. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining me on this journey. My name is Nandita Bajaj and I'm the host of Beyond Pronatalism, Finding Fulfillment With or Without Kids, an interview series in which, through intimate conversations with women and men from diverse backgrounds, I explore how they are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism - the often unspoken pressures to have children, whether from family, friends, or the culture at large. In each episode, I dive into personal stories with people who are forging unconventional pathways to fulfillment, including redefining what family means to them, whether that means being childfree or childless, having biological kids adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones. Hello Bob, and welcome to the podcast. It's lovely to have you here.
Bob (01:40):
Thanks a lot for having me. I've been looking forward to it.
Nandita Bajaj (01:43):
As have I. And Bob, I've had the opportunity to get to know you a bit and it has been such a fascinating journey hearing about your personal story. So if you could start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself as a way of introduction, that would be great.
Bob (02:00):
Thank you. Okay. I guess I'll start from the beginning. I'm 74 years old. I was born in Louisiana in 1950. I lived the first six years of my life in and out of foster care. When I was six years old, I was adopted by one of the gentlemen who was a customer at the tavern where my birth mother worked, and she used to bring me there in the afternoons and the men would pick me up and let me play pinball and then they'd take me down to the drugstore and buy me a hot dog and a coke and an ice cream cone. And I laugh since I've gotten grown, but I've always had an affection for taverns. I think it started kind of young, but anyway, I was adopted when I was six by one of the men who had been there, and very shortly thereafter he stopped drinking and converted to being a fairly hardcore southern Baptist.
(02:53):
And that's the world in southern Louisiana that I grew up in. And now we're talking the middle 1950s to 1968, when I graduated high school, I pretty much lived in my parents' environment, which the thing about pronatalism is that that was a very conservative society, primarily Catholic, but we happened to be Southern Baptist. But even the folks who were Catholic, the idea of family and doing everything by family and for family and family being the ultimate bonding unit was very big. And so in my own case, very early on I knew there was something different about the way I grew up versus the way other folks did. And I had one adopted brother, but he had been adopted since he was a baby and he was nine. So when I was brought in that brought in those kinds of tensions, and he and I had very different personalities and my definition and way of dealing with siblings was very different than everybody else that I knew.
(03:52):
My parents tried to make it as normal as they could, but it wasn't. So anyway, when I got through that, as I got older and a teenager, I got a little bit more rebellious and one thing led to another and the Southern Baptist thing wasn't working for me, and it certainly wasn't working for me in my parents' opinion. So it was 1968 and I joined the army, and I stayed in the army for three years. I didn't go to Vietnam, but I was sent to Germany for two years. And at the same time I married my high school girlfriend, and she was with me in Germany for those two years. And she and I had been together for quite some time, kind of a typical high school romance sort of thing. Truth be known, she came from difficult circumstances, and we kind of raised each other.
(04:35):
She was a decent person. We just kind of grew in different direction. When I got out of the military, for lack of something better to do, I ended up going back to college, ended up getting a degree in political science with a minor in business. When I got done college, I went and worked in the Middle East for several months and I worked in Singapore for three and a half years. By that point I had a wife and a three month old daughter, and one thing led to another, I got into the teaching business and I moved to Maine in the late 1980s because I didn't want to raise a mixed race child in Louisiana partly. And then I taught social studies and alternative education for a career for 35 years in a suburban community around Portland, Maine. And I retired 12 years ago. And since then I've substitute taught and I do a good bit of work with an organization called Vet to Vet where we meet up with guys who can't still get around and one thing and another. And I'm pretty close to one of the gentlemen there and we're good friends and that's kind of path my life has gone.
Nandita Bajaj (05:45):
I so appreciate you giving me this quick summary of your life from the very beginning to where you're at today. And right off the bat you had a very different start to what family is, and you said you grew up in foster care for the first six years and then you were adopted by this man that you met at the tavern. So let's hear a bit about your experience, whatever you remember from early years of being in foster care.
Bob (06:13):
Well, strangely enough, contrary to a lot of people's experiences, I was never mistreated in foster care. The last foster place I stayed in, the lady was very nice to me. One of the things that sticks out is that we slept two or three kids to a bed. And then just the thing that sticks in a kid's mind when I got adopted and we went in and my adoptive parents showed me the bedroom that we were going to be in, I was going to share with my adopted brother, I remember thinking how cool it was going to be to have my own bed. So I guess everything comes from perspective, but when you're a kid and your mother's work serving drinks at a tavern, that's not generally expected to be the healthiest atmosphere you can be raised in or whatever.
(06:56):
And I say this jokingly, but it's the truth. I was never mistreated by any of the folks in any of the places she brought me. And all my memories of those are pretty good. And one of those gentlemen turned out to be my adoptive father. So to adopt a barmaid's kid, he had to be a decent guy. So that was pretty good. One of the toughest things for me, everybody tries to make you fit, but sometimes that makes you fit less. When you meet relatives and you meet neighbors and you meet this and you meet that, and it thins out over time, but it never goes completely away. People try to reassure you, 'you're family'. And the older I get, kind of the more offensive that is.
Nandita Bajaj (07:37):
And how did that show up? People trying to reassure you or maybe overcompensating for the fact that you were different?
Bob (07:45):
One of the things people try to tell you is, oh, your parents really wanted you. That's why they picked you. Now, the truth is what they wanted was their own kid and they couldn't have any. So the best you are is second place for nice people. And don't get me wrong, the people who adopted me and raised me did what they thought was best for me, and they were very good and decent people. But at some point in your life you have to figure out how the term of 'bastard' applies to you, because it's something that even till today, it's used from one end of the spectrum to the other in referring to things that are not good or not normal or not whatever. And back in those days, if somebody told you you were a 'bastard', that was a big, big reflection on your mother, that she must be some sort of woman of ill repute or whatever.
(08:34):
So I can't say, it doesn't dominate your life, but it's never gone either. So the circumstances I came from, like my adopted brother, he was adopted when he was a baby and I don't exactly know how he felt, but even at times when he got angry at my father was when he was a teenager, he would say things like, he's not our flesh and blood. He can't tell us what to. I never bought into that. I always bought into the idea that he took us and raised us and I don't know - legally, socially, whatever you want to call it - he was our father and she was our mother and that's what we did.
Nandita Bajaj (09:06):
You mentioned that your mother was a bar maid, and what were the circumstances, if you feel comfortable sharing, that led to you ending up in foster care?
Bob (09:18):
I didn't know what I was in was called foster care. When I was going to be adopted, my birth mother was in the hospital and I was brought there and she asked me if I wanted to go live with Buddy, which was what she called my adoptive father. And I'm six years old, and he bought me hot dogs and treated me nice and whatever. And I'm not totally sure because I thought it meant, as best I can remember, what I thought it meant, was instead of living at the foster home I was going to go live in his. And then after I got adopted, I started to see all of the ramifications of what being adopted meant. But I didn't understand what I was getting into when I was initially asked. I did what, adult asks you something when you're six years old, if you're used to complying, that's what you do and that's what I did.
Nandita Bajaj (10:06):
Sure. Did you stay in contact with your birth mother after?
Bob (10:10):
I saw her twice after I was adopted. Once she showed up at the house and had just knocked on the door, and my adoptive mother I thought was going to have a stroke. I still remember this from that long ago, in that it was the only time I'd ever seen my adoptive mother be rude to somebody. And she let her talk to me and things, but she wasn't happy about it. Another time when I was in the second grade, she came by the elementary school where I was and the kids told me, Hey, there's a lady over there that wants to talk to you. And I walked over towards the fence and, at the time I was just about to get there, one of the teachers on duty walked up and she went and got in the car and drove off without me talking to her. Those are the two times I've seen, and I really don't mean to be getting hokey here, but where I'm sitting here in an office, I've got one picture of her and me when I was in diapers and we're at a beach somewhere, and it's up there.
