I was placed in a lower-middle class family that did not give me the option of attending college. I spent my 20s and 30s in a whirlwind of jobs and failed relationships. I am convinced that the lack of bonding during the formative first eight weeks of my life, when I was placed in foster care, and the compounding of abuses I experienced in the adoptive home, led to my free-fall as an adult.

I still wonder if I should try to find my birth mother. But there is an irrational fear that I will be “rejected” again if she does not want to hear from me. Intellectually, I know that she was the victim here, and she had no choice but to give me up in a time when single mothers were ostracized. After 53 years, clearly, she has had a full life without me and may not have ever told anyone about me. There are many stories of an adoptee placing that phone call only to have the line go dead when they announce who they are.

And here is where I am at a loss. Could I handle this response? Respecting her decision(s) while trying to gain some self-love and respect for myself?

Adoption in the 21st century is clearly a different animal, but the psychological ramifications are still broad. Yes, there are children who need families. But there will always be strings attached.

Another reader also worries about the longterm effects of early childhood separation:

I was adopted in the mid-1960s, a white child adopted by white parents. I always knew I was adopted; I never “found out.” I had a little book called The Chosen Baby that my parents would read to me. They were always very loving and supportive; it was a great home. I saw adoption as a good thing, and I was puzzled when friends would express dismay or pity that I wasn’t my parents’ “real” child.

Mostly what I remember is a mild curiosity about my origins and imagining that my “real” mother might be, say, Judy Garland. (This was around the time I starred as Dorothy in a 4th grade play.) And I always had this kind of lonely feeling like I didn’t fit anywhere. I was fascinated by family resemblance, since I didn’t look like my parents or extended family. I felt like I didn’t look like anyone else. I was also very insecure and over-eager to please.

As an adult, I had some counseling and read a couple of books on the separation that happens when a child is separated from their birth mother and the trauma that results from that. I suspect that my fear of abandonment and the desperate desire to please (that I still struggle with daily) are part of this subconscious effect in my own life.

One more reader’s story:

Back in the ‘60s, you didn’t have a child out of wedlock—especially in a small town—so my biological mother placed me for adoption. No one knew she was pregnant, not even my biological father.

My adoptive parents were told not to try and have any more children. They had a daughter and then three subsequent miscarriages. Wanting another child, they adopted me—a small and frail infant about a month old.

When I was in the fifth grade, my parents sat me down and told me I was adopted. They told me very little about my birth mother, and I later discovered what they did know was a lie from the adoption agency.

My biological mother was married and divorced with a two-year-old daughter before she met my biological father. When she discovered she was pregnant, she took a trip to the other side of the state to give birth. She later married and had another daughter, making me her middle child.

I did some searching through the years, and when I was 30, I was finally able to make contact with my biological mother, her two daughters, and their families. I was welcomed “back” into the family as if I had never been gone. Twenty years later, we’re still close. I try to get down for a visit at least once a year.

I was married when I met my biological mother, but my wife left a few years later. Still desiring children, I adopted my son as a single adult male … something that seems to be rather rare. My son was 13 and we had a wonderful relationship until his death about seven years ago, at the age of 22.

When I turned 40, I was able to locate and first speak with my biological father. He married and had two daughters, both younger than me, both married with children. I was the happy surprise for my biological father later in life. His wife told me he had always wanted a son and was so pleased that I found him. I was a bit of a shock at first, but as soon as the shock wore off (right after my first visit), I was welcomed to his family just as I was my biological mother’s family.

All of this life experience, plus my mission work in other countries, caused me to set my life’s direction helping orphans and at-risk kids around the globe through Orphan World Relief. The story of my birth and adoption isn’t the end of the story, just a continuation of a journey … a destination unknown but anticipated.

It upsets me that people get so defensive, because I have no problem with other people not wanting to adopt; I just want to adopt for myself. If someone tells me, that adoption isn’t for them, I respect that. What I don’t respect is people feeling like they need to put someone else’s decisions down just so they can feel better about their own decisions.

The other reader:

I want to comment as an adoptee and an adoptive mother.  I was adopted as an infant, and I adopted a newborn, who is 4 1/2 years old.  I can only tell you what I see in her as a pre-schooler who learned to talk quite early and is already identifying some sight words. How she will be a kindergarten, I cannot say, but I can say she is extremely curious, smart, interesting, funny, and has one of the wildest imaginations. Never would I see a gap in her potential achievement because she’s “adopted.”  

