Tell me about adoption

[Anonymous]

I think this is pretty bizarre. I would think that we've had enough years of experience with blended families to know that kids in a family will have special people in common, and then maybe some special people who are just theirs. I don't think everything has to be "evensies" among kids in a family. Kids are different and come with differences.

If I were an adoptive parent, I would consider it my role primarily to be my adopted child's parent, and yes, of course I would expect all of my family to treat the child as ours. It would also be my role to facilitate healthy relationships between the child and any biological relatives who wanted to be involved. I think it would be a mistake, and very poor boundaries, if I and my biological children were to have our own relationships with the child's biological relatives (other than polite, warm and friendly relationship). I did not adopt the entire family; I adopted the child. I would never in a billion years think that the adopted child's grandparents should act like grandparents to my bio children.

It's interesting that this argument is focused on grandparents exclusively. Are we also adding on aunties and uncles and cousins for our biological child, when we adopt a child? And what about the adopted child's biological parents, if they are also in the picture here? Do they get some honorary relationship with my children? Hell no! You are not marrying the adopted child's family. You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become your family relationships.

I think the relationships governing situations like these are marriage and adoption. Marriage flows up and down and family tree - Grandparents take on a new daughter-in-law, for example. A new member of the family! And now they might have new grandchildren, the DIL's children from a previous marriage, and the grandparents (should) treat these kids as their own grandchildren because of the relationship of marriage between their son and the DIL. Then the son and DIL adopt a child. This is their grandchild because of the relationships of marriage between their son and DIL and the adoption. The marriages and adoptions make the relationships.

There is no marriage or adoption between your biological children and your adopted child's relatives. That's the difference. It's OK for your adopted child to have special relationships that your biological children do not.

I guess a scenario might be that you actually want for more loved ones in your biological children's lives. OK. But I actually think you'd be doing your adopted child a disservice to make his bio grandparents belong equally to your other children. The adoptive child should get to navigate that relationship without a lot of other people in the way. That's confusing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is pretty bizarre. I would think that we've had enough years of experience with blended families to know that kids in a family will have special people in common, and then maybe some special people who are just theirs. I don't think everything has to be "evensies" among kids in a family. Kids are different and come with differences.

If I were an adoptive parent, I would consider it my role primarily to be my adopted child's parent, and yes, of course I would expect all of my family to treat the child as ours. It would also be my role to facilitate healthy relationships between the child and any biological relatives who wanted to be involved. I think it would be a mistake, and very poor boundaries, if I and my biological children were to have our own relationships with the child's biological relatives (other than polite, warm and friendly relationship). I did not adopt the entire family; I adopted the child. I would never in a billion years think that the adopted child's grandparents should act like grandparents to my bio children.

It's interesting that this argument is focused on grandparents exclusively. Are we also adding on aunties and uncles and cousins for our biological child, when we adopt a child? And what about the adopted child's biological parents, if they are also in the picture here? Do they get some honorary relationship with my children? Hell no! You are not marrying the adopted child's family. You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become your family relationships.

I think the relationships governing situations like these are marriage and adoption. Marriage flows up and down and family tree - Grandparents take on a new daughter-in-law, for example. A new member of the family! And now they might have new grandchildren, the DIL's children from a previous marriage, and the grandparents (should) treat these kids as their own grandchildren because of the relationship of marriage between their son and the DIL. Then the son and DIL adopt a child. This is their grandchild because of the relationships of marriage between their son and DIL and the adoption. The marriages and adoptions make the relationships.

There is no marriage or adoption between your biological children and your adopted child's relatives. That's the difference. It's OK for your adopted child to have special relationships that your biological children do not.

I guess a scenario might be that you actually want for more loved ones in your biological children's lives. OK. But I actually think you'd be doing your adopted child a disservice to make his bio grandparents belong equally to your other children. The adoptive child should get to navigate that relationship without a lot of other people in the way. That's confusing.

No, it's not bizzare. It's a double standard. If you think this is OK for the adopted child then you must think the reverse is OK too: A biological child can have a special relationship with THEIR bio family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins) that do not include the adopted child. Because they have a "special" biological connection like the adoptee's birth family?

I guarantee that any extended bio family which did this to an adopted child would be immediately pilloried, rightly so. But you are saying it's OK for the adopted child's family to exclude the bio children, giving them no more than polite yet detached recognition?

And sorry but your use of marriage in this case is not relevant. A DIL with children from a previous marriage can easily become an ex-DIL especially with 2nd marriage failure rates. In that case, the exH would only have legal custody/visitation with the adopted child not the woman's children from a prior marriage.

More importantly you are digressing from the adoption discussion which is an entirely different matter. This brings up just one complex, complicated issue about the current trend for open adoptions (with bio family in direct contact) which is NOT studied nor dealt with. Including its impacts on other children and the best way that BOTH extended families can navigate it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is pretty bizarre. I would think that we've had enough years of experience with blended families to know that kids in a family will have special people in common, and then maybe some special people who are just theirs. I don't think everything has to be "evensies" among kids in a family. Kids are different and come with differences.

