How long would you have to be involuntarily separated from your own mother before she would have changed to the point that you didn’t feel like you had a unique connection to her?
What if someone kidnapped your kids you actually have right now? They are young-school-age, right? They could quite conceivably settle very tightly into a new family, to where while they remembered you, they didn’t feel like you were their real mom any more. Would you be content to have a “non-parental relationship” with them? Could you do that?
Well, if I were only 3 or 4, probably not that long. As a older child/teen, I don’t think it could happen. But you can’t put a set of parents in front of a fifteen year old who hasn’t known them since she was three and expect her to care about them more than the parents who have raised her most of her life – which is why I thought the bio parents in the Face on the Milk Carton books were so creepy. They kept thinking that their daughter was going to one day suddenly act like her bio parents were the parents she loved most and that was never going to happen.
No, I mean now. If you were involuntarily separated tomorrow. The way you feel connected to your mom. How long would it take before you felt like you didn’t have much of a connection to her because she’d been away for so long? Before you’d grown apart so irrevocably that it wasn’t really a mother/child relationship any more?
Of course a lot of things would be very different, but I don’t see how you could think that parents would not even feel strong emotions for their kid. And even if they weren’t easily recognizable to the casual observer, I think any parent would be able to see how it was still their same kid. But no, you wouldn’t be able to just pick up where you left off, of course. You’d love your kid as much as ever though.
Right, but your mom was “old” when you were born. The way your feelings towards her would never change–even if she changed/matured/had a ton of experiences without you–is how she felt towards you when you were an infant/toddler/small child.
Let’s just say I’d feel very, very different about the situation if the kid had been adopted through legitimate means like a state orphanage or the foster system or something. As it is, I’m sorry, but the fact that these people bought their baby kind of renders them “not good people” somehow in my eyes. So I’m not convinced they’re the best parents for the kid, even if they love him. It’s like, I’m reasonably sure Jefferson had love of sorts for Sally Hemings, but he still viewed her (and other slaves) as his property, and because of that, wasn’t a good person. Same-same here.
Sorry, I was away. There are a lot of caveats in that situation:
One presumes that their current parents are not the ones who kidnapped them (since if they were, going to jail might impede on their ability to continue to parent them).
They have been their parents for a long time and have formed a strong attachment relationship with the children.
Would I be ‘content’ to have a non-parental relationship? Hell, no! Would I do it if it seemed like the best thing for the kids? Hell, yes.
Could I do it? Yeah, I think I could. It would be painful and heart-wrenching. It would probably require counselling for myself and my husband.
I would, literally, die for my children. This sacrifice would be far short of that.
This is hard to respond to because I don’t agree. I don’t think it’s a binary situation. It can be in my best interests AND the child’s best interests, so one is not trumping the other.
Really out of curiosity (because overall here, I think we fundamentally disagree but I’m enjoying the conversation and don’t want you think I’m targeting you in an aggressive way), would your opinion change at all if:
The adopted parents were even a little bit directly culpable, let’s say they had knowingly used a shady private adoption broker because they were heartbroken and desperate after not being successful with pursuing a legal adoption. Other than this, they are loving parents and the kid loves them and is happy and thriving. Should custody be given to the birth parents?
The adopted parents acted in good faith, but shortly after the adopting their child, learned that who they believed to be a reputable private adoption broker had been involved in other illegal adoptions in the past. Fearful of losing their child, they decide not to come forward to authorities, but rather wait until the investigators contact them. The investigation is slow-moving, they are not contacted for several years. Again, the kid is happy and thriving.
The kid is happy and thriving is really enough for me. I think the kid has a right to enjoy their life and not have it disrupted any more than it has already been. I have seen the damage this disruption can do first hand. I see all the pain that my kids went through (and are still going through) because of it. I couldn’t cause that kind of pain for them again. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Of course, in both cases, I would work to develop a continuing relationship with the child (if they wanted one, of course). I would sincerely hope that the adoptive parents would be willing to work with me on it. If they weren’t, I might pursue legal action so I could get some kind of visitation but only if the child would not be negatively affected by it.
ETA: I don’t mind all the questions at all or that you likely think I am nuts. I am happy to clarify my position.
Nothing short of abuse, neglect, or free will should sever the natural ties of a parent or child (by free will, I mean in the case that the parent willingly and without coercions surrenders the child).
Well, in those cases, the adoptive parents knew someone was wrong, so they are accessories to kidnapping, pure and simple. Now, if the natural family pursues custody here, allowing the adoptive parents to keep the child sets a pretty terrifying legal precedent: that all kidnappers have to do is get away with it just long enough for the child to bond with them, and they’re set.
It’s a sad situation, and ideally all the adults would work together somehow, but the idea that a bio family whose child has been kidnapped should do this Stella Dallas martyr thing and withdraw themselves is a little bizarro to me.
I admit, I come at it prejudiced because half my life was ruined because my biological mom showed up when I was 14 and tried to assert her “rights”. All she did is drive a huge wedge between my adoptive mom and me that was never repaired (mom died two years ago so it never will be) and for a long time I hated my biological mother. Now I just feel completely neutral and a little bit of disgust for her.
