Hi, I am new to this, but I have had a nagging question after reading a lot of information on the internet about adult adoptees and their experiences. My adopted child is still just a baby and we have an open adoption, so I’m wondering…what should I expect to deal with as he grows and realizes he is adopted? Do most children/adult adoptees grieve the loss of something/someone they don’t really know? I’m having a hard time understanding why they would grieve when all they love and know is being provided for them in their adopted home. Thanks!!
Related posts:
- How will we get through this adoption?
- Adoptive parents, would you want the first/birth mom of the child you adopted to tell her friends?
- What will my first mom expect from me post-reunion?
- At what age should I tell my adopted child that I am really her grandmother?
- How do I cope with people who want to make my child a poster child for his/her issues?
Some kids grieve their adoptions and some kids don’t. My understanding is that every adoptee needs to integrate their adoption experience into their self-concept, which means coming to terms with their understanding of their adoption and figuring out what it means to them. This looks different for different adoptees and I don’t think it has anything to do with how much love we adoptive parents provide them with because it’s not about us — it’s about understanding a central issue in their lives.
For people raising kids in open adoptions, there’s a lot of good information at the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project. It’s the most far-reaching research so far about open adoption for adoptees, first parents and adoptive parents and looking through it can be useful. My impression of the research is that openness helps kids make sense of their adoption stories earlier since it’s all out there to deal with and that’s a good thing.
As to why someone might grieve the loss of adoption even if they were raised very happily in an adoptive home, well, I think it’s a fallacy to believe that adoptive parents are meant to take the place of first parents. It’s like saying a second husband takes the place of a first husband. I mean, they are two separate — if connected — experiences.
This is something I wrote a couple of years ago:
“It’s like if you have a house and the house burns down and you lose everything in it. You have insurance and the insurance replaces the house and replaces the stuff but you still lost a house. You still had the trauma of a fire. You can be happy in your new house, you can be grateful, you can even feel lucky but you still lost a house. You still lost everything in it. The new house doesn’t cure the loss of your old house; losing your house is one thing and getting the new house is another.”
http://www.thiswomanswork.com/2006/07/23/adoption-verbosity/
Obviously it’s not like that for every adoptee — so much has to do with personality!!! — but I think we adoptive parents shouldn’t take it as some kind of failure if our kids grieve the loss of their first families. My daughter sometimes misses the idea of being her first mom’s baby and I’m proud that she feels safe enough to express that with us. It makes me feel like I’m doing my job to support her, which is really what being her mom is all about, you know?
Anyway, I hope that helps anyone reading this feel better about the idea of adoptee grief and understand that it doesn’t have to threaten your child’s relationship with YOU and in fact it can be one of the things that can bring you closer just as any emotional sharing would.
With many of our friends pregnant, my son, who is only 3, is already seeing how his life is different because he was adopted. He is not being raised by the same woman who carried him. He knows her, and he loves her, but he is having to try to understand how each family is different.
It’s not about love, I don’t think, but about making sense of the world and his/her place in it. I think all humans go through this and adoptees have an extra complex issue to include in their identity formation.
I hope that being open and honest, and encouraging him to feel what he feels, and express his feelings honestly and safely, will mitigate serious negative consequences, but I do expect some level of grief…the road not traveled kind of thing.
Great analogy Dawn, it really hits it right on!
I am an adult adoptee..I will say, in my case, I grieved the “fantasy” of my first mother. IT was a closed adoption so I didnt know her, but when I was younger, I would think, maybe shes rich, famous, beautiful etc. I didnt know the reason for my placement so that initself made me “grieve” the what ifs. In an open adoption like i have with my son, those What ifs will not be there. He will know the reason for the adoption and will not have the “fantasy” birthmom . So i guess if you think about it, can you grieve money you dont have, or the house that you dont have or the clothes and material things you dont have? Sure, but in the long run, you learn to cherish what you have.
hope this helps!
Thank you for all the comments. More questions to come…
So, with the house analogy – what I’m thinking is, you “knew” your last house. You remember the color paint, the family dining table, the nights reading by the fireplace. But my baby doesn’t have any memory of being in his mothers womb or being born or being in the hospital with her. So what’s to miss? To me, it’s like saying, don’t you miss great great grandma Velva? Well, no, she died when I was 3. I have no memory of her but some pictures my mom put of her holding me when I was a baby in my scrapbook. How can you grieve something you never remember having?
Sorry, just trying to wrap my mind around this one!
Does that make sense?
Thank you. This is really interesting to me. When you said your daughter gets sad and wonders why she doesn’t live with Pennie, that made me sad thinking about how it might happen in my situation. I guess I feel like…well, why would you want to live w/ someone you don’t know when you have us here to live with? It’s a lot to sort through. What do you say when she asks a question like that? Do you feel hurt?
Thanks for the advice.
I will look at the blog!
Let’s use a different analogy. Let’s say your mom died in childbirth and your father remarried quickly so you were raised by a wonderful, loving step-mother. Would you not feel a sense of loss of what could have been? Curiosity regarding what it might have been like to have had your first mother raise you? Would you never wonder what you might have had in common with her, or what the relationship might have been like?
Let’s look at something less drastic than death. I am sure many, if not most kids with divorced parents mourn the loss of their intact family, even if the divorce happened young. My niece was only 18 months old when her folks divorced, and has been raised by her step-dad since she was 3. She knows no different, however she had to assimilate that, and had strong negative feelings about it periodically over the years
Did you ever make a conscious choice, one that you were happy about, yet considered what things would have been like had you chosen differently? Perhaps even mourned the lost idea, or goal, or dream? I chose not to go to college…I don’t regret that at all, however I have grieved a bit at not having some experiences I have heard others talk about.
As we have an open adoption, and Dawn does to, our children know their first moms, and love them…I fully expect him to have “what if” moments. I do not know if he will grieve or mourn in those moments, rather than merely wonder but I won’t be shocked if he does.
It’s not unimaginable, to me, to mourn an idea, to mourn as I said before, the road not traveled.
Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I would wonder what it might have been like. I guess when I picture the term grieving (as I’ve heard many use in this circumstance) I think…funeral. Lots of emotion, remembering back to what was, wondering how can life go on w/o this loved one or what it will be like. I guess the type of grieving we’re talking about may be a bit different. I get the wondering part and even the sadness for what might have been. I guess when I look at his birthparents lives now I think…how could he be sad he’s not with them? (They’re very nice, but their lives are kinda messed up.) And hopefully, and I pray, that when he’s old enough to “get it” they will be making better decisions for themselves. So – this idea is starting to sink in.
Also, don’t forget there is a bond formed in the womb, sharing a body does that, as well as a genetic connection of some sort that I haven’t been able to describe. Like speaks to like I guess. I could see the intuitive connection between DS and his FMom when he was an infant. He shares many physical as well as personality traits with her.
FDad is reluctant to really let anyone “in” to his world, to let anyone see who he is inside, so I have a harder time picking out the similarities, but I am sure they exist.
At some point, I or DH may not ‘get’ something about DS, that someone in his first family will understand intuitively because they share that something. Not that we will not try to understand who he is and what he does as a unique person, but I would wonder if that will be a cause of frustration.
I am not trying to scare you. DS loves us. I am his his “precious Mama”, his “best friend” and “Supercool” according to him. He and DH do everything together and have an amazing relationship others comment on all the time. Him also loving his first parents is not a threat to that. Just more people to love.
Hello,
I’ve been surfing through several of your discussions and have found them interesting. I would like to make a quick comment to the “bond” formed in the womb. I agree that a child in the womb can feel, hear, or experience his/her environment around her–loud noises, pleasant voices, aruguments, feelings of fear, love, etc. But I totally disagree that there is some kind of “mystical” bond. I think that is just a bunch of poo poo.:) It allows you to give to much “power” to the biological bond. I adopted both of my children when they were infants. The reason I found your website is because I was wondering what adoption “philosophies” are currently, well, shaping the adoption culture. Some of the “adoption” literature I’ve read has really bothered me. I’ve been listening to other adoptive parents, and some of the books, material they’ve read has really “hindered” their ability to be confident in their parenting. I have more to discuss, but I’m out of time. Sorry for this hit and run. I look forward to sharing some of my thoughts with you.
Sorry. Did not mean to offend.
No offense, just differing opinions up for discussion
I think this is a wonderful discussion, and I really applaud you, anonymous, for being open and honest with your questions and worries. I resonate so much with everything Dawn et al are saying, but I want to say also that feeling open and unhindered by these worries is a process. I’m 4 years (and 2 kids) into the journey of adoptive parenthood, and I was in a different place 3 and a half years ago…. wanting to have and encourage openness in our adoption, but also worried- about all of it! I think that the process of becoming an entitled adoptive parent is in some ways inextricable from becoming a parent, period. Once we feel secure in our selves as our childrens’ parents (and in my opinion this doesn’t happen right away, no matter how you become a parent), all this extra stuff- worries about terminology, future grieving etc- sort of becomes beside the point. Its just the work of parenting.
