(Adopted people only) How does it make you feel...?

Question

when someone tells you, you were chosen (via adoption.)

Answer 1

"Chosen" is a word that is suppposed to make an adoptee feel better about being adopted.

In the first place, it's not really accurate. What actually occurred was the adopters CHOSE to become parents that way. They didn't CHOOSE any particular child. The fact is, they eagerly accepted whatever child they were offered. If it wasn't you, it could just as easily been another child. The point being, it doesn't really matter to the adopters because they still got a child by choice.

What choice did the adoptee have in all this? I think it emphasizes to the adoptee that their purpose of being here is to fulfill the adopter's dreams, not their own. It also makes a child feel different, and not really in a good way. I've known some adoptees who did feel special when they heard themselves called "chosen" when they were younger only to grasp the full meaning of "chosen" when they got older. To be chosen, one must first be "unchosen." I've also known adoptees who believed the "chosen child" story and conjured up images in their minds of children in orphanages, nurseries, or on store shelves, like commodities, waiting for a taker. Doesn't do a lot for the self-image.

Additionally, it lends the feeling that if one were "chosen," there might be a higher expectation of something in return from them to the adopters. Maybe that's where the "grateful" aspect comes in. It also doesn't acknowledge that for every family that "chooses" a child that way, another family loses a child, parents, & extended family that way.

It ranks somewhere up there with "gotcha day," meaning with some words, the relationship is not centered on the child, it's centered on the adopters who did the getting or the choosing, and are clearly the beneficiaries. So if that's supposed to make an adoptee feel better and special over all the other children who could have been adopted by them, even if well intended, I think it falls short.

Remember: When somebody "chooses," somebody else "loses."

julie
reunited adoptee

Answer 2

I think it is great that you are asking the adult adoptees about the impact adoption has had on their lives. And, as you can see, you will get a wide range of answers. From adoptees in various stages of addressing what adoption means to them. And that is an on-going process that will evolve over time. Mine did, and many others I know changed their position over time. You can see by the answers you are receiving how polarized the adoption issue is even amongst the adoptees themselves. You might ask yourself why either extreme of opinion even comes to a public forum like this? And the answer would be that it is an ISSUE for everyone here. For all adoptees here, it is an issue. That, in itself, is telling... The typical human response to such a survey is to place your heart where your hope is, which would be that adoption is a win-win solution for everybody. If this is the case, then why would there be any negative responses? What if hope for positive outcomes is not enough? I think the reality is more that it is a crap shoot. Once a child is relinquished, their fate is up to others. Entirely up to others: whether it is the adoption agency, or the adopting parents. But no longer up to you. Could be wonderful. Could be terrible. Is that a risk you really want to take with the life of your offspring? It is true that someone in a position to adopt can give more opportunities, more attention, and more focus. But can they give them more love than you? What if their love is toxic? What if the attention is a burden? What if the focus is really on parent joy and not on the child's needs? All the opportunity in the world does not always equal happiness... I had the misfortune of not having a positive outcome. The adoption agencies failed me. Social services failed me. Despite whatever hopes my biological parents may have had for me. Despite how much effort and hope I myself put into making my fate be as positive as I could make it. I was loved too much. It happened. It still happens. So I have no real answers for you, because that would be ingenuous to tell you I know anyone else's truth. But I can tell you that the questions you're having now, should you adopt, will never go away. The uncertainty will never go away. That's why it's not surprising so many adult adoptees and relinquishing mothers are allied in their voices against the adoption industry: They share decades of questions and uncertainty. Having raised my own children, I also know that facing hardship together with my children was what ultimately defined us as a family, and that experience was worth its weight in gold. Hardships are temporary. Love will find a way. Adoption is permanent.

Answer 3

I know it's a lie! even as a child I knew it was a lie. My parents were just the next on the waiting list- they never chose me!

I had recurrent nightmares throughout childhood about being 'chosen' I was on a shelf with a bunch of other kids waiting to be chosen, hopeful and anxious and rejected when a set of parents walked right by me and left me there, on the shelf.

Underlying the whole thing was the knowledge that I had been 'unchosen' by the most important person in my little life and didn't know why. So I concluded it must be because there was something wrong with me, that I must be unloveable or she wouldn't have left me.

I think the feeling of being unloveable is so deep-rooted that it makes it difficult to accept love, nuture and all the good things that come from the good parenting from adoptive family. It just doesn't make up for what's lost.

My parents thought I was just fine. They never knew what was going on inside the little mind of their adopted child. And I wouldn't have been able to articulate those feelings at that age in any case. I didn't have the words until I was an adult to understand what it was all about.

