Why are many adoptees so bitter?

Question

I don't understand. Are you all from bad homes? Why is it that almost every adoptee on this forum is unhappy with life? If I found out today that my mom wasn't my biological mother, I wouldn't care, same as if I found out if my daughter wasn't my biological child. Why does it matter if you are blood related? I am not blood related to my husband (good thing right!) and I love him more than anything in the world. I am not judging, I just don't understand. Thanks for all of your answers.

Answer 1

I'm a happy adoptee.  I think most of ones that are unhappy and bitter are more discouraged at the system.  A lot feel (or even know) that there was coersion or lying done to seperate the baby and mother - which is awful and should be illegal.  My bmom was 35 and came all the way to Texas from St. Louis to have me and give me up.  She looked up the attorney, she chose not to have a nursery visit and then went home to her husband and teen children.  My parents and brothers are wonderful and love me...we are a cuddly, huggy, loving family.  Strangely enough, I am JUST like my dad in personality and look just like my mom (or very very close)..I have her expressions and mannerisms.  I don't feel I lost a heritage and I have my medical records...since the day I was born to today...what I don't have is my bparents records but I just don't need them.  I have a birth certificate and all that.

So, as I sd...I think the SYSTEM needs fixing.  I think the attorneys in many cases are bad....or the counselors or something.

Answer 2

Thank you for asking this. I have been wondering the same thing myself. I aman adoptee. Basically, i am a normal child. I dont label myself and I dont give out the "pity me, i'm adopted" c**p either. In the UK, adoptive parents are checked for criminal records etc etc and the social services go through them like a fine tooth comb. I'm not sure what happens in the states, but I'm pretty d**n sure that adopted children arnt put with any tom d**k or harry. Blood is nothing, its love that counts and alot of these bitter adoptees on here dont seem to understand that. I'm pretty bored of the people with such a "i'm a victim" attitude. sad sad sad.

Question for PHIL M and JULIE. when your a baby, you havnt a clue that you are bonding with anyone. How can u think you bonded with your birth mother? Think your selves lucky that you wernt old enough to remember her!!!! GET OVER IT!! Be greatfull that you have parents who love u! !!!!!

Answer 3

Hi Squirrel,

I'm glad you asked that as it gives a chance to explain something that many people are not aware of.  I will try to explain it as I'm certain there are others out there who are wondering the same thing.

Society puts the notion out there that adoption is always a win-win-win for everyone, and that everyone accepts what was done to them and lives happily ever after.  While it usually IS the case for adoptive parents, it's not the case for adoptees and natural families.  

First, they have suffered the loss of their mothers.  That should not be minimized.  Then they are not allowed to grieve over it.  They are told to be grateful, shut up, don't question, be happy!  

Even in the best of adoptive homes, there are conditions that adoption places upon a person that make a person unhappy with the SYSTEM, but not necessarily with their parents.  That's a key point that is missed by many outsiders.  That leaves many adoptees saying "I love my adoptive parents.  That doesn't mean I love adoption."  Many adoptive parents support their adult adoptees in working for changes and assisting them in righting the wrongs that were done with respect to documents, etc.  The question isn't whether they love each other, they do!  Adoptees are happy in other areas of their lives, they are not happy with the way adoption in the U.S. is practiced.

What happens is adoptees grow up and realize that due to circumstances beyond their control, they are now permanently denied their birth certificates.  Every other citizen has the right to theirs.  They often find out they were lied to.  They find out they do not have the same access to their ancestry, medical information, ethnicity, culture, etc. that everyone else has.  They want their rights back.  Some states have restored them.  Most of the rest of the world does not trample on adoptee rights the way the U.S. and Canada do.

What is perceived as "bitter" is actually speaking up and saying "Hey, we want what everyone else is entitled to have."  What some may see as bitter can actually be determination to do better for the next generation of adoptees so they do not have to endure the same system.  I can see how outsiders may think "how strange for an adoptee to want to change things when I thought everything was perfect in adoptionland."  The truth is things are far from perfect.  Nobody knew that back when the adoptees were babies.  It took adoptees who have been through the system to speak up and get things going for the others.

Only by listening can others begin to grasp that yes, there are things that can be done better.  Improvements need to be made.  What you are witnessing here is that many adoptees have no other public forums on which to speak up freely because there are others who wish to silence all the negative in the hopes that it will go away.  The only way to make it go away is to address the issues and correct them.  I hope this helps.  Thanks for asking.

julie j

reunited adoptee

I also wanted to add that if you found out today that you were really adopted, sure you would still love your mother; however, I guarantee your reality would feel shattered and your life would feel like a lie.  The late discovery adoptees are among the most confused because they have been deceived their entire lives.  If you would like further information on that, you can visit an adoptee support group and see first hand what I have seen from what that does to people.  I also believe that most people if they found out their child was switched at birth, would want to know what became of their biological child.  That would not mean they are disloyal to the child they raised.  There is always enough love to go around.  It needn't be a competition between anyone.

Edit to add: We also don't like the way the children who really do need homes are passed over and forced to live their childhoods in foster care because all the adoptive homes are going to infants who have natural parents who in most cases, could raise them.

Answer 4

Why do you assume we're bitter?  I find that odd.

Anyway, I find your comparison fallacious.  If you found out today your mom wasn't your biological mother, that probably wouldn't be upsetting.  But we didn't find out TODAY that our mothers weren't our biological mothers.  Speaking as someone adopted as an infant, I LOST my mother when I was born.  And I have ALWAYS KNOWN that I had lost my mother.  That impacts a person's psyche when it is first developing.  The child has bonded with the mother as a result of being wholly dependent upon her for nine months.  That person is then taken away.  That is a much deeper loss than the intellectual one you describe.  When the mother is lost the infant, there is no explaining or comfort that can take place.  The child just FEELS the loss.  That doesn't go away.

But I'm not bitter about that.  In fact, I'm not bitter at all.  If I seem bitter it is because society, as a whole, refuses to acknowledge that something bad happened to me.  I am called bitter and angry, identified as anti-adoption, and so on, just because I think something bad happened to me.

Edited to Add: I'm disappointed by some of the answers on here.  I don't think I've read any adoptees "whining" on this site.  I see adoptees trying to share their experiences and being labeled and accused.  I don't come here because I want people to feel sorry for me.  I'm managing, thank you very much.  I come here because there is another side to adoption that hasn't been discussed by society as a whole, and I see that same ignorance rather prevalent here.  If you think I'm whining, you aren't reading what I'm writing.  Of course there are worse things that might happen to someone than adoption.  But that doesn't make adoption good.  There are worse health problems than going deaf, but that doesn't mean when a deaf person speaks up for the rights of the deaf and tries to share his or her story that he or she is "whining" or "bitter."

Answer 5

I am adopted and had a very wonderful experience.  I'm a happy,healthy adult who had a great childhood and don't have any regrets about being adopted.  I went running errands a minute ago & started thinking of these very same "bitter" adoptees you are speaking of.  I thought - you know, there are people who live through REAL crimes in this country.  Crimes like women being raped, children being sexually abused by a family member, kids seeing a loved one shot for some petty cash - these people have a more understandable bitterness towards the world & yet you'll find many victims of crime CHOOSE to live their lives not being a victim.  I greatly admire people who have gone through hardship in their life and can still CHOOSE to be a positive, loving person who doesn't go through life seeing themselves as a victim but rather as a person who is strong for having lived through such a hardship.  Those people deserve great respect.  So, it makes me very curious when I see people on here who, from what I can tell, the only "hardship" they've endured is not knowing their biological family, or having their records kept from them.  Many of them even grew up in loving adoptive families but that's still not enough to make them get out of their "i'm a victim" mentality.  I'm sorry but I just have no patience for people who want to feel sorry for themselves over something that is relatively low on the catastrophes that could occur scenario.  I'm not without compassion mind you.  I feel so sorry for people who had endured real hardship and I DO have a level of sympathy for what some adoptees go through.  But there comes a point in your life where you stop whining about your past and you understand that it's only hurting YOU to remain bitter about it.

I'm not trying to invalidate the very REAL hurt many adoptees feel & the great sense of loss many feel.  While I don't identify with that, I can understand who that would impact one's life.  But I guess my point is that, in every life, there is hardship to some degree or another - some have much more and some have much less.  How you react to it determines the kind of person you are.

Answer 6

I am an adoptee, and I am bitter about adoption.  

I am bitter because adoption gave me a lot of extra hurdles to overcome in my life, I am bitter because my name was changed, I was adopted by an infertile couple who would have never adopted had they conceived their own child, who would have never adopted me if I had been male, but was instead adopted to fill a very specific need, a replacement daughter.

I am bitter because studies since 1960, report that adoptees across the board struggle more than their non-adopted counter-parts and yet adoption agencies and attorneys still sell adoption as the loving option.  

I am bitter because adoption per se is harmful to children, and yet people continue to deny this  and use children to fulfill adult wishes.

