A friend who knows I write this blog, sent me an article about a baby stolen from her family in Korea to feed the demand for adoptable babies in the US. However, I have written about that issue more than once. Below that article was another one that caused me to go – oh Wow !!
Here is that story from Slate by Allison Price – LINK>My Sister-in-Law Asked Us to Adopt Her Twins Because She Missed Her Old Life. Somehow, We Said Yes.
Last year, when our kids were 3 and 4, we decided to explore adoption and/or fostering, as we felt like we still had room and love for more children in our life. Around the same time, my sister-in-law got married and pregnant with twins. She had never expressed much desire to have children and was definitely stressed to discover it was twins. When the twins were about 6 weeks old, they all came to stay with us for a weekend to attend SIL’s friend’s wedding, during which we agreed to watch the babies. They ended up texting around 11 p.m. that they’d had more to drink than they’d planned and the party was still going, so would we mind if they just got a hotel room and we’d keep watching the babies overnight? We were fine with it. The next day, when it was 3 p.m. and they still weren’t back and hadn’t answered any texts, my husband called them. They’d decided to take advantage of sleeping in, had brunch then had a few shops they wanted to check out, and thought it was a nice break from the babies.
Two weeks after the wedding, they asked to come visit us again. They told us that having twins was significantly more difficult than either of them had imagined and they were really missing their previous life and the ability to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. They said they knew we were considering adoption and wondered if we would take in their twins. They thought it would be the best solution as they could continue to see them and be involved in their lives (at their convenience). My husband and I were shocked. We spent the next month talking to them about it more and went to multiple counseling sessions with them. I went to the obstetrician with my SIL to discuss the possibility of postpartum depression affecting everything. The outcome of it all was that they didn’t want to be parents and wanted us to take the kids. Ultimately, we drew up a legal agreement, they surrendered parental rights and we adopted the twins.
We absolutely love the babies and feel like our family is complete now, but I don’t know how to interact with my brother-in-law and SIL anymore. I lost all respect for them when they basically admitted that their kids were an inconvenience they wanted to be rid of. (When we asked what they would do if we didn’t adopt them, they said they were considering other private adoption options.) It’s been a year, and everyone in my husband’s family just acts like what they did was perfectly normal. My BIL and SIL have even asked us not to tell the twins we aren’t their biological parents, which goes against the legal agreement we all signed. We plan to be open and honest with them about how they came to be a part of our immediate family. It’s so bizarre to me that everyone thinks this was a perfectly appropriate thing to do.
Asked advice – Is there a way to discuss this with them?
The Advice Columnist said – First and foremost, it sounds like you need to know whether the terms of your adoption agreement are legally enforceable, or whether some of the terms of the adoption can be changed.
How you talk with your brother-in-law and sister-in-law about disclosing the adoption to the twins needs to come from a well-informed decision that you and your husband make. Adoption can mean a lot of joy, love, and comfort, but it can also mean trauma, confusion, and anger. I foresee a lot of those latter feelings for these twins, knowing that their birth parents (who they will presumably develop a relationship with) saw them as inconveniences to be surrendered.
Keeping this important truth from them—one that is central to their identities—is likely to feel like a betrayal once the twins inevitably find out. You need to do a lot of research on open and kinship adoptions to be sure you’re making the decision that is right for your family and these twins; if you haven’t already, find a support group where you can crowdsource resources and feedback. Then you’ll be able to inform the birth parents and the rest of the family how you will be proceeding regarding disclosing to the twins. Make no mistake: No matter who else in the family has what opinions, this is ultimately you and your husband’s call as the legal parents.
It is a bizarre situation you are in—not just the surrender of the kids, but the supposed blasé attitude of the rest of the family. You sound understandably unclear about how you’re even going to maintain a relationship with your BIL and SIL, given how this has played out. Keep an eye on the family dynamics here; while I hope everyone can exude love and grace around these children and their adoption, I worry that this inauspicious start might signal more drama and discomfort to come. I hope I’m wrong, but that’s all the more reason to find a support group, and maybe also a therapist for you and your husband, to help you make sense of this unique dynamic. Good luck.
Lately, it seems every few days or weeks there is a new story that reaches my awareness related to Korean adoptees. Today, I have 2 to share in this blog. The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. A lot of Korean born children came to the US after the war and in the decades since.
I discovered Kristen Kish in the current issue of Time magazine’s feature – 100 Next – The World’s Rising Stars and then found an interview in Bon Appetit – LINK>How Being an Adopted Korean Influences the Way Kristen Kish Cooks by Alyse Whitney, who notes – I was also adopted from Seoul (by a white family in upstate New York). She talked to Kish about feeling disconnected from Korean culture—especially the food.
