That’s what “open adoption” means, isn’t it?
How common was it for your peers to be sexually active at the time?
Open adoption has degrees, as I understand it. Sometimes it’s letters and pictures, sometimes it’s actual contact and relationship stuff.
Wait, what? what happened? Sorry if this is intrusive–this just jumped out at me.
Red, do your parents ever mention or discuss him with you now, or is it one of those forbidden topics?
Red, how often do you think about your child? Do you miss him? Do you daydream about what he’s doing?
At what point did you realize you were pregnant? How did you tell your parents? As devout Catholics, did they throw a major tizzy?
If you don’t mind me asking, did you get pregnant in spite of using contraception?
My questions were already answered, so please disregard my previous post.
You said you and your bf didn’t use birth control. You were 14 and he was 16. What advice, based on your own experience, would you give a Catholic school board on how best to give sex education on birt control to 14 year olds?
Since I’ve had my son, I have been amazed at the feeling “now I can die peacefully” that I have. Of course, I can’t die, I have to take care of him, but there’s this feeling that I have done a very important thing in giving birth to him. It’s probably a genes thing, the idea of having made a biological replacement. However, the feeling is real for me, and I wonder if I might feel the same way if I was separated from him. Do you feel that way?
I am thoroughly pro-choice, and an abortion might have been an option for me had I pulled my head out of the sand in time.
I was pretty much in denial for about 5 months. Getting an abortion would make the whole situation real and I didn’t want that. It would’ve involved telling my mother, and for some reason, that seemed like a fate worse than death. Which was really stupid, because my mother is a wonderful woman and wouldn’t have reacted the way I imagined, nor did she. I didn’t get pre-natal care, I didn’t stop my normal lifestyle, (no drugs, but I did drink occasionally,) and I sure didn’t acknowledge the fact that my jeans didn’t zip and my bras no longer fit.
As you pointed out, there are levels. We have a really unusual situation, and I have not come across another adoption setting quite like ours. I truly lucked out when I chose my adoptive family, because this is how they wanted it.
Between us, we created an extended family, so when I say I’m in his life, my whole family is in his life. My mom is Grandma, my brothers are uncles, and we visit as often as a normal family. I stick with just my name when he refers to me, because we didn’t want to muddy the waters trying to refer to me as an aunt. He knows exactly who I am, and where I’m at in his life. When he was young, his mom would tell our story like a bedtime story, so it is just a normal part of his life.
We all get together for birthdays, he was in my wedding, I visit whenever I can, as do they. And they have the same type of relationship with the birthmother of their other son.
My peers were all older. I hung out with a crowd that was all 4 or 5 years older than I was. Mentally, I was on their level, and sex was a part of that.
The kids my age? I don’t think sex was all that common for them yet.
We were using condoms, and evidently fell onto the wrong side of the percentages game.
And, apparently, how you and the kids were willing to do it as well.
I’m an adoptive parent. I’ve met adoptive families who wanted a relationship like yours - but over time, truth is that that sort of relationship is seldom really sustainable. Girls who are fourteen when they have a baby often move on with their lives - and choose not to make room for the visits as a twenty one year old college senior with a seven year old that they were willing to make at sixteen with a two year old. Or the kid moves on - we don’t have an open relationship in our adoption (my son is from South Korea) but I doubt we’d have maintained one - he is absolutely NOT INTERESTED in being adopted - or Korean - and there is only so much “be polite” one can enforce on an eight or ten year old kid before it becomes obvious that at least for the moment, forcing the relationship isn’t doing anyone any good. And adoptive parents are often at fault as well - we are at the age where fitting in visits with relatives in between baseball, piano, softball, school, scouts, etc., is hard - and maintaining relationships is back burnered. It is nice to hear when it works out the way people intended for it to work.
This is so great it made me cry. What a truly wonderful situation. I have a childhood friend (four years older than me). She and the boy across the street were dating and she got pregnant. Her catholic family sent her away to have the baby and they put it up for adoption (this was around '66 or '67…I’m certain she wasn’t more than 16 when he was born, and open adoptions were virtually unheard of).
She continued to date the boy and they married. However, they were unable to have any more children of their own. 
This story has always made me sad, but on an up note, they adopted two Russian kids and are a very happy family today.
Damn, now I’ve lost the really long post I just wrote.
Nava, it was very unusual for my peers to be sexually active. There were two other girls at my Catholic school, generally regarded as sluts, that I’d say maybe were also sexually active.
Dung Beetle, it’s sort of a forbidden topic in my family, although I gather from one of my older sisters that the family may talk about it, but not with me. I’m quite certain that my father has never mentioned it, he’s a bottler. But as I alluded to earlier, my extended family was not to know at the time, but it seems they do now. My aunt a few years back dropped me a line congratulating me on my graduation (with an AA) and mentioned something about “If the family had known what you were going through we would have been so supportive.” I don’t know who’s talking, but someone obviously is.
bup, honestly he doesn’t cross my mind very often now. I talked about it incessantly with my friends for the first few years, because I was pissed that it was such a verboten topic, and I needed to get it out. But as the years went by, because I don’t have any access to any information, gradually it just settled in in the back of my mind and only comes out occasionally. I’m ashamed to say that I have occasionally realized it was his birthday yesterday.