Nandita Bajaj (11:03):
I mean you probably didn't know at the time, but was that difficult for you to be living apart from her after spending the first many years knowing her?
Bob (11:12):
I don't remember it as such. I wasn't close enough to her. And in fact, I've talked to counselors about it and things. When you grow up like that, one of the things you bring with you is you resist attachment. I've had people tell me that I can get rid of things and not worry about it more so than anybody they ever saw. And there's probably some truth to that. It shapes the way you look at things.
Nandita Bajaj (11:33):
I bet. I have no doubt. And then what was that experience like, being raised as an adoptive child in a world that is very strict and rigid about what is considered a family? What was it like being around other children at school? How did society respond to this? Did many people know that this was an adoptive family?
Bob (11:55):
The people in the neighborhood kind of knew, but it wasn't a big issue. And so when I was a little kid in elementary school and things, things were fine. My adoptive brother and I did not get along at all. He was tall and thin and good looking and a good athlete, and he wasn't very good at school. I was short and dumpy and could read anything somebody put in front of me, and we just did not have much in common. And he had been an only child for nine years, and then all of a sudden they bring in this smart fat kid and he wasn't real happy about it, and we just didn't get along very well. But we were both adopted, so there weren't any issues there. But one of the things that it did do - the attachment I saw people have to quote their brothers and sisters or whatever, I didn't know what to call it or anything like that, but I knew I didn't have it, because what we did was come to an uneasy truce that our parents could live with. But he and I never had much time or use for one another.
Nandita Bajaj (12:54):
That's tough. That's a lot of years living under the same roof with someone that you don't get along with.
Bob (13:01):
And what you do learn to do or what, and I don't know whether this is good or bad, but we didn't stay at each other's throats all the time. We just didn't have much use for each other.
Nandita Bajaj (13:09):
And so you joined the army when you were how old?
Bob (13:12):
18.
Nandita Bajaj (13:13):
So right after you finished high school?
Bob (13:16):
I went to college one semester. And if you lived in my parents' house, you went to church on Sundays. And one Saturday night, I came home from being 18 in Louisiana on Saturday night, and my father asked me where my car was the next morning and I didn't know. And yeah, that pretty much sums it up. So I decided it was time for me to, because by then I was 19 and rebellious against this hardcore Southern Baptist world that I grew up in. You went to church on Sunday in the morning, then you went to church on Sunday in the afternoon, then you went to mid-week prayer meeting, and then twice a year you went to two week long revivals that were seven nights a week.
Nandita Bajaj (13:56):
Wow. Tell me more about that. Tell me the experience of growing up in this very religious household.
Bob (14:03):
Strangely enough, there are good and bad components to it. Now, if there could be a sociological monument to pronatalism, that would be it. Maybe that lady that you interviewed who grew up Mormon, she might have it beat. But other than that, on Mother's Day, they used to have the Sunday of Mother's Day, they would have all of the women stand up, and the biggest hero was the person who had had the most children, and that was an annual event. And then, if they had dancing at school, square dancing, you couldn't dance because it was against the religion to dance. If boys and girls went to camp, you had to swim boys and girls on separate days because something was going to happen evil if you saw each other in a swimsuit. When people got married, it was a big to-do. Girls had hope chests, and it was just what was perceived, the family, as they saw it, was the center of everything. And I really do believe, because the pastor at the church my family went to had adopted two kids, and I think they all felt if they couldn't have their own then help out the poor kid and do the next best thing. But it was all driven by this desire for this one-dimensional what a family should be. So if a kid's not from that, what you try to do is take him from wherever he or she was and turn him into that. Am I making sense with that?
Nandita Bajaj (15:26):
Sure tou are. Sure you are. So do you think one impetus for adoption in this case was to bring up a child with those religious values?
