Question for Adoptees? I have asked guestions regarding adoption and the responses I have received seem angry?

Question

Why is there so much anger? Maybe I am naive , but is it not better to have been placed up for adoption if the birth family could not take care of you? Also, were you told as a child or did your adoptive parents wait until you were a teenager and tell you? If they did not tell you at an early age , do you think that is the reason for the anger? Do you think had they been honest it would have been easier for you to deal with? Any answers appreciated

I am in the process of adopting and wondering if there is something that I can do to make it easier when the child gets older

Answer 1

Read the answers here, that should answer your question some.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtXBJpPCiZ0TpItHMl0SKYpq.Bd.;_ylv=3?qid=20071204092058AAmYXIH

Read Betty Jean Lifton's 'Journey of the Adopted Self'.

Here are some things that would help your little adoptee less angry:

-Insist on an open adoption.

-Keep his surname as his/her middle name

-Acknowledge his losses.

-Allow him to keep pictures of his family.

-Do not give him the name of a member of your family. e.g. your father's name is David, so you name him this. He is not of your 'tree', please don't make him act as if he is.

-Enjoy the pleasure of his company while he is with you. He does have another family--he does not belong exclusively to you.

-If he is having emotional problems-get him therapy with a therapist who understands adopted children or deals with PTSD. Don't think it 'doesn't have to do with' adoption--it does.

-Celebrate his differences. This child will come from a different gene pool. Do not expect him to like baseball just because your husband does. He might like to paint instead, please honor this.

-NEVER let people tell him he is LUCKY or should be 'grateful'. Remind them that YOU are the one who is lucky. After all YOU wanted a child, he didn't ask to be adopted.

Maybe others can add more. If my parents had done/or not done these things I'd have been a lot happier. But in 1964, 'telling' an adopted child was thought to be enough. It's no where near enough now.

If any of the above make you feel strange, and you are not comfortable with them--do not adopt. It's not fair to the child. Think of an adopted child as coming with permadent in-laws.

All adopted children have 2 sets of parents.

Answer 2

This question has been asked and answered....and asked and answered. It makes me wonder if the answers are not being believed?!
I was told I was adopted from infancy. However, I did not understand what it meant when I was very little. Finally, one day when I was six years old, I asked my mom, "Tell me again what adoption means". And she did. And my world came crashing down around me.
I remember every detail of that moment. I remember that my mom was doing laundry and I was sitting on the floor leaning against the wall. I got really quiet, and felt myself get pale and lightheaded. My mom was distracted with what she was doing and didn't really notice my reaction.
A few days later, I found myself sobbing, but when my family asked me what was wrong, I couldn't explain why I was crying. I got very depressed after that. All I could see were the differences between me and my family. I felt completely out of place, I knew that they all belonged to each other, but I didn't...that I had family somewhere else that I didn't' know, that I couldn't know. Again, I was only six years old. It felt horrible. I was depressed and devastated. Was I angry? Maybe, I don't remember anger particularly.
What makes me angry or rather frustrated now, is that non-adopted persons do not validate or seem to believe that I might have felt like this, or that others who are adopted might have feeling similar to this.
You ask whether it is not better to have been given to a family that could care for me as opposed to being left with a family that couldn't care for me. This is the WRONG question. It is entirely beside the point. This is a question that requires a logical thought process and therefore only an adult can answer. The problem with this is that ADULTS aren't adopted, BABIES AND CHILDREN are adopted. Babies and children cannot rationalize why they may have been given away by their birth mothers. It didn't make any sense to me as a child, and was therefore, completely devastating...can you understand that? Can you understand the depth of my pain and confusion as a young child of six? Probably not...only someone else who has felt it can understand it, I think.
Was there anything my parents could have done? Probably not a lot. The best thing an adoptive parent can do is to educate themselves, a couple of excellent books have been suggested several times. In addition to this, adoptive parents can make an effort to not judge those feelings the adoptee has, to validate over and over again those feeling and to not take it personally. And BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE REAL.

Answer 3

Anger - hmmmmmmm - that has been asked so many times in here - please go back and read through resolved questions.

