Dear Adoptive Parents: The Burden of Adoptee Loyalty

[Hekate]

35. ^^^Your second paragraph^^^

I'm from a generation where adoption was common; and where adoptions were closed as a matter of course. Two of my cousins are adopted, in two separate families. I can't count how many friends are adoptees. One of my nieces is infertile and adopted a little girl.

I have followed the changing mores and changing times with interest and empathy because of these personal connections. I think I understand what the movement is about. One of my friends found her birth-mother when she was in her 50s, and was welcomed with open arms. The experience was transformative -- for the first time she was surrounded by people who looked like her, laughed and moved like her. She loved her adoptive parents more than words can tell, but the experience of meeting her birth-mother filled a hole in her.

I know this: people are driven to create families. In the usual course of things, women get pregnant. Children share the DNA of the parents who raise them. They share many traits, from eye color to personality.

There is incredible pain from infertility. Absolutely incredible. The assistance of science is massively expensive and often fails. Adoption fills the needs of both adults and infants, and has existed probably from the dawn of time.

And I think adoption is usually undertaken with the best of intentions. At least it does not happen by accident: no one ever looks at their adopted child and says, "Whoops, were you ever a surprise!"

Human families are full of surprises, though. Some parent-child struggles, both internal and external, are inevitable regardless of DNA. There is no "one size fits all."