Bob (15:37):
For sure, and sociological values. Strangely enough, I've mentioned this to you before, but the other thing you can't take out of the context of this place and this time was the racial aspect of things, because all of that pronatalism, the racism, the religiousness - all of it was part of a big sociological picture. My wife's from Singapore and the world she grew up in, they have their sociological picture of how life, family, this and that is. And my guess is you had the same thing where you came from India. They're all different, but the directions don't vary too far from the scripted way of doing it. It's pretty universal, best I can tell.
Nandita Bajaj (16:17):
Well said. All roads lead to marriage and children, no matter what culture you come from, no matter how progressive or conservative the culture is, right? Yeah, that gives a really good picture of the Southern Baptist upbringing. And how did those pressures show up for you growing up, that one day you were going to follow suit and pursue those pathways that the church was laying out for you?
Bob (16:44):
What it did for me growing up was as much as I tried, I never totally bought it. Okay, I can remember, I don't know if you know what it is or your listeners do, but there's a thing called being 'saved' in the Southern Baptist religion, and after they have a sermon or whatever, the pastor says, if you want Jesus to save you, come down and he prays, and then you get baptized and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. The day I stepped out, I didn't get my foot on the ground outside of the pew, and I knew I had screwed up. And just from then on, I kind of did what I needed to do to get through it, but I never really believed it. One of the things that Population Balance did in an organized manner was let me know that I'm not the only person in the world who kind of saw it this way. But in those situations I wasn't rebellious, I just kind of went along to go along. And then when I got in the army, I had a friend who was raised much more liberal than I was, and I heard him say that he was an atheist and lightning didn't strike him.
Nandita Bajaj (17:46):
Yeah. Was that the first time you'd met somebody who was an atheist?
Bob (17:51):
It's the first time I had ever heard anybody say that, because they used to have a doctrine in the Southern Baptist Church was if you're an atheist and you really don't believe in God, then you're automatically going to hell. And if that's all you've ever heard, I mean you don't exactly believe it, but you don't have any alternative thing to believe either. Well, I heard this friend of mine say he was an atheist, and if he was an atheist and God had made everything, like everybody says, then God knew he was an atheist anyway, so there's no point in lying about it.
Nandita Bajaj (18:21):
It's a pretty good argument.
Bob (18:22):
But the point being is all of a sudden you had somebody to discuss all of these feelings you've had for eight or 10 years and you didn't know what to call 'em. You didn't know what to do with them. Then around this same time, another kind of 'aha' moment, and you're going to get a kick out of this, but I told you I was 18 when I went in the Army, and at that age, we all read Playboy magazine for the interesting articles. And they did an interview with Paul Ehrlich, the author of Population Bomb, which I've heard you interview and things, and I was smitten and not from a religious perspective, but I've always been somewhat of an environmental, you know I spent a lot of time outdoors and that sort of thing. And when he talked about what was coming and so on and so forth, immediate connection, and when I got back to the States from three years in the military and running into my friend and reading Paul Ehrlich, I was not the same human being.
Nandita Bajaj (19:23):
Wow. Those years in the military, it seems like you had so many insightful, liberating experiences.
Bob (19:32):
And this doesn't have anything to do with pronatalism, but I bought my first motorcycle and I rode it all over Europe with my ex on the back. And prior to doing that, I had never been further than 50 miles from home in my whole life. A big to-do in those days, you could drive to New Orleans and put on all your good clothes. So all the people in New Orleans knew you were the country people coming to town, but that's what you did. And when I got back to Louisiana, I just knew, and what saved me was for lack of something better to do, I decided to go back to college and I ran into two or three professors. This was another advantage, kind of waiting to go to college. I'll never forget, I turned in an English paper one time and I got it back and the professor had passed it out to let the other students see it and trust me, in high school, that never happened.