Even before this, my husband pointed out a story in The Huffington Post – I Was Told My Parents Were Dead. 38 Years Later, I Got An Email That Changed Everything by Cat Powell-Hoffmann. As a Gemini, stories about twins fascinate me. She observes – “Was this why I could never shake that lonely gnawing in my belly when I was growing up? Was she the reason?”
Something that seems clear to me in reading both stories is how this cultural “exchange” failed to truly provide these adoptees with any cultural foundations. Kish was born in Seoul, South Korea as Kwon Yung Ran. After living in a few orphanages as an infant, she was adopted when she was four months old. Cat’s adoption records noted that she had been “abandoned at birth with no living relatives.” Contacted by a woman who worked at the adoption agency 38 years later, she is told – “you have family in South Korea. Your mother is alive and well.” And “You have a twin sister.”
The woman from the adoption agency forwarded two letters to Cat. The one from her birth mother addressed her by her orphan name, Yi Soon. Her words were tender and fragile. Her twin’s letter felt like living distant but parallel lives. Her reunion occurred in Tulsa Oklahoma, at the adoption agency’s corporate headquarters. She notes the “two women raced toward me with their arms outstretched and tears in their eyes.” She said meeting her twin was “like looking at a stranger wearing my face and using my voice — but one of us spoke Korean and the other did not. It was disorienting and bizarre to think I’d shared a womb with another human being and now I was meeting her again 38 years later.” Then she says, “The very first words my birth mother said to me were ‘Mianhae,’ which means ‘I’m sorry’ in Korean. Then she said ‘Saranghae,’ which means ‘I love you’.” Turns out that when she was born in 1973, twins were considered bad luck in Korea. Her mother had to choose and chose the first born twin. The cultural differences meant they didn’t understand each other, and they were accustomed to living very different lives. She says, “because of our language barrier, we were mostly forced to play charades to communicate, and I could barely get across the most basic sentiments, much less hold the heart-to-heart conversation I so desperately wanted to have with them.”
Back to Kristen Kish’s story – she writes, “As I grew up, I realized just how incredible it was to go from unwanted and abandoned by my birth mother to being part of a new, welcoming family, who felt only joy at my arrival.” Kish writes that adopted children are like “real-life Cabbage Patch Dolls” because they have their own special dates and certificates for when they are adopted and become citizens of the United States. Kristen Kish was adopted into a family in Kentwood Michigan. She says, “I love to eat Korean food, but I don’t need to cook it. Other people can do it better.”
Kish writes – “I don’t know anything about Korean culture. I was raised by a white family in Michigan, and I didn’t look in the mirror and think about why we didn’t all look the same. They are my family, and that’s all I know.” Also that “There’s this fondness I’ve always had for older Korean women—I soften up, and I can legit feel it inside my heart. They’ll be like ‘I’m so proud of you’ and it just crushes me, in this really sweet way,” Kish explained. “My life is f—king fantastic and I don’t want a Korean family, but we both know that there was another life that could have potentially happened. It’s the ‘what ifs?’ that get you.”
She has a positive perspective on her adoption but still hopes to one day at least go to the clinic where she was born. She notes – “I feel oddly disconnected because my family is my family. Maybe I wouldn’t have become a chef if I grew up in Korea. I was put up for adoption for a reason, whether I was unwanted or they couldn’t care for me, and my life wouldn’t have been as great. Being in a family that wants you, that life is much better.” Kish has been named as the new host of Bravo’s popular and long-running series “Top Chef,” which she won in it’s tenth season.
Sadie & Jarvis, with Godparents, Kennedy & Brandon and kids
I have written before about the special challenges that adoptees of a different race face when placed with a different race of adoptive parents. In the past, this has usually meant Black and Asian children placed with white adoptive parents. In a somewhat recent development, Black couples are adopting white children as shown in my photo above. I was made aware of this couple today.
For most of my life, I really did not have much of a racial identity. True, my skin was unmistakably white. I grew up on the border with Mexico and so my environmental was predominantly Hispanic. My parents were both adoptees with no more than a minimal knowledge of who they might have been before adoption. I used to say I was an Albino African because really I couldn’t prove otherwise and neither could anyone else. I honestly suspected 25% Black, 25% Hispanic and the rest White for much of my adulthood. Now that I know something that my parents never knew – something about the people who conceived my parents and gave their genetic heritage to us all – I know that I have 25% Danish, a lot of Scottish and Irish, quite a bit English. These are the real realities and it is a gift I never expected for over 60 years of my life to receive. Yeah, it matters.
