Your thoughts on adopting or on being adopted.

F

farmchild

Member
I am adopted and am now 70 years old. The fact of being adopted has "colored" my whole life to various degrees. Even though my adoption took place a long time before the current practices of "open adoption", I have lots of information about my biological family and in later years even met a few of them.

Getting a "real" (adoptive) family was a lucky break for me but having detailed information about my biological roots often created emotional conflict in me. I can only speak from my own experience, but personally I think I would have been happier (less anxious) with a lot less information about them.

I'd be interested in hearing about other adoptee experiences. Thank you, Rebecca


 

I really admire adoptive parents. My favorite couple are the Johnson's as on the TV reality show "Seven Little Johnson's", dwarf parents with one dwarf birth child and four adopted dwarf kids from all over the world. The adopted kids were rejected by their birth parents and now have a good life full of great opportunities. It's a good show too, little people with big personalities. The oldest girl recently won first runner-up in a local beauty pageant amid a lot of family kibitzing.
 
I have two adopted children. Both adopted as babies but always aware they were adopted and we kept their original names. No different from any other family and the word adopted was never used in our family as they were our children. My son traced his birth mother , met her once and that was enough. He is married with two children of his own now and being adopted does not appear to have impacted him at all. But how could you tell? My daughter is in her 30's now and has never had any interest in tracing her birth parents. Her view is 'I have a great family , why would I want to meet up with a family who gave me away'? Again she does not appear to be suffering any consequences but how can you differentiate personality traits in that way?
 

Hi Butterfly - I think it's important, just my opinion, to know the "simple" fact that you are adopted. No details, which back-in-the-day, were not available to you anyway. Adoption records, back then, were CLOSED and SEALED by the courts. I think the reason for this was to PROTECT the adoptive parents from any unwanted contact or interference from the biological parents. If an adopted child asks for information about "how it happened?" I think, at most, they should be told that their birth parents loved them but simply were not able to take care of them and wanted them to have a good home so adoption was an answer for everyone involved. Normally, when a child is adopted through the established system that is the outcome. The other reason for disclosing the adoption to the child is to protect them from the possibility of being told about it by someone other than their adoptive parents. I know we cannot protect our children from everything, but in the case of adoption, we can do at least that much.

thanks for responding, rebecca
 
I've noticed not all who replied are adoptees, so I hope it's o.k. if I respond too, although I wasn't adopted. I can speak from my own opinion, and also people I've known.

May have been time-frame, may have been location, but when I was a kid, individuals who'd been adopted were generally NOT told. The reason: so both the child and the adoptive parents/families would have a sense of family unity and security. One friend who'd been adopted WAS told, and it bothered her intensely- knowing the parents who loved her weren't her 'real' parents, siblings weren't 'related' to her, and felt different from the other kids in school. She had a difficult time of it all through our growing-up years.

More recently, with the 'honesty' and 'let it all hang out' approach, I've known of adoptive parents who were absolutely heartbroken when the kids they adopted, raised, and loved, 'ditched' them with 'now I want to find my REAL parents!'

These examples are the main reasons I still believe adopted children should not be informed- unless it's due to a medical necessity, such as needing a bone-marrow transplant and a blood-relative would be the best match. Otherwise, the adoptive parents who raised the child are the parents.
 
Hi JaniceM - first I want to comment on "real" parents. I knew a couple once who after having adopted a little boy began to wonder, when he was about 3 yrs, if someday he would want to find his real parents. I couldn't contain my thoughts (I rarely do) so I said to them - you ARE his REAL parents...who bandages his scraped elbows, who comforts him if he has a bad dream, who rubs Vicks all over his chest and plugs in the vaporizer when he has a cold, who helps him with his homework, who holds him and tells him how much they love him???? The only thing those "other" folks possess is just an act of biology and does NOT make them PARENTs !