Also read adoptee blogs - and try to understand how being adopted effects adoptees. You will never truly understand what it feels like - but if you have a compassionate heart - you will come to understand the losses that adoptees feel for the family they were taken from.

Even if it is in the child's best interest - all children have a deep need to want to stay with the family they were born to - and it takes a lot a care, love and patience to help that child heal from that loss. (I don't think they'll ever 'get over it' - but as with losing someone to death - they will come to a place of peace with it all)

Would you tell a family member to 'get over' losing someone to death?????

Never tell an adoptee to 'get over' their adoption loss.

The adoptees that I know - and I know well over 100 - that are the most at peace with being an adoptee - are those that have been told the truth from day 1, had adoptive parents that never spoke badly about their first family, had adoptive parents that allowed them to talk openly about their own adoption & that allowed them to search out and find their family of origin.

In this day and age - 'open adoptions' can be put into place - and these have a much better psychological effect on the child - as they will always know both their families openly.

Adoptee blogs -
http://www.adultadoptees.org/forum/index.php?topic=2805.0

Answer 4

Why are you lumping all adoptees into one class and announcing that we are all bitter and indignant? Generalization are what make human beings indignant. What you notice are people who usually unhappy with a minimum of one ingredient of being observed that's the reason they're here. it somewhat is the standard tale you never pay attention from the customer who had a great journey yet you useful pay attention from each physique who had a under predicted journey. it somewhat is an identical element with adoption and why human beings submit concerning what they're dealing with in each and each of their own guy or woman cases. there are a number of hundreds of people who're touched with the help of adoption yet you're maximum possibly in user-friendly terms seeing the smaller proportion who desire to talk out. they could understand that they at the instant are not the only ones who're having a similar thoughts whether useful or adverse. the main important difficulty with adoption is the shortcoming of expertise and the secrecy that this u . s . a . has placed upon it. maximum adoptees have not got a similar rights as those raised interior of their organic and organic families. we are in a position to not have get entry to to our unique delivery certificates. we are in a position to not maximum cases discover out the circumstances at the back of the determination of why we've been located with yet another family contributors. we've not got scientific background to bypass onto our medical doctors could an ailment upward push up. well-being circumstances are nevertheless not continually a reason to open an adoption checklist interior the eyes of the court docket so have not got the misperception that in basic terms because of the fact somebody is unwell they are in a position to get the information they want, it would not continually take place that way. Why do not non-adoptees have a soapbox to stand on??? Do they not have the splendid to submit on yet another class concerning family contributors themes? I look to have study a lot of them there. each physique has a soapbox and the majority whilst susceptible, use it.

Answer 5

I always knew I was adopted. I'm glad I was told early on. I had a grea adoption and I can't imagine loving any other people as deeply as I love my a'parents. But I still grew up feeling confused, different, and absolutely alone even among those who love me most--not necessarily angry.

I've been told searching for my first parents makes me pathological. I've also been told that if I don't find and form a close personal relationship with my first parents, I'm pathological. I've been told I was unwanted, and lucky, and illegitimate, and an angel sent from heaven. I've been told I'm exactly the same as/just as good as everyone else, and that I am some kind of second class citizen who can't see my own birth certificate. As a kid I was both teased and praised (as if it were a choice I made!) about having been adopted. I've been told I'm a valuable commodity and I've been told by people who know nothing about me or my situation that my mother was a whore.

The reason for my anger is not anything my a'parents or first parents did or did not do. It's the system. It's living in a society that does not accept my truth because it's too busy making big money off the fees that now attend private adoptions. It's being told that adoption doesn't matter and that my feelings are wrong.

Think about it. What if something had happened to you when you were tiny that charted the course of your entire life? Now imagine that when you want to talk about it, you're told by well-meaning people who have no experience with your trauma that it didn't matter, that you need to shut up and never have any help or validation so that people can guiltlessly keep inflicting the same trauma on others. Your pain doesn't matter, your human curiosity doesn't matter, the fact that you don't know your own medical history and have spent your life filling in medical forms with UNKNOWN doesn't matter. Wouldn't you be angry?