This story has an interesting twist. After agreeing to foster a newborn, actually premature, baby boy they named Ezra. After agreeing to foster, the birth parents deciding to surrender their son to this couple for adoption. Next, the Sampsons chose a new and somewhat surprising path that I am also familiar with – embryo donation. This allowed Sadie to experience pregnancy. Their twin daughters were named Journee and Destinee and they are also white. Their family motto has become, “Families don’t have to match.”
Because I am familiar with reproductive medicine, I know the difficult next stage – what to do with leftover embryos ? We allowed ours to be adopted. It was all arranged online independently but the couple did hire a lawyer. I never questioned their race nor did the thought cross my mind. Clearly, it was not a predominant concern of my own at the time. Sadly for that couple, the process did not result in a pregnancy and live birth.
White supremacists worry a lot about the dilution of the white race. It is a fact of modern life that the races are mixing. Interracial marriage, the children born to such unions and adoption are all – let us hope – leading to a better understanding that human beings are more alike than different. That peace and harmony on this planet may be the eventual result. The only real question remaining is the issue of adoptee trauma and that many donor conceived persons also have issues with how they were conceived. It is a tricky path to walk but some brave souls are stepping out ahead of the rest of society. With a better understanding of psychological impacts, it may be possible to avoid some of the worst of the worst outcomes. I do hope over time that proves true.
A woman writes that when she was 2 or 3 years old, another child about the same age simply appeared out of nowhere. The child was just there one day. When the older siblings came home from school and this woman and the new child were playing together in her room. She also mentions that her mother was an alcoholic and abusive in many ways.
The two girls were so close in age and so close in general people always asked if they were twins, and her mother decided at some point to tell people yes. So for most of this woman’s early life, she thought the other child was her twin sister. I know how this feels. My younger sister was born 13 months after I was and we went through that, even often dressed identically. However, my sister outgrew me and it pretty much stopped at that point. Throughout our childhood, we shared a room. My much younger sister always had a room of her own.
To add another layer of weirdness to it all, when she was 5, her mother actually did have twins, boy/girl. So it was always a funny thing that the family had two sets of twins. The original “one” and this woman shared a room her whole life. They were always in the same grade in school, and though this other one did have legal last name that was different from hers, back in the day schools allowed a “goes by” name, so her “twin” always used the same last name as this woman.
When she was around the age of 8, she realized her dad never picked her twin up for visits, when he came for her and her brother. Her mom simply told her that her “twin” a different dad but she did know that didn’t really make sense. Her older sisters never told her that this “twin” was adopted and neither did her mom. The next day her mom sat her down and told her that her “twin” was not her sister but actually her cousin. That her “twin” was her sister’s daughter and her sister decided she wanted her daughter back. Her mom said her “twin” was now living with her aunt in California but she had never met this aunt.
When she was 26, her mother died. Through Facebook her aunt contacted this woman. Her aunt had no idea about her “twin”. The aunt only has sons and they’re both quite a bit younger than this woman. The other aunts have been accounted for (and this woman did know those her whole life) but no idea about her “twin”. The aunt that contacted her had never lived in California and clueless couldn’t help uncover the mystery’s truth.
After her mother passed away, this woman went through every bit of paperwork her deceased mother had and never found anything about retaining guardianship of a child or relinquishing a child. She’s not certain how her mother pulled it all off. Where did her “twin” come from and where did she end up. How was her mother able to enroll this child in school or get her vaccinated, etc. It doesn’t seem possible. Yet, if she hadn’t lived it, she’d be skeptical of the whole story.
She would like to find her “twin” again and realizes that the girl’s memories of their childhood home and her mother are probably terrible. This woman can only imagine the trauma her “twin” endured. She has a good idea of her twin’s birthdate and what she knew the name to be then. She tried searching on Facebook for her “twin’s” name but it’s hopeless without at least a specific state to begin with. She knows her mom did have a social security card for her “twin” at some point because she remembers seeing it.
It all remains a monumental mystery for this woman. Twin stories fascinate me as a Gemini and as someone who experienced a sister close enough to seem like a twin. Just sharing an amazing story today without any real answers to the mystery itself.
Sarah and Andy Justice of Tulsa, Oklahoma had a long, frustrating journey to become parents. When they finally succeeded with the adoption of a surprise (triplets), then came more surprises. The whole story can be read here – A Week After They Adopted Their Children, This Couple Got Some Life-Changing News.
Hannah, Joel, and Elizabeth (the adopted triplets) were born eight weeks earlier than planned, so they had to be placed in the neonatal intensive care unit.
The Triplets – Hannah, Joel, and Elizabeth
This next part is not actually an unusual outcome, I have known of cases in my own lifetime –
Only a week after they became parents, Sarah noticed something was wrong. She was feeling sick and assumed this was the result of all the stress they’ve been through. It turned out that Sarah was pregnant.
But this not a common outcome – Sarah wasn’t just pregnant, the results showed that she was going to give birth to twins! All of this only a week after they came home with the triplets.
Raising five babies at once was going to be quite a challenge so they needed to prepare and plan ahead.
Two new twins were named Andrew and Abigail.
With new arrivals, twins – Andrew and Abigail
Because of their unusual situation, the family received a lot of donations as news about their family spread.
But there was to be one more surprise – in 2015, Sarah found out she was pregnant once again. By 2016, they now had a sixth baby in their family. This youngest child was named Caleb. He was born when the triplets had turned four years old and the twins were three and a half.
Being told they were infertile and then having their prospect of adopting babies lost when two separate times, different birth mothers changed their minds. But this did not cause them to give up on their dream of having a family.
I read about a mom who has gender disappointment and so wants to give her baby up for adoption. She doesn’t agree with having an abortion but is ok with choosing adoption because she didn’t want a girl baby.
There’s a huge difference between “oh man, I really wanted a girl/boy!!” vs “I don’t want this baby since it’s a girl, so I’m going to cause lifelong trauma in this child because I didn’t get my way.” Either way there will be major trauma.. staying with a mother who doesn’t want you or being given to a family who does but having adoption trauma.
Someone commented that there are thousands of families out there who would adopt this baby in a heartbeat. If the mother had chose abortion, she would just continue having kids. The commenter then asked, What if this happens again the next time she gets pregnant ?
I do agree – she needs the help of counseling before anything else can happen.
In my own family, I know that with my youngest sister, my parents were really hoping for a boy but got a third daughter. This sister now has serious mental problems, very likely a paranoid schizophrenic, but she also fought A LOT with our mom. I have to wonder if the disruption between them didn’t start in utero.
One woman shares this story – when my mom had my little sister, the mother that she shared a recovery room with asked if she had a boy or a girl. Upon hearing girl, she disappointedly said – if my mom had had a boy, she would ask to switch as she just had her 3rd girl.
Someone else noted – gender disappointment is so bad. Kids are more than their gender. Another noted – I see a lot of “well I want a girl for all the pretty dresses and rainbows and unicorns” but she might not even like those things. Or you might think you have a daughter until one day she tells you – he’s a boy. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be the gender you want, even if they’re born the “right” sex.
In my own family, we have also always tried to emphasize that we will accept and love our children no matter what, regarding gender identity and/or sexual preference.
Another wrote – I have twins, I wanted a b/g set and when I found out I was having 2 girls sure I was like “oh man I wanted a boy and a girl” but I wasn’t like super upset. Having gender disappointment is fine but it’s not a huge deal, not to mention gender doesn’t really mean anything anyways.
We actually have quite a few sets of twins in my mom’s group. Most are same gender twins but a couple were boy/girl twins. No one ever expressed any regret with the sex of the baby they birthed.
It has long been common in Asian cultures to prefer having sons. So comes this very sad story – she’s Korean and her parents are Caucasian. Very turbulent home life. On her 16th birthday, her parents said they don’t know when she was born, and she didn’t lose the tip of her finger from getting it slammed in a window at preschool, the story she had been told all her life. She was found in a dumpster/garbage can in Seoul. She was given an appropriate birthdate. She had gangrene in her finger/s, that was the one they couldn’t save.
And there is this sad story about why . . . I have suffered from gender disappointment. I honestly think my adoption has a lot to do with why I had gender disappointment. I have 4 boys and always wanted a girl. There are a lot of reasons why, one being trying to “right” the mother-daughter dynamics caused from adoption (I also had a pretty emotionally abusive adoptive mom). I also have always felt like an outsider in my family growing up, and I still feel like it even in the family I created.
My boys are daddy’s boys and have always loved following their dad around and doing the same things as him. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “Mom, you stay home. Just dad,” when my older boys were little. They have zero interest in anything that I’m interested in, so many times I’m stuck doing things alone. And yes, I already know girls can be the same way.
It’s not even about growing up dynamics, but more about adult. When children grow up, it’s seems to be more socially acceptable for daughters to be friends with their mothers than sons. You rarely see adult sons shopping, going to “girly” movies, or even vacations with their moms, yet these are pretty common with mothers and daughters. It is more acceptable for sons to hang out with their fathers when they’re older. Of course I hope my boys put their potential future families first because that’s healthy and what should be done, but knowing that I will be kept at a distance still makes me sad.
It’s just my abandonment issues talking.