(20:23):
In high school, I had it all down to mediocrity was an art, but all of a sudden I found out, on an intellectual basis at college, that there were folks who appreciated art because it was art. You met all kinds of interesting people and that sort of thing. And the other thing is at that time birth control had just come in, and this is part of the reason I'm not married to my first wife anymore, is there were lots of people doing lots of experimenting. And for about 8 or 10 years between when the birth control came out and when AIDS came out, you could pretty much do what you wanted without a whole lot of medical consequences being out there. And that, I didn't know it at the time, but the starting of the women's movement and things, because I majored in liberal arts, and we had a few feminist firebrands who I'm sure they're still doing things exactly the way they wanted to do, and they don't want to be told what to do by anybody. And that was the group at that small southern university at the time. And that all worked me towards combination of save the environment and quit telling people to have kids they don't want. I mean, that's kind of how I phrased it at the time, but in my view, it still pretty much amounts to that.
Nandita Bajaj (21:36):
It totally does. And I like that you said, stop telling people to have kids they don't want because that has been from thousands of years at the heart of the population problem, and it's this pressure that hamstrings people into making decisions they've really never thought that deeply about.
Bob (21:58):
Another thing that I've, since I got it when I took the pronatalism course, some of the reading I did there, one of the suggested readings was 'ejaculate responsibly', and obviously the humor of the title, but the long and the short of it is one of the things with me because would you say 75% of the people you deal with are female that you interview and that sort of thing?
Nandita Bajaj (22:21):
Yeah. Most of the people who want to talk about the pressures happen to be female, and that's why I have been so interested in hearing stories of people like you who shine a light on how this is affecting everybody.
Bob (22:35):
And one of the things that I go back to, I don't know if angry is the word, but the best thing I can say about my biological father is at the very least he was irresponsible. And way later on when my wife and I had our daughter, she was an unplanned pregnancy, and at that point in time, because of some of the women I had met when I was in college, one of the things I very much knew was I wasn't going to tell her what to do. So when she told me she was pregnant or whatever, I said, I'll support you in either direction. Now I found out since what she wanted me to say was yes have the...okay. So that was kind of one of those things. No matter what I said, I was kind of wrong, but the long and short of it is we decided and we had our daughter. Until this day, there's nothing that's ever happened to me in my life that was as wonderful as the day my daughter was born. I never loved anybody like I loved my wife and my daughter at that moment at the same time. That having been said, we decided that was the size of family we wanted. Then when we were thought down the road and we made that decision and talked about it as a final decision, then that's when I went and got a vasectomy.
Nandita Bajaj (23:43):
And that must've been a big deal at that time. How common was it for men to take responsibility, right?
Bob (23:51):
Not very. When I went in, the doctor started to say something. I literally told him, I don't want your opinion. This doesn't have anything to do with you other than the surgery part of it. Do you know what you're doing? That was the only conversation I had with him.
Nandita Bajaj (24:05):
Yeah. Was he trying to dissuade you from getting a vasectomy?
Bob (24:08):
I don't know.
Nandita Bajaj (24:10):
Yeah. You just did not want to find out.
Bob (24:13):
I didn't care one way or the other. I think he was a pretty decent guy. He started laughing, but at the time I was 36 years old. You're not part of the family, you're not part of the discussion.
Nandita Bajaj (24:25):
Yes, yes. Well, that's great. And your wife, how did she respond to that decision?
Bob (24:32):
She was fine with it. I told you she's from Singapore. When Lee Kuan Yew came to power in Singapore in the early 1960s, for folks who are interested in history or whatever, if you in my view want to see an example of how a society changes, and again, it's not a picture of American democracy or whatever, but Lee Kuan Yew took Singapore from roughly the same per capita, GDP as Malaysia, now it's 20 something percent higher than the United States. And one of the first things he did was said, we can't leave half the population on the sidelines. So he immediately, all girls could go to school. My wife's mother was illiterate. She's deceased now. My wife speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, Teochew, Malay, and English, and she could speak all five before she got out of high school. And I'm positive you can speak at least three languages.
