When An Adoptee Becomes A Mother

Adoption is a lifelong process, and becoming a parent adds a layer of complexity as it causes adoptees to revisit, or consider for the first time, the losses that go along with adoption.

This can be surprising for adoptees that were comfortable with their family situation for a couple of decades. I do remember (since both of my parents were adopted) that we had no medical history at the doctor’s office but we knew there was an explanation – adoption.

Adoption can be a delicate subject. The spectrum of the adoptee experience is vast, and the conversation often feels dominated by adoptive parents who have deeply ingrained fears about losing their child or children. This is why I focus more on the adoptee and the original parents who usually have a diminished voice in society.

Feelings and issues are bound to come up when adoptees become parents themselves. Questions arise about family and cultural histories, medical concerns and the role of identity in the parenting experience. An adoptee frequently wonders, “Who am I, really?”

One adoptee shared this – “If there was a part of me that yearned for something – a hole that was difficult to fill – I didn’t connect that with being adopted. I struggled with anxiety and trust, and that worsened as I grew into adulthood. But I was certain I wanted to have biological kids — to create them, to grow them, to birth them. I didn’t know why I needed that, or why I was lonely and struggled to trust others. I just knew I needed to fill this hole, to find this missing piece.”

I have felt this with each of my three biological children – it is an emotional response when I see my baby for the first time, feeling a definite bond to that child. It is a tidal wave, taller and more powerful than falling in love. When an adoptee experiences this it is much more – like they had missed something their entire life but didn’t realized what it was until that moment. The adoptee may even wonder if their mother felt something like that for them. Or if she didn’t. What did that say about their worthiness to be loved ? I wonder if my adoptee mother had these sudden realizations. She is deceased now and I can’t ask her about it.

An adoptee may struggle with how their own original mother could carry them for nine months and then simply let them go – permanently.

For many adoptee moms, this grief is new, something they don’t understand until they become pregnant themselves. New ways of thinking about their adoption often heighten the myriad emotions experienced during pregnancy and birth.

All adoption is rooted in trauma. Being separated from your original family, and from the woman who you grew inside of, is trauma. The baby does miss that heartbeat, that smell, that undeniable bond. For an adoptee during a pregnancy, it may feel quite novel to realize they are about to meet their very first blood relative. Adoptees often experience an added layer of appreciation and gratitude for as well as an added connection to their children.

Questionable Motives

The problem with adoption agencies is their motive to promote their business. It is always about the money though they will market their services in emotional, heart wrenching ways.

Adoption IS giving your baby away and it is about the agency SELLING your baby to someone who has the financial resources to pay for that baby.

Instead of posting on social media that you are praying to God for this desperate young mother to CALL you and give HER baby to you, it would be more altruistic to pray for support so that this mom could successfully parent her child. People who work for adoption agencies think it is okay to pray to God for a mom’s downfall so that she will ultimately chose to relinquish her baby to THEM.

Sadly, both the people working for an adoption agency and prospective adoptive parents all too often USE religion to coerce vulnerable people into doing what is to the benefit of these motivated people.

If you are a believer, then here is the truth – God did choose parents for that baby which is fully within the Christian viewpoint. Here’s a relevant example for you – wasn’t Mary only 13 years old and unmarried when she conceived Jesus ? And possibly homeless ? I don’t remember the part where God sent an adoption agency over to make things “right” for her.

And if anyone ever wonders why an adoptee would turn away from Christianity, here are your examples. Adoption agency workers and prospective adoptive parents literally praying for the trauma and separation in a genetic family to fulfill their own selfish desires.

A Question of Ethics

A question arises among adoptees about the morality of putting a price on their lives. It is a fair question. Is it right to pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy a child ? The going price is often in the $30,000-$40,000 price range.

One adoptive parent answered that question rather honestly – “We were so clouded by desire that we really didn’t think about the cost.”

What would you think, if you knew, that an agency had tiered pricing on the babies they are selling ? White$$$, whomever $$, Black$. Is value related to the ethnicity of a person ?