One other woman writes – I can kind of relate to this. My adoptive dad didn’t really want kids, but would rather we were boys, if he had to have them at all. My adoptive mom found out she was pregnant with my sister when I was placed with them. Therefore, we are 9.5 months apart in age. My mom is very frilly and girly. She owned a dance studio, so we grew up doing dance and beauty pageants. Luckily, I liked those things. Anyway, we always heard people telling my dad how he was surrounded by girls and how he needed a boy…blah, blah, blah.
I also get this ALL. THE. TIME. “Are you going to try for a girl?” “Oh, you would have such a cute daughter.” “You NEED to have a girl! They are so fun!” It’s always so awkward…especially since my husband had a vasectomy after our 4th boy.
A mum-to-be has sparked an interesting debate online, after confessing she’d found herself in a bitter row with the biological family of her soon-to-be adopted twins.
The woman and her husband are due to become parents to a gorgeous pair of twins when they are born next year – but while everything had been going smoothly between the two families, they’ve recently come to a huge road block over names.
“My husband and I are in the process of adopting two cute little twins that will be born in January,” the 25-year-old explained on Reddit’s Am I The A**hole forum.
“The biological mother is a 15-year-old girl, G, who doesn’t want to keep them. She’s the daughter of a friend of a friend of ours and somehow it got through that we wanted to adopt so her family called us as soon as they knew that G was pregnant.”
The couple have been with G all throughout her pregnancy and have assured her that even though she doesn’t wish to be a mother to the twins, she can still be a part of their life and visit them whenever she wants, as they’ll all be living in the same city – despite the fact the teen has shown no interest in having a relationship with them at all so far.
“As soon as we found out about the baby, we began looking for names and when it was confirmed that it were going to be twins, a girl and a boy, we decided on the names Ellie and Evan,” the woman continued.
“Last week however, we were informed that G had chosen names herself; Walter and Agnes. She didn’t choose them because of a relative, just because she thought they sounded cool. I don’t think I have to mention how outdated the names are and my husband and I simply don’t like them.”
The mum-to-be added that even if the name chosen by G were great, they’re still hers and her husband’s children and they will be raising them, therefore it’s their place to choose the names.
“They will also get our last name and legally be our children, which was decided and agreed on five months ago,” she continued. “G’s family is upset with us for not accepting their ‘real’ names and is threatening to look for new parents.”
The mum explained that while she was considering naming the girl Ellie Agnes to appease the family, there was no way she would ever name the boy Evan Walter.
Although it appears to be empty threats from G’s family, the woman turned to Reddit to question whether she was justified in putting her foot down when it comes to naming their adopted babies.
“I think you need to look at it from the bio moms perspective. She is giving you a really big gift. Regardless of practicality, opportunities etc, these are her babies. Naturally she would want to give them a name, it’s practically the only thing she will ever be able to give them,” one suggested.
“You will be the ones to comfort them, you will be the ones to cuddle them, you will be the ones there for every milestone. I understand hating the names, but I would try to either keep them as middle names or talk to her and see if you can come up with better names together.”
In my all things adoption group, the comment was –
To me it basically comes down to whose names are they?…The baby boy and the baby girls. It’s as simple as that. It’s not the adopter’s names nor the birth mother’s names…it’s the names she chooses and gives them. So it’s their names. Their name is their property, belonging to each of them. To take that away is identity theft, as happens in the majority of adoptions. It kinda happened in my adoption, as my adoptive parents didn’t know/weren’t told my name so chose what I was to be called. I was 38 before I learned my original name…MY name. I usually liken it to me calling someone by their wrong name eg Barbara, but I call her Bernice. She’d put me straight pretty damn quick, yet Adoptees live a life by the wrong name and are expected to put up and shut up! Adoption should be about the child’s needs and about their rights, respect and autonomy, not ownership, imbalance or superiority. When will people get that?
My own experience –
My adoptee dad used to tease my adoptee mom by using her name at birth. It turns out that both of them had names relevant to their genetic heritage – for my dad, his middle name was the name of the man who fathered him. for my mom, her middle name was her grandmother’s middle name – my grandmother had lost her mom at the tender age of 7 and was seeking to honor her. I am against adoptive parents changing adoptee’s names. The change in the last name may be a governmental requirement as regards financial responsibility but then again, these days, with remarriage so common, does it really matter what the last name of the child is ?
One of the hardest things to do was to let them go home to their natural parents but that’s what we as foster parents have signed up for. It’s what foster families are suppose to do. But the urge to parent and fall in love with babies is a strong one, even if you didn’t birth them.
A foster parent writes – Today’s the day I realized I can’t do this. Most of the 20+ foster kids we have had were teens who stayed with us until they decided otherwise. This is the first time we have fostered babies and today I realized this will be the placement that breaks me.
I went to the hospital and picked the twins up 2 weeks after they were born, my home was their first home. They have had 3 visitations from their biological parents, who are trying to get them back. I have had them for 4 months now and my family is the family they know.
