An adoptive parent complains – We fought for 2 years and spent $20,000 in attorney fees to adopt this kid. I feel like I haven’t done whatever it was that he actually needed. Should we now just give him back to his biological mother – 8 years later. No one is happy.

One comment notes – I would bet money this kid knows exactly how much those attorney fees were and is made to feel guilty about them. I know because my former stepmom held attorney fees over my head when I was growing up. I still don’t know why she tried to adopt me and my siblings, she didn’t even like us.

One adoptee noted – This is why you don’t steal someone’s kid. How sad for that poor boy and his first mom too.

From another adoptee – The part that really riles this adopter up the most is the money and time that they wasted since they are unhappy with the results. The absolute cognitive dissonance, self-deception based on their effort justification rather than the results achieved (for anyone involved) would be astonishing if it wasn’t so common in this ‘field of play’.

An adoptee shares – My female adopter was livid when I was able to reunite with my mother in my mid-twenties (agency “allowed” us to meet since she had kept her address current and had given permission to be contacted, if I ever came looking). Anyway, one of the biggest reasons the adopter was angry was MONEY. “Ok, she can pay us back all the money we spent on you” “if we had known this was possible, we never would have spent the money on Catholic tuition” (Catholic Social Services is who reunited us—and yes, they separated us too, I get the irony) “we paid a lot of money to adopt you, they should refund us now”. If this doesn’t totally prove that we are nothing but a commodity and a transactional relationship, I don’t know what does…