Adoption: recipe for failure ? ?

In My Humble Opinion
1

As is the way of events, one hears more of failures than of successes, but I am wondering, in light of the many news articles, if there is a built-in, perhaps genetic, predisposition for failure, in the adoptee, biological parents, and/or adoptive parents.

My personal experience and knowledge of adoptive situations have shown a markedly high failure rate but as initially stated, perhaps I have yet to hear from those who have enjoyed a rewarding and positive outcome, whatever their status in the dynamic might be . . .

My worst recollection of the situation was when I returned to civilian life from the military, in the early 50’s, and while renewing friendships with my old “crowd”, I asked, “How’s Paul doing, I haven’t seen him yet ?” and there were throat clearings from lowered heads, and finally someone spoke, “Paul is in a mental hospital – he got his draft notice, and his dad threw a going-away party for Paul and invited all of us, and in the middle of the festivities, he make an announcement, “Paul, you are going to war and you might not come back, and there is something I want to tell you: you are not my real son – you are adopted” and Paul just stood there, saying nothing, and finally collapsed, drooling, to the floor, and when we visit him at the hospital, he doesn’t seem to know any of us” . . .

Paul and his dad had always been close, doing things together, and apparently this was more of a shock than he was capable of handling . . .

Is it possible/likely that there is some inborn characteristic in a woman to be less of a mother, and therefore willing to give up her child, and further, is it possible that some aspect of this deficiency is passed along to the child, giving it an edge on performing less that normally in society, and further, is there some propensity in adoptive parents that can cultivate actions or attitudes toward their “new” child that can lead it astray of normal responses ? ?

There are too few beautiful stories, like the two sibs, and one of them says, “One of us is adopted, but we aren’t sure which”, but as stated, good stuff is supposed to happen and is, therefore, not newsworthy . . .

2

As is the way of events, one hears more of failures than of successes, but I am wondering, in light of the many news articles, if there is a built-in, perhaps genetic, predisposition for failure, in the adoptee, biological parents, and/or adoptive parents.

My personal experience and knowledge of adoptive situations have shown a markedly high failure rate but as initially stated, perhaps I have yet to hear from those who have enjoyed a rewarding and positive outcome, whatever their status in the dynamic might be . . .

My worst recollection of the situation was when I returned to civilian life from the military, in the early 50’s, and while renewing friendships with my old “crowd”, I asked, “How’s Paul doing, I haven’t seen him yet ?” and there were throat clearings from lowered heads, and finally someone spoke, “Paul is in a mental hospital – he got his draft notice, and his dad threw a going-away party for Paul and invited all of us, and in the middle of the festivities, he make an announcement, “Paul, you are going to war and you might not come back, and there is something I want to tell you: you are not my real son – you are adopted” and Paul just stood there, saying nothing, and finally collapsed, drooling, to the floor, and when we visit him at the hospital, he doesn’t seem to know any of us” . . .

Paul and his dad had always been close, doing things together, and apparently this was more of a shock than he was capable of handling . . .

Is it possible/likely that there is some inborn characteristic in a woman to be less of a mother, and therefore willing to give up her child, and further, is it possible that some aspect of this deficiency is passed along to the child, giving it an edge on performing less that normally in society, and further, is there some propensity in adoptive parents that can cultivate actions or attitudes toward their “new” child that can lead it astray of normal responses ? ?

There are too few beautiful stories, like the two sibs, and one of them says, “One of us is adopted, but we aren’t sure which”, but as stated, good stuff is supposed to happen and is, therefore, not newsworthy . . .

3

To administrator: Please delete post with mis-spelling in topic title. Thank you.

4

Well, it got him out of the army!

You ought to remember that, in those days, girls were pressured to give up their babies. And they were generally kids–forced marriages with the kid-fathers were hardly guarantees of success.

Adoption should remain an option for women ignorant of contraception who are unwilling to abort…

5

I’m not really sure what you want, you cite an anecdote to show ‘adoption generally ends in failure’ but this is a phenomenon I haven’t come across. What counts as ‘failure’?

Anecdote 2: my older brother and sister were adopted by my parents, and have led perfectly normal, happy lives, with no desire to trace their birth parents. What does that prove?

Where Paul’s Dad went wrong was to withhold this information til he was an adult. My parents told my siblings when they were still babies, they grew up knowing that they were chosen and loved. My sister actually felt sorry for me when I was born because I wasn’t hand picked.

People do, say and act in stupid ways, and that impacts on their children, adopted or not. Birth parents can wreak havoc on the well being of their children just by being shitty to them, we have enough threads on this board to attest to that. I can’t see that’s any different to having adopted parents who are less than stellar.

Are you suggesting we should just leave abandoned kids in care homes?

6

My concern is piqued by the many recent news stories about adoptions from the Soviet Union, and their failures, plus the one I mentioned about my friend, plus more than a few that I have known of that I didn’t mention . . .

Sanvito, IMO, you are really reaching to suppose I proposed leaving undesired children in foster care – I can’t see any suggestion at all that such an idea was put forth . . .

7

Reported as duplicate thread.

8

It is my understanding that the spate of failed Russian adoptions is because Russia is adopting out children with attachment disorders due to spending the first few years of their lives in *really *shitty orphanages.

9

Well, if you’re looking for anecdotes, I can tell you that I’m adopted, and it seems to have gone reasonably well for me and my adoptive parents. We’re very close - live in the same town, I cook for them at least once per week, and I can’t imagine loving them more if they’d given birth to me. I wouldn’t call that a failure, personally.

As to whether I’m more disposed to ‘performing less than normally in society,’ I guess you’d have to define what’s normal. No axe murders here, but I’m not POTUS either. And I’ve got to say: I think people maybe TALK less about the successes (of which there are many) than the scary outlier experiences (sounds like Paul’s definitely qualifies).

What do you mean by ‘astray of normal responses?’

10

I think the anecdote in your OP is more like “telling a kid who’s about to leave for war that he is not likely to make it home and that he is adopted - recipe for failure?” than adoption itself.

I have a friend who is adopted and so are 2 of her siblings, and 2 are bio kids, and they are the happiest family I’ve ever seen. Normal as anything. Lots of love, you can hardly stand it.

I have another friend who, like SanVito’s sister, is “proud to have been chosen” and has no problems in his life related to being adopted.

My best friend’s mom was adopted as a teen. She went on to have 5 kids of her own and 13 grandkids. Her adoptive parents are hella awesome!

I have a feeling that if we did a little anecdote-off, the “grew up just fine after adoption” stories would crush the “my life was ruined by adoption” stories.

11

I have numerous personal friends that were adopted and are parents of adopted children. I’m not aware of a single one that has resulted in a negative outcome as you describe or assume.

12

And failed adoptions make for news stories. You don’t hear stories like my son - who is doing fine (some fairly normal middle school issues - we are homeschooling the first year of high school because he fell in with “the wrong crowd.” But that isn’t an adoption thing - the wrong crowd was bio kids).

I’m pretty active in the Twin Cities adoption community and I know of zero “failed” adoptions. I know some people whose kids didn’t turn out well - biological AND adoptive.

It is true that adopted kids are more likely to seek counseling, but the reason for this is not clear - is it because their parents - who had to get counseling to get them - are more comfortable with the idea? Is it because kids who are adopted are more likely to have inherited conditions? (ADHD, depression, and chemical abuse problems are more common in adoptive kids, but we don’t know that its the ADOPTION, those all have a genetic component as well, and its understandable that a birth parent with any of those issues might choose adoption over trying to raise a child). Is it because their pre-adoption lives were difficult (the situation in Russian orphanages has been mentioned, but kids coming through the foster care system have usually been abused)? Or is it the adoption itself. The people who study it think that the first three have far more to do with the issues these kids have than the adoption.

(ETA: Another hot issue is mixed race adoptions - our son is Korean and we are white - but are racial issues from the adoption - or are they racial issues that would have occurred regardless of the color of the adoptive family. That is far less clear. And frankly, there aren’t enough Asian adoptive families - the alternative is institutional care).

13

I thought this was a new word I should know.

14

Dangerosa, you touched on salient points, some that I would have asked, had I thought of it . . .

15

The idea that biological parents who place their children for adoption are “lesser” parents is pernicious. To recognize that one is not in a position to give a child the best possible start in life, and to place that child with a family that really wants to raise a child and has the love and the means to do so, takes enormous strength of character.

16

One flaw in your assumptions there is the notion that the woman gave up the child voluntarily. That wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t that long ago when an unmarried young woman would be de facto incarcerated and her baby taken without ever asking her her opinion on the matter. Within my lifetime in fact, and the lifetime of a lot of people still living.

17

+1,000 I was such a child

18

I’d like to see a cite for that. Yes, there were a lot of societal and parental pressures put on women to place their child for adoption, but at the end of the day, the mother had to relinquish her rights, not the grandparents.

StG

19

Hi Dad!

Actually, my dad sent my sister (who had indicated she would be interested in adopting if she wasn’t able to get pregnant) email not so long ago saying pretty much what the OP said – speculating that adoption carried within it the seeds of its own failure, as all the cases he knew of personally ended with the adopted kid being messed up.

On further investigation by my sister and me, it turns out that in all the cases he knew of, the adoptive parents drew a sharp distinction between the adopted kids and bio kids, and treated the adoptive kids as (his words) “second-class citizens.” …Yeah, maybe it’s not so surprising that the kids didn’t turn out so great. (Note that this was back in the 60’s. None of the adoptive parents I know are like that in the slightest.)

I’d also cite Steven Jobs and Kristin Chenoweth as high-profile counterexamples to the OP.

20

I don’t know how old you are, but when I was very young, keeping an out of wedlock child pretty much meant your life was over. It went over 100 times worse than a child porn conviction does today.

Women who absolutely could not bear to part with their child, assuming their family would even allow it, would usually marry someone in a hurry and then have a “premature” baby. Or perhaps a quickie marriage to the father of the child, with an even faster divorce after the child was born. Or if their family could afford it, they would send the girl away to distant relatives to have the baby, then set the young “widow” up in a town 1,000 miles away to start her life over. Sometimes people got married and stayed married and things worked out fine, but others weren’t so lucky.

People forget that women back then didn’t have the earning power they do now and that immediate family had much more control over your life and decisions. If you were young, pregnant and unmarried; you were the wayward one, not society.

It’s easy to say that “at the end of the day, the mother had to relinquish her rights, not the grandparents”, but if at the end of the day you will not have a home to live in, are branded a whore who is now easy pickings for every male in town, are stigmatized to the point where getting a job is most likely an issue, cannot rely on family for childcare (daycare does not exist yet), earning a living wage is going to be next to impossible, your former friends cannot associate with you for fear of being lumped in with you, and on and on.

My cite would be four relatives that I know for a fact had these scenarios happen to them, and countless first hand stories I’ve heard from people who had no reason to lie.