Today the twins had a doctor’s appointment and their biological parents showed up. No one knew they were coming, so it was just me with the parents and the babies. During the appointment the babies cried and reached for me but the biological parent wasn’t having it and would try to soothe them. It was like watching a stranger try to comfort my own child.
Today, I wanted nothing more than to hold these babies and tell them it would all be ok and today I was told I couldn’t. Today was the day it really set it that they won’t stay with me. Today’s the day my heart shattered. Today is the day that being a foster parent sucks.
First things first. This foster parent was immediately given a reality check.
What got to me was her saying “they were reaching for me!” Babies don’t reach at 16 weeks…my daughter can barely control her arm movements yet. It’s so delusional!!
My daughter is 6 months and I didn’t even catch that but yes! She didn’t start reaching for her dad and I until this month.
I was thinking that too! That’s so little to be reaching!
Babies at 16 weeks know who mom is instinctively and recognize caregivers but they don’t even show a preference.
The only one who was ‘reaching’ was the delusional foster parent.
And well . . . I’m sure it must have been a painful experience for their birth mother too. Let’s hope that whatever agency is handling the return of the twins to their parents will help you and the parents to work out a transitioning period during which they can come back to feeling “at home” with their parents again. It takes lots of generosity of spirit by all the adults concerned, but it is possible–and possible to do well, for the twins’ benefit. (Said from experience.)
Our infant fosterlove was crying and crying in her mom’s arms at a social services meeting. So instead of just letting the baby scream I asked the mom if I could help. I showed her how her daughter liked being held like a football and bounced. Then I handed the baby back and had her comfort her. I reminded her that she will figure that all out once she goes home. She thanked me and it led to us having a good relationship while her daughter was with us. We had her until she was 14 months.
And I never will know my grandfathers, or my grandmothers either, because they have all died. But I’ve seen photos and heard some stories which is more than I had for over 60 years of my life.
My mom wasn’t much inclined towards this man and showed no interest in these half-siblings. She only yearned for her mother who was already dead when she pushed the state of Tennessee to give her details as an adoptee (which they still denied her). I think my mom had a pre-birth and infant sense that her own mother felt abandoned by this man with good reason. The true reasons for their separation and why he didn’t come to her aid in Memphis, I’ll never know. I have this picture thanks to my cousin, the daughter of the younger girl in this photo.
An article in Severance magazine where the aftermath of separation is often detailed by those who have experienced it is shared caught my attention for it’s headline – The Grandfather I May Never Know. I still need to actually read it (and will before I finish this blog) but I would suspect from the headline, it is still possible for the author.
In her article, Bianca Butler writes – “As a young child, I didn’t know that my mother and her twin sister (now deceased) had been adopted in 1960. I found out in 2000, when, after nearly 40 years of silence, their biological mother wrote to the twins asking to reunite.”
She describes one outcome of their reunion – “By meeting her biological mother, my mother learned her biological father’s identity and that she and her twin are of mixed-race ancestry: African American and white. Their biological mother had been a young African American college student at the University of California, Berkeley when she relinquished her twin daughters for adoption. They were born in a time in the United States when interracial unions were not only taboo but also illegal (Loving V Virginia) and when young unwed women were shamed and stigmatized—a time known as the Baby Scoop Era, from 1945 to 1973, before Roe V Wade in 1973.”
Since the suspected father of the twins denied paternity, the author decided to get her DNA tested. She goes on to share that “The Ancestry DNA test confirmed that I’m 31% Norwegian and, through the DNA matches, that I’m related to his cousins. I sent him the DNA results, but he’s still in denial and, sadly, not open to a relationship.” She admits that – “Finding biological family and taking a DNA test can bring great joy and excitement, but it can also bring rejection and disappointment. . . . It can be very emotional opening up old generational wounds that still haven’t been healed. . . . some people don’t want to be found, especially when race and adoption are factors, and I’ve had to accept that reality. “
She adds a happier note – “On a positive note, through Ancestry DNA I was amazed to connect with a cousin on my mom’s paternal side who is close to my age and open to connecting. She moved to Sacramento from Minnesota last year for graduate school, and we plan to meet. From her own ancestry research, she was able to give me more information about our shared heritage and ancestral homeland in Fresvik, Norway, which, in addition to Oslo, I hope to visit.”
This happened for me as well (thanks to DNA testing). I have contact with a cousin in Denmark now. I have learned details about my paternal grandfather’s early life. I would love to travel to Denmark and visit the family there (who never knew my grandfather ever had any children, and he probably never knew either as he was a married man and my grandmother simply handled it quietly).
