The Right To Grieve

I am running short on time today (what’s new ?). This adoptee’s story (not my own) makes some important points today and so, I share.

I was adopted at birth and found out around age 5/6. My ”aunt” and my “cousins” were really my biological mom and siblings. I was the middle child. I found out at a very young age about my biological dad. We had contact a few times, without my adoptive parents unaware because they always discouraged me. When they found out, they made me block him in every sort of possible contact ever. Monitored my phone and e-mail constantly.

I found out a few years later that he passed away in a motorcycle accident.

Anyways, I have a lot of resentment towards my adoptive parents ~~ because that was taken away from me and I never get to have that now. I have a hard time processing whether I have the right to grieve a person I barely knew – but that was my dad.

It just feels messed up.

I feel like there’s this hole in me that will never be filled because it can’t.

We had a DNA test done and I’m definitely his. Which I sometimes selfishly feel like I wish that was wrong and someone else was my biological dad so I could have that chance – but it is what it is.

So much of my life, I feel like, has just been taken away from me. It feels unfair.

What Would The Answer Be ?

Why is it, when adoption comes up, that there are a majority of adoptive parents who will say “Well, what was I supposed to do…just accept that I couldn’t have a baby?” What do you want an adoptee’s answer to you to be ? Just take someone else’s kid ? I get that people want children, but is it another person’s job to supply a child for you ?

Life is not fair. If you didn’t complete your degree, do you say – what am I supposed to do ? Would other people tell you to just go and take someone else’s degree off the wall ? Why isn’t it your job, to give all of the money you have, to the people who are poor ? Or leave your current job, so someone who is unemployed can have it instead ? Would you take your dream home and give it someone who is homeless to live in ? How about that fancy car ? Should you hand the keys over to someone without one ?

Sometimes, life requires us to accept something that is true but that we sincerely don’t want to be part of our reality. Certainly, modern medical science does have some solutions that allow previously infertile women to conceive a child using assisted reproductive techniques. Not only is adoption in the process of being reconsidered and reformed but the medical approaches are as well. Not only are adoptee searches all the rage these days – and many of those searches have successful outcomes with the photos from these reunions making my own heart happy when I see them – but people who were conceived using donor sperm or donor eggs (or both) are discovering that the anonymity that was once standard, leaves them with the same black hole of genetic identity and lost familial medical history that adoptees in closed adoptions have been contending with since the beginning of adoption, which adoptees started pushing back against as early as the 1990s. Now donor conceived persons are pushing back against similar issues.

What sometimes gets lost in these conversations is that people are not inanimate objects like a university degree, employment, a person’s acquired wealth (whether by inheritance or hard work) or the home they bought to live in, the car that transports them wherever they want to go. Actually considering the reality that a child is not a commodity. In their desperate attempt to acquire a child to fill their own unfilled need, the humanity of that child and their birth mother is sometimes lost. That reality that these are human beings with feelings and emotions needs to be carefully reconsidered. You won’t die if you never have a child but you could utterly ruin two other lives in the process of taking someone else’s child – the birth mother’s and the adoptee’s lives – for the remainder of their personal lifetimes. Yes, reunions do relieve some of that long-held sorrow but you cannot recover or make up for the time or relationship development that was lost in the interim.

Morally and Ethically Wrong

An adoptive parent disclosed that she receives $4,000 per month in adoption subsidies for 3 children. These children do not have any physical or intellectual disabilities. They do not have any known medical conditions.

The fact is that states can pay not only foster parents but adoptive parents as much as $4,000 per month for 3 children. Homeless parents are often working one or more jobs and still can’t find affordable, income-based housing. How is this fair ?

Often adoptive parents are the first ones to say that the natural parents need to be able to provide for their kids “on their own”.

How can people not see why and how this is problematic and how morally and ethically wrong this is. Some even justify this as a fair situation. Something is terribly wrong in our society that we do not give full support to struggling families but instead take their children away from them and pay complete strangers to care for them.

I didn’t even know adoption subsidies were a thing.

And to be clear, not EVERY adoption qualifies and it varies by state law. Often, there does have to be some kind of ‘special needs’, though that is a broad category that includes sibling groups, children over 6 years, minorities as well as physical or mental disabilities.

Sadly, many of the original parents who surrender children for adoption do so because they believe not having enough money defines them as not being good enough to parent a child.

Here is one story to highlight the unfairness –

There was a couple who adopted a sibling group. This family makes a 6 figure income. The couple was childless for 14 years. All of the adopted children received Medicaid, the family received a substantial subsidy, and all of the children were eligible to attend a public university of their choosing free for 4 years.

The kids never had to do “without” the basics growing up (though they did not have their biological mom which is always a significant loss). All of the children are now adults.

The husband does very very well in his profession. The couple never actually “needed” a dime of assistance nor did they ever have to pay for healthcare for the children. To their credit, the couple did make trusts for the children.

It is just hard to understand why a sibling group is automatically considered “special needs” . Why is this kind of financial support not “income based”, like every natural parent would be faced with ?

And this is basically political. Universal health care, living wage, other so-called “socialist” policies would address all these issues struggling families face. Hard core capitalist each have their own version of America. No one would ever need to remove children from parents simply for poverty. Not doing this creates an insanely expensive, ineffective child welfare system, and a lot of suffering. And again, this is a voting issue.

From Foster To Adopt

So you are a foster parent but you really hope to adopt ? You say you support family reunification but you are actually hoping it doesn’t happen for your own charges ?

You can not have the main goal be reunification AND have the main goal be adoption.
You cannot foster and be willing to adopt while yet wanting/hoping/planning to adopt/grow your family that way.

I have read that in Florida they have 2 different tracks. You choose to foster with a goal of reunification. Or if you want to adopt, you can still be licensed to foster. The only children placed with you would be those whose parent’s had their rights permanently terminated by the courts. And I also read that is the same process in Oregon.

One described their experience thus – The first time I really thought they were two separate main priorities (reunify, if at all possible for those kids) but in general, I realize that I was personally seeking adoption in my life eventually. It was emotionally brutal for me and that isn’t fair to the kids. Those two goals inevitably conflict with each other and I really struggled with the cognitive and emotional dissonance. I think you should only do that if you’re willing to become the permanent home for kids in your care, but only if all else fails.

It is honestly a very weird paradigm – you want the kids to go home but also want to be the family who adopts them, if they need that.

The key to balancing the two contrasting goals is awareness. A foster parent needs the awareness that they may be facing grief and mourning in the future. There is also the awareness that if they don’t adopt, someone else may. Most importantly, how little it will feel good either way.

Gender Inequality

Somehow, in my own family’s experiences, it seems to me that the financial and real life burdens of parenthood fall mostly on the mothers.

Both of my grandmothers conceived my parents with the help of men 2 decades older than them and yet the burden fell solely upon my grandmothers. Until the marriage I am presently in, for myself and each of my sisters, our ability to parent the children we conceived was directly impacted by our ability to provide for them, therefore, we were robbed of that joy in life.

There continues to be a huge inequality in how women are paid and in the costs they must bear as mothers in regards to their careers and their ability to create enough financial strength to provide for all the basics in life.

No wonder women experience so much dissatisfaction and no wonder many of them do not feel that marriage is a beneficial situation, even if they are also dependent upon the male half of their couple for their financial support. Many times the male half refuses to provide that support or in some way, if the woman has any qualities to offer, will exploit her contribution or wealth for his own comfort and success.

I don’t know how, as a society, we fix this imbalance and make economic support more equal for the majority of people, and especially for the parents of children – but I do know we are not there yet.