And whether to tell, or not tell, has to be an individual family's decision - one size does not fit all. If you chose to not tell, then you need to be very confident that friends, extended family members, and perhaps siblings are in agreement with you to not tell. Finding out as a BIG SURPRISE rarely has positive consequences.

thanks for responding, rebecca
 
My husband adopted my daughter when she was 2. Her 'sperm donor' never gave a crap about her, never gave a dime of support nor even bothered seeing her, even as an adult. She blames every bad decision she's made on us and has convinced my husband he's always favored his biological daughter and not her, an absolute bunch of garbage. She has been verbally abusive to her younger sister over this issue. Needless to say, our family is in shambles.
 
dear debbie in Seattle - you are posting on a "senior" forum so I am assuming that your daughters are now grown women. I am also 'guessing' that the painful lives and the current shambles in which you have been living started a long time ago, in their childhoods or even before. ALL of you could benefit from in-depth family counseling but you are all adults now and cannot be forced into getting help. If you and your husband are wiling to uncover the dynamics that laid the foundations, so long ago, for your shambles, then there is real hope for change and healing. Being hurt and angry and defensive won't heal anything - EVER. You and your husband need to start the process as a couple. If he is not willing, then seek help for yourself. I have been through my own shambles and getting help (actually being "forced" so-to-speak, by my doctor to get help) SAVED MY LIFE. Something MUST change - obviously the current dynamics ARE NOT WORKING.

I urge you with my whole (healed) heart to seek guidance - you can't get there alone. blessings, rebecca
 
farmchild said:
dear debbie in Seattle - you are posting on a "senior" forum so I am assuming that your daughters are now grown women. I am also 'guessing' that the painful lives and the current shambles in which you have been living started a long time ago, in their childhoods or even before. ALL of you could benefit from in-depth family counseling but you are all adults now and cannot be forced into getting help. If you and your husband are wiling to uncover the dynamics that laid the foundations, so long ago, for your shambles, then there is real hope for change and healing. Being hurt and angry and defensive won't heal anything - EVER. You and your husband need to start the process as a couple. If he is not willing, then seek help for yourself. I have been through my own shambles and getting help (actually being "forced" so-to-speak, by my doctor to get help) SAVED MY LIFE. Something MUST change - obviously the current dynamics ARE NOT WORKING.

I urge you with my whole (healed) heart to seek guidance - you can't get there alone. blessings, rebecca
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dear farmchild:

Been there and done done that numerous times, the entire family also, to no avail. We, as a family did the best we could and was still never good enough for her. Yes, she is an adult, 43 years old. She has made her own life choices and will always be welcome in our home as a family, but not to constantly blame any of us for every stubbed toe she's had in her life. Do not judge, you haven't lived my life.
 
My experience is not with adoption per se. I did not meet my biological father till I was in my early thirties. As a young child I had first a pedophile for a step father, than a second step-father who actually knew nothing about raising or disciplining a 9 year old daughter, but he did okay. I never felt comfortable calling him Dad, but always called him by his first name. There was one time that while speaking with friends who lived with their biological fathers (and mothers) that it felt good to join in and say, " My Dad........etc." meaning my stepfather. That was the only time I did because it seemed phony.

As a young girl, I always imagined my biological father to have a great sense of humor--I've no idea why I thought that. I eventually found out he had overcome alcoholism years before I met him & he was married to a very nice woman & living a financially average life. His sense of humor? Average. :)

My mother's side of the family had a Gypsy Prince & as my maternal grandmother told my aunts and uncles, "It's nothing to be proud of."

As I think about adoption now, my mother's husbands could be said to have "adopted" me. I understand it's NOT the same as what you're speaking of.

Before they came along, one time I & my sister were taken away from her for 6 months when I was 4-?, before she ever remarried and she was having a tough time providing our needs. Because I remember quite well so many of the bad things that happened to me at times back then, and their outcomes on my life, also on up, but NOT the good things, why is my mind a blank concerning those 6 months away from my mother? I have no remembrance of where or with whom I lived. Either I was content, or I was so very unhappy my remembrance is closed off from revealing it. Strange.

I'd like to know what my father's Swedish family was/are like, I just don't have the finances to pay for research.

Farmchild, we are our own persons, not unchangeable copies of ancestors. Our choices in life (emotionally, mentally and physically) are unique. If our biological parents/ancestors were the worst, so what?

