Adoption

"Don't you ever wonder who your 'real' mother is?" "Do you want to know why she gave you up?" "Why don't you try to find her?" Provocative questions to be sure; but asked without much thought.  You see, I am proud to say, I am adopted.

From my perspective, I might respond with queries running something like, "Do you think your parents really wanted you?" "Were you an 'accident'?" "Do you wish for a different family?" (Don't ever ask this one to a teen family member.) Seriously, these are pretty silly questions.  Why would anyone even ponder any of these issues?

My parents openly discussed our adoptions with both my sister, also adopted, and me.  It puzzles me that they did.  I think they must have done so to ensure that I would fear much harsher punishment for any criminal acts I might contemplate as an adult.  Dad was in many ways a visionary.  Surely, he foretold that a liberalized justice system would forgive crimes perpetrated by someone who was unaware of his adoption.  Think what he denied me.  A life of ill-gotten riches, gone, all because my parents told me they wanted me badly enough to adopt me.  Society's best psychologists and social workers once poised to help me cope, have no further interest to explain any anti-social behavior.  Who is in my corner?  What excuse can I use now?

So there I was, not even old enough for school, already relegated to a life of normalcy.   I listen to accounts of aberrant behavior, apparently the result of emotional scars, brought on by coping with the news of adoption.  How could such news bring anything but joy?  Unlike biological parents, an adoptive couple plans, seeks and selects their child.   It is always a conscious and pro-active decision.  That is truly selfless love.  That is not to say that biological parents feel any less of a fierce love for their offspring.  It merely debunks the myth that adopted children have any different emotional issues, consequential to the adoption or to finding out about it.

Today, we hear so much talk about "biological" parents.  Someone recently quoted a statistic claiming that something in excess of 35% of today's families had at least one non-biological parent.  Add to that adopted children and parents, siblings and relatives from re-blended families.  We are becoming a society of few biological relatives.

In my own experience, biological relatives have been lacking in many traits of human decency.  Biological aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents that absent themselves from children's lives for more than ten years; what could possibly justify this?  A biological father chose to ignore his children for more than fifteen years! How can a child understand that?  That I do not feel more outrage underscores my own cynicism.

Perhaps it is my perspective from an adopted child's position that allows me to deal with these injustices.  After all, my own non-biological parents taught me the value of selfless, non-political love.  They set the example for my life model.  I have trusted and relied upon it for most of my life.

 

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