Why is it that every adult adoptee i know?

Question

Why is it that every adult adoptee i know, I will admit i only know a handful so it is hardly representative, either want to have a gang of bio kids on their own or no kids at all there seemes to be no happy medium.

All think it is great that we are adopting though.

Answer 1

For those who having a blood connection is important having biological children if they don’t have a reunion with their birth family may be the only blood family that they know.  They might also want the experience of living with blood family so even if they are reunited they probably aren’t going to live with their found birthfamily. Though I know there is always the expectations, If I remember Andraya said she lived with her mother for some time after finding her.  

I figure some may not want to have children at all because maybe they feel their child would become just as lost as they are not knowing their history, even more if they have not searched, not been  able to find birthfamily, or birthfamily wants no contact.  Some woman posted here a while back that her ex-husband was adopted and had no interest in searching however their son did want to search and did and ended up having a relationship with his biological paternal grandparents. They also may not want to risk that an adopted child would have the same feelings they had, and if they took it very hard being adopted, had a lot of issues, perhaps even treated poorly or unfairly by their adoptive family,  I could understand only wanting their "own" or none at all.

I also had a professor a few years ago his mother was adopted and he was 1 of like 11 children. It is an interesting observation R. I really don't know that many adoptees  offline, the few i do know are young and don't have kids.

Answer 2

I know a couple of adult adoptees very well since they are family members.  I think that, for many, being adopted becomes a central part of who they are, it makes them (at least to themselves) seem different from the norm, and makes them think a great deal more about the idea of family.  For some, it makes them want to cling to family so much more, makes them value family more than most.  It makes them think of family as so much more important and makes them want to have, as an adult, the natural family that they missed out on as children.  For others, they probably don't want to re-live the whole experience of family.

Answer 3

Well I must say that you have made me think and I suppose that adoptees who have lots of bio children are probably trying to fill in the gaps of their own lives and the ones who don't want any children of their own might just not be wanting any children of their own to feel as they might have growing up or maybe they just don't know how to feel the love that they probably feel has always been missing from their own lives.Personally I am adopted and never wanted more than three children of my own.I finalised my family after my fourth child was born of which the first was adopted out and the third was stillborn.I figure that I am lucky to have the two remaining children around me as well as their three children.

Answer 4

Wow Andraya, thats the first time Ive heard someone else really mention the issue I'm facing right now... Sort of.  

(When I was first becoming sexually active I was SO petrified I would get some girl pregnant. <-- you kind of mentioned that bad blood thing and I can relate to that too but its not specifically what I'm talking about here...)

For me growing up adopted, I always felt disconnected from my roots.  Like I sprung onto the earth fully formed and came from nowhere.  It was not a comforting thing to feel like I had no connection back across the ages and that I'd never looked at another and felt or knew that bond of blood that everyone talks about.  In a way I felt like Frankensteins monster.

It was very hard for me to get past all the dead ends I ran into trying to find my bio-parents.  I even found evidence of missing or destroyed records.  It was like I didn't exist.  I finally gave up after years of searching but I always sort of thought it would be ok some day because even if I am cut off and cant find where I came from, someday when I have my own children I can look at them and I will have someone else in this world who is connected to me in that way.  If I don't connect back at least I will connect forward through the generations.  I won't be alone anymore.

So imagine how I felt when I found out my wife cant conceive.

It was like a knife twisted into my heart.  So impossibly hard to accept.  Oh I told my wife I could handle it, I mean, Hey, I'm adopted and its all good right?  I had to put up that front for her.  What was I going to say "you have crushed my biggest hope for my entire life?"  I had to be the strong one and swallow that pain, bury it deep down inside.  She already knew how important it was to me.  Why would I rub it in her face when she couldn't do anything about it anyway.

So now I have found, or been found by my biological sister.  And I'm getting ready to meet her and then eventually everyone else, Mom, other sis, brother, aunts, uncles... and I sort of thought that it was OK now, maybe, since I finally was going to have that connection I WOULD be ok just adopting, but not so fast.  Something inside me is saying no; now more than ever I NEED to have my own children.  I've never felt I need a whole clan or an army of me.  But I desperately need to have my own biological child, at least one.  I think I could love one bio and one adopted child the same with no difficulty because I absolutely do not think blood is necessary to make family.  But I need to create a life from a part of my own, tear apart a strand of my DNA and mix it with someone else's to create a whole, unique new being, teach them and raise them to think for them self and then set them free on the world to pass on some part of me or it will be the biggest regret of my life.  I need this.  Maybe its completely irrational, but it doesnt matter I NEED to do this like I need to keep drawing breath.