If you are open to the insane amount of growth- for me it has been spiritual growth- that this process makes available to you, you will grow, and it will get easier, and these kinds of worries will fade. Only to be replaced by new ones, i’m sure…
I read through this thread with great interest, and felt the most solid connection with what Dawn had to say. I’m an EFT practitioner and a birthmom and have been running local support groups for adult adoptees and birthmoms for 17 years. I think that in the end, it doesn’t matter WHY adoptees grieve, just that a lot of them do, and if you raise them in a supportive atmosphere where they know they can be open and honest, even if you don’t understand their issues, they can deal with and get past them. The times that I’ve seen real problems arise between adoptees and parents is when the parents have an attitude of ownership, and make their kids feel guilty for even thinking about birth family. On the other hand, the happiest situations have been when parents embrace their kids without judgement, and just support them in whatever their journey is.
im commenting on what pamba said. again, im adopted and recently met my biomom. Even though she carried me..honestly there is noo bond that i see OR feel. I see that we look alike, that we share some strange behaviors lol, but I personally again just my feelings, theres really nothing there. Shes a wonderful woman and i respect her but the same way i respect anyone. It depends on the person i guess. Im a very independent person and always have been, so maybe me not depending on others makes me not feel that..who knows, but again,this is just my feeling.
I stumbled upon this website quite by accident but I’m glad I found this thread. It’s so interesting!
I am 19 years old and I was adopted through a closed adoption (i realize you are referring to open adoptions, but i will share my experience anyway if you don’t mind hehe) when I was born. I’ve known since before I could understand what adoption is and what it means. My adoptive parents are two of the greatest people I could have ever asked for and are WONDERFUL parents (my mom had severe endometriosis and could not conceive…therefore, me! lol).
I have never experienced any kind of grief or anything because I was adopted (maybe because it was closed? who knows…). Being adopted has always been a part of me (my adoptive parents and I celebrate my adoption day every year). If I were to meet my birthmother, I would most likely revere her and have SO much appreciation and respect for her for what she did for me but I can’t IMAGINE having a connection with her like I have with my adoptive mom (not that I can say for sure of course…).
My adoptive mom (henceforth known as my mom) and I have had 19 years of bonding–fights, graduations, honor rolls, deaths, laughs, etc.–that have formed their way into a joint parent/friend roll for her now. She has been with me through everything in my life and is still there for me supporting me through my college career.
Though I cannot deny the connection I had with my birthmother (who can possibly deny 9 months of growing & developing as well as the the physical & emotional pain for my birthmother during the whole birth and adoption process), I have a really hard time seeing how I would have a closer connection (whether natural or otherwise) that would surpass the connection with my mom.
I don’t know if I completely went off on my own tangent and I apologize if I did. This thread just inspired me to answer. Thanks =)
Hello all. For the original post, I would suggest contacting the agency and having them contact the birth parents to let them know you are interested in more openness and that you son is asking about them. If you had him write and they ignored the letter, I think that would possibly be harmful.
. I never felt anything other than I was their oldest son.. not that I was the adopted kid or that I was in anyway different from my brothers.
I just turned 39 and am adopted. Do the math and you know that I was born 1970, adoptions almost all closed I guess. I have known for as long as I can remember that I was adopted. And I don’t remember ever feeling any particular way about it. I never really felt like I missed anything. Knowing my parents, if I had wanted to talk about it then that would have been fine. I do have a poem that my Mom gave me one year, I don’t remember when, all about having 2 Moms. One Mom who carried me and birthed me and made the sacrifice to give me up. And my Mom who was there for the skinned knees, hurt feelings, asshole teenage years, etc. Both Moms loved me and both were important in making me the person I am. My Mom had 2 or 3 miscarriages before they adopted me; then, they had my 2 brothers 2 and 6 years later the ‘old fashioned’ way
When I was around 20 or so, my Mom gave me everything they had from the Hospital and Catholic Family Services from my adoption time (probably would have earlier, but I didn’t come out of my teenage-induced idiocy until around 20-22). There were notes from the nurses / nuns about my first 3 weeks (time from birth to adoption). My eating habits, my baby bowel movements, sleeping, and some notes (generalities) about my birth parents… ethnicities, health histories. They (the nuns/nurses) called me ‘Troy’. Abby (Dawn, this is her cousin Tony). That was interesting because my next younger brother is Troy. Anyway, I knew my birth Mom was Dutch, Ukranian, and others. My birth father had Scandanavian and Indian, among others. Now, in 1970 Indian meant Native American.