If I were an adoptive parent, I would consider it my role primarily to be my adopted child's parent, and yes, of course I would expect all of my family to treat the child as ours. It would also be my role to facilitate healthy relationships between the child and any biological relatives who wanted to be involved. I think it would be a mistake, and very poor boundaries, if I and my biological children were to have our own relationships with the child's biological relatives (other than polite, warm and friendly relationship). I did not adopt the entire family; I adopted the child. I would never in a billion years think that the adopted child's grandparents should act like grandparents to my bio children.

It's interesting that this argument is focused on grandparents exclusively. Are we also adding on aunties and uncles and cousins for our biological child, when we adopt a child? And what about the adopted child's biological parents, if they are also in the picture here? Do they get some honorary relationship with my children? Hell no! You are not marrying the adopted child's family. You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become your family relationships.

I think the relationships governing situations like these are marriage and adoption. Marriage flows up and down and family tree - Grandparents take on a new daughter-in-law, for example. A new member of the family! And now they might have new grandchildren, the DIL's children from a previous marriage, and the grandparents (should) treat these kids as their own grandchildren because of the relationship of marriage between their son and the DIL. Then the son and DIL adopt a child. This is their grandchild because of the relationships of marriage between their son and DIL and the adoption. The marriages and adoptions make the relationships.

There is no marriage or adoption between your biological children and your adopted child's relatives. That's the difference. It's OK for your adopted child to have special relationships that your biological children do not.

I guess a scenario might be that you actually want for more loved ones in your biological children's lives. OK. But I actually think you'd be doing your adopted child a disservice to make his bio grandparents belong equally to your other children. The adoptive child should get to navigate that relationship without a lot of other people in the way. That's confusing.

No, it's not bizzare. It's a double standard. If you think this is OK for the adopted child then you must think the reverse is OK too: A biological child can have a special relationship with THEIR bio family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins) that do not include the adopted child. Because they have a "special" biological connection like the adoptee's birth family?

I guarantee that any extended bio family which did this to an adopted child would be immediately pilloried, rightly so. But you are saying it's OK for the adopted child's family to exclude the bio children, giving them no more than polite yet detached recognition?

And sorry but your use of marriage in this case is not relevant. A DIL with children from a previous marriage can easily become an ex-DIL especially with 2nd marriage failure rates. In that case, the exH would only have legal custody/visitation with the adopted child not the woman's children from a prior marriage.

More importantly you are digressing from the adoption discussion which is an entirely different matter. This brings up just one complex, complicated issue about the current trend for open adoptions (with bio family in direct contact) which is NOT studied nor dealt with. Including its impacts on other children and the best way that BOTH extended families can navigate it all.

Yes, I am absolutely saying that. The only change I would make to what I wrote is this: You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become YOUR family relationships -- unless time and affection makes it so.

I do not believe that members of the adoptive family should be putting themselves in the same relationship to the biological family as the adopted child. The adopted child is the primary consideration, and should get the lead in the relationships with her biological relatives. A very strong lead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is pretty bizarre. I would think that we've had enough years of experience with blended families to know that kids in a family will have special people in common, and then maybe some special people who are just theirs. I don't think everything has to be "evensies" among kids in a family. Kids are different and come with differences.

If I were an adoptive parent, I would consider it my role primarily to be my adopted child's parent, and yes, of course I would expect all of my family to treat the child as ours. It would also be my role to facilitate healthy relationships between the child and any biological relatives who wanted to be involved. I think it would be a mistake, and very poor boundaries, if I and my biological children were to have our own relationships with the child's biological relatives (other than polite, warm and friendly relationship). I did not adopt the entire family; I adopted the child. I would never in a billion years think that the adopted child's grandparents should act like grandparents to my bio children.

It's interesting that this argument is focused on grandparents exclusively. Are we also adding on aunties and uncles and cousins for our biological child, when we adopt a child? And what about the adopted child's biological parents, if they are also in the picture here? Do they get some honorary relationship with my children? Hell no! You are not marrying the adopted child's family. You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become your family relationships.

I think the relationships governing situations like these are marriage and adoption. Marriage flows up and down and family tree - Grandparents take on a new daughter-in-law, for example. A new member of the family! And now they might have new grandchildren, the DIL's children from a previous marriage, and the grandparents (should) treat these kids as their own grandchildren because of the relationship of marriage between their son and the DIL. Then the son and DIL adopt a child. This is their grandchild because of the relationships of marriage between their son and DIL and the adoption. The marriages and adoptions make the relationships.

There is no marriage or adoption between your biological children and your adopted child's relatives. That's the difference. It's OK for your adopted child to have special relationships that your biological children do not.

I guess a scenario might be that you actually want for more loved ones in your biological children's lives. OK. But I actually think you'd be doing your adopted child a disservice to make his bio grandparents belong equally to your other children. The adoptive child should get to navigate that relationship without a lot of other people in the way. That's confusing.

No, it's not bizzare. It's a double standard. If you think this is OK for the adopted child then you must think the reverse is OK too: A biological child can have a special relationship with THEIR bio family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins) that do not include the adopted child. Because they have a "special" biological connection like the adoptee's birth family?