I have no idea what to do now.  I totally find myself resenting my wife all over again.  Its a whole other issue to discuss w my shrink.

I wonder if anyone will ever really do the research on what happens to us and our psyche when we go through adoption.  I know books are out there but I mean really a serious long term study on these very intricate deep issues of how we view family and what we think about adoption and fertility or the lack there of when its our turn to have families.

I know I'm more Fk'ed up than I will ever actually admit to anyone in person.  Thats the nice thing about these anonymous means of expression.  It seems so safe, you can really let things out.  Maybe thats why some people who are adopted don't want any children.  Maybe they are the ones who didn't find a family that they could bond with so closely and really see how important family can be.  

For me the closeness of my adopted family combined with what I feel I lost not knowing my biological family growing up and now finding them and actually getting to see how much they look like me (or I like them) and learning all of these crazy similarities between me and these people who I have never met but share so much with makes it seem so much more important to me now to have my own kid/s.  

Family and having children is just this super "charged" issue for us (adoptees).  It just depends on the details of our situation whether we have spun away and end up with an aversion or are highly drawn to the children thing.  Either way I think its been such a powerful force in the shaping of our lives and how we see ourselves that we feel very strongly one way or the other.

Answer 5

My best friends is an adult adoptee with two children.

Another close friend adult adoptee with two children.  

My neighbor is an adult adoptee with two children as well.

One cousin, adult adoptee has three children.  

Another cousin, adult adoptee only has one so far.  

My other 4 cousins are still childless.(early 20's)

Foster cousin still childless. (early 20's)

2nd cousin adult adoptee has three children.  

2nd cousin adult adoptee has 1 child.

Answer 6

When my son was born it was so bittersweet. Here was the first blood relation I had ever laid my eyes on, here was the one thing I was never suppose to do.

Looking into the face of your newborn is a powerful thing for any new mom. I can't even explain how intense it is to look at your child and see someone related to you. To touch and hold another person who shares your genetic make up. Most people who aren't adopted take that for granted, they spend their lives with "their people". They look into similar faces every day, they hear similar voices and watch similar mannerisms, we don't. Maybe some adult adoptees want many children because it is also a way of connecting with their roots and who they are.

The ones who don't might share feelings like my own. Growing up I couldn't grasp the concept that giving birth and parenting went together. One lady had a baby and another lady raised the baby. I'm not sure where the idea came from for me but I still fight with it. I never wanted to be the mommy when we played house, my barbies were never pregnant. It was drilled into me from a very young age (mostly by extended family) that I had to be "careful" because I could get the "bad blood". I knew that meant not to get pregnant because then I would be "just like my real mother". I didn't want children at all. I had bad blood and no right to have a family. For some reason I never thought I was good enough to be a mother, after all my own mother wasn't.

Answer 7

That would be me.

I grew up with someone else's parents, so I wanted my OWN children.

Answer 8

I have met a lot of adoptees since I adopted my son, and one has 18 kids; 3 have 2 kids; 1 has 1 bio and 2 step, and 1 has none and there are several in between.  I think it might have more to do with if they were privately adopted as infants, or if they were taken by the state as an older child.

Answer 9

My best friends dad is an adult adoptee with 2 children.

Answer 10

First of all it is great that you are adopting and I wish you well.I myself am adopted and I can tell you that I never wanted a gang of kids in my first marriage we had two a boy and a girl so I regarded myself as being a very fortunate Dad because I could give a good life to them and I did right up until my wife went of with someone else but that's another story in this day and age I think that having a huge family is irresponsible for far to many reasons to go into right now but then who am I to tell people what to do as they say its different strokes for different folks.Adopting a child or children rates very high in my esteem.I am to old now to do it but would have if my marriage hadn't gone down the pan.So once again I wish you well and I'm sure the child you adopt will have marvellous parents and a great life and that to me is the ultimate happy ending.God Bless.