An adoptive parent in an honest evaluation of how they are feeling might say, “The moment we drove away from the hospital it felt like we stole him. It was such a conflicting feeling.” Some won’t even give it a moment’s pause.

What would you think if you knew the legal system was being gamed ? “Our lawyer was a whole other bag of nuts as she moved our court date around because the judge that was assigned to our case hates adoption.” I wonder why ? Could it be that judge knows something about the realities ?

A very honest adoptive parent might admit to an adoptee that – “Yes we bought a kid, yes at the time we thought we were doing the right thing ‘if we didn’t take him…’ yes, I wish it was different for him that he wasn’t a secret. But I love him. I am totally geeked when he discovers something new. I make little videos and pictures to send to the one app that I know the natural mother checks, so she can see her son. I hope that she comes and builds a relationship with this amazing human. I also daily feel conflicted with the whole process. I caught myself in the market one day when asked if he was adopted – I replied ‘oh no we bought him.’ I struggle with not wanting him to feel like he was a purchase. Do you ever feel like you were not bought ?”

Money will always be a complicating factor. It is often said of corrupt practices “follow the money.” That makes sense. Who is gaining wealth at the expense of whom ? Just one of the reasons that the whole system of adoption is being looked at deeply and reforms to that practice are being discussed.

The Liar’s Club

It never ceases to amaze me how I end up reading books with no idea they are relevant to my interests here and then, near the end of the book, something happens and I’m like Wow !!

I don’t believe that what I will share with you would in any way spoil a reading of Mary Karr’s book. There is a mother/child separation and reunion story that occurs near the end of this book.

She writes – “Those were my mother’s demons, then, two small children, whom she longed for and felt ashamed for having lost. ‘It was like a big black hole just swallowed me up. Or like the hole was inside me, and been swallowing me up all those years without my even noticing. I just collapsed into it. What’s the word the physicists use? Imploded. I imploded’.”

“Mother did what seemed at the time the Right Thing, though had she Thought, she may have Thought Twice about how Right the Right Thing would wind up being, for surely it drove her mad. She tore up the papers giving her sole custody of the two minor children, Tex and Belinda.”

After she found a husband willing to take them, they were too big, “They didn’t want to come.”

And why hadn’t her mother told her subsequent daughters about the marriage and the lost children ? “It’s one of the more pathetic sentences a sixty-year-old woman can be caught uttering, ‘I thought you wouldn’t like me anymore’.”

Her sister hired a detective and they found those kids. They were damn eager to be found and within weeks arrived at her Mother’s house, bright and fresh-faced and curious as all get-out.

Karr tells her story with spunky narration that never fails to stay in a deep love for her admittedly flawed parents. Their flaws never seem to be a lack of love for these their children but more personal in nature, though impacting their ability to parent well. I do highly recommend her story. It is riveting and even scary at times. There is one significant sexual abuse episode that could be triggering for certain readers.

One Way The System Is Broken

I read a heartbreaking story today and I want to share it because not only does it illustrate something that is really not just but also that love is real and true and people can and do change.

So this woman was adopted at age 5. Her mother’s rights were terminated voluntarily because she had failed to complete her “plan”. The woman was placed into foster care – twice.

At the time, her father was incarcerated on assault charges. Other than the fact that he had lost his temper and gotten violent, she doesn’t know anything more about the circumstances. What she does know is that he did not get violent with her mother or any of his children. I too understand inheriting a temper, I got my father’s much to my own surprise when I discovered that well into my 50s.

Back to my story. The father did NOT want to give up his rights. He wanted to parent the child himself, when he was released. He wasn’t serving a particularly long sentence. However, his rights were forcefully terminated because he was in jail. Sadly, he was released a few months after she was adopted.

At some point, the father spoke to a caseworker. He learned there was a prospective couple planning to adopt his child. It is said he made threats to harm the couple planning on adopting his child. He threatened to forcefully take his child back if he had to.