I don't think adoption has to be traumatic. But I think it will be as long as nobody wants to do anything but tell pretty happy stories about how one hundred per cent great it is--as long as nobody wants to stop the cash flow--and as long as nobody wants to know how it affects first parents and adoptees.

Thank you for asking this.

Answer 6

I honestly don't know. I was adopted as an infant and knew from the start (I am a different race than my adopted parents). I think a lot of it is feeling abandoned if you do not know under what circumstances you were given up under. I know nothing of my birth family but figure if they wanted to give me a better life they were right to do so and if they simply did not want me, I did not want to be where I was not wanted.

Answer 7

It is absurd to think that every adoptee on every forum is going to be filled with stories of rainbows, ponies and unicorns.
As in all things, there is a range to how adoptees react.
Some are angry because they have been denied basic civil rights.
Some are sad that their biological parents relinquished/placed/abandoned them.
Some are angry about constantly being told to be grateful for the wonderful lives they were given that maybe weren't so wonderful.
And some of them are tired of being judged by those who have adopted or are looking to adopt who only want to hear the bright side of adoption.
There are both losses and gains in adoption. The most important gain is that a family gets to raise a child they wouldn't otherwise. The most crucial loss is that a child will grow up without knowing the people who brought him/her into the world.

I wish I could tell you that there was only brightness and light in adoption but that is simply not reality.

There are positives and negatives just as in all of life.

Answer 8

i dont know why there is so much anger about adoptions...i just know my own story and i dont think it would have turned out much better had i been left with my birth family..i knew the entire time i was growing up i was adopted..i always knew i didnt belong..my name was changed but yet i knew my birth name..my adopted family didnt tell the truth about my birth mother and i had alot of anger over the entire situation..she died when i was four..i didnt find out till i was 16..and then told she was a slut..i dont understand why they hated her so much because without her they wouldnt have had me...they tried to make me hate her by what they said and it only made me want to know that much more..i did find out most things this year..but it shouldnt have had to be when i was 36..it should have been a right when i turned 18...

Answer 9

To answer your question, I reviewed your questions and it's obvious to me why you're getting angry responses. The last thing you ask is a self-centered question which demonstrates no understanding or compassion for an expecting mother and her baby. You seem only concerned with yourself and getting your hands on a newborn. As of only 6 months ago you were still trying to concieve. In fact you've asked a multitude of questions in that subject but just a hand full in the adoption catagory. You've asked such gems as how can I get a nearly free adoption, and can the grandparents stop an adoption - (grandma doesn't want to lose this baby from the family.) You admit the parents of this baby are relinquishing because at age 18 and 20 they don't feel as they can afford their child.

You percieve anger because you do seem naive about adoption issues and losses in general. Yet this appears to be the first question you've remotely begun to consider some other truth, although you still turn it back on us to further inquire what causes our anger.

It seems as though you simply have "baby greed" - a desire to stop the aching saddness at your inability to grow a child in your womb, and to staunch the crying and grief you feel on Mother's Day each year.

Selfishness and entittlement tend to be salt in old wounds. Have you taken another's poster's advice to read through old threads?

Have you ever seen how an upset crying baby will often stop crying when handed back to the arms of his/her mother? When "your" baby comes home s/he is going to be crying desperatly for his/her mother. No amount of paperwork will make you seem like the right person. You won't be. There will be lots of crying grief. Are you prepared for that? How are you going to help that grieving baby cope with the loss of his mother?

You sense anger because your questions reveal how unprepared you are to be an adoptive mom, and we pity the child and family that is about to be separated. Instead you are in polyanna mode where you are eager to meet your own needs.

I hope you appreciate this answer. I imagine it is difficult to hear, and EASY to dismiss this perspective. I hope this info might help you understand what you are about to get into. I'd guess you to be a prime canidate for post-adoption-depression because I think you are unprepared.

Answer 10

I was told at age 10. I felt no anger or resentment. I believe that this is because I was brought up as if I was their own. When I was 56 I learnt that I had a younger brother and we're now the best of friends.

It turns out there were several other half-siblings from my birth mother; some of them wanted no contact, so I can only assume different people are affected in different ways.