I do share this perspective with the article’s author – “As an adult, I’m doing the healing work to educate myself on intergenerational trauma, loss, and abandonment that happen through adoption.”
Vagabond, I think the man with the pipe in his mouth is my paternal grandfather.
Lily MacLeod and Gillian Shaw ~ photo by Carlos Osorio for the Toronto Star, 2012
As a Gemini, twins have always fascinated me. I have wondered if I once had a twin in utero who vanished. Having gone through assisted reproductive medical interventions, I know this happens. It happened with my older son when my pregnancy originally appeared to be twins. I really didn’t want the challenge but in my mom’s group we have several pairs of twins and one set of triplets. The father of the man I am married to was a twin. Both my father in law and his twin brother are now deceased.
The less than common occurrence of multiple births has my attention this morning after watching the documentary – Three Identical Strangers. The story tells how these men were separated at 6 mos and adopted out with strategic intent by the clinical psychiatrist, Peter Neubauer, through the cooperation of the Louise Wise adoption agency. Psychology Today did an article entitled The Truth About “Three Identical Strangers.” The article explains – Dr Viola Bernard was the chief psychiatric consultant to the Wise agency. In the late 1950s (before Dr Peter Neubauer was involved), Dr Bernard created a policy of separating identical twins when they were adopted. Dr Bernard’s intentions are described as benign. In a memo subsequently recovered, she expresses her hope that “early mothering would be less burdened and divided and the child’s developing individuality would be facilitated” by this separation. It wasn’t only the Wise agency but many other agencies that also practiced the separation of twins at the time of adoption.
The conclusion by Dr Lois Oppenheim in the Psychology Today article is – The basic premise of the film, that the triplets’ separation was a heartless scheme undertaken at the expense of the children’s well-being to enable a scientific study, is fiction. The filmmakers could have created a documentary about the complexities of the twin study, its origins and context, and the changing standards of ethical norms and lessons learned. This might have been less dramatic, but it would have made an important contribution to our understanding of gene research and parenting.
Yet, the practice of separating identical or even non-identical siblings in the adoption industry continues and the study and research of such persons continues to this day. Regarding my photo above of Lily MacLeod and Gillian Shaw, the story in The Toronto Star by Amy Dempsey tells us that the 12-year-olds were separated as babies in China but reunited after the two separate Ontario couples adopted them. When their separate/different adoptive parents made the startling discovery that their two daughters were identical twins, they vowed to raise the girls as sisters. Their situation is highly unusual: Lily and Gillian are two of only a handful of twin pairs – mostly Chinese children adopted by North American parents – who are being raised, knowing they are siblings but separately apart. For scientific researchers, the girls are yet another opportunity to study the effects of nature vs nurture in real-time. As for their families – strangers thrown together by the most unusual of circumstances – their situation explores a new kind of blended family, with unique and fascinating joys and challenges.
The Toronto Star goes beyond the story of the twin Chinese girls to note that in the late 1970s, scientists at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research began studying what was then a new category of multiples — adopted twins who were separated at birth and reunited as adults. Dr Thomas Bouchard’s landmark paper was titled “Minnesota Study of Identical Twins Reared Apart.” The study shook the scientific community by demonstrating, across a number of traits, that twins raised apart are as similar as twins raised together. The study’s evidence of genetic influence in traits such as personality (50 per cent heritable) and intelligence (70 per cent heritable) overturned conventional ideas about parenting and teaching. And findings of genetic influence on physiological characteristics have led to new ways of fighting and preventing disease.
While I was yet pregnant with my oldest son, I chose to read a book titled Mother Nature by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy which had just come out in the year before. So my interest is long standing and it is little wonder that the issues continue to capture my interest. For centuries, the self-sacrificing mother who places her child’s needs and desires above her own has defined womanhood. Designed by nature for the task of rearing offspring, women are “naturally” tender, selfless and compassionate where their progeny are concerned. Those who reject childbearing or fail to nurture their offspring directly are typed as pathological, “unnatural” women. In traditional Darwinian evolutionary biology, the female of any species has evolved to produce and nurture the species; one could say it is her only role. Feminist treatises have long argued against the necessary conflation of “woman” with “mother,” and classics such as Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born have cogently argued that such altruistic maternity is a cultural construct and not a biological given.
From a review (link above) of Hrdy’s book Mother Nature – US anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy strides into the minefield, examining motherhood across cultures, historical periods, evolutionary tracts and biological species to better understand human maternity. Hrdy’s book resides in that rare space between academic disciplines (she is a professor emerita at the University of California-Davis and she has been schooled in anthropology, primatology, evolutionary theory, history and feminism). Her work can be situated somewhere between specialist treatise and popular biological science. Hrdy’s unique placement enables her to combine the best of Darwinian evolutionary biology with feminist cultural theory, without falling into the political entrapments of either camp.