Anyway, I am writing way too much. I decided to find them. Unfortunately, at that time, unmarried fathers were often omitted from birth certificates. There are almost no records and they are almost impossible to find. So, I found my birth mom. I had a court appointed surrogate (?); basically a go-between who would track her down and let her know I wanted to meet her. If she were interested, a meeting would be arranged. Well, CFS had all of my records still and within 2-3 weeks of having their guy doing the search, I had a dinner date with my birth mom.
This was almost pure curiosity for me. I don’t feel that I had ‘less’ of a life due to my adoption. But still, who was this person? And, to be honest, I figured that, had I given up an infant 34-35 years ago, I would probably think about that child almost daily… how is he? Did I do the right thing? I wanted to tell her that she did fine. That my parents were supportive, loving, strict, everything you could want in parents. I have seen the families of some of my friends, etc. I hit the Family Lotto… my immediate and extended family are all super, super people. I wanted my birth Mom to know that as hard as it must’ve been for her, the people who became my family are some of the greatest people I know.
She had lost track of my birth father. He had been very poor and on leave from the service when I was conceived.
Another cool person I would liked to have met was my birth grandmother. In 1970 when good catholic girls got pregnant, they often went to stay with a sponsor family in another town until the ‘trouble’ was dealt with. When my birth mom was leaving, her Mom told her… now, if that baby has any defects or anything like that, you bring it home. No one’s going to adopt a baby like that and we can’t just leave him in a group home (don’t know what they called it then); you bring him home and we will do the best we can. Now, you can have whatever opinion you want of how ‘accidental’ pregnancies were handled… I am not here about that. But, to me, that is a very awesome thing that her Mom said.
Anyway, we had that one dinner. I guess I have a 1/2 brother and 1/2 sister out there. She (b-Mom) has not told any of them (her husband, not my b-father, knows). Shortly after, she sent me a letter (without return address). She was not ready to tell her family about me… I emailed, or sent a letter via CFS, that I understood. I am not looking to add new family members. I would love to meet them, but if she is not comfy I understand. I am a lapsed, poorly practicing Catholic but still Catholic. I understand the Catholic guilt; I can’t imagine how it was for her in general. Although, from our conversation, the family who sponsored her was very non-judgmental and even the nurses/nuns in the hospital were pretty good. I mean, they are nuns so they always have to be a little judgmental (I think its the job description) but they were understanding from what i heard.
We haven’t seen each other since, and occasionally I am sad about that.
Which gets me back to the OP. I would contact thru the agency or some third party. At the minimum, you should send the letter asking about openness. That way, if there is no response, its not your boy wondering about the mail everyday. Just my $0.02
Sorry for the ramblings.. I am sure no one will read this anyway, the thread is over a month since last post
Again, it depends on the person. Maybe if you were adopted you *wouldn’t* have any issues and maybe this is why it’s hard for you to imagine that someone else might. I for one DO miss my great grandmother even though I barely knew her. I miss knowing her. I miss having the chance to have her in my life. I feel connected to her even though I only met her twice when I was very very very small. Just the idea of her means a lot to me and it would even if I hadn’t met her a couple of times when I was four or five because she symbolizes a lot of things I lost when my parents left California and we lost touch with most of our extended family.
The other thing is that in this world, we put a whole lot on biological ties. Some of our kids are going to take that cultural emphasis to heart. Sooner or later pretty much every adopted person hears, “Where’s your REAL mother?” And some kids are going to say, “My mom IS my real mother” but others are going to wonder and maybe miss her and maybe miss her A LOT even if they never knew her.
But when you get right down to it I don’t know why some adoptees miss their first families and grieve their first families and others don’t; I do know that how their adoptive parents raise them doesn’t necessarily make a difference. I’ve heard from many adoptees that maybe they grieve their losses but their (also adopted) brother or sister is pretty disinterested and doesn’t think much about it. The lesson I take from this as an adoptive parent is that MY DAUGHTER can decide how she feels about it and I’m not going to turn it into my deal. I’m not going to fret when she’s sad and asks why she doesn’t live with Pennie — I’m just going to meet the need she’s expressing to miss Pennie and get comfort from me about it.
There are lots and lots and lots of adoptee memoirs and blogs if you want to hear the voice of adoptees. This is an outdated list but it’s a good start:
http://adoption.about.com/od/newsandreference/tp/adopteeblogs.htm
I’m absolutely inspired by you! I adopted my son when he was almost 4, but he was with me for a year before that. At no time did I attempt to hide anything from him. He went from one how to another so he was keenly aware that there was a difference and it was not necessaruly easy for either of us. He is now 9, over the years the lines of communication have become wider.