Of course she gave me up more or less willingly in the first place. The scenarios were the adoptive parents were more or less a little bit culpable are of course different. But I still don’t agree biological parents automatically hold the trump cards. I think these need to be decided on a case by case basis. And if it’s a case where the parents just shut their eyes and didn’t ask any questions, it’s not going to be an easy sell to the kid, either.
I hope I am not coming across as too aggressive: like delphica, I am enjoying the conversation.
I can’t see how it would seem like the best thing for my kid. Unless there was a good reason why I wouldn’t be a good parent–a reason that would have compelled me to seek out and vet adoptive parents on my own–I just don’t see myself able to take it on faith that strangers would make the best choices for my kid. What if they bully him? What if they smoke dope with him? What if they are racist or sexist? What if they push him too hard to get into Harvard? To not have any input, any right to even communicate with him–that wouldn’t be best for him, even if it were easiest.
I think dying to save my son would be easy. I wouldn’t even have to think about it. This would be harder, because there is a lot more gray.
I guess I would feel I couldn’t be sure he’d keep being happy and thriving, and couldn’t stand to lose the right to monitor that. I would do everything in my power to minimize the disruption–not move them or anything–but I couldn’t just slink off in the night and hope it all worked out.
I really disagree with this. I had a friend in high school who had the pretty standard Sundays/2 weeks in the summer visitation schedule with her Dad. Once she hit 12 or so, she started skipping some of those visits and her dad didn’t push the issue. What arose was a situation where her mom felt emotionally involved with whether or not her daughter “chose” to go see her dad, and there really arose a lot of pressure to chose not to see her father, and a lot of guilt when she did. Had they all stuck to the visitation schedule, they all would have been happier: the mom wouldn’t have felt like her daughter was rejecting her when she went to her dad, the dad would have had a better relationship with his daughter, and my friend wouldn’t have felt that relationship with one parent meant rejecting the other. A 12 year old who suddenly discovers he has more parents than he knew can’t be expected to decide then if he wants a relationship with all of them, and it’s unfair to put him in the position where he has to choose. Better to let the courts create opportunities for a relationship to grow or not over time.
And I guess I think that no matter what, the child is going to be negatively affected: the potential negative effect of not knowing me and his first father has to be weighed against the potential negative effect of a court battle. The potential negative effect of a disrupted life has to be weighed against the potential negative effect of his second parents making mistakes, and, honestly, the potential negative effect of knowing his first parents did not fight to know him–which I think would feel like an abandonment or a rejection.
I think your situation was very very different from any of the hypotheticals here, Anaamika. In these situations, I do think that the bio family (or the legal adoptive family, for they can lose a child by kidnapping as well), holds the trump card. If another Aaliyah Hernandez/Delimar Vera is discovered, I don’t think a moment’s time should be wasted determining how content the child is. That wasn’t the kidnapper’s kid.
I am not Mika, so I shouldn’t speak for her. Fortunately I am kind of a dick..
I took her point to be that the biological parent is likely to ruin any chance of having a healthy, fulfilling, good relationship with the kid by pursuing legal custody. Yes, the bio-father probably has the legal right to custody, but what he hopefully desires – to be the kid’s dad, not just his sperm donor – isn’t open to him anymore. Through no fault of the kid or the bio-father’s, it’s too late. The kid is going to perceive the bio-dad as a stranger who is ripping him away from his real parents, and always resent him.
I also take issue with the notion that the child’s contentment is irrelevant. Possessive case aside, one’s children are not one’s property; they are persons. A father’s job is to do what is in his children’s best interest, not what the parent wants. Yes, that can sometime involve taking the kid out of a situation the kid prefers – say requiring a kid to move with you when you change jobs and cities. But in this case, there’s no good to be done by taking custody, because the parent-child relationship between the bio-dad and the kid is chimerical. It could only be restored with a time machine, and this ain’t that kind of thread.
Agreed. But they are not adults, and they don’t know what’s in their own best interests. Well, of course, that varies - if the kid was 6, I’d say “Definitely to the bio-dad”, if the kid was 16, I’d say “Definitely with the adoptives”. You hit on the nebulous age where I think there’s still a chance for recovery of the dad-son relationship. And since the adoptive parents aren’t special snowflakes IMO, I don’t hesitate in saying he should have that chance.
Not that the child is a person instead of a possession, but that familial ties are not essential to the child’s well-being. And that it’s impossible to cultivate a father-son relationship past the age of 10.
And also, that if you look at these cases in real life, like Aaliyah Hernandez, it tends to not bode well for the child’s bond with the kidnappers or accidental kidnappers.
But I have to run now, so I’ll be back to argue later tonight.
Now we’re getting into actual kidnappers which is a whole different kettle of fish, isn’t it? I don’t think the OP started out with actual kidnappers, just people who might have gone a step or two too far to get the child they really wanted. Ergo, people who actually love the child they did get.
I don’t know. It’s not so cut-and-dried as the biological parents coming storming in and whisking the child away. From the article sugaree linked to:
The best interests of the CHILD. Not of the biological parents. And these kids were actually stolen.
It’s a fascinating topic and I hope it’s OK that I am interjecting some of my personal experience from the point of view of an adoptee.