I guarantee that any extended bio family which did this to an adopted child would be immediately pilloried, rightly so. But you are saying it's OK for the adopted child's family to exclude the bio children, giving them no more than polite yet detached recognition?

And sorry but your use of marriage in this case is not relevant. A DIL with children from a previous marriage can easily become an ex-DIL especially with 2nd marriage failure rates. In that case, the exH would only have legal custody/visitation with the adopted child not the woman's children from a prior marriage.

More importantly you are digressing from the adoption discussion which is an entirely different matter. This brings up just one complex, complicated issue about the current trend for open adoptions (with bio family in direct contact) which is NOT studied nor dealt with. Including its impacts on other children and the best way that BOTH extended families can navigate it all.

Yes, I am absolutely saying that. The only change I would make to what I wrote is this: You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become YOUR family relationships -- unless time and affection makes it so.

I do not believe that members of the adoptive family should be putting themselves in the same relationship to the biological family as the adopted child. The adopted child is the primary consideration, and should get the lead in the relationships with her biological relatives. A very strong lead.

This is not true. There is NO legal requirement for the adoptive family to establish nor continue any contact with the bio parents/family. Period.
This is nonsensical. Are you saying that Aunt Sarah (a member of the adoptive family) SHOULD NOT consider herself to be an aunt (same relationship) to Adoptee Larlo's siblings?

You have not yet gained comprehension that this open adoption landscape is rife with challenges and problems that NO ONE has studied nor has answers for?

One thing I do agree with you is that children in a family should be of primary consideration - both adopted AND bio. It's about time for experts to start examining these open adoptions issues for ALL family members or else 20 years from now we will be looking back saying, "How in the world could anyone think this was going to be psychologically healthy for children?"

All we have now is ad hoc opinion which amounts to nil.

[Anonymous]

One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open-wounds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is pretty bizarre. I would think that we've had enough years of experience with blended families to know that kids in a family will have special people in common, and then maybe some special people who are just theirs. I don't think everything has to be "evensies" among kids in a family. Kids are different and come with differences.

If I were an adoptive parent, I would consider it my role primarily to be my adopted child's parent, and yes, of course I would expect all of my family to treat the child as ours. It would also be my role to facilitate healthy relationships between the child and any biological relatives who wanted to be involved. I think it would be a mistake, and very poor boundaries, if I and my biological children were to have our own relationships with the child's biological relatives (other than polite, warm and friendly relationship). I did not adopt the entire family; I adopted the child. I would never in a billion years think that the adopted child's grandparents should act like grandparents to my bio children.

It's interesting that this argument is focused on grandparents exclusively. Are we also adding on aunties and uncles and cousins for our biological child, when we adopt a child? And what about the adopted child's biological parents, if they are also in the picture here? Do they get some honorary relationship with my children? Hell no! You are not marrying the adopted child's family. You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become your family relationships.

I think the relationships governing situations like these are marriage and adoption. Marriage flows up and down and family tree - Grandparents take on a new daughter-in-law, for example. A new member of the family! And now they might have new grandchildren, the DIL's children from a previous marriage, and the grandparents (should) treat these kids as their own grandchildren because of the relationship of marriage between their son and the DIL. Then the son and DIL adopt a child. This is their grandchild because of the relationships of marriage between their son and DIL and the adoption. The marriages and adoptions make the relationships.

There is no marriage or adoption between your biological children and your adopted child's relatives. That's the difference. It's OK for your adopted child to have special relationships that your biological children do not.

I guess a scenario might be that you actually want for more loved ones in your biological children's lives. OK. But I actually think you'd be doing your adopted child a disservice to make his bio grandparents belong equally to your other children. The adoptive child should get to navigate that relationship without a lot of other people in the way. That's confusing.

No, it's not bizzare. It's a double standard. If you think this is OK for the adopted child then you must think the reverse is OK too: A biological child can have a special relationship with THEIR bio family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins) that do not include the adopted child. Because they have a "special" biological connection like the adoptee's birth family?

I guarantee that any extended bio family which did this to an adopted child would be immediately pilloried, rightly so. But you are saying it's OK for the adopted child's family to exclude the bio children, giving them no more than polite yet detached recognition?

And sorry but your use of marriage in this case is not relevant. A DIL with children from a previous marriage can easily become an ex-DIL especially with 2nd marriage failure rates. In that case, the exH would only have legal custody/visitation with the adopted child not the woman's children from a prior marriage.

More importantly you are digressing from the adoption discussion which is an entirely different matter. This brings up just one complex, complicated issue about the current trend for open adoptions (with bio family in direct contact) which is NOT studied nor dealt with. Including its impacts on other children and the best way that BOTH extended families can navigate it all.

Yes, I am absolutely saying that. The only change I would make to what I wrote is this: You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become YOUR family relationships -- unless time and affection makes it so.

I do not believe that members of the adoptive family should be putting themselves in the same relationship to the biological family as the adopted child. The adopted child is the primary consideration, and should get the lead in the relationships with her biological relatives. A very strong lead.

This is not true. There is NO legal requirement for the adoptive family to establish nor continue any contact with the bio parents/family. Period.
This is nonsensical. Are you saying that Aunt Sarah (a member of the adoptive family) SHOULD NOT consider herself to be an aunt (same relationship) to Adoptee Larlo's siblings?