Nandita Bajaj (25:26):
Well, two and a half maybe. Well, that is such a great example. And I think like Singapore, there are so many other countries who did that very well, right? They prioritized girls' education. They prioritized access to reproductive services, abortion, birth control, et cetera. And you see what happened in Singapore happened in so many other countries, and I'm so happy to hear that you have personal experience of that from your wife's mother's experience to your wife's experience, how starkly different they are.
Bob (26:02):
Well, another interesting thing that I'm sure you'll be very much approved of was my mother-in-law had seven kids, and my father-in-law was the one who got the vasectomy.
Nandita Bajaj (26:10):
Wow. That was a long time ago.
Bob (26:13):
A long time ago. Lee Kuan Yew and his wife both graduated from Oxford. His wife was number one, and he was number two in class rank. The point being, he appreciated the fact that women were partners and the society's benefited because of it.
Nandita Bajaj (26:31):
That is really important piece of history. Very, very interesting. And you're at a place where you feel quite liberated, very insightful. What are some final things you'd like to or share with our listeners?
Bob (26:45):
I guess my biggest one is, and this is going to sound like the high school teacher in me, but don't have preconceived notions about other people and try to be less judgmental. And one of the things I just absolutely love about the pronatalist conversations and things that that is there's no one right way. And I have been very, very fortunate in that I had met the people who adopted me. But no doubt about it being adopted is better than trying to raise yourself when you're 13 years old. So that part of things, I am very, very lucky. I have met a lot of people in a lot of places that have been very good to me. Strangely enough, and since the three or four years ago since I took that course, one of the things that has really opened up is the number of people starting with yourself that I feel like understand what I'm talking about. As nice as people can be, if they come from that pronatalist mindset, some of the stuff you go through, they sort of think if you were like them, that would fix it and well, no, it doesn't. Because you're not them. And my guess is women have heard that or felt that a hundred times more than men.
Nandita Bajaj (27:55):
Yeah. Those are really wise words and helpful insights, Bob. And where are you today? What's life like today for you?
Bob (28:04):
I have to balance my activism to try to make sure it doesn't turn into pessimism. One of the things I do miss big time is the best part of teaching. I'm still friends with some young folks that I taught 35 years ago.
Nandita Bajaj (28:20):
That's incredible.
Bob (28:21):
The guy who's my mechanic was a student of mine when he was in high school.
Nandita Bajaj (28:25):
I love that.
Bob (28:26):
So that part of teaching I miss. I'm about to go back, I think this fall, I'm going to do some adjunct teaching at the local community college. They're developing some courses and things. They want to teach people how to be proper ed techs, people who either have just a high school diploma or whatever. I think that'd be kind of nice. I think they're headed in the right direction if that's what they want to do for work. So it'd be a pleasure to work with them.
Nandita Bajaj (28:48):
Well, this was such a great interview, Bob. Thank you so much for sharing so candidly all of your experiences from your upbringing to now. This was a really wonderful story and you had so many incredible insights to share with all of us.
Bob (29:05):
And thanks very much for having me.
Nandita Bajaj (29:07):
My pleasure.
Bob (29:08):
Take care.
Nandita Bajaj (29:09):
That's all for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. What did you think of this episode? Do you have your own story you'd like to share? Check out the show notes to see how you can get in touch with me. Whether you'd like to share feedback about the show or a particular episode, or whether you'd like to join me on the show to share your own story, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much again for joining me today as we collectively discover and celebrate the many different pathways to fulfillment beyond pronatalism. Beyond Pronatalism is brought to you by Population Balance, the only nonprofit organization advancing ecological and reproductive justice by confronting pronatalism. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Nandita Bajaj, with the support of my production team - Josh Wild, Elisabeth Strunk, Alan Ware, and Kirsten Stade.