Newsletter
#173 for Internationally Adopting Parents
October 19, 2015
PAL Center Inc.
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Latest Articles
from the
International Adoption Articles Directory
Thoughts About the Biological Parents of International Adopted Children
How do you deal with the biological family of the adopted child that may still reside somewhere abroad?
More important, how does your child deal with that?
What's the role and position of the adoptive parent in the process?These and many other far reaching questions and thoughts are discussed in the latest article of our counselor Jeltje Simons
Jeltje Simons
Before I adopted I had some ideas about birth families and the children available for adoption and it all appeared quite straight forwards. In the case of adoption every legal tie with the birth family is cut, the child becomes your own as would have been the case by birth, and you live happily ever after.. . The reality is of course a little more complicated.
In the past decade there also has been a huge shift in opinion about what is a good practice when it comes to birth parent contact. From adopting very young infants and telling them nothing if they were of similar race, to fully open adoptions where birth parents and adopters have each other's contact details and can be in touch whenever they wish. These are the trends, so some people seek contact with the birth parents before their children are of age when they can decide. Also when it comes to inter-country adoptions, TV programs that show great reunions are not helping people to see the full picture. These programs are just a snapshot of a long process of loss and pain that lasts years; and the reunion moment, though full of emotion and excitement, is not the final outcome for most.
Most inter-country adoptions are fully closed, and that's it. That is also one of the reasons some people choose inter-country adoption over domestic: it gives them a piece of mind not to have to deal with all sorts of contact issues, direct (meeting the birth parents once or more times a year) or indirect (writing to and receiving letters from the birth family). However, the truth of the matter is, even if you have adopted a Chinese girl for whom the chances that the birth family will ever be found are extremely low, the presence of the birth mother is real still, even if you have never met her, if you do not have information about her existence: she is important to your child and so to you.
After my children came home I was surprised how much I was thinking of their birth mothers. And to be honest, I still do think about that woman who is always in the background. Looking at the facial features of my new child and wondering if he was looking like her. For the birth mother he is still the baby frozen in time; for me - the child she will never really know. I feel sadness thinking of the consequences of the fact caused by her walking away. Maybe the act in itself made her life easier at the time, maybe she still thinks of him and wonders how he is doing, maybe he is a lost memory.
For my child the consequences of his abandonment have been huge. The neglect he suffered; his trauma, his difficulty attaching, his inability to really care about people, animals, belongings; his social problems, his learning challenges are all the direct result of never having a mother to love him, to soothe him, to protect him, to attach to him and care for him.
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