You have not yet gained comprehension that this open adoption landscape is rife with challenges and problems that NO ONE has studied nor has answers for?

One thing I do agree with you is that children in a family should be of primary consideration - both adopted AND bio. It's about time for experts to start examining these open adoptions issues for ALL family members or else 20 years from now we will be looking back saying, "How in the world could anyone think this was going to be psychologically healthy for children?"

All we have now is ad hoc opinion which amounts to nil.

No no no. Sorry. Maybe I didn't write clearly enough. I'm saying, maybe adopted child Raya has a biological Aunt Mary. Adopted child Raya has two siblings in her adoptive family, Sam and Todd. Should Aunt Mary treat Sam and Todd as her nephews? Should Sam and Todd consider Raya's Aunt Mary as their aunt as well? I think NO.

I believe someone was saying upthread that Raya's biological grandparents should treat Sam and Todd as their grandchildren too, that Sam and Todd get to claim Raya's biological grandparents as their own as well, so that everyone is treated "fairly." This is what I'm objecting to.

Of course I believe that everyone in the adoptive family has a relationship to the adopted child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open-wounds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/

Powerful words.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open-wounds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/

Powerful words.

This isn't an open adoption and the issue is this "mother" demanded coming back into her biological child's life and demanded to be mom again. Child didn't agree. She was inappropriate. This mom made a choice. The adoptive parents and child are not to blame.

The issue isn't being better off without her biological mom. The issue is this mom wanting to be a mom vs. a different kind of relationship and not respecting the child is bonded to their parents through adoption.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is pretty bizarre. I would think that we've had enough years of experience with blended families to know that kids in a family will have special people in common, and then maybe some special people who are just theirs. I don't think everything has to be "evensies" among kids in a family. Kids are different and come with differences.

If I were an adoptive parent, I would consider it my role primarily to be my adopted child's parent, and yes, of course I would expect all of my family to treat the child as ours. It would also be my role to facilitate healthy relationships between the child and any biological relatives who wanted to be involved. I think it would be a mistake, and very poor boundaries, if I and my biological children were to have our own relationships with the child's biological relatives (other than polite, warm and friendly relationship). I did not adopt the entire family; I adopted the child. I would never in a billion years think that the adopted child's grandparents should act like grandparents to my bio children.

It's interesting that this argument is focused on grandparents exclusively. Are we also adding on aunties and uncles and cousins for our biological child, when we adopt a child? And what about the adopted child's biological parents, if they are also in the picture here? Do they get some honorary relationship with my children? Hell no! You are not marrying the adopted child's family. You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become your family relationships.

I think the relationships governing situations like these are marriage and adoption. Marriage flows up and down and family tree - Grandparents take on a new daughter-in-law, for example. A new member of the family! And now they might have new grandchildren, the DIL's children from a previous marriage, and the grandparents (should) treat these kids as their own grandchildren because of the relationship of marriage between their son and the DIL. Then the son and DIL adopt a child. This is their grandchild because of the relationships of marriage between their son and DIL and the adoption. The marriages and adoptions make the relationships.

There is no marriage or adoption between your biological children and your adopted child's relatives. That's the difference. It's OK for your adopted child to have special relationships that your biological children do not.

I guess a scenario might be that you actually want for more loved ones in your biological children's lives. OK. But I actually think you'd be doing your adopted child a disservice to make his bio grandparents belong equally to your other children. The adoptive child should get to navigate that relationship without a lot of other people in the way. That's confusing.

No, it's not bizzare. It's a double standard. If you think this is OK for the adopted child then you must think the reverse is OK too: A biological child can have a special relationship with THEIR bio family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins) that do not include the adopted child. Because they have a "special" biological connection like the adoptee's birth family?

I guarantee that any extended bio family which did this to an adopted child would be immediately pilloried, rightly so. But you are saying it's OK for the adopted child's family to exclude the bio children, giving them no more than polite yet detached recognition?

And sorry but your use of marriage in this case is not relevant. A DIL with children from a previous marriage can easily become an ex-DIL especially with 2nd marriage failure rates. In that case, the exH would only have legal custody/visitation with the adopted child not the woman's children from a prior marriage.

More importantly you are digressing from the adoption discussion which is an entirely different matter. This brings up just one complex, complicated issue about the current trend for open adoptions (with bio family in direct contact) which is NOT studied nor dealt with. Including its impacts on other children and the best way that BOTH extended families can navigate it all.

Yes, I am absolutely saying that. The only change I would make to what I wrote is this: You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become YOUR family relationships -- unless time and affection makes it so.

I do not believe that members of the adoptive family should be putting themselves in the same relationship to the biological family as the adopted child. The adopted child is the primary consideration, and should get the lead in the relationships with her biological relatives. A very strong lead.

This is not true. There is NO legal requirement for the adoptive family to establish nor continue any contact with the bio parents/family. Period.
This is nonsensical. Are you saying that Aunt Sarah (a member of the adoptive family) SHOULD NOT consider herself to be an aunt (same relationship) to Adoptee Larlo's siblings?