I also don’t feel any gap of achievement from my adoption. What is much more complex is how old the children were when they were adopted. And were they adopted internationally, and what is the adoptive family like?  Dysfunction affects all families, regardless of economic resources.  

Many families, adoptive or not, are raising children who do not have secure attachments because the parents did not have a secure attachment, and unless the parents realize it and do a whole heck of a lot of interpersonal work, they “pass” on that insecurity to their children, in how they raise them.  I honestly don’t understand that this isn’t a greater point for everyone to question.  But, I believe it has to do with our culture, a culture that rewards insecure attachment and helps us remain capitalistic.  I know, at this point, you will probably delete this part of my comment.  But at least you will read it.  Or I hope so.

It reminds me about the gaps in education on adoption, and how it’s much more preferable to blame a gene on a child than to ever question if there was some dysfunction in the parenting of the adoptive parents. And I am an adoptive mother saying this. I do not deny trauma with adoption. I understand it more than most because I’ve experienced it at depths most don’t, with myself, and with my daughter.  

I am writing this because I hope you will print some of it.  Because it shames us as adoptees and then really hurts us as adoptive parents to know our children will be shamed and suspected of being “worse” because of their “adoption.” People who are or aren’t connected to adoption really need to get this. So, thank you for attempting to create dialogue.

Are there other adoptees out there who have also adopted? Email me your story or opinion and I’ll update this note, or post a followup. Please try to be concise, so I can post as many responses as I can while keeping the conversation tight.

Unfortunately, other family members seemed to be intimidated by him, including my wife. I was smart enough to realize that forbidding contact with her birthfather was likely to backfire. But I did my best to provide a stable presence for her and limit contact when I could. It was nerve-wracking.

At times I resented the fact that I was the man who paid the bills, attended teacher conferences, enforced curfews, took her to the hospital when she cracked her chin open … while the birthfather was always on the periphery with bribes. He has been a constant thorn in my life. It stings when I hear someone ask my daughter about her real father.

Now that my daughter is grown, it doesn’t matter very much. We are close and I don’t care as much about the identity issue. She calls me dad … except in those awkward moments when we run into people who know her from her birthfather. On those occasions, she will introduce me as her stepdad, and that hurts. For his part, the birthfather pretends that I don't exist and that he raised this remarkable young lady.

This makes me wonder if anyone ever gets exactly what he or she wants in an adoption. I wanted a daughter. And I have one, but with a constant presence in the wings, proclaiming that I am not her real dad. My daughter’s birthfather wanted to get out of paying child support, but I suspect that he never expected to be replaced by me at center stage, so I doubt that he is happy with the situation either.

I hope that in all of this, my daughter is the best off. As much as the situation irks me, I have always tried to put her interests above my own issues, and I have never spoken ill of her birthfather. To be fair, his family is quite loving, and I can’t mind the fact that lots of people love her—even if they do consider me her stepdad.

I can’t think of what I would have done differently. Somewhere in all of those parenting activities, my daughter and I formed the strongest bond I have with anyone. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. And I have a sweet daughter who tells me she loves me, who comes to me for guidance, and who is a hell of a lot of fun to be with.

Still, I have to admit that I’m a bit wistful at this point in my life to not have a child without adoption strings. I can expect to see my daughter's birthfather at her wedding, demanding to walk her down the aisle, pushing me out of the way at the reception to give a lengthy toast about his girl. If that’s not hell, it’s at least purgatory.

The act of putting a child up for adoption must be one of the most agonizing, heart-wrenching decisions that a person could be faced with in their lives. I can't begin to comprehend the enormity of it. However, by that same measure, I assert as an adopted child that birthparents can’t possibly understand the struggle that these children with “two” sets of parents try to reconcile within themselves.

I know that another adopted child somewhere might have come to a different conclusion, but when I read that birthmother’s anguish when her daughter denied that she was her mother, I recoiled. In my circumstance, the idea of ever considering another person a mother to me feels like a terrible insult. Throughout my life there has only been one woman who put me to bed at night, who helped me when I struggled growing up, who provided hours of endless support, who let me cry on her when I was grieving or in pain. There is one woman who has been a relentless advocate for me, no matter what the age. She’s someone I’ve been truly blessed to have in my life, and she's an example I aspire to live up to, every day of my life. She’s my mother.

I owe thanks to my birthmother for making the difficult choice to put me up for adoption, for allowing me to have the good fortune to come into this family. But in regards to who my mother is? That was never a question for me.

Another reader who has no interest in connecting with his birthparents:

I was adopted 30+ years ago in a closed adoption process through the Catholic Church. I grew up in a loving household and had a wonderful childhood with my adoptive parents. I always knew that I had been given up for adoption because my birthparents were young and couldn’t raise me, and I received a note from my birthmother to that effect. I’m thankful to my adoptive parents that I always knew I was loved and that the fact of my adoption was considered to be an incredible blessing.

I have never wanted to seek out my birthparents, a fact that sometimes surprises me. I have other friends who were adopted who have begun warm relationships with members of their biological family, and it seems as though a missing piece has been discovered for them. For whatever reason I don’t feel this same need.  Perhaps this stems from a fear of upsetting the wonderful family life I grew up with, or a basic fear of the unknown. But at the end of the day I feel that, in my case, there are some questions in life which will just not have answers.

Before I had biological children of my own, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have blood ties with someone in my life. After I had children, I found that it wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be. I love my children the same way I love my spouse and my parents.

I have begun explaining to my children the fact of my own adoption. My biggest concern now is my lack of a medical history. I still do not wish to find my biological parents, but I am thankful every day for the love and the sacrifice they made for me.

Thanks for this thread and I look forward to reading more. For many people, this is a topic that lives in our core. I hope the conversation can be helpful for your readers, wherever we are in our own journeys.

My mother didn’t want me to have the children. Their grandmother was a felon, with drug charges, and didn’t want to assist the children with any financial, emotional, or physical help, but she wanted to control how they were raised. My own family made it harder than it should have been. Ten years later they are still making my life hard.

I love my kids, and it is a difficult time with both of them now in their teen years. My daughter has often told me that she tries to keep the fact of adoption a secret. It seems that her classmates single her out because of it. My son will not speak of it at all. He was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and has always been a challenge to raise. The never-ending stress from two kids, work, and my family has given me health issues (I’m 58).

This year my son entered high school and it was a very difficult transition. I finally allowed him to go live with his grandmother. Personally I think it is a huge mistake, but he was not trying to work or seek help. I can honestly tell you that you can only help someone who is willing to help themselves. At 14, he must accept some responsibility for his actions or inactions.

I have to agree with your previous reader that a lot of personality is genetic. My daughter is like my own child but with my niece’s personality. My son and I love each other, but we are not alike at all.

Family adoption should be the easiest form of adoption, but I have experienced the exact opposite. My personal belief is that I should have taken the children and moved far away. That was out of the question with a single woman with two very difficult family members. I believed that the children should have a chance to know all of their family, from both sides, and that they should have a role in raising in the children. But it didn’t turn out that way. Everyone has an opinion on how to raise them, but no one wants any of the responsibility.

My birthmother had mourned my loss all her life (having been forced by her Italian Catholic parents into giving me up) and was overjoyed when I found her. It helped bring closure to the most painful experience of her life.

My adoptive parents reacted to this by dismissively claiming “she has nothing to do with you, she’s not your mother," and then refusing to hear any more about it.  Meanwhile I, as a grown adult—not a child “belonging” to one parent or the other—remain caught in the middle.  

So here’s what it’s like to be adopted: The parents who raised you are your parents and the relatives that you knew growing up are all “related” to you. But beyond that is nothing; I feel zero connection to “great-great grandmother So-and-So” who has no blood relationship to me whatsoever.  Those ancestors belong to my parents and cousins, but not to me.

On the other hand, it is the complete opposite with my birth family. With them, I do not feel that they are my parents, siblings, cousins, etc. in the sense that I feel that way about the family I grew up with. They are strangers who are related to me by blood, but we have no shared history. Yet when they talk about our mutual “great-great grandmother So-and-So,” then I DO feel connected. The same blood that ties them to our ancestors ties me as well. We are equally connected that way.

This is a dichotomy that no non-adopted person will ever face or understand. It is something every adoptee (of a closed adoption) experiences to some degree.  Without an origin story, which everyone else takes for granted, we feel rather like we were just found under a cabbage patch with no link to the past and no bloodline to pass on to our own children.

When we have Family Tree projects in school, it cuts deeply. We were grafted onto our tree, we have a deep sense that we don’t really belong there, yet we have no idea where our own tree is planted.

She left the hospital and I stayed. I also had to stay in California until my adoption papers went through the intra-state compact for approval to bring my child back to Missouri. The birthmother insisted I stay with her, and over those five days she helped me understand how to care for my baby. My mom had died three months before this wonderful event, leaving me without a mother from which to learn from.

After the adoption, the birthmother and I still kept in touch. She started sounding very depressed. She and her boyfriend had been fighting a lot. It sounded as if she was back on drugs when I would talk to her on the phone. She wasn’t able to get a job or go to school, as she’d enthusiastically talked about before giving birth.

One night she told me that her kids and boyfriend were being mean to her. She said “they don’t realize I am in post-partum depression.” I offered support, but I didn’t know exactly what to do. Post-partum depression is real. It can be devastating. I can only imagine how much worse it is for someone who’s adopted out a child.

But she didn’t change her mind; she still seemed satisfied with her decision to adopt out her daughter, thinking it was best for the baby. As I stated before, I had fallen hard for her as a person, her integrity to her word, her loving ways of handling the adoption in the hospital room and at her house. She’d even asked me if I’d adopt her other two children if anything happened to her.  I said I would.

About three months after our daughter was born, I received a message from someone who’d known the birthmother. She said that our loving, beautiful birthmother had died. She had overdosed on heroin in the bathtub talking to her boyfriend by phone.

That was the saddest day of my life. The sacrifice she’d gone through was huge, and the weight of it immense, without someone there to help her get through it.

All adoption situations are different, but it’s difficult for all the birthmothers. Stand by these wonderful women. Never judge a birthmother. Always know that she sacrificed much to give her child a family.

I rejected my own ability to care for her. I rejected that I could be enough. I rejected my strength to get on my feet and survive. To persevere. I made the horrifying decision that some other woman, whom I didn’t even know, would be better suited for my own child than me, her biological mother.

Because I was young, I believed that where I was in life at that point would last forever. And that place was not ideal for a baby. When time and experience taught me that circumstances change and life is always moving forward, it was too late to go back. The papers were already signed. She was someone else’s now. Forever.

We did end up staying in each other’s lives. We visited at least once a year. We talked on the phone and sent letters, photos, texts, and the like. As the years progressed, I found it more and more difficult to watch someone else raise my child, not to mention watch my child call someone else “mom.” I had no voice in the choices they made for her. I was forced to sit back and observe, while my child grew without me in a home that was entirely foreign to my own.

It has been the ultimate form of psychological and emotional torture. The worst hit me when my daughter considered suicide and ended up in a hospital, and I wasn’t allowed to contact her because I wasn't a direct relative. Or was it years earlier when she wanted to run away and considered living with me, but her parents wouldn’t grant me legal guardianship to take her to the doctors in case of illness or emergency, so it didn’t happen.

Sitting back and watching your child hurt without the ability to do anything but scream in silence is indescribable. I brought my daughter into this world and made a self-sacrificing decision to do what I thought was best for her, and because of ink laid out on two square inches of paper when she was only days old, I had no right to care for her ever again.

And then, this past year, when she entered college and I expressed my joy that I could somehow be more free to be a mother to her, she became angry and insulted that I would suggest such a thing. She clarified that I am not her mother—that I gave up that right a long time ago and I don’t ever get to have it back.

Children have the ultimate power to destroy their parents, and in my mind I have never not been her mother. But she has destroyed me with the reality of where her heart lies.

In her mind, perhaps she is better off without her birthparent. In my mind, I am not her birthmother. I am her mother. She is not my “birth daughter.” She is my daughter. And to think that your own child is better off without you is excruciating. It’s only echoing the fears and insecurities I had in my own head when I made the decision of adoption: “maybe she’s better off without me.”

But nothing in my heart believes it. And it’s painful to be a part of the silenced side of adoption: a birthparent. There is a lot of focus on adopted kids and adoptive parents. But for every one of those, there is a mother out there who gave birth to that child and might be hurting so deeply on the inside for the remainder of her life.

“Your mother didn’t want you, but I did, so now you are mine.” “She was engaged to another man when she got pregnant with you and had to give you up to get married.” “She was a drunk and had more kids and didn’t want you.”

I knew that MY mother, my “real” mom, didn’t love me. Why else would she abandon me? As long as I can recall, I have had a hole in my heart, knowing that something was wrong with me, terrified that if people knew me they would not want me around. I’ve always hated Mother's Day, and a basic distrust of the Catholic Church.

All my life I’ve heard that women who give up their children for adoption are selfless and “want only the best” for their child. If that is true, why do they not send along a note to the child to allow them to understand why they were given up? Why is it that even now I cannot be told the circumstances of my birth without her permission? Even now? I am nearly 60. What harm would it do?

By the way, in the late ‘90s, my mother who raised me did give me a sealed envelop telling me her understanding of my adoption circumstances, but after 40 years I was afraid to pursue it. She died in 2011, and last year I located my birth mother through Google. I wrote her last November, inviting her to respond. I was not seeking a relationship; I just wanted her to acknowledge me. She did not answer.

I also joined Ancestry.com and had an autosomal DNA test. There were few matches and most were such distant predicted relations that I gave up thinking I would ever know about my family. Still, I built a tree from my mom’s maiden name. (She was from a small town in Michigan and had a fairly uncommon name.) Not long ago I received a match with a predicted 1st - 2nd cousin relationship, who had a public tree showing a connection to my mother. Her mother was married to my mother’s brother. Strengthened by this tenuous link, I decided to call my birth mother.

She told me I was wrong and it was not her, and she didn’t know why my mom would have given me her name. I questioned her more and she faltered in her answers and I had the feeling she was making things up as she went along. Finally I asked her why it was that I had a DNA link to a member of her family and she just said she didn’t know.

So, I am still rejected by her. Strangely, having talked to her and hearing her rejection voiced changed things for me. I now know what kind of person she is, and am glad I was adopted. I only wish I had done it before my mom died, so I could tell her she was right after all. My idea of who my “real mom” was turned a complete about-face.

I still intend to research my biological family connections through genetic genealogy, and am currently following a lead that may be a link to my birth father. I am waiting for a response to my request to Michigan’s Central Adoption Agency to provide the non-identifying information about my adoption, though I don’t hold much hope that there is much.

I firmly believe that every individual has a right to know the circumstances of their birth and the identity of their parents, at least once they reach the age of majority. Our biological parents may not want a relationship with us, but we have a right to know our origins.

During my life I’ve met many other adoptees. Most of them had similar feelings. Yes, there have been a few that were happy growing up, but they’ve been in the minority. Many had substance abuse problems. I drank too much for a long time, especially when my feelings of rejection were triggered. I just wanted to escape this life, where others had parents that wanted them.

I don’t know why I’ve emailed, but maybe if enough of us tell you what it is really like to be adopted, the insane idea that birth parents are some kind of hero will stop, and adoptees will have the right to judge for themselves if they did them a favor.

Send me an email if you also have a notable story to tell.

Bullying is a topic that has been covered extensively and the effects of bullying on children are well known. Does it not seem obvious that a young child who is reacting to being bullied may appear to have attention issues and/or behavior issues?

When my children were young, they very innocently shared their adoption stories with their peers only to have those stories thrown back in their faces in a very cruel way. Taunts like “you don’t belong here,” “nobody wanted you,” “where’s your real Mom, maybe she’s dead”; these and many others were common.

My younger child also got some cruel lessons in racism the very first day of first grade. Not one teacher was ever aware of what was going on. Although teachers told me, in a very condescending way, that they were always aware of what was happening and had a zero-tolerance policy toward bullying, the truth is they were clueless and not at all helpful.

In the end, when my children had completed 4th and 6th grade, I took them out of school and home-schooled them. They both finished up their schooling, finishing high school in three years, and went on to college. In college they both achieved very high grades, got academic scholarships and were admitted to honor societies. My oldest is now a graduate student who intends to become a history professor and my younger child is completing a degree in communications.

For the most part we have gotten past the hurt and emotional damage caused by the bullying, although I do believe this leaves some lifetime scars. They are also at peace with their adoption stories, knowing that a part of their history will always be missing.

What do you think, especially if you’re an adoptive parent or were raised by adoptive parents? Drop me an email and I’ll post your perspective.