I  could go on, but I have to go, the bitterest pill to swallow I will end with though, I am bitter because at the end of the day my adoption wasn't even necesssary.

Is there something wrong with having anger at injustice?

eta:  BestAdvice, how on earth can you decide other people's life experiences based on what they post in the adoptee section of Y!A?  What a naive idea.  Why do you need to bolster your opinion by insulting others?

Answer 7

First, no, not all adoptees are from bad homes.  They feel the way that they do because of the lost or severed connection they missed having with their biological family.  It is one thing to know that your mother had passed away and thus, someone else HAD to take care of you and something else entirely to know that your mother did not want you or couldn't keep you.  It leads to feelings of abandonment and these can be very serious, very emotionally damaging, and very real to a great many adopted people.  

Second, you don't know how you would feel if you found out you were adopted and you don't know how you would react either.  You might not be as bitter as others but the possibility does exist because emotionally, being adopted is very damaging no matter who you adoptive parents are.  Until you walk in their shoes, you cannot know what it is like.  

Last, just because they have negative emotions about being ripped from their birth families does not mean that they don't love their adoptive parents.  It means that they are angry about a society that dictated that their mother should not keep them because she was either too young, too poor, or uneducated.  

A LOT of people, adoptees and Mothers, feel manipulated and exploited through adoption.  These feelings don't just magically disappear with time.  

~Raja

Answer 8

Ok, so you love your husband and he's not a 'blood' relative.  Say he walks out on you tomorrow, but another guy shows up and says, 'Hey, I'm your new husband and I'm going to love you just as much as your old one.  Now you need to just forget all about him".  How would you be feeling then, hmmm?

Please, it's really insulting to be told how to feel by someone who hasn't experienced it themselves.  Can't you just believe what we're saying is true?  Why doesn't anyone trust us to tell the truth?  Is it because, as someone else wrote, our mothers were 'troubled' and we may have inherited this personality trait (wtf!)?.

Personally, I'm bitter about being adopted  just because it hurts so much.  I am not, however, a completely unhappy or dysfunctional person.  I have a Master's degree, I am married with children and have a successful career.  So, I am not just sitting around pitying myself all day.  Hardly anyone I know even knows I'm adopted.  Even so, it's still painful, and I still have feelings of loss.

When people endure tragedies in their lives like divorce, death of a loved one, illness, etc., do you just tell them 'get over it already!'?  No, I hope you show them sympathy and compassion.  Maybe you could change your perspective on the issue and really try to show the adoptees who do have feelings of loss and pain some compassion and understanding.

Answer 9

bit·ter      

–adjective

1.having a harsh, disagreeably acrid taste, like that of aspirin, quinine, wormwood, or aloes.

2.producing one of the four basic taste sensations; not sour, sweet, or salt.

3.hard to bear; grievous; distressful: a bitter sorrow.

4.causing pain; piercing; stinging: a bitter chill.

5.characterized by intense antagonism or hostility: bitter hatred.

6.hard to admit or accept: a bitter lesson.

7.resentful or cynical: bitter words.

The preceding is the definition of "bitter" from dictionary.com.  I read it a few times and decided that, yes, I am bitter, because I am adopted and adoption is bitter.

1. Adoption IS HARSH and DISAGREEABLE.  Taking me as a newborn from my mother was harsh and disagreeable.  Who out there who has held your newborn in your arms would disagree?

2. n/a

3.  Being adopted IS HARD TO BEAR.  It was GRIEVOUS and DISTRESSFUL for me as a newborn to be taken from my mother, and has caused me a BITTER SORROW.

4.  Being taken from my mother as a newborn and adopted by strangers caused and continues to cause me PIERCING, STINGING PAIN.

5. I feel INTENSE ANTAGONISM AND HOSTILITY when I'm told to be happy I wasn't aborted, and to be grateful for being taken away from my original mother and raised by strangers.

6. It is HARD for me TO ADMIT my feeling about being adopted to myself and especially to my adoptive parents.  It is hard for me to ACCEPT the isolation and pain I feel on a daily basis.

7.  All of the above makes me both RESENTFUL AND CYNICAL.

As an adoptee, I guess I do fit the definition of bitter.  I hope this helped you to understand.  Just because I don't remember my mother or being taken from her when I was born, doesn't mean that it hasn't impacted every aspect of my life.  You weren't adopted so you cannot know how you would feel.  Please don't insult us adoptees by telling us how we should feel.  This just makes us even more bitter.

P.S.  I did not have a bad adoption experience.  My adoptive parents are great, I love them.  They always were honest and told me I was adopted.  All of that doesn't change the fact that being adopted sucks.

