If u were adopted will u answer this?

Question

i am married. im 22 years old my husband is 30 ..... we are starting the process of adopting through a foster agency and i want to know do any adopted children ever feel good about thier parents and do they always want to search for thier bio family???? do they feel like thier adopted families stole them away/?

Answer 1

Once again...  searching for my natural family says nothing about my feelings toward my adoptive family.  I love them both.

Here is some reading for you to better understand the experiences of adoptees:

* "Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self" by Brodzinsky, Schecter, and Henig

* "Journey of the Adopted Self" by Betty Jean Lifton

* "The Primal Wound" by Nancy Verrier

Answer 2

My PARENTS (the mom and dad that raised me) are hero's in my eyes. They could not have given me a better life never did I feel stolen or unwanted by either set of parents. My mom and dad never put down my birth parents and when ever I asked questions they were honest with me. If they didn't know an answer they would simply tell me they didn't know and just say they are sure they (my birth parents) would have done thinks differently if they could have, wouldn't we all. That not all people can raise kids, and sometimes they are better parents for giving there child up for adoption then if they tried to raise me them self.

Answer 3

I was adopted in 1968 at 18 months.  I have always just "known" I was adopted - I don't remember anyone at any point in time telling me I was adopted.  When I was 11 or 12 I was very upset with my parents and wanted to find my "real" parents.  They chose to send away for whatever information they could obtain from the adoption agency and sat me down and went over it all with me.  I was able to discover several things about my biological parents this way.  That information has kept me satisfied for the last 25+ years and I am so grateful to my biologicals for giving me up and for my parents for raising me the way they did.  I know I had it better with a loving two parent home than with my divorced biologicals.  I guess I'll always want to know who I look like and it would be nice not to have to be treated as high risk for health issues (mammograms beginning at 35 - yuk!), but I am very content not knowing, knowing that I will find out all when I arrive in Heaven.

Answer 4

I have respect for my AP's.  I never thought I would search for my biofamily but things change as we get older & I have started my search.  It's not out of hate at all.  In my case I don't believe I was stolen if what I've been told was truth as I have trouble remembering anything from before my adoption.  I know for others being stolen is a reality for them though.

Answer 5

I'm an adult.

I feel good about my aparents, and I searched for and found my natural family. My search and reunion is in no way a reflection on how I feel about my aparents. It was a quest for "self."

Adoption doesn't replace what we didn't have, it gives us something new to add to our lives. But, we can't start life from chapter 2. We need to know about chapter 1 in order to feel whole. Searching has nothing to do with good or bad adoptive parents.

For a long time in my life, i did feel stolen. But I wasn't.

Journey of the Adopted Self ( betty jean lifton ) read it please.

You need to be honest with any foster child that comes into your life about his origins and how he/she got there. Age appropriate of course, but it is his life story, and he has a right to know.  

Answer 6

I am 15 years old. And, found out I was adopted. I was told when I was about 10years old. I know my biological mother, because she was who I thought was my sister. And, by blood my Mom, is my grandmother. But I dont see it that way. I think It takes more to be a mom, then who actually gave labor to you. As of my biological father, I want nothing to do with him. Yes, I was curious who he was. But dont feel the need to know him, when I already have a father. I am glad I was adopted and am not ashamed of it. But I do not see my blood parents as anything. They didnt ear the right to be called my parents. If I didnt know who my biolgical mother and father were, yes I think I would of looked for them, only to ask why they gave me away? And, there is alwasy this feeling in my heart, that was there something wrong with me? But I think all kids who are adopted go through that course in their life, when they feel if they were different in any way. But, I find myself lucky, my mom always tells me at least you know we have you because we wanted to, we picked you, other parents have their kids but cant choose them. And she tells me that im special.  

Answer 7

Whether or not an adoptee searches has nothing to do with the adoptive parents and everything to do with the adoptee's needs and feelings. I know a LOT of so called "angry, bitter adoptees" who love(d) their adoptive parents with all of their hearts who searched for their first parents and had questions about them and wanted to know them. I also know some who wanted to search, but didn't until after their aparents were dead or searched and never told their aparents for fear it would hurt them. Why would they try to protect their aparents if they didn't love them?