But being chosen, well, it doesn't always feel so good

Answer 4

Hurt. But nobody seems to understand :( you wake up every day wondering who your real parents are and when you can meet them! To be told you're not related/ not part of a family you love really kills. It's asif all of your happiness has somehow been taken away and your just left with nothing but reject, yet some people still have the nerve to say that you're special because you were 'chosen'.. Yes an adopted child was chosen but they had to chose someone, you were just that someone who they picked out because they had to! I did not even understand what being "adopted" meant at first but now I would do anything to go back and change it. I know I can't but that's how I feel! Every adopted child, even if they deny it, will feel rejected at some point. Scared, ever so. So so scared to even get close to someone Incase they leave. It destroys you!! Although your family now have done everything they possibly can for you and no matter how much you love them and appreciate that, it's still not the same.
I wish I could change everything.
And the jokes- "HA you're adopted!!! Lol"
No.
Just no.
It's not even funny to be honest!
Rejected.
That's all ill ever be..

Answer 5

Furious, as if my experience, emotions and life before adoption are being denied. There is no magical cabbage patch where people go to pick out some perfect baby the fairies made just for them.

My first mother UN-chose me. Then the state of SC chose adoptive parents for me. They did a great job of putting me in a family that was right for me, but I wasn't chosen--at least not by my parents.

I understand that people mean well when they say this, but it's hurtful and ignorant.

Answer 6

When people say that to me now I just want to roll my eyes and breath a heavy sigh for their ignorance.

When I was told that as a child it made me feel very weird. On one hand it made me feel like I should feel special when in fact I didn't and on the other it made me feel like I was picked off a shelf at a store instead of actually being born like everyone else. My birth was never talked about so I never had any connection to the fact that I was born - I was just chosen.

It also instilled in me the feeling that I better live up to what is expected of a "chosen" child. Nobody would choose a bad child so I better be good all the time and since my first mom didn't keep me, who was to say if these new parents would either.

Of course that was all fine and dandy until a few years later when I exploded emotionally and acted out in every way imaginable.

Chosen is a label that adoption agencies made up to make us compliant about our grief. How can a child grieve their losses when they are supposed to feel so special.

It's manipulative and demeaning. And besides - we aren't chosen - at least the vast majority of us aren't. I was the next baby in line and my adoptive parents were the next parents in line. It still happens that way when it comes to most international adoptions and with domestic adoptions alot of the times its the expectant mother doing the choosing. So it's just another lie to add to all the other lies designed to make the medicine go down easier.

Answer 7

I was adopted when I was six weeks old. I was told that I was adopted/chosen when I was old enough to understand. I have never really bought into the whole "chosen" thing. I do not believe I ever really bonded with my adoptive parents. My family is not close at all. I feel very disconnected from them. I am sure it is not this way for everyone, but my whole life I have looked in the mirror and wondered who I am. It is a strange feeling.

Answer 8

What part of ADOPTED PEOPLE ONLY do some folks not understand....it's so irritating to hear other's speculation on what they think they'd feel if they were adopted....especially when they TOTALLY miss the mark, which non-adopteds typically will because it takes a very unique person to even begin to fathom the loss.

Being told i was chosen, makes me feel irritated. I was bought, not chosen. I was the baby that was available when my customers came along. Landing with my particular adopters was all just luck of the draw.

Answer 9

It makes me feel frustrated about the ignorance of the general public about adoption.

As someone said earlier, I wasn't chosen. My adoptive parents were the next on the list and I happened to be the baby that became available at the same time.

In using the term "chosen," it infers that I should be grateful for my fate. I am not. It infers that I was wanted. I was not - a BABY was wanted. I was the baby. It was an ideal, a dream that was wanted - a dream that I was not equipped to fulfill, and suffered for trying.

The term "choice" is, itself, an interesting subject. It has been used to manipulate people for ages. The language of "choice" is historically used to create public policies for Medicaid funding, family tax credits, infertility treatments, teen pregnancy, welfare, and adoption. The word reeks of prejudice, class, and race. People are railroaded into the lesser of several evils and then told they made a "choice."

As IF checking either Plan A, B, C, or D is a "choice." As IF birth control failure is a "choice." As IF surrendering a wanted child is a "choice." As IF my adoptive parents "chose" ME.

It's pure rubbish - and it's insulting.

Answer 10

I am an adoptee and I have always hated that phrase!!

I was not 'chosen' by anyone. My parents couldn't have children biologically, so they decided to adopt. Who they got was a crap shoot...basically the same way it is a crap shoot with biological children. I mean, yeah..you expect there to be some of you in your biological children, but think about it..there are throwbacks and more of one side of the family than the other.

But to say I was 'chosen' is insulting to my intelligence and to me as a person!