There has not been a year where the conversation about adoption, his birth family, and his place has not come up. With friends who have “birth parents” he knows things are different for him. What I have always shared with him is that different does not mean bad it just is, that he was chosen by me for the love I have for him, his birth Mother was not able to care for him, and that any questions he has will be met with openness. I think that his questions are a for of grieving, inquiry, and personal growth. If you keep that in mind, let it be about you child’s emotional and personal growth, and understand they have nothing about you, the process with flow naturally. My son was worried that I might think he does not love me! Believe me, they being to understand and LOVE you for who you are for them. It’s a great ride for everyone!
No, I don’t feel hurt. Really it has nothing to do with me — it has to do with her relationship with Pennie and this is something the two of them need to work out on their own eventually. My job is to support Madison as she figures things out and love her through it. I know Madison loves me but I also believe that little kids ought to be able to take their parents’ unconditional love for granted. I remember when I was little that I told my mom that I liked my dad best — she didn’t feel bad, she said she understood (and she did). I didn’t tell her that to hurt her, I told her that because I trusted her and because I was missing my dad who traveled a lot. Knowing that she could accept and love me unconditionally no matter what went a long way to make me feel safe and supported so I want to give that to Madison.
Madison has had to hear EXPLICITLY that I’m not jealous of Pennie to feel better about expressing her love for Pennie. There was a time that she worried about my feelings and so she was rougher with Pennie than was really good (wrote about that here: http://www.thiswomanswork.com/2008/10/01/visit-decompressing/). She needed me to say explicitly that I would NOT feel jealous if she hugged and cuddled with Pennie. Since we’ve talked more openly about this, I’ve noticed her relationship with Pennie is much more relaxed and fun. And remembering my relief when I told my mom that I loved dad best, this doesn’t surprise me. (Honestly, the fact that my mom was strong enough to not get all jealous made me love her MORE. Kids don’t need the added burden of their parents’ tension.)
I think you bring up a good point about not getting hung up on the word “grieving” when we talk about this. In an ideal world, grieving would be seen as a normal, healthy way we deal with changes in our lives. But we’ve culturally associated grief with something scary that results from terrible events and should be avoided. So when we start talking about grief in adoption, sometimes adoptive parents’ alarm bells start ringing.
Reading Dr. Maguire Pavao (she wrote “The Family of Adoption”) gave me a helpful framework for thinking about this issue. She suggests that our adopted kids go through all the regular developmental stages as non-adopted kids (I think we would all agree with that
). But at each stage, they have some extra emotional work to do as they ingrate their adoption into their identity. Basically, as part of figuring who they are is figuring out who they are as an adopted person. That extra emotional work will look different for different kids, just like typical identity development looks different for each child. For some, it will be a simple process that they are not even really aware of. For others, it will be a more visible, bumpy process. (I’m paraphrasing from memory–hopefully I’m not misrepresenting Dr. Pavao too badly!)
What was helpful for me about this was realizing that when my children express anger/sadness/whathaveyou about their adoptions, it’s not a sign that something is going wrong or I’m a terrible parent. It’s a sign that they’re doing the important identity formation work that they need to do, that they are working out a healthy, integrated self-image. And the best thing I can do is engage with them where they are at and support them as they work through those emotions without being scared by them or trying to squash them.
I realize I’m rambling a bit–hope that makes some sense…
Perfect sense, I appreciate this post, and the book suggestion, a lot
Pamba, welcome to the site. Primal wound and prenatal bonding are extremely controversial, it’s true and even the experts can’t agree about it. You are welcome to share your opinion here since we all have different experience, ideas and theories about adoption but I ask you not to use terms like “a bunch of poo poo.” I know you put the smiley there but even so, this could be very offensive to our members who do believe in primal wound/prenatal bonding theory. Thanks!
I didn’t say the bond was mystical. I learned about various forms of bonding and imprinting in animals, including humans, in high school biology and in further scientific reading since then. I was unaware that the idea was remotely controversial.
I also believe that humans have the capacity and even instinct to bond/attach with their primary caregiver(s) even if it’s not the natural mother. That doesn’t change the fact that newborns respond to their mothers voice and smell above other females, which indicates some kind of preference for their mother at birth. If that wasn’t formed prenatally when was it formed?
I have no opinion of the primal wound theory, having never read the book
I practice attachment parenting, and do not feel hindered in my parenting at all due to recognizing that he was born to someone else, and shared a body with that person for 9 months.