Does blood really matter in adoption?

Question

if you are baught up by someone that you are not blood related too, then your obviously going to love them as they become your mother and father. I think that blood means nothing when you have the love of great parents. Love doesnt run through the veins and in your genes, it runs through your heart and emotions. Its trust, its safety, its natural. Why do people think that adoption isnt natural? please tell me your views. Thanks x

Answer 1

I love my adoptive parents!! To me blood doesn't matter. Does that mean I didn't wonder about my birth mother? No, I though about her all the time. Especially when we did projects for a family tree. i wondered what my hertiage was. I also wondered about medical information. The last thing i wanted to know was: why did she give me up. Was my birth mother a drug addict and slept with men for money? yes she did. But she did make a choice to give me up. One from what i'm told by my biological family that haunted her to the day she died. Then there are some birth mothers that were not drug addicts or live a bad lifestyle. I have just read the book "the girls that went away". It was very eye opening. Most of those mothers didn't want to give their babies away, but were made by their families or boyfriends. Does it happen today? Not as much, but it happens.

Just so you know not all birthmothers are these horrible people you paint them out to be. Your's may of been horrible, mine was she lived a very bad life. But I would never paint all birth mothers as horrible like you do. You may not have issues of abandonment or rejection or other feelings that adoptees feel. Which is fine, some adoptees don't feel this. But for some reason I get this feeling that you want to dismiss these feelings that other adoptees feel. Which i feel isn't right. Everyone has a right on how they feel, people are different therefore they will deal with life differently. You shouldn't try to make these adoptees gloss over their feelings because you don;t have them.

edit---What I was trying to say is that you seem to want to dismiss the feelings of some adoptees on here. You are mocking them and then you get upset when they mock you. Especially since you just changed your sign on name. I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but now i'm not sure.

Answer 2

I'm going to answer this from a different perspective - and yes, I am prepared for the thumbs down - but I want to throw this out there for people to think about it also....

Does blood really matter in adoption?  As an adoptive parent, no; blood does not matter to me in our adoption story.  My son is my son and I would die for him if necessary.  My love for my son fills my heart completely and I cannot imagine my life without him.  

However, as an adoptee, I could see how blood would matter.  Love may not be what runs through your heart, but blood is what defines you medically and genetically.  I could see this being important to an adoptee.  

But I can only answer the original question as an adoptive parent - and for me blood does not make a difference for us with our son.

Answer 3

Being taken from the woman who bore you for nine months creates a loss of a sense of security in the infant.

If your parents were to die, and someone showed up and started treating you with the same love and affection that they had shown you, would you be upset?  Why?  It's only love, safety and trust, right?  If someone else can give you that, aren't your parents replaceable?

Your contradiction is evident...  You say "blood means nothing" and then say that you aren't saying blood doesn't matter.  You are.  It's hurtful.  Stop.  Please.

Answer 4

If blood doesn't matter, why do people spend so much time tracing their family trees and studying geneology.

Have you never watched 'Who Do You Think You Are?' on the BBC - doesn't it ever make you wonder? not even a little bit, about your ancestors?

I had to wait until the age of 36 before I discovered I was of Irish heritage - that's one tiny little snippet of information about myself that the American Sealed records Adoption System has 'allowed' (LOL) me to have, and it means ALOT to me

If it meant 'nothing' Sarah, you wouldn't have bothered searching for your blood relatives, now, would you?  and in the UK you are not denied your own information as we American Born adoptees are, so don't even suppose to think we're 'in the same boat' - because that's way off the mark

Perhaps blood means nothing to some people.   But ancestry means something to a great many people, why should adoptees be in different?

If blood isn't important why doesn't everyone just adopt rather than having their own children?  People spend thousands on fertility treatments to have a blood related child before resorting to adoption - why would that be, I wonder

Edited to add:   Dear Sarah you may better understand when and if you have given birth to a child yourself - that's when it really hits you, what it means to be related to somebody.  And calling me bitter is a bit rich after the vile emails you sent.  Pot. Kettle. Black - much?!