So it is said that for this reason, the adoptive parents chose a closed adoption.

Sadly, her dad maintains to this day that she was “kidnapped”. This is an understandable perspective.

Turns out, her dad lived close by her entire childhood even though she did not know him. He remarried a few years after his release. He went on to have 4 more children who he successfully parented. A portrait of her hung in their bedroom all the years of her childhood. They even had a small cake to celebrate her existence on her birthday each year.

This just feels so very sad . . .

The Search Is For The Truth

Tim McGraw with pregnant wife Faith Hill

This is how it feels to be adopted –

“I had a spirit that was completely outside what my family was. I didn’t know anyone I was related to, biologically, which gives you a sense of not knowing who you are.”
~ Audry Faith Perry aka Faith Hill

“There was a period of time when I first moved to Nashville, like the first couple of years, that I was just simply lost. That’s when I went on the search for my birth family.”

“The first time I met my biological mother, I just stared at her. I’d never seen anybody who looked anything like me. It was the awe of seeing someone that you actually came from. It fills something.”

While her adoptive family hadn’t shared her level of musical interest, her birth mother’s sister and mother had been members of their church choir, just like Hill. My own mom’s musical compositions tended to be religious and were often performed by a church choir. In addition, the discovery that Hill’s biological mother was an artist helped her understand why she’d been drawn to a creative career.

Meeting her birth mother also brought new facts to light. Her birth mother had gotten pregnant while having an affair with a married man. Sounds a lot like my dad’s adoption story.

“Meeting her birth mother was the most profound life-altering experience for her. After that, her world turned upside down. I was part of her old world, and she had to let that world go.”
~ Daniel Hill, ex-husband

Her second husband, Tim McGraw discovered that the man raising him wasn’t his biological father. Very much like a dear friend of mine who only recently also made such a discovery.

“Having been adopted, I really have a strong sense — a necessity almost — for stability. A foundation where my family is concerned.” Her close ties with the family that raised her didn’t change when her biological mother and brother entered her life. And when she and McGraw had three daughters together, Hill took time off from her career in order to be with them as they grew up.

Hill never forged a deep bond with her birth mother, who passed away in 2007. This is not actually an unusual result with adoptee reunions nor is how Hill appreciated her biological mother’s actions, at one point noting, “I know she must have had a lot of love for me to want to give me what she felt was a better chance.”

I believe that BOTH of my grandmothers were also motivated by such a love when they made those difficult choices.

Oversharing

I have been reticent until recent years to share some things that I consider privacy sensitive. Our perspectives on where the boundaries are can change over time.

It is a topic in adoption related groups that the balance is difficult to determine. There are adoptive parents who upon meeting you will immediately share with you that their children are adopted and have trauma histories. Realize you only just met and they don’t really know you or you them. That is considered in poor taste now within our modern society.

An enlightened adoptive parent may wish to be aware of not owning their adopted child. The adoptive parent may take care not to ignore the original family. At the same time, the adoptive parent may be concerned that they don’t stigmatize their child by making an issue of the child’s adoption.

One balance can be to remain open to discussing adoption while not initiating the conversation. The context in which it comes up matters.

It appears that oversharing is often related to wanting to be acknowledged for doing a “good deed”. Saving a child’s life – is often NOT the truth – no matter how much the adoptive parent would like to believe that. Adoptive parents have often not accepted their role in separating a mother and child.

Adoptive Parents in some groups want to be quick to point out that the behavior they’re asking for help managing is NOT A RESULT OF THEIR PARENTING. Some Pro-Life adoptive parents overshare to burnish their credentials – I saved this child from abortion by convincing her mother to give her up to me instead. You get the idea . . .

Before you overshare, ask yourself – Why does anyone need to know ? There may be times. Just be selective and consider whether sharing will eventually cause some kind of problem in the future.

Better To Have Been Aborted

It may surprise a reader to know this, but many adoptees actually wish they would have been aborted. That is how painful it is to be given up for adoption and doubly painful if the adopting parents prove to further damage an already damaged soul.

I am pro-Choice and pro-life. Not pro-Life like most of those are. They are only pro-Birth, truth be told. They are not willing to fund adequate financial support to struggling mothers so that they can keep and raise their children.

The world has enough people already. We do NOT need to be fruitful and multiply any more. In fact, we have not needed to do that for a very long time. The population explosion first occurred on a small scale and with a relatively moderate intensity in Europe and America, more or less between 1750 and 1950. Enough is enough. If a couple wants to have children and is willing to fully support raising them, I’m all for it. Otherwise, trust women to make the best decision and stop stressing over the babies you imagine they have killed.

I fully understand what it feels like for a child to be born into this world unwanted and unprepared for. My maternal grandmother never had any other children because of the shame and guilt she felt at having surrendered a child for adoption. She died too young and I fear what happened to separate her from my mom haunted her for her entire life.

I am a woman who chose to have an abortion. The timing was wrong, the father was wrong to make any kind of commitment and the pregnancy was not developing normally. I am grateful I could go to a clean clinic, where I received counseling and good treatment. It still haunted me. I had a child before the abortion who I am forever glad I kept (even though some circumstances at the time of her conception suggested I should not have – I knew she would be just fine and she was/is). I am a woman who went on to have two very wanted sons when I entered into a marriage to a good man who wanted to be a good father and he is.

What’s In A Name ?

What is it that a hopeful adoptive parent is seeking ? For many, they can’t conceive naturally and really want to parent. It is much more about what they want, than what the child needs. Many children who are adopted didn’t actually need to be. Their mom’s were NOT well enough supported to make the choice to raise their child that almost every mother would.

So what’s with changing the child’s name and cutting all ties to their original family ?

It is an attempt to create a fiction. A fiction that the child was born to you and is related to you as much as they would be if you had birthed them yourself.

In cutting ties, it is an attempt to erase the origins of the child.

Who do these actions really serve ? The adoptive parents or the child that they adopt ?

If it truly served the child’s needs they wouldn’t go searching for information and even contact with their original family if it didn’t matter to that child. Just saying . . .

Helping Families Stay Together

We’d be better off spending the money upfront, whether that’s in the form of early childhood education, preventative healthcare, or helping families get the support they need to stay together. It would cost less overall and be more beneficial to those who truly need it. There will always be cases where throwing more money at a scenario doesn’t help, but overall, it makes more sense financially and emotionally.

If we really cared about children, we would want to do everything in our power to keep them out of the foster care system.

I am so grateful no one ever reported us as having children out of control. There was a time in our lives when I worried about that. I even cautioned my children to try to be on their best behavior out in public or they could end up like that episode of The Simpsons when the children are taken away.

I was happy to read that there are efforts underway to totally rewrite how child welfare works.

As a society, we should be helping children BEFORE a caseworker shows up at their house. We should be supporting that family BEFORE anyone feels inclined to call a child abuse and neglect hotline on them.

As a society, we can be spending taxpayer funds more effectively by spending them on prevention. Many believe it would be cheaper to intervene earlier. It would be less traumatic for the children and their parents. Therapists, parenting coaches (children do not arrive with an operating manual) and mental health professionals could help families avoid bad outcomes.

A good goal to begin with is to find families at risk but not over the edge yet. Families that lack secure food and housing because of poverty. Those young parents who grew up without good attachment to their own parents (in my case, my parents were adoptees and I can see now that they were strangely detached as parents, though overall good parents who did love and care about us).

I remember my mom telling me how she didn’t know how to cook or clean house when she first married my dad because her mother lacked the patience or tolerance for flaws to teach her. My mom made certain her daughters had such skills.

Here is the shocking statistic for only ONE of these 50 United States –

In 2019, in the state of Colorado there was a $558 MILLION dollar budget and 8,820 children were taken out of their family homes and placed in foster care.

I find that staggering and very very sad.