You have not yet gained comprehension that this open adoption landscape is rife with challenges and problems that NO ONE has studied nor has answers for?

One thing I do agree with you is that children in a family should be of primary consideration - both adopted AND bio. It's about time for experts to start examining these open adoptions issues for ALL family members or else 20 years from now we will be looking back saying, "How in the world could anyone think this was going to be psychologically healthy for children?"

All we have now is ad hoc opinion which amounts to nil.

Stop giving wrong information. If in court at the time of the adoption, the court can legally uphold any open adoption promises but if they will depends on the state. Some states will uphold the agreement and others will not. If an adoptive family agrees to 1 visit a year, the birth family can take the adoptive family to court to get that visit if its in the agreement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open...ds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/


Powerful words.

This is the perspective of one party in the adoption triad. I'm sure that the adoptive parents and the child also have sides to the events as portrayed in this writing. My guess is that if the adoptive parents were unwilling to grant temporary custody to the birthmom when daughter was a rebellious teen, it was probably because they didn't have a lot of faith in birthmom's ability to manage the situation. The birthmother comes across as a little immature, selfish and overly dramatic---she doesn't seem to respect the fact that someone else did the very hard day-in and day-out of parenting. She seems to view the adoptive parents as temporary caretakers who weren't doing the job the way she would have done it---and felt entitled to step in once her daughter turned 18 so she could reclaim what she viewed as her rightful place. The birthmom's pained reflection illustrates though, is that open adoption should not automatically be the recommended form of adoption. Ultimately, the person who balances all these issues is the adopted child. As the comments to that 2015 perspective demonstrate---adult adoptees widely differ in choosing whether and how to have relationships with biological relatives. This birthmother's anguish could very well be temporary---the daughter could very well decide at an older age to have a relationship with her. But the birthmom doesn't get to demand that her daughter call her "mother" ---the daughter gets the right as an adult to decide the people to whom she wishes to give those labels. In the adoption triad, it is the child who has the least amount of say in the process. It is only fair that they have the greatest rights to self-determination as adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open...ds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/


Powerful words.

This is the perspective of one party in the adoption triad. I'm sure that the adoptive parents and the child also have sides to the events as portrayed in this writing. My guess is that if the adoptive parents were unwilling to grant temporary custody to the birthmom when daughter was a rebellious teen, it was probably because they didn't have a lot of faith in birthmom's ability to manage the situation. The birthmother comes across as a little immature, selfish and overly dramatic---she doesn't seem to respect the fact that someone else did the very hard day-in and day-out of parenting. She seems to view the adoptive parents as temporary caretakers who weren't doing the job the way she would have done it---and felt entitled to step in once her daughter turned 18 so she could reclaim what she viewed as her rightful place. The birthmom's pained reflection illustrates though, is that open adoption should not automatically be the recommended form of adoption. Ultimately, the person who balances all these issues is the adopted child. As the comments to that 2015 perspective demonstrate---adult adoptees widely differ in choosing whether and how to have relationships with biological relatives. This birthmother's anguish could very well be temporary---the daughter could very well decide at an older age to have a relationship with her. But the birthmom doesn't get to demand that her daughter call her "mother" ---the daughter gets the right as an adult to decide the people to whom she wishes to give those labels. In the adoption triad, it is the child who has the least amount of say in the process. It is only fair that they have the greatest rights to self-determination as adults.

This is unrealistic. Did you read that the child was adopted at a few days old? Explain how an infant or a small child is expected to "balance all these issues"?

Further, the perspective you tout shows zero empathy and completely minimizes the life-long pain this woman has endured. "Pained reflection" and "temporary anguish" and "selfish" and "overly dramatic" because she made/was coerced to make a monumental decision at a most vulnerable point in her life? Those types of descriptors are pretty inhumane. Especially if one has not personally been in the exact same situation making the same decision.

If someone is an adoption-industry advocate then of course they would view this piece with skepticism since it is contrary to the party line.

Here is another perspective, that of an adoptive mother in an open adoption (from 2019 as if that really makes a difference to the subject matter):

"McGrady became a mother in her 40s, when she adopted a newborn baby girl from a local couple who wanted to pursue music careers instead of becoming parents. She’d always planned on having an open adoption, but never the possibility that she would later take her daughter’s biological parents, whom she identifies only as Bill and Bridgett, into her home for a few months when they found themselves homeless—or that their relationship would sour when she eventually stopped welcoming their last-minute requests to crash with her.

McGrady entered into the open-adoption arrangement without much of a plan for what lay ahead, and the consequences bear out as McGrady’s relationship with her daughter’s birth parents metamorphoses repeatedly. At first, Bill and Bridgett are like random but tentatively friendly strangers on the opposite side of an important transaction; soon they become something like extended family members, then something like dependents, and ultimately something like bitterly estranged relatives."


https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/rock-needs-river-open-adoption/581851/

Bottom line, to get back to OP's original question: OP, do your research. Look at all sides of the adoption issues, consider the choices and life-long ramifications, discuss it with those who will be your support group (family, friends) and most importantly, consider the child. Always consider the child first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is pretty bizarre. I would think that we've had enough years of experience with blended families to know that kids in a family will have special people in common, and then maybe some special people who are just theirs. I don't think everything has to be "evensies" among kids in a family. Kids are different and come with differences.