Answer 5

Hi Sarah C,

Yes, you can love people who are not your blood.  Anybody can love somebody not related to them.  For example, people get married to non-related people and love them.  

Being raised by people who are not related to you, no matter how good that experience is, does not mean that you will not ever have the need to know your own heritage and family.  It does not mean that your natural families cease to exist.  It does not take away the need to know where you came from.  It does not mean you do not have any love left over for others.  Love is not something I feel you should try to put limits on how much is allowed.

You see, love is not something that gets smaller if you love more people.  It's the opposite.  Love grows, we are capable of loving many people.  Parents are capable of loving many children.  People are capable of loving their stepparents, their in-laws, grandparents, etc.  Nobody should feel threatened when an adoptee and his/her natural family have a relationship either while the child is growing up or after the adoptee is an adult.

So the answer is Yes, parents are absolutely capable of loving children who are both biologically related to them and not biologically related to them.  Also, children are absolutely capable of loving parents biologically related to them and not biologically related to them.  Thanks for asking.

julie j

reunited adoptee

Edit to add:  Many parents think blood must count for something.  How else could you explain why so many spend years and years trying to conceive, and spend large amounts of money on procedures trying to have a blood child of their own first before they finally give up & decide to adopt a child?

Answer 6

I'm guessing that you are either a troll or you are about fourteen years old.  You spelling is atrocious, BTW, and your screen name is offensive as h**l.

Answer 7

Yes, blood does matter.  Genetics are very complex and researchers are learning more and more about how much genes account for who you are.  

I don't deny the fact that my adoptive parents are my parents.  They raised me and I love them.  They aren't, however, anything like me at all.  We don't look alike, sound alike, or act alike, nor do we have any of the same interests, unlike my brothers who are their biological children.  It's a very lonely feeling to be the only one in the family that is like me, and that they're all similar to each other.  Adoption Isn't natural, biology is.  That doesn't mean adoption isn't sometimes necessary, it just isn't natural.

btw-WHAT us up with your screen name?  Are you trying to make fun of adoptees that are in touch with their feelings?  That's just mean.

Answer 8

To me it doesn’t matter though I do plan on one day taking an ancestry dna test.  I'm not ever  going to look or  try to find my genetic‘kin’. If I never know a blood relative essentially saying if I never have a biological child, I will not be crying a river over it.  When you look at it everyone is probably distantly related in some fashion branched off from the first few people.

Answer 9

Not until somebody needs a kidney.

Answer 10

i love ALL of my parents. To me blood DOES mean something. Where and who I come from is important to me. I am so proud of my heritage, and I have also spent a great deal of time getting legal documents for my aparents family tree and their ancestors. Ancestry is important to them as well, they both enjoy tracing their ancestors infact this year I helped my aunt trace her ancestors all the way back to england in the early 1700's thats so cool for her.

I am also a direct descendant of King Kamehameha the ruler of Hawaii looong long ago.

I enjoy passing this honor down to my children who and where we come from is something to honor and be proud of. It makes a part of us up that "great parenting" can't.

I love me for all of me, who I was raised to be, and the me that came from my ancestors. I don't see why there can't be enough love to go around for all of them. It doesn't have to be one or the other for me, because I love one set of parents doesn't take any amount of my love away for my other set of parents.

I don't think adoption is "natural" because we're not born to these people naturally...or at all for that matter. These people who we grow to love and call our parents became our legal parents on PAPER. Thats NOT natural. The way we entered eachothers lives isn't an act of "nature" i think its a human act.

Again, it doesn't mean I love any of my parents any less.

Answer 11

no

Answer 12

There is  no difference. Love is love, blood ties doesn't guarantee love anyway. I HATE when people refer to children as adopted children. When you adopt a child it is your child. Why include the word adopt? That makes me think of my own children. My husband is their father, he has raised them into adulthood with me. When someone refers to him as a stepfather it makes MY blood boil

______________________________________...

WOW, apparently alot of people think that adopted children are not as good as blood children. That is truly sad.

Answer 13

Petunia is that you?

If you think adoption is natural then I suppose you think polyester is natural too?