Do you think adopted kids are obliged to search for their biological parents?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Well, it sounds to me like you are only talking to people for whom the adoption continues to have some force in your life. Obviously, for the people out their who have no residual feelings about having given a child for adoption, they aren’t going to be talking to you about adoption.

I did not claim it was just you and your mother that felt the way you do. I was saying that it is not true that EVERY birthmother feels the way you do.

And since we get to take anecdotal evidence and extrapolate it to universal ceratainty:

I, myself, do know personally a woman who gave up a child for adoption, and then for the next 25 years had absolutely ZERO interest in knowing what happened to that child.

Of course she didn’t literally forget that she had given birth to a child, but she rarely gave it any thought. She says, and I have no reason to doubt this, that she only vaguely remembers the date on which she gave birth; much like you might only vaguely remember the date of a hernia operation. She felt that it was best to put the child up for adoption and was completely comfortable with that decision. Other than having given birth she did not feel in any way that she was a parent to that child.

25 years later, she received an inquiry from an agency that seeks to reunite children with their birth-parents. My friend asked no questions about the child, had no interest in learning about the child and she told the agency that the child already had parents and they weren’t her. That if the child wanted to know more about who she was, she should look to people for love and explanation.

So, not all women feel as you and your mother do (though I am sure than many, perhaps most, do). My one personal experience with an adoptee finding a parent was a near tragedy. A friend in college finally found out who his father was (the birthmother had died, overdose) without an intermediary. My friend made an unannounced visit to that man. To cries of “I told that bitch to kill you!” and “You will not ruin my family” my friend was punched and kicked until he finally got away. He was devastated and refused to call the police. He did have a better experience with his maternal grandparents, but he found that it didn’t fill any holes in his life and after a few visits never made contact again.

By no means do I think this incident representative of anything like a normal response to a reunion. I only mention it because you’ve stood by your statement that “of course the birthmother thinks of you.” While that may technically be true, there are certainly cases where it isn’t meaningfully true.

62

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by obfusciatrist *
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That paragraph is unclear. Let me try it again:

25 years later, she received an inquiry from an agency that seeks to reunite children with their birth-partents. My friend asked not questions about the child, had no interest in learning about the child, and she told the agency that the child already had parents and that she wasn’t one of them. Further, if the child wanted know more about herself and who she (the child) was, should should look to her parents for love and explanation.

63

Tech,

Do you have any idea when you and your bio-mom are likely to meet, or are you at the tenative, “ok, we both wanna meet, lets start workout out where/when/how”?

-Doug

64

Back in 1961, it was the best thing for a 17 year old girl to do in that unfortunate situation.

I’ve registered in case he’s trying to find me.

I would never consider intruding on his life, but I have always wanted to be reassured that his parents took good care of him.

Techchick, my heart goes out to you. I wish you were mine.

65

dublos,

No, I have no idea. Like, I hope, I said in this thread ( I said it in my MPSIMS thread) that the intermediary I had is no longer in the program. So I am forced to deal with the service/program in a raw state again which really sucks. My intermediary was truly someone I connected with and well I had contacted her about four years prior to entering the intermediary program as she’s also a private investigator.

Tuesday night I called the program left my information and asked them to call me, collect. They wont call outside of the local calling area unless you authorize collect calls, which I did. Also, they only return calls a few times a week so I have been biting (not literally) my nails since then.

I guarantee, through that MPSIMS thread that I will keep people updated. I also intend to create a web page if/when the actual meeting happens. I am torn between having my father and brother there or just having my step-brother there. I know that sounds odd but my step-brother and I are closer in age and also he doesn’t know his own father and if I am thoroughly disappointed I think he’s the best one for me to unleash my feelings to.

I also think that if I have my step-brother there, rather than my father and/or brother, she wouldn’t feel so intimidated…does that make sense?

OldBroad hun,

I can’t imagine what you are thinking as a birth mother. As I stated earlier, I contacted my birth mother the legal way, via the intermediary services. They are trained by the state to handle opening up “old wounds”. If you are comfortable with it, then you might try the services available through your state. It’s VERY legal, and no one’s identity is compromised through the system, that’s why there’s an intermediary.

It took my birth mother three years to decide to meet me. You can meet with resistance and I did let it go sorta, relunctantly. Because of this thread I called the then intermediary to find out good news…so, if in your heart you feel you want to attempt to contact your bio-son, try an intermediary. I would assume that they would contact the adoptive parents first to ensure your son has full and complete knowledge of his adoption. Not all kids are privy to that information. You can always check it out.

66

I think this may be the key to part of our disagreement. You’ve said this a few times in the thread, and I don’t understand it. I’ve known several adopted people in my life, and have been pretty close to a couple of them, and I’ve never heard of anyone (except maybe in grade school) making fun of a kid because they are adopted. About the only attention I ever saw given to it was sometimes curiosity, and usually people thought it was kinda cool. I’m not saying that instances of people being mocked for being adopted are unheard of, just that I don’t think it’s common, at least not these days (and I am a bit younger than you, but not THAT much). I know people who have been adopted do have feelings of being “thowaways” sometimes, perhaps a bit of projection is going on. If you go around thinking people are thinking of you as a bastard, you are bound to see evidence of that after a while. I think public opinion of adoption is pretty positive, considering how popular it is among the wealthy, religious figures, and celebrities, and how hard some people fight for the right to adopt.

I disagree, there are some instances where the birth SHOULD end the relationship. There are people out there who are not fit to be mothers in ANY sense, and people who do not want any kind of relationship with their child and would resent it if it was forced upon them.