If I were an adoptive parent, I would consider it my role primarily to be my adopted child's parent, and yes, of course I would expect all of my family to treat the child as ours. It would also be my role to facilitate healthy relationships between the child and any biological relatives who wanted to be involved. I think it would be a mistake, and very poor boundaries, if I and my biological children were to have our own relationships with the child's biological relatives (other than polite, warm and friendly relationship). I did not adopt the entire family; I adopted the child. I would never in a billion years think that the adopted child's grandparents should act like grandparents to my bio children.

It's interesting that this argument is focused on grandparents exclusively. Are we also adding on aunties and uncles and cousins for our biological child, when we adopt a child? And what about the adopted child's biological parents, if they are also in the picture here? Do they get some honorary relationship with my children? Hell no! You are not marrying the adopted child's family. You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become your family relationships.

I think the relationships governing situations like these are marriage and adoption. Marriage flows up and down and family tree - Grandparents take on a new daughter-in-law, for example. A new member of the family! And now they might have new grandchildren, the DIL's children from a previous marriage, and the grandparents (should) treat these kids as their own grandchildren because of the relationship of marriage between their son and the DIL. Then the son and DIL adopt a child. This is their grandchild because of the relationships of marriage between their son and DIL and the adoption. The marriages and adoptions make the relationships.

There is no marriage or adoption between your biological children and your adopted child's relatives. That's the difference. It's OK for your adopted child to have special relationships that your biological children do not.

I guess a scenario might be that you actually want for more loved ones in your biological children's lives. OK. But I actually think you'd be doing your adopted child a disservice to make his bio grandparents belong equally to your other children. The adoptive child should get to navigate that relationship without a lot of other people in the way. That's confusing.

No, it's not bizzare. It's a double standard. If you think this is OK for the adopted child then you must think the reverse is OK too: A biological child can have a special relationship with THEIR bio family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins) that do not include the adopted child. Because they have a "special" biological connection like the adoptee's birth family?

I guarantee that any extended bio family which did this to an adopted child would be immediately pilloried, rightly so. But you are saying it's OK for the adopted child's family to exclude the bio children, giving them no more than polite yet detached recognition?

And sorry but your use of marriage in this case is not relevant. A DIL with children from a previous marriage can easily become an ex-DIL especially with 2nd marriage failure rates. In that case, the exH would only have legal custody/visitation with the adopted child not the woman's children from a prior marriage.

More importantly you are digressing from the adoption discussion which is an entirely different matter. This brings up just one complex, complicated issue about the current trend for open adoptions (with bio family in direct contact) which is NOT studied nor dealt with. Including its impacts on other children and the best way that BOTH extended families can navigate it all.

Yes, I am absolutely saying that. The only change I would make to what I wrote is this: You only adopted the child, and the child comes with some pre-existing family relationships that you must honor, however those do not become YOUR family relationships -- unless time and affection makes it so.

I do not believe that members of the adoptive family should be putting themselves in the same relationship to the biological family as the adopted child. The adopted child is the primary consideration, and should get the lead in the relationships with her biological relatives. A very strong lead.

This is not true. There is NO legal requirement for the adoptive family to establish nor continue any contact with the bio parents/family. Period.
This is nonsensical. Are you saying that Aunt Sarah (a member of the adoptive family) SHOULD NOT consider herself to be an aunt (same relationship) to Adoptee Larlo's siblings?

You have not yet gained comprehension that this open adoption landscape is rife with challenges and problems that NO ONE has studied nor has answers for?

One thing I do agree with you is that children in a family should be of primary consideration - both adopted AND bio. It's about time for experts to start examining these open adoptions issues for ALL family members or else 20 years from now we will be looking back saying, "How in the world could anyone think this was going to be psychologically healthy for children?"

All we have now is ad hoc opinion which amounts to nil.

Stop giving wrong information. If in court at the time of the adoption, the court can legally uphold any open adoption promises but if they will depends on the state. Some states will uphold the agreement and others will not. If an adoptive family agrees to 1 visit a year, the birth family can take the adoptive family to court to get that visit if its in the agreement.

It's not wrong. Most states do not enforce open adoptions agreements. Even in states that MIGHT have some loosely written legislation, it has already been proven that impoverished adoptive parents rarely win against an adoptive family who have the legal authority for the child, as well as money, to fight them. It is laughable to think any judge will force a child to have contact with a birth parent if the child's adoptive/legal parents protest, and the law is very gray. Talk about trauma... That's why open adoption agreements are a sham.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open...ds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/


Powerful words.