As for your additional question, you tell your kids the truth in age appropriate increments and let them decide. Don't insert your own judgments, just tell them the facts and answer their questions and leave it up to them. They may still want to find their parents even if they did suffer abuse and/or neglect and they may not. Whether they do or not will not be because of how good a job you did as a parent, just the personal needs and emotions of the child. Please don't personalize it. Finding our first parents does NOT mean we are trying to replace our adoptive parents or that our aparents aren't enough. Remember that when you want to have or adopt a second child it is not because the first isn't enough or that you don't love them. You can love both. The child may not even be seeking an abusive or neglectful parent to start a relationship, they may just be looking for validation that the parent is blame for the abuse and not themselves.

Answer 8

I was in foster care.  My adoption was completed legally.  Therefore, I do not feel my adoptive family stole me.  I love my adoptive family, but I still searched.  That has nothing to do with how I feel about my adoptive family.  

Wanting to know about my whole past, including my pre-adoptive past and those in it, is an entirely separate issue from how I feel about my adoptive parents.  I love them all.  Like any other people, adopted people are capable of loving many people who play various roles in their lives.  

Some people search, some don't.  It's a personal matter, based on one's desire to know more.

Answer 9

I was given away at the time of birth, and I was adopted when I was 7 weeks old.  I love my aparents genuinely and dearly.  They were good to me.  My adad is THE person on this earth who has come closest to the unconditional love to which so many people aspire.

I never felt stolen.  I felt removed...taken out of one life and kerplunked into another.  Both lives are mine; both lives are real.  So, why is searching for my bparents perceived as some sort of traitorous act?  Can't I be curious about my origins AND be true to the love of my adopted family?  

One thing that I believe sooo many people do not understand about adoption is that bparents CHOSE adoption (for good or bad, with or without coercion, etc.).  But they approach it as ADULTS with at least some life experience to help them make sense of it.  Aparents CHOSE to adopt and again, enter into it with adult life experience.  Many adoptees are simply placed into adoption....we had no say, have no say.  We are forced to deal with our adoptions as CHILDREN in a very public forum with lots of uneducated scrutiny.  And when we attempt to find our histories, our truths...we are called ungrateful.  That is a difficult pill to swallow.    

Answer 10

First off, congratulations on opening your heart to make a home for a child.

A couple things to consider:

1. It's not a sure thing that the child will have been abused in any way. A lot of kids end up in the foster system because they were given up at birth and simply were never placed with families. Parents may have given a baby up because of finances, or the mother may have been young or unwed...

2. If you start telling your child from as young as they can understand, I don't think they'll feel abandoned or stolen. My adoptive parents got me when I was a baby, but from the time I was 3, they always told me I was "special" and that they picked me instead of me growing in mommy's tummy. When I got older and could understand the concept, it never occured to me that it was because I was loved less, but rather because I was loved more.

3. When a child starts asking 'why didn't my parents keep me' the answer I've found that works best is that their parents wanted to give them the chance to do things they could afford, or didn't know how to do, and that it was with love that they gave the baby/child to someone else to give them a better chance at having everything they want. If however, a child HAS been abused, you'll know this and you'll be able to explain that someone (God if you're religious) wanted them to have the best chance possible to be happy and not be hurt.

It really is true that all a child needs is solid, strong, unwavering love. If you do everything out of love, if you remind the child every day that you love them and that they're special, they'll become just as attached to you as their birth parents. I've never thought anything less of my adoptive parents... and because of that, I've never really wanted to go and find my birth parents. I figure that they made what I hope was a tough decision and that I'd never stop them from looking for me, but the ball's in their court.

Good luck.  

Answer 11

I love both of my parents very much. My dad and I have always been close and my mom and I have gotten closer since my children were born. The hardest thing for me was the need for acceptance and my insecurities of being rejected again. It wasn't easy for me; however, the older I get, the more I respect and appreciate what my adoptive parent's did for me. I hope you do continue with the adoption because you are making a child's life better.

Answer 12

I personally do not feel like I was stolen away from my biological parents.  My biological mother knew that she couldn't raise me on her own and she knew that the best life for me would be to give me up for adoption.  My biological mother choose my family for me to live with.  (She never knew the specifics of the family.)    I feel very lucky to have my family.  

