Q for adopted people,had your parents not told you..?

Question

..you were adopted but you are now 17 years old and they are mom late 60's dad early 70's,what would you be thinking about your parents?

Answer 1

Wow - hurt / betrayal /  suspicion / confusion...too many feelings to go on!

Answer 2

If they were that old and I was the adopted child, I think one of the first questions out of my mouth would have been "How would I have known I was adopted if you had both died before now?"

Answer 3

If I wasn't told, I wouldn't know and would think the same of my parents as anyone else!    

However in my case, I knew my sister & bro didn't look like our Mom, and had a different Dad than I did, but I looked like my sis & bro.  I was smart enough to figure out, either my sister was my Mom or my bro was my Dad.  It was my sis.  I call her my sister/mom now.  So I was addopted by my Grandparents and raised at theirs.  They will be my only parents.  I was lucky enough to find and get pictures of my real dad, and that was great.  I feel lucky to have been kept in my family.

Answer 4

they waited a while to have kids... ??  I dont think you were adopted... tell them you are working on a project and you need pictures of when your mom had you in the hospital...

Answer 5

They may not have told him but the kid deserves some credit; I'm sure he's figured it out and it will most likely be a relief to confirm his suspicions as fact

Answer 6

I echo what Heather said.

Many late discovery adoptees I know have had suspicions their whole lives. Not all - but most.

There is the fact that the parents are so much older - but also differences in appearance that most likely would be apparent.

As far as finding out - I would probably never be able to trust my adoptive parents ever again.

Or anyone else that kept the lie up for so long.

Any parent that truly loves their child - could never keep such a secret from them for so long.

NEVER.

What goes around - comes around Dave.

I truly believe that.

Go about this gently - slowly - and with patience.

Good will come good.

I just know it.

Answer 7

I wouldn't be thinking anything because I would have no idea.

I do not advocate keeping adoption from children but that seems the only logical response to your question.  

Answer 8

I would be quite hurt to say the least that they would hold back something so important from me.  I would feel betrayed.  I would feel that they couldn't trust me to love them even if we weren't blood related.  I would think that perhaps they were more interested in appearances (that it looked like I was "born to them") than the truth.  I would think that my own feelings didn't mean a whole lot in all of this.

I guess it would be similar to finding out that one's spouse hasn't been honest.  However, this would be dishonesty about me, not simply about things other than me.  Lying by omission is dishonest.

Do you know for certain that your wife's child's aparents didn't tell?

ETA: Thanks, Dave.  I see.  That's really too bad.  I went ahead and answered your other question with this new information in mind.

Answer 9

I am an adopted person.  I am in reunion with my natural parents.

To be perfectly honest, being who I am, I would have been extremely skeptical all along if I'd grown up in the scenario you described.  Having a 'mother' who 'had' me at the age of (about 50) would be just plain weird.  You say the son's a-mother is "late 60s" and I just did the math.  To me, "late" has to be 66 or older.  Meaning she was at least 49 when he was born and possibly 52 -- yikes.  I know it's done, but it's certainly not common.  I would have pestered my parents for pictures, hospital records, newspaper clippings (where I live, a mother giving birth at 50 would definitely make the papers), etc.  I would have hounded them to insanity until they "put up or fessed up".  I know that's what I would have done because I *did* bug them like that about other things.  :-)

As to how I would feel, that's a tough one.  I would be devastated.  A lot would depend on how my relationship with my parents was at the time.  When I was 17, it was not-so-good.  I knew I was adopted all along, though.  Learning of my adoption at 17 I believe I would have felt hurt, betrayed and unspeakably angry.  To know that I had lived one 'reality' and then discovered that 'reality' was not real at all -- I can just barely imagine what that would feel like.

I would never trust them again, for one thing.  I'm not sure if the relationship with my parents would survive at all.  I don't trust people easily anyway, and to have the most important 'trust' in my life completely obliterated -- in the revelation of a lie that was so long, so convoluted, so...ugh!  I've always had a really big problem with people who can look me in the eye, smile, profess to love me...and lie!  To have that done by the people who TAUGHT me that it's better -- no, that the ONLY correct thing is -- to be honest.  That would do me in.  That would be the headstone on the grave of my trust for them.  Period.  Please keep in mind, I'm just talking about myself here.  That's what I know about me -- like it? not so much.  know it?  yup.

The other thing I know about myself is this:  Knowing is better than not knowing.  That applies to EVERYTHING in my life.  I would rather know that I have terminal illness.  I would rather know that if my spouse cheats.  I would rather KNOW -- anything -- than not know it.  (Those things don't apply to me, btw, they're just examples.)  And yes, I'd even rather know, than not, about the bad things in life...even the bad ones I can't do anything about.  I live by the idea that knowledge is power.  The more informed any decision I make is, or can be, the better.

I don't know if this helps you at all.  I don't know anything about your wife's son.  But, maybe taking what I've said, you can think about his personality (if you know it) and read up on what "late discovery adoptees" say about how they felt.  And then decide how to approach it.

Best of luck to you!

ETA:  furfur, I'll give you one scenario that could answer your question...a good friend of mine who discovered that he was adopted (shortly) after the death of his longer-living parent, did so from documents in their safe-deposit box, which he 'inherited' as part of their estate.  He was devastated... more like destroyed...over how he learned it, that he could never 'reconcile' the deception with his parents, and that they were not available to answer questions.  He was one of those rare few who never 'suspected', so his shock was utter and his 'trauma', total.  I've never felt worse for a late-discovery adoptee than I did for him.  It was heartbreaking.