This is the perspective of one party in the adoption triad. I'm sure that the adoptive parents and the child also have sides to the events as portrayed in this writing. My guess is that if the adoptive parents were unwilling to grant temporary custody to the birthmom when daughter was a rebellious teen, it was probably because they didn't have a lot of faith in birthmom's ability to manage the situation. The birthmother comes across as a little immature, selfish and overly dramatic---she doesn't seem to respect the fact that someone else did the very hard day-in and day-out of parenting. She seems to view the adoptive parents as temporary caretakers who weren't doing the job the way she would have done it---and felt entitled to step in once her daughter turned 18 so she could reclaim what she viewed as her rightful place. The birthmom's pained reflection illustrates though, is that open adoption should not automatically be the recommended form of adoption. Ultimately, the person who balances all these issues is the adopted child. As the comments to that 2015 perspective demonstrate---adult adoptees widely differ in choosing whether and how to have relationships with biological relatives. This birthmother's anguish could very well be temporary---the daughter could very well decide at an older age to have a relationship with her. But the birthmom doesn't get to demand that her daughter call her "mother" ---the daughter gets the right as an adult to decide the people to whom she wishes to give those labels. In the adoption triad, it is the child who has the least amount of say in the process. It is only fair that they have the greatest rights to self-determination as adults.

This is unrealistic. Did you read that the child was adopted at a few days old? Explain how an infant or a small child is expected to "balance all these issues"?

Further, the perspective you tout shows zero empathy and completely minimizes the life-long pain this woman has endured. "Pained reflection" and "temporary anguish" and "selfish" and "overly dramatic" because she made/was coerced to make a monumental decision at a most vulnerable point in her life? Those types of descriptors are pretty inhumane. Especially if one has not personally been in the exact same situation making the same decision.

If someone is an adoption-industry advocate then of course they would view this piece with skepticism since it is contrary to the party line.

Here is another perspective, that of an adoptive mother in an open adoption (from 2019 as if that really makes a difference to the subject matter):

"McGrady became a mother in her 40s, when she adopted a newborn baby girl from a local couple who wanted to pursue music careers instead of becoming parents. She’d always planned on having an open adoption, but never the possibility that she would later take her daughter’s biological parents, whom she identifies only as Bill and Bridgett, into her home for a few months when they found themselves homeless—or that their relationship would sour when she eventually stopped welcoming their last-minute requests to crash with her.

McGrady entered into the open-adoption arrangement without much of a plan for what lay ahead, and the consequences bear out as McGrady’s relationship with her daughter’s birth parents metamorphoses repeatedly. At first, Bill and Bridgett are like random but tentatively friendly strangers on the opposite side of an important transaction; soon they become something like extended family members, then something like dependents, and ultimately something like bitterly estranged relatives."


https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/rock-needs-river-open-adoption/581851/

Bottom line, to get back to OP's original question: OP, do your research. Look at all sides of the adoption issues, consider the choices and life-long ramifications, discuss it with those who will be your support group (family, friends) and most importantly, consider the child. Always consider the child first.

I agree with all of this, and PP said it better than I could. I was accused earlier in this thread of being "anti-adoption" because I said that adoption is inherently traumatic. I'm not anti-adoption exactly (but I am anti- coercion-of-poor-women, and anti-stick-your-head-in-the-sand). I know some great adoptive families. I just want people to go into it knowing all the perspectives and challenges, and to go about it in a way that they are not perpetuating trauma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open...ds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/


Powerful words.

This is the perspective of one party in the adoption triad. I'm sure that the adoptive parents and the child also have sides to the events as portrayed in this writing. My guess is that if the adoptive parents were unwilling to grant temporary custody to the birthmom when daughter was a rebellious teen, it was probably because they didn't have a lot of faith in birthmom's ability to manage the situation. The birthmother comes across as a little immature, selfish and overly dramatic---she doesn't seem to respect the fact that someone else did the very hard day-in and day-out of parenting. She seems to view the adoptive parents as temporary caretakers who weren't doing the job the way she would have done it---and felt entitled to step in once her daughter turned 18 so she could reclaim what she viewed as her rightful place. The birthmom's pained reflection illustrates though, is that open adoption should not automatically be the recommended form of adoption. Ultimately, the person who balances all these issues is the adopted child. As the comments to that 2015 perspective demonstrate---adult adoptees widely differ in choosing whether and how to have relationships with biological relatives. This birthmother's anguish could very well be temporary---the daughter could very well decide at an older age to have a relationship with her. But the birthmom doesn't get to demand that her daughter call her "mother" ---the daughter gets the right as an adult to decide the people to whom she wishes to give those labels. In the adoption triad, it is the child who has the least amount of say in the process. It is only fair that they have the greatest rights to self-determination as adults.

This is unrealistic. Did you read that the child was adopted at a few days old? Explain how an infant or a small child is expected to "balance all these issues"?

Further, the perspective you tout shows zero empathy and completely minimizes the life-long pain this woman has endured. "Pained reflection" and "temporary anguish" and "selfish" and "overly dramatic" because she made/was coerced to make a monumental decision at a most vulnerable point in her life? Those types of descriptors are pretty inhumane. Especially if one has not personally been in the exact same situation making the same decision.

If someone is an adoption-industry advocate then of course they would view this piece with skepticism since it is contrary to the party line.

Here is another perspective, that of an adoptive mother in an open adoption (from 2019 as if that really makes a difference to the subject matter):

"McGrady became a mother in her 40s, when she adopted a newborn baby girl from a local couple who wanted to pursue music careers instead of becoming parents. She’d always planned on having an open adoption, but never the possibility that she would later take her daughter’s biological parents, whom she identifies only as Bill and Bridgett, into her home for a few months when they found themselves homeless—or that their relationship would sour when she eventually stopped welcoming their last-minute requests to crash with her.

