How Do Adoptees Feel about Adopting?
Each adoptee’s experience is uniquely different.
Some people think there is a collective adoptee opinion about certain topics, but that’s not the case. Each adoptee’s experience is uniquely different. It’s those life experiences that form our opinions about the world around us. Many adoptees go on to adopt children of their own. I’m not sure what their thoughts are about it, but I’m sure it varies from person to person.
For me, as an adoptee, I have never had any desire to adopt. I lived what most people would consider a normal childhood. A miscarriage at a young age affected my relationship with the idea of motherhood forever. Feeling that bond with my unborn child and then losing that child ingrained in me a longing for a child. I desperately wanted to be a mother. I had absolutely no wish to adopt though.
I wanted a child of my flesh and blood. I didn’t know a single person who was related to me. There was no one in my life who looked like me. Those things may seem trivial to some people, but to many adoptees, they are important. As much as I wanted to be a mom, adoption was never an acceptable route to me. I have stepchildren that I love as much as my biological children, but I would never have sