That’s a good point you’ve made, Sarahfeena, being adopted is not a big part of my life either.
My father’s partner’s grandchild adopted a Korean infant. The whole familly is pure Italian, on both sides.
They named the child Giuseppi. They didn’t want him to feel out of place in the family with a non-Italian name. 
My last name is extremely German. My son (who is older) got tha occasional double-take from his teachers when they called out his name on the first day of school, and saw that he is not genetically middle European. With his little sister, they are more used to it.
You probably will get some disagreement, but not from me.
This is based almost entirely on two entirely non-rational things -[ul][li]the horror stories I read about birth parents trying to get their birth children back after the child had already been adopted or spent years apart. [*]my own, astonishingly negative reaction to a forum where a birth mother in an open adoption spoke to us about her experiences and expectations. Maybe she was a perfectly nice person, but I got so upset I had to leave the room.[/li]
I had this nice cosy picture built up of what birth mothers were like, and it sure as hell didn’t fit her.[/ul]No offense to birth parents, I hope.
That they are adopted is obvious and we couldn’t have covered it up if we tried. The actual details (what we know of them) of the circumstances of their birth parents we don’t share with anyone outside the family. That we do consider up to our children to decide who they want to share it with, and how much.
Neither have much curiousity about them. Once, when my daughter was very young, she wondered, not about her birth mother, but about her foster mother, the woman who cared for her before she came on the plane to us.
We got a picture of my son in his foster home, before he came to us, and there was another child beside him in the picture. Fast forward fifteen years, and my son was at Korean Culture Camp, where they were showing pictures of themselves in Korea. Guess who was showing off a picture of the same foster mother in the same living room?
Small world, but I would hate to have to clean it.
Regards,
Shodan
I love that!
Heck, my husband has a Spanish last name, and he is blonde, extremely fair skinned, and blue eyed. He isn’t even a little bit adopted…he just happens to look like his Irish/German mom, not his Hispanic dad. People ask him where he got his name all the time…he just says “from my father,” with this kind of “well, DUH” tone in his voice. 
I’m not so hot on open adoptions, either. I think it creates complications in a child’s life that aren’t necessary, and I think that if you really want the child to bond with the adoptive family, it’s probably best that they don’t have two “moms” (even if they only call one of them mom, the biology is kind of hard to ignore). I guess I just don’t see the psychological advantage, since most of the adopted people I know don’t seem to have that feeling of “incompleteness” that people assume we have. I always say that I have all the family I want or need, thank you very much (and sometimes, more than I want or need!)
First, let me say how much I appreciate all of you taking the time to answer these questions.
I train Foster and Adoptive Parents in a course called Model Approach to Partnership in Parenting (MAPP). In NC, both Foster and Adoptive parents must go through this 30 hour training.
My question has to do with the “open adoption” comments. There can be a wide span in the interpretation of exactly what “open” means.
How would you have felt if your adoptive parents had allowed your extended biological family to maintain contact with you?
Like your biological grandparents…would you have wanted to have known them as you grew up?
Let me also extend that question by asking this…
If you had lived in a foster home prior to being adopted, would you have wanted to maintain contact with your foster home?
**Assuming that had been a good placement, of course.
For me, it’s a hard question to answer. My initial reaction is no…I had both sets of grandparents and the usual assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins in addition to my own parents & siblings. So when I say “no,” I mean not that I have anything against the bio family, but that I don’t think anything was missing from my life by not knowing them.
Whether or not I would have been OK with knowing them is kind of a different issue. I guess I would have liked it, but I don’t know what it would have been like, so I can’t say for sure.
I would assume yes, even though I don’t have experience with this, either. I would think that anyone who I lived with and helped raise me would be a relationship I would like to maintain.
I think that foster families make a big impact on kids. My husband’s parents had a foster child before my husband was born, and he remembers that when that kid grew up, he came to visit, just because he wanted to touch base and say hello. I don’t think he was even with them for very long.
I’m an adoptive parent, not an adoptee. I’m not against open adoption, but there are a few issues I REALLY DON’T LIKE.
It seems from my outsiders view (our son is Korean, we have no contact with his birthmother, open adoption in Korean being VERY rare), that there are often boundary issues - surprisingly, in the cases I know of, not with the birth mother but with the birth grandparents, who seem to feel that “some other people are raising our grandbaby.” I’ve heard about birth grandparents showing up uninvited at birthday parties, wanting to know when the baby is going to come over on Christmas day. Messy.
The other thing I’ve seen is that birthmom is often young and while she is in high school (and sometimes for a few more years) she is willing to play her role - and often an odd family forms. About the time the kid is old enough to have questions and not be cute, having a birthchild becomes increasingly awkward - there are boyfriends involved she wants to spend time with, college maybe, eventually a whole family of her own. It sets up a second rejection for the kid.
I do sort of wish that we were able to exchange letters or Christmas cards with our son’s birthmother - that level of contact would be nice. On the other hand, I’m a lousy correspondent and I’m afraid I wouldn’t keep up my end of the bargain - which would be just as heartbreaking.
The sort of commitment required, plus the boundary dance, on all ends makes it seem difficult for it to work out well. It may be worth it when it does.
As are mine. We used to tell folks, " We had our babies at the airport, not the hospital." My soon to be ex-FIL used to comment that my son looked like his side of the family, which is 100% Polish peasant stock. I think it’s called “claiming”, thought I always labelled it “bullshit”.
I’m a retired E.M.T. Is there something about having Koreans in the house that drives people into medical services??? 
Cartooniverse
I think as foreign adoption becomes more common, and the US becomes more racially diverse, these kinds of double-takes are going to be rarer, because of adoption and inter-mixing.
One of the things our adoption agency warned us about was that racial issues might pop up when our son began dating. (Not so much with our daughter - white males with Asian females doesn’t trigger the same societal anxieties as Asian male- white female, apparently).
Nothing much has happened so far - my son dated a half-Argentinian/half-Norwegian girl for a while. I was sorry when they broke up - she was gorgeous.
Sarahfeena, you were adopted as an infant, were you not?
My issues with “open” adoption run somewhat more with Dangerosa’s concerns than with yours, Sarahfeena. I worried much less about the psychological stress of having two mothers, one birth and one adopted, and more with the problem that an open adoption meant that you were becoming more a grandparent than a parent. My worry (based largely on hearing from the birth mother in the forum I mentioned earlier) was that we would become responsible for mothering the birth mother as well as the child.
The birth mother that I mention seemed to expect that the adoptive parents were to serve as free baby-sitting during the week, and that she would have what amounts to visitation rights on weekends and holidays. And for some reason what she said set my teeth on edge, for a bunch of reasons.
Obviously this was just one instance, and I don’t expect that all or most birth mothers have the same expectations.
He wants to go to dental school - how are your teeth?
We have some, but not a lot, of information about the birth parents of our children. Do the adoptees here remember learning anything about their birth parents? In particular, the birth father?
I mentioned earlier that we consider this information private to our children, so I will completely understand if you don’t care to answer.
Regards,
Shodan
engineer_comp_geek, your advice to adoptive parents is spot on. I never had the impression that I was second best in any way when I was growing up, from any members of my close or extended family, because my parents were open with us and everyone else about our adoptions.
I also have to agree with you about open adoptions - often they sound so confusing for the kids involved and there are so many things that can go wrong. What is best for the birth mother and adoptive parents in that situation may not be best for the child - it’s a tough call.
I was told that my birth mother was a nurse (and she was) - the ladies at the hospital where I was born commented on it when my mum and dad picked me up. I know almost nothing about my father - his name is not on my birth certificate but he is listed as an engineer. That’s another reason I’d like to contact my uncle - he may know my father’s identity.
I don’t know - I think I would have wondered why on earth they’d given me away, I guess. I don’t think I’d have liked my biological grandparents - my grandfather anyway. The small bit of information I have indicates that he was the one who pressured my birth mother into giving me away in the first place.
I suppose for me it would depend on the adults and child involved.
I think you’re right about this…where I live, interracial couples of all sorts are so common they don’t get a second glance.
Yes, I was 6 weeks old. Lived with the nuns before that.
I never thought of that, but I can totally see how that could happen. I guess I’m looking at it from the child’s POV rather than the parents’!
Of course it did…you’re not the babysitter or day care provider, you’re the new parents, you know?
Probably not, but I think the problem I have is a birth parent having ANY expectations. It doesn’t seem right to me, somehow…as though they can’t quite let go. I don’t think it sounds healthy for anyone involved.
I’ve got nothing. I think I said earlier just basic descriptive information, and that’s it.
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When my brother was 19, he and his girlfriend gave their baby up for adoption. It was an open adoption, but they have pretty limited contact with the child and his adoptive family. (Child and family live in Pennsylvania; brother lives in California; former girlfriend lives in Texas.) Once every 6 months or so, the kid’s adoptive mom will send my brother a letter and a photo, and my brother has met with the family a couple of times, but that’s about it.
My parents have never met the adoptive family, but every Christmas my mom sends them $100 for their son’s college fund. I think my mom would like a closer relationship with the family, but recognizes that it would be very weird and perhaps not in her grandson’s best interest.