McGrady entered into the open-adoption arrangement without much of a plan for what lay ahead, and the consequences bear out as McGrady’s relationship with her daughter’s birth parents metamorphoses repeatedly. At first, Bill and Bridgett are like random but tentatively friendly strangers on the opposite side of an important transaction; soon they become something like extended family members, then something like dependents, and ultimately something like bitterly estranged relatives."


https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/rock-needs-river-open-adoption/581851/

Bottom line, to get back to OP's original question: OP, do your research. Look at all sides of the adoption issues, consider the choices and life-long ramifications, discuss it with those who will be your support group (family, friends) and most importantly, consider the child. Always consider the child first.

I agree with all of this, and PP said it better than I could. I was accused earlier in this thread of being "anti-adoption" because I said that adoption is inherently traumatic. I'm not anti-adoption exactly (but I am anti- coercion-of-poor-women, and anti-stick-your-head-in-the-sand). I know some great adoptive families. I just want people to go into it knowing all the perspectives and challenges, and to go about it in a way that they are not perpetuating trauma.

What is your real agenda? Your rants are pointless. Dont tell OP not to adopt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One birth mother's view of open adoption with pertinent insights:

"Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/the-open...ds-of-an-open-adoption/410143/


Powerful words.

This is the perspective of one party in the adoption triad. I'm sure that the adoptive parents and the child also have sides to the events as portrayed in this writing. My guess is that if the adoptive parents were unwilling to grant temporary custody to the birthmom when daughter was a rebellious teen, it was probably because they didn't have a lot of faith in birthmom's ability to manage the situation. The birthmother comes across as a little immature, selfish and overly dramatic---she doesn't seem to respect the fact that someone else did the very hard day-in and day-out of parenting. She seems to view the adoptive parents as temporary caretakers who weren't doing the job the way she would have done it---and felt entitled to step in once her daughter turned 18 so she could reclaim what she viewed as her rightful place. The birthmom's pained reflection illustrates though, is that open adoption should not automatically be the recommended form of adoption. Ultimately, the person who balances all these issues is the adopted child. As the comments to that 2015 perspective demonstrate---adult adoptees widely differ in choosing whether and how to have relationships with biological relatives. This birthmother's anguish could very well be temporary---the daughter could very well decide at an older age to have a relationship with her. But the birthmom doesn't get to demand that her daughter call her "mother" ---the daughter gets the right as an adult to decide the people to whom she wishes to give those labels. In the adoption triad, it is the child who has the least amount of say in the process. It is only fair that they have the greatest rights to self-determination as adults.

This is unrealistic. Did you read that the child was adopted at a few days old? Explain how an infant or a small child is expected to "balance all these issues"?

Further, the perspective you tout shows zero empathy and completely minimizes the life-long pain this woman has endured. "Pained reflection" and "temporary anguish" and "selfish" and "overly dramatic" because she made/was coerced to make a monumental decision at a most vulnerable point in her life? Those types of descriptors are pretty inhumane. Especially if one has not personally been in the exact same situation making the same decision.

If someone is an adoption-industry advocate then of course they would view this piece with skepticism since it is contrary to the party line.

Here is another perspective, that of an adoptive mother in an open adoption (from 2019 as if that really makes a difference to the subject matter):

"McGrady became a mother in her 40s, when she adopted a newborn baby girl from a local couple who wanted to pursue music careers instead of becoming parents. She’d always planned on having an open adoption, but never the possibility that she would later take her daughter’s biological parents, whom she identifies only as Bill and Bridgett, into her home for a few months when they found themselves homeless—or that their relationship would sour when she eventually stopped welcoming their last-minute requests to crash with her.

McGrady entered into the open-adoption arrangement without much of a plan for what lay ahead, and the consequences bear out as McGrady’s relationship with her daughter’s birth parents metamorphoses repeatedly. At first, Bill and Bridgett are like random but tentatively friendly strangers on the opposite side of an important transaction; soon they become something like extended family members, then something like dependents, and ultimately something like bitterly estranged relatives."


https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/rock-needs-river-open-adoption/581851/

Bottom line, to get back to OP's original question: OP, do your research. Look at all sides of the adoption issues, consider the choices and life-long ramifications, discuss it with those who will be your support group (family, friends) and most importantly, consider the child. Always consider the child first.

I agree with all of this, and PP said it better than I could. I was accused earlier in this thread of being "anti-adoption" because I said that adoption is inherently traumatic. I'm not anti-adoption exactly (but I am anti- coercion-of-poor-women, and anti-stick-your-head-in-the-sand). I know some great adoptive families. I just want people to go into it knowing all the perspectives and challenges, and to go about it in a way that they are not perpetuating trauma.

What is your real agenda? Your rants are pointless. Dont tell OP not to adopt.

I'm not telling OP not to adopt. I'm telling OP to look at all sides, to be educated about it, which is what I said. WTAF. What is your agenda? You haven't made any good point, you've just been here throwing out defensive postures. Are you an insecure adoptive parent who can't hear anything negative about it?