If you are raped or molested do you think the child will suffer in years to come?

Question

If you kept that child full term and adopted the child out. Imagine that child at 18 trying to find his or her roots. Can you see the whole picture.

Answer 1

I think that at one time or another, everyone becomes curious about their family's history and they start to ask questions (and there are times that they might hear things such as their being born as the result of a rape or molestation), but I don't really see it as being so much of an issue that they are going to take extreme measures as to want to kill themselves over it or try to find the attacker of their mother and do him harm.

Sure, that child will be a constant reminder of the nightmare of what happened when the child was conceived and if anything, it will have a harder effect on the mother, but she should try to seek therapy to help her overcome her issues because the child is innocent and has absolutely nothing to do with the whole root source.  The child is just the outcome and nothing is going to erase what is already done (their being born).  Regardless of what type of person the father is, rapist, molester, serial killer, crack head or whatever, that man is still the child's father and there is no way to turn the clocks back to change that.

I, myself, have had to deal with the issues of being molested by a family member from the ages of 12-16 and date-raped when I was 18 and all incidents went unreported and the only person that ever knew was my so-called best friend at the time and she never told anyone.

I am in my mid-40s now and I am ok with things because that is all in the past, but things like your question (which I am still ok with) spark things up again and it gets me thinking about all of the 'what ifs' and I think that in answer to your question, if I had become pregnant <which, thankfully, I never did>  I truly believe that I would have went through with the birth and tried my best to raise the baby on my own (I come from a close-knit family and think that after all of the 'how could you let this happen?' bits of anger and resentment, they would have stood by me) and when the time was right and when they were old enough to understand (maybe around the time when it was to introduce the subject of s*x and talk about the birds and the bees), I would slowly bring the subject up in sort of a skeletal way by not exposing too much and let the child make his or her decision to know the true details and form their own opinion of their father and decide whether they wanted to know more about him.

Answer 2

If you're trying to make the argument that it is universally better for such a person to have never lived at all, I'm not buying it. It's far better to have a life with difficulty in it that you may overcome than to have never had life.

Answer 3

In this scenario, it may come as a shock to the child at 18, but if the child has had a good upbringing and is a stable person, it should not cause any irreparable harm.  

Edit:  Ms. Palin's stand on reproductive issues is really irrelevant to the question, as you've posed it.  This scenario happens.  It does not have to be damaging to the child.  I think it would be pretty difficult to suggest to a well-functioning 18-year-old that he/she would have been better off never being born.  There are plenty of arguments against Palin's stands on this issue.  This isn't a very good one.

2nd Edit - Bluelady, you're argument about the impact on the woman is perfectly sound.  You also have to remember that when an adult child seeks out a parent, the parent has to be willing to be found.  If the child was a victim of a rape, the mother could choose not to have contact with the child and the child would, therefore, never learn the truth.  But to try and predict 18 years into the future just doesn't wash.  I'm not saying that it might not be traumatic for some adult children who learn of this.  But it is not a given.

Answer 4

Keeping the pregnancy out of rape or incest is totally barbaric. This woman will be exposed. Americans arent that blind. Everyone knows that the odds of malformation to the child are very high. Otherwise we will all be marrying our fathers and brothers and producing children. It is totally stunning that people cannot see this.

Answer 5

Hopefully, the child will not ever know the reason he/she was adopted and will not have to suffer with knowing the truth.  If the child is raised by loving and caring adoptive parents that will nuture and provide the child what is needed, then there is a good chance the child will grow to live a happy and healthy life and might never look for his/her birth parents.  On the other hand, if there comes a time when the child is older and wants to know his/her real parents and is told why he/she was adopted, then I suppose there's a chance that it could have some type of negative impact on his/her life if told the truth.  So, the question becomes, if asked by the child, do you tell the truth or lie in order to protect him/her?