One thing that that my family did that not all adoptive families do is to talk about my adoption.  It has always been a very open topic and continues to be in my life.  

I hope this helps

Answer 13

I am a 30-something woman who was adopted as an infant.  While I did spend 2 weeks in 'temporary' care, after the first couple days in the hospital, it was not state foster care but rather a home in the state a was born -- arranged and paid by the adoption agency -- until I was old enough to travel.

My search was based on things that *I* needed, and wanted.  It had nothing to do with what my adoptive parents gave me, or didn't...how they loved me, or didn't...or anything to do with them at all.

My parents gave me everything they had and everything they could.  They loved me as much as they were capable (which was very, very much).  I didn't search because they had denied me anything.  I searched (and reunited) because there are some things that an adoptive parent/family can NOT give an adopted child/person.  If they could have, they would have...I am sure.  They could not give me a sense of my pre-adopted identity.  They could not tell me, with certainty, what my race was -- by the time I was 14, it was pretty obvious that the race listed on my "non-id info" by the agency was incorrect...or at least incomplete.  They couldn't explain why I was wired differently mentally, emotionally, even physically than they are.  They couldn't give me (much as they wanted to) the sense of completeness I had grown up without.

Reuniting with my natural family has given me all of the above...and it has improved (at least 100%) my relationship with my adoptive family.

Please become completely comfortable with the idea that there will be things you can never give your adopted child -- before you adopt.  The reading that PhilM has suggested is a good place to start in order to gain some understanding in this area.

Please also become completely comfortable with the knowledge that your adopted son/daughter may very well feel a sense of loss -- even if they were not stolen and they know it.  Please recognize that if you do the best you can as a parent and support your child into adulthood with a loving and mature attitude about his/her situation that a decision to search will not be about you.  It will not mean that your child does not love you.  It will not mean that they are trying to replace you.  Please don't discourage him/her from searching if they choose to.  My parents did not have a high enough comfort level to help -- but they never discouraged me.  My dad would ask how it was going from time to time.

Now that I am reunited with my natural family and my a-parents are sure of my love, it's been a lot more comfortable.  They have exchanged emails, cards and pictures with my natural mother and no longer see her as a threat to my relationship with them.  They ask about my 'other' family quite regularly.

I wish you the very best as you pursue adoption through foster care.  Oh yeah, as a social worker (and prior to becoming one) I have worked with a lot of kids who are removed from their parents and some eventually adopted.  There are many, many cases of a parent/s rights being terminated when there was *no* abuse to the child.  These are cases that have long-term/severe substance abuse by one or both parents and the child is often neglected, malnourished, etc.  I'm not trying to get into a 'semantics' thing here...yes, neglect is also a type of abuse.  My point is that some children who are available for adoption through foster care have never been physically or sexually abused.  I'm sure you don't intend to, but please don't tell your adopted child that they have been abused if they haven't.  One of the ways that I have found works in talking to kids about their parents is to separate the parent/s from the behavior.  Talk about the behaviors as 'bad' and make sure they understand that using drugs, committing crimes, etc. is not okay but that is not WHO their parent is, it what they have done and it is a mistake.  A bad one.  Kids are smart.  In cases where a child is available for adoption through foster care, they know that their parent's choices are wrong.  But they still love them anyway...most of the time.  And they are also very sensitive.  If you 'hate' their original parents, they will know.  I had a really hard time with that myself sometimes when I worked in one of the group homes.  I would be so mad about something a parent had done and the child/ren of that/those parent/s could tell.  I had to be really careful not to let my anger affect my mood while I was at work.  I had to learn to 'forgive' the mistake while never 'accepting' the bad choices.  And I loved those kids to bits!  And they knew that, too.  :-)

Whew!  That was a lot.  I hope some of it can be useful to you as you work toward your goal.

Take care!

Answer 14

congrats on chosing foster care- to adopt.

it's the ONLY adoption that should be allowed.

that being said, i was a regular healthy white kid adoption and yes, i would not stop looking until i found.

Answer 15

I'm also adopted. I love my AP with all my heart. No matter what DNA says, they ARE my parents. Yes, I did search for my bio family. And when my B father didn't want anything to do with me, it was my AP who were there for me. It is completely natural for an adopted child to be curious. But you have nothing to worry about.