If the worst, I still say that was their problem, thank goodness we're not like them. God bless. :)
 
debbie in seattle said:
dear farmchild: Been there and done done that numerous times, the entire family also, to no avail. We, as a family did the best we could and was still never good enough for her. Yes, she is an adult, 43 years old. She has made her own life choices and will always be welcome in our home as a family, but not to constantly blame any of us for every stubbed toe she's had in her life. Do not judge, you haven't lived my life.
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I can tell farmchild meant well. I don't think she was "judging" you but rather just trying to help you out of concern for your family's happiness and harmony but the written word in cyberspace often appears harsher than actually perceived by the receiver.

I don't know your daughter but some 43 yr-old "children" are ungrateful and selfish beyond reasonable, which might come from a complicated behavioral disorder caused by genes, chemical makeup, peers, TV reality shows, movies, magazines, hostile work environment, etc. They want to blame everyone around them except themselves...for everything. Sometimes drugs will cause over-the-top anger and a distorted sense of reality but i know nothing of the situation. I, too, am just trying to be helpful in some distant way.
 
I have a heartwarming adoption story. It's not about me, it's one of my computer tutor students, a widowed woman in her 80's who had been adopted as a baby. She grew up quite happy and knew she was adopted. She knew she had an older sister and brother, and some other minor details, but that was about it. She saw an ad for Ancestry.com and was curious about her ethnicity, so she asked me to help submit her DNA to them.

When the DNA results came she got the biggest surprise, not only did she find out her ethnicity, but also found there were 2 people in their database she was very closely related to. She sent an email to them and got an immediate reply.

Turns out those 2 were her 90 yr old sister and the sister's daughter, her niece--sadly, her older brother had already passed. They had been searching for her for years. She had not been forgotten. They were so happy to have found her and welcomed her to the family. Last time I spoke to her, she was on her way to visit them for the first time, luckily only a few hours away.
:love_heart:
 
I just think I would rather not have known if I had been adopted because I think I would have thoughts about family not being "real," and all that comes with that. I have known a couple of adopted children who felt that way and were quite unhappy -- feeling different somehow.
 
I had two friends back when I was growing up that were adopted. They both knew they were and just mentioned it in a matter of fact way. They seemed to be OK with it but never discussed it in any detail or indicated that they had any issues with it and I never pressed them about it. Of course that doesn't mean I had any clue as to what their private thoughts might have been.

My lesbian cousin and her partner adopted two Chinese girls. Apparently girls are not valued as much as boys in that culture and the "one child policy" has resulted in many girls being put up for adoption out of the country. The oldest is now in college and the younger one in High School. They were adopted as infants so they are pretty much All American Girls and seem happy and fun to be around. However again, I don't know what their private thoughts might be.
 
Trade said:
...My lesbian cousin and her partner adopted two Chinese girls. Apparently girls are not valued as much as boys in that culture and the "one child policy" has resulted in many girls being put up for adoption out of the country. The oldest is now in college and the younger one in High School. They were adopted as infants so they are pretty much All American Girls and seem happy and fun to be around....
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That was just a dose of reality. More than one child results in forcibly giving one up. A mother's worse nightmare that will never go away for a lifetime. Thank you to all the servicemen and women for our American freedoms...absolutely precious and never to be forgotten.
 
My daughter adopted a daughter in China 15 years ago. The family already had a son so she was left at the orphanage the day she was born. To this day she can't stand sheets or quilts over her legs as they were tied down in their cribs in China to keep them from getting out of the bed at night. She has had many medical issues over the years and my daughter faxed 150 pages of medical records to Johns Hopkins for help and she has an appointment in August. One of the main issues is the lack of med records including genetic issues. Since she comes from China, there are none. She is a brilliant child taking all honors classes and being at the top of them. Of course she knows she is adopted and has no desire to find her birth parents. My daughter adopted from China as she had 2 friends who adopted American children and the birth parents came back in both cases and took the children back. She was determined it would not happen to her.
 
Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a daddy.

What else is there to know?
 

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