67

I am not saying we are mocked for being bastards but the attitudes, with which you apparently carry, we are still considered children, whom within the establishment, have no rights. In older days we would have been considered bastards by the fact that we were born out of marriage and in many religious circles are considered the children of the devil. Not the exact definition of bastards but a pretty close estimate.

What gets my goat is that you Badtz seem to assume that we adoptees have no rights that the rights of adoptees are taken away the moment we are born, which I dispute to no end, obviously. I also wonder why you think this. There is also the birth mother who after many years may want to seek out her child. With this, from what I have seen you write, she is the only one with the rights to decide upon contact or not. HUH?

Not all adoptees want to be contacted, not all birth mothers want to be contacted, but I do believe that the system needs to work with both sides and allow either side to contact one another within reasonable bounds. In my state, if you were born after 1967 you are required to utilize (depending on the adoption agreement filed with the courts) the state’s intermediary services, again, trained people.

I also said:

“If at all possible”. Not all women or girls are able to handle the contact. I think there can be reasonable assumptions that if a woman who gives up a child to adoption might need to be considered for no contact if certain, and obvious, circumstances exist where a birth mother would be a detriment to the child and how they are brought up to be functional adults.

What you have to understand is that, even back in my day of being born, it was VERY taboo for a woman to give birth out of wedlock and in many circles it still is. Many times women are told they are losers, sluts, whores, etc for bringing a child into the world without the benefit of marriage. This idea perpetuates a lot of shame and displacement amongst women. We are the givers of life and rarely does a man have the requirement of/by women to be responsible for the life they helped create. In this case the woman deals with the scrutiny of family, friends and society. This does exist today despite the apparent explosion of unwed births in the last 20 - 30 years.

As a woman I find this attitude, although somewhat diluted today, to be a horrible attitude while a man gets away with it and hardly a scar to bear for the rest of his life. A woman, as some of the birth mothers have said, want and need their children in some capacity. No, not all women are this way but I will state that every woman that has gone through such a scenario either thinks daily of their adopted child or has blanked it out to stiffle the pain. It is well known that people who have suffered things in their lives so painful they block it out and vow never to review it again. I honestly believe that women who do this are either traumatised by the event or were never emotionally able to comprehend the circumstances with which they found themselves in.

Anyhow, I kind of think I need to take a break from this thread. I know that my birth mother wants to meet me and I pray after two months her resolve hasn’t lessoned. I will state, and stated it before, it’s an individual thing. Everyone is different in how they approach their own personal experience with adoption but unless you are a member of the triad I have a hard time relating to you as a being in this manner. I think that statement is very obvious.

68

And how does all this “birhtmothers never quite get over it” talk jive with the generally accepted pro-choice position (amont pro-choicers, anyway) that women can have an abortion, even late-term, without any long-term psychological effect?

69

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Your rights as someone who was adopted are no different then mine. Just because you want to know something about your birth parents doesn’t mean you get to.

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It sure beats some of the alternatives.

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Abandonment isn’t uncommon in certain cases. Such as being unable to care for the offspring or birth defects. It wasn’t uncommon in the past for humans to get rid of kids with particularly bad birth defects. Exposure still goes on in parts of the world I bet.

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I don’t think most people look at it that way.

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I disagree. If I adopt a child then I will raise him or her according to the values my wife and I share. I don’t think we’d need a third parental figure who may not share our beliefs in how a child should be raised. Furthermore I might think that the biological parent is a bad influence on the child. I would not adopt a child if I had to cater to the wishes of the biological parents for the rest of my life.

Marc

70

Actually, I think that the birth-parents have less right to contact the person they put up for adoption than vice-versa, UNLESS the right to that contact was agreed upon with those doing the adoption. I’m not backtracking on my statement that those who are adopted have no right to meet their birth parents or know who they are, but I think they should be able to find out about their medical background, through intermediaries, if this is possible. If those doing the adoption want to agree to some other arrangement, that’s their right, but if the birth-mother says she does not want anything to do with the child they are putting up for adoption, that should not be overrided.

I don’t think of people who are adopted as children. When I keep saying ‘adopted children’ I’m not implying they are still children, though it may sound like that. It’s just that nobody gets adopted as an adult.

71

*Originally posted by techchick68 *
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Since your mother has agreed to a meeting, the point is moot in your case, but…

It’s not that you don’t have any rights, it’s that you do not have more rights than your birth mother. A meeting requires that both sides agree to it. If either side doesn’t want to meet, then it’s not going to happen, unless the refusing side changes his or her mind. Neither side has any right to force the other into a meeting.

The problem with claiming rights in this situation is that the wishes of one side may be directly opposed to the wishes of the other side. In a case like this, does one person’s “right” to know their child/birth mother outweigh the other person’s “right” to privacy?

And no, I’m not adopted, but I have been in a situation of someone repeatedly tracking me down after I had clearly stated I wanted no further contact. Naturally, this has skewed my opinions in a different direction from yours, in that my main concern is that people who wish to be left alone are free to do so.

–sublight.

(my browser crashed twice while previewing this, so I’m just going to go ahead and post. Please forgive me for any typos)

72

I am a little confused here. Techchick, do you feel that biological parents should be compelled to meet thier children? Because that is what everyone is argueing against, not whether or not it is a Good Thing for biological relatives to meet. Do you feel that had your mother continued to refuse to meet you the state should have given you her address anyway, and then sent a sheriff over to make sure she let you in the house? Becasue that is what it looks like you are proposing.

You may feel that birth parents are morally obligated to meet with thier biological children, but my mind boggles at the idea that they should be legally obligated to do so.