Heartening for me, as a biological/genetic mother who lost physical (but not legal) custody of her daughter when she was only 3 years old, I am reminded in this review of Hrdy’s book that stay-at-home mothers are rare in the historical and evolutionary archives; community caregiving is an age-old model of childrearing. Throughout history in primate and human communities, mothering techniques involve “allomothers”: the delegation of child caretaking to other members (male and female) of the community. “Mothers have worked for as long as our species has existed, and they have depended on others to help them rear their children,” Hrdy writes. That means I was not the abject failure I believed my self to be for over 60 years but just another kind of mother. Motherhood today often includes women who have jobs and incomes of their own. Hrdy sees this as an evolutionary process to ensure long and safe lives for these mother’s child(ren). A lack of financial resources most certainly drove me to leave my daughter with her paternal grandmother, while I took a risk to see if I could earn some decent money driving an 18-wheel truck. There never was the intention to permanently abandon my child to other people. Thankfully, as adults we are happily close enough at heart and I believe love one another as fully as any mom could hope for. It is actually the lack of financial resources that is at cause for most adoptions.
In “60 Years On, Twin/Triplet Study Still Raises Questions” – an interview of Dr Leon Hoffman by Elizabeth Hlavinka for Medpage Today looks at the ethics of that study, which began in 1960 (the documents from which are sealed in the archives at Yale University until 2065). This tells me that Peter Neubauer, who died in 2008, eventually had his own qualms about the ethics of what he had perpetrated, though he is judged to have mostly been concerned with confidentiality issues that (until open adoptions began) were the rule in commercial closed adoptions (the effects of which continue to obstruct and vex adult adoptees to this day – change comes slowly). My blog today takes it title from an observation by Dr Hoffman – that the problem with a lot of “exposés” is that we judge the past by our present values. That is an important point. He also notes that at the time of the Neubauer project, there was a prevailing belief that twins would be better off separated, if they were going to be adopted. That twins were more difficult for the mother and that it would be easier for the mother to take care of one child instead of two children. I understand. In our mom’s group, those with twins often hired au pairs to assist them in those early days.
In this interview, Dr Hoffman notes – I always tell parents of kids that I see, “How much is genetic and how much is environment?” and I always say, “It’s 100% of both,” because those two are always interacting with one another. More and more data has shown that genetic variations get very much affected by the environment. I believe this is also evident in the story about the triplets. They even admit that during that time of their own high publicity, they amplified their similarities because that is what people were curious about. It is clear that they each had unique personalities that do seem to have been affected by their adoptive parents and the differing environmental situations they were raised in. As aging adults, the two surviving individuals have very different surface appearances while retaining many similarities.
Since I have looked at mother/child separations now for several years and am against the practice of adoption generally and in favor of family preservation, I was emotionally triggered last night by thinking about the amplifying effect of separation trauma (which IS mentioned by the triplets in their documentary) as yet another separation wound for babies who grew into their humanity in the same womb. Fortunately for the children in my mom’s group, they don’t have either of those added traumas. “The twin relationship, particularly with (identical) twins, is probably the closest of human social ties,” says Nancy Segal, who is herself a twin. This is why it’s so important for multiples to grow up together. Segal, now a psychology professor at California State University, has found about 15 more sets of adopted twin children being raised by different families, most of them Chinese girls. Researchers attribute this phenomenon to China’s one-child policy, which led to the abandonment of thousands of female babies. Though China’s official adoption rules state that twins should be placed together, pairs like Lily and Gillian prove things don’t always happen that way.
I found one other article that I’m not going to say very much about. You can read the story – Stories of Twins Separated at Birth by Pamela Prindle Fierro at the VeryWell Family website. There are the two sisters – Anais Bordier and Samantha Futerman. They found each other through Facebook and YouTube. They had been raised on different continents. The article includes information about the “Jim Twins” – James Arthur Springer and James Edward Lewis who found each other at the age of 39 in 1979. And there are actually MORE stories at this link.
The important thing to learn is that every action taken, that affects another human being, has the possibility of unintended consequences and that there is always the need for a fully informed consent in the interest of human well-being. An issue with adoptees is that due to their young age, they are never able to give informed consent and therefore, their rights are never considered. This is an issue with many adoptees who feel they are treated like second-class citizens with important basic human rights withheld from them – identity and medical issues foremost. An evolving issue with donor conceptions is similar. The human being conceived in that manner had no ability to consent to the method of their conception. Realistically, none of us consents (in a human sense, but I believe we do in non-physical prior to birth as I believe we are eternal souls).
Missing Mom 