Answer 10

They don't feel loved. The people that should have loved them gave them up. How would that make you feel? They have a right to feel a little bitter, don't you agree?

Answer 11

This is the first I have been aware of fellow adoptees being bitter. Well I was adopted and I ate on the porch after the family ate inside, leftovers Yum. Hand me down toys for Xmas, no birthday parties. Had to go right home and work after school, no dating, no friends able to come visit, not allowed in the living room. It goes on and on with many beatings in the woodshed. Gee Bitter? I guess we want to much?

Answer 12

I dare say that if you REALLY found out your mom want your bio mom...you would feel very differently.  I am not bitter whatsoever,  I had a great adopted family but I also have a great bio mom and dad.  Because I know my bio parents it does not change the way I feel about my adopted parents, but it does change things...there is not a good way to explain it to someone that hasnt been thru it

Answer 13

I love my mom and dad very, very much.  I don't need my bio mother in my life and I don't feel bitter.  I just figure she missed out.  I can understand though how it may make some people feel rootless.  Especially if they didn't find out until they were adults.

I also think that sometimes adoptive parents might try just a little too hard.  I used to go nuts because my mom was sooooo over protective but as I got older I understood that she was just trying to be Super Mom.

Answer 14

It's just the feeling of knowing where you came from that your adopted family may not be able to answer. No love can be replaced by the love  of  biological parents

Answer 15

Being bitter gets a bad rap. Adoptees have plenty to be bitter about, as stated here and elsewhere.

We lost our ENTIRE families. But society expects us to be grateful. Worse, society promotes this horrific act of abandonment.

You cannot possibly understand. Even if you really wanted to.

Blood does matter. You are aware that geneology is the number one hobby in America aren't you? And how would you like putting "don't know" every time you need to fill out your medical history? How would you like being a denied a passport because your birth certificate is fake?

Our rights are being denied. We have much to be bitter about.

Answer 16

Well unless you're adopted you wouldn't understand.I myself am adopted and have been since i was 2 weeks old.I am a bi-racial woman adopted into an all white family.You don't know how hard it is to not know where you came from and who you really are.You have to deal with alot of self-identity issues.I know have a beautiful 11month old daughter, who has a very rare skin disease(urticaria pigmentosa) and i am to believe that it was inherited by a biological family member.You just never know what you could possibly inherit if you're adopted.

Answer 17

A lot of people just need something to complain about.  You will generally come across two kinds of people: positive ones who take life by the horns and negative ones who constantly whine and moan.  "I have wonderful a-parents who love me, but I'll never recover from the primal wound of abandonment."  Boo-freakin-hoo!!  If you want some real perspective, do a little research on an area of Africa called Darfur, realize how lucky you really are and move on.

Answer 18

Your analogy is flawed because the person who is your mom in your scenario is still your mom.

Ok, think of the mom you have. The mom you know.  The mom who is genetically related to you and is who she is.  Now imagine that instead of  her raising you the way she did, the way mothers are supposed to, she left you at the hospital to be raised by someone else.  A complete stranger she had never met before.  Someone who is NOT the mom you know.

And suppose those strangers, while being very nice people are the exact opposite of everything your mom is.  Different physical characteristics, different mannerisms, different everything.

Now imagine growing up with people who are completely nothing like your family of origin.

It is a life that is livable but it's very different from hypothesizing that the woman who very much IS your mother suddenly isn't.

You had the genetic mirroring.  You have the physical resemblance.  You had the benefit of being held and cuddled and possibly even nursed as an infant by the person who gave birth to you and shares DNA with you.

Hypothesising that if you found out your Mom wasn't your mom would be ok because SHE IS YOUR MOM.

It is hard to know that your parents abandoned you as an infant.

It is hard to know that in your adoptive family you are more often than not second choice to them having bio kids.

It is hard to be adopted and there is really no way you could understand that unless you actually walked a mile in an adopted person's shoes.

So yes.  Some adoptees are bitter for the above reasons.  And some aren't.

But no one likes to be judged by people who have had the luxury of being raised by their own biological family.