Uh… not worth the hijack?
The parents, by the way, are also looking at it from the child’s point of view - just with the “older and wiser” and “don’t hurt my kid” parent instincts. No parent, adoptive or bio, wants to see their kid’s heart broken. No one wants to see their kid forced to make choices between two families.
It is SO HARD balancing my family and Brainiac4’s family with kids - whose house this Thanksgiving, we just saw my mom, I suppose we need to see his, one Grandma took the kids to do something really special, now the other grandma is hurt - she wanted to be there for their “first roller coaster ride” or whatever. Add possibly two entire other families (if birthdad is involved ) - grandparents, aunts and uncles. Wait for explosion.
My kids don’t get enough time with the two (and a half) sets of grandparents they have. They are so busy - I’m not sure where I’d shoehorn in more. And it isn’t just hard for me, its hard on the kids too. They’d like to see more of their grandparents, but we have to make choices.
Wow, it’s almost like the adoption version of the stork myth! Cute.
My sister-in-law is adopted, though my husband is not. One day they were at the supermarket with their Mom, and the cashier looked at the adorable young lady and said, ‘‘What a beautiful child. Does she look like her father?’’
Totally deadpan, Mom replied, ‘‘I don’t know.’’
I really appreciate everything about this thread. My husband and I are definitely going to adopt, though a lot of the discussion here has made me stop to reconsider open adoption, which we were convinced was the most ‘‘fair.’’ There are so many issues to consider; I am really grateful we have years to prepare before we start the process.
Since almost all the respondents on this thread were adopted as infants, I thought I’d tell you a little about my brother’s experience.
I am the only biological child of my parents. My brother, my only sibling, was adopted when he was 6 and I was 11. When he came to us he was living in a foster home about 4 hours away.
My parents both have almost purely German ancestry, and my brother is just as white as the rest of us. He was adopted through a Lutheran adoption agency. I don’t know if there was any active discussion of race matching or why my parents chose that agency. I don’t know exactly why my parents decided to adopt, but I do know that they wanted an older child because they were much harder to place 40 years ago. They probably still are.
For the first several months, my brother would with decreasing frequency mention something about his living situation in his last foster home, which was on a farm. I don’t remember him mentioning his foster parents, but he talked quite a bit about his fear of the hogs. He never talked about his birth parents.
He had a biological sister, but he never talked about her at all as far as I know, with the exception of one instance which my mom told me about. When he was 8 or so, Mom had taken him to the library for storytime. He had to wait in line while Mom stood some distance away. A kid next to my brother in line turned and said to him “I know your sister!” My brother replied matter of factly “Yes, I do have a sister.” That was the end of the conversation, and he never mentioned this incident to my mother or anyone else.
With that small exception, after the first several months he never talked at all about his life before he joined our family. He speaks of himself as being German, though none of us know what his ethnic background really is.
When he was in his late 30’s, he and his wife visited our nonagenarian grandma in the nursing home. Though she was nearly sharp as ever mentally, she let slip that my brother had a biological sister. My brother had no memory of her at all, and this was extremely disturbing to him. He could not believe it was possible to forget such a thing. For about a year, he tried to find her, but was thwarted by lost or sealed records. However, he had no interest whatsoever in learning anything about his biological parents. Since this investigation fizzled, he’s never mentioned this subject again, and I don’t ask him about it.
Obviously, he’s always known he’s adopted, and as far as I know has never made a secret of it. Our family doesn’t really make a point of mentioning it, either. For the most part, I think of him as always having been part of the family. When talking of events in my childhood, my parents and I occasionally have to say something like “Oh yeah, that was before you came to us.”
Thanks, zagloba, that was interesting. I have no experience with the adoption of older children, and how it might differ from infant adoption. If you don’t mind my asking, do you know how old your brother was when he went to the foster farm?
Regards,
Shodan
I tend to speak of myself in terms of the same ethnic/nationality background as my adopted familiy. I guess it’s kind of a cultural thing. My parents aren’t that ethnic in terms of what they cook or anything, but since they are Polish, Irish, and German, and it seems as though half the population of Chicago are, too, it’s just natural to feel that this is what I am as well!
I was telling my folks about this thread last night, and my mom told me that when we were kids, a friend of hers who also had adopted children told her to never let our teachers know about it. She said that once they find out a kid’s adopted, they blame every problem he has on it. I would imagine this isn’t as much of an issue these days. At least, I hope not.
zagloba, thank you so much for sharing your brother’s experiences with us. These threads are such great opportunities to learn.