I feel bad, because I so often hear people talking of lost loved ones that say “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him,” but it’s not the case for me. I don’t think I could stay sane at all if I did that.
Now, that’s not to say that he never crosses my mind, and around the holidays and our birthdays (his is 11 days before mine, in January) I do think about him more often. But I always have to do a bit of mental arithmetic to figure out how old he is, which shows how often he is on my mind. But I do wonder, now that he’s 12, if he has any of my talents or his father’s, or if he likes the same kind of food, or if he got my curly hair. Does he play soccer or guitar like his father? Is he artistic like me? Is he a little smarty-pants know-it-all like both of us?
Maastricht, my sex ed was a lot different than other Catholic schools, in that my science teacher covered it for a week, and was a bit subversive. She gave us the whole spiel that the church does not approve of anything other than the rhythm method, but went on to describe the other birth control options. Now, we didn’t get to practice putting condoms on bananas, but it certainly wasn’t the stern abstinence-only talk that the baby’s father got, delivered by a guy in a hot pink jacket that said “Mr. No Sex” on the back. No, I’m not making that up.
But of course, if it had been a real sex ed class, perhaps one that distributed condoms and told us about the teen birth control program the Health Department runs, where you can get the pill free and without your parents’ permission, things would have happened differently.
As to feeling as if I could die at peace because I’ve brought new life into the world? No. Actually, from the age of about 18 to about 23 I was obsessed with settling down and making babies. I wanted to get married and start pumping out kids tout de suite. I now realize that was a way to either 1) replace the son I’d given up 2) make amends to him by caring for another child or 3) both.
I’ve since realized that I still don’t feel prepared for motherhood, although I know that if it happened I would be able to do it, it would just mean sacrificing a lot of my goals and dreams. Since I’d really rather not forgo my Ph.D., I’m waiting for that.
Freudian Slit, that’s a very complicated story in itself. I suppose it would be closer to statutory rape/molestation but I really don’t know what to call it. Basically when I was 12 I met an 18 year old guy who liked to deflower virgins. It wasn’t forceful, but it was manipulative, and for a week afterwards I had a very strong psychosomatic reaction where I’d vomit at the sound of his name or anything to do with him.
This is very true… As much as I’m in his life now, it’s less than it was when he was younger. For the very reasons you give. Our lives get busy. He’s an active kid, involved in sports and all that entails. They have another son, same thing… so before you realize it, 6 months have gone by and you haven’t really connected in any meaningful way. No one is really at fault, it’s just life and we’re living it. So when we find ourselves again, we make the time to plan a weekend and visit. He has his life and I have mine. It works, so we don’t question it.
As one of those kids given away by teenage moms, thanks. I had a good childhood, and my mom sacrificed like crazy to get me a good education. I’ve met the other children my biological mom had and kept. Two are in and out of prison for drugs, the third is okay, but has relationship problems.
I’m not saying that you all wouldn’t be/aren’t terrific parents now. Obviously, every person is different. But I’m glad I was adopted. It was the best thing for all of us right then.
Assuming I was your son who tracked you down when he turns 18, how would you answer these questions?
- Are there any family genetic problems I should be aware of - history of heart disease, alcoholism or cancer for instance?
- Same for my father’s side of the family.
- Are there any famous or infamous relatives on either side of the family?
- Are there any traits - anger, humor, violence, athletic, etc. that are common with the males in either family?
- Any relatives I can hit up for money, or hope to inherit money from?
What I am trying to imply is that I have to assume your son is growing up with a good family and will one day, if not already, discover he was adopted and have many questions other than what you fear - “Why did you give me up for adoption?”
I think, at least speculation on my part, that I would be far more interested in seeing what you look like, hearing family history and just wondering if I were anything like my biological parents and family.
This book is a mandatory read for anyone involved on either side of the adoption process, past, present and future.
It is exactly why I don’t trust the information in my adoption folder one bit. Lies, shame, deceit.
Woot! Phd!
12?!? I’m sorry.
I’ve found this thread very interesting. Thank you for starting it.
I don’t have any to contribute, really, but I wanted you to know that I appreciate you starting this thread. I’m an adoptive mom, and I’ll be reading eagerly.
RedRosesForMe, would you want to be contacted by your son?
Well I’d answer them honestly, of course. Do you actually want me to answer them? I can’t imagine my family’s medical history would be an interesting read.
But I would like to meet him someday, The Weird One, if he were interested. Just to see how he turned out.
Shirley Ujest, what exactly do you mean? I know that they asked me (and the father, I assume) a million questions on everything from medical history (mine and the families’) to what talents, interests, and skills I had. Is that not standard? Or do you mean people often lie about that, because I certainly didn’t. Also, I was told that they planned to tell him early on about his adoption. They had an older adopted child who was too old not to realize that babies come from mommy’s tummies, so I can’t imagine they could not be open about it.