Answer 19

if you were to find out tomorrow you would be pissed because you whole life would have been a lie. it matters to me alot. everything that could go wrong with adoption other than sexual abuse has happened to me. I got some of the worst verbal abuse anyone could possibly believe. but i was chosen right?

for some people that were adopted their are no effects or they're in denial but i don't mess with them cause weather they're in denial or not they are happy. it's not my place to distroy that. but some people had great homes but still could never connect to their family. it can make you feel very very lonely to know you have nothing in common with these people.  when they did want to include me my family does arts and crafts.I am very artistic, i draw, i play a sax, i write music, poetry, paint murals, 3d animate (and a few more artistic things) but to sit down to do arts and crafts you may as well have stuck ice picks in my eyelinds. I hate arts and crafts with a passion. so even when i was included i was excluded.

it just sucks to not know where you came from. i could die or my son could die of something that is genetic. can i take any preventative measures? no. i have no way of knowing. i may or may not be black. i may never know. I know i'm korean but what is the other half of me. it's sad when there are people out their that know more about you than you do and they tell you they know but they're not going to tell you even if it will kill you. why should i be happy. a lot of us don't have kids because of it and so we never know what it is to have a blood anything. Sometimes i am afraid that i love my son more out of the fact that he's the only blood relative i know  more so than the fact that he's my son and then i feel guilty for feeling that way. a lifetime of these situations, thoughts, and people constantly pointing it out will make you bitter.

Answer 20

I am the furthest thing from bitter.  I am so happy that i was adopted.  My birth parents were 14 and 15 years old.  What does a 15 year old know about raising a kid? I lucked out and got a GREAT set of parents.

Answer 21

I am with you I understaind that some people have bad adoptive parents but I am sure that there is an equal amount of people that have good adoptive parents and some that dont even know that they are adopted.

Answer 22

Well, I spent this past weekend with my natural father.  We were separated when I was 13 months old.  I was adopted and had an okay life.  We were reunited 6 years ago.  One of the things we discussed was that it really IS different if you're raised by blood or not.  My father said he totally gets that and it makes perfect sense to him that it is different.  He put it like this, "It is different, even if it turns out well, it's still different."  No one can really get this if they were not raised by non-blood, because they have no personal reference point.  (Having witnessed others who were adopted doesn't count as a personal reference point.)  It doesn't mean that there may not be a very deep, familial-type love in the relationship.  It just means that it's different.

I am not bitter that I was adopted, since I didn't have a legal family at the time I was adopted (obviously.)  I am angry at an adoption system and set of laws that discriminate against adopted citizens having the same rights as non-adopted citizens.  Discrimination is not okay.

I would like to add, since so many people have discounted or belittled what some adopted citizens are saying:

Please do not tell adopted citizens how what they should think or how they should feel or not feel.  Before women had the right to vote, there were many women who were quite happy with the status quo, and were not in favour of the vote.  

Did their lack of the right to vote endanger their lives like starvation or serious bodily harm would?  Perhaps not; but, this made the law that disallowed them the right to vote no less discriminatory.  Perhaps they should have all just shut up and been grateful if they had husbands to put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.

Answer 23

There's a lot of theorizing about this, and nobody knows for sure, but the most popular theory right now goes like this:

Blood relatives share traits and characteristics that help them bond.  Adopted children do not share those characteristics.  This keeps them isolated and also causes the parents (and other family members) to treat them differently from natural children in the same family.  This may not be deliberate, but it's impossible to avoid 100% of the time.  The result is that the child grows up with a sense of isolation and alienation, from living as a "stranger" in a family.  Add to that the fact that adoptable children tend to come from troubled mothers, and the fact that personality is somewhat heritable, and you have another factor.  

There is a lot more to it than that.  But that's the gist.  It won't fit the facts for every adoptee but it fits the facts for a lot of them.  Certainly for me.

Edit: Although I stand by my answer, I think you should give Best Answer to Julie J.  Her perspective is excellent.

Answer 24

Beats me. I'm an adoptee and while it's a little unsettling not knowing who your parents were and why you gave them up, I don't consider them my family. My family is the people who took me in and my sister they took in as well, not out of need but out of pure love.

I think a lot of bitterness stems from adopting parents who don't tell their children from the start that they were adopted and instead lie to them for many years.

Answer 25

I asked this same question a long time ago.

My conclusion is that there are many adoptees active in this category that were denied their identity, believed that their mothers were coerced into relinquishing them to adoption, and some had less than desirable adoptive parents. They want their feelings and experiences validated, and, in some cases, rightfully so.



But what I've also noticed is that they have a hard time recognizing, validating, or expressing that not all adoption experiences are the same as their own. Which I guess is hard to do when you don't know any different. Some are calm and articulate, others are not.

Answer 26

I've noticed this too! It's horrible. I just sit and read because if I post something, it's just unreal how unhappy people are and I don't wish to surround myself with negativity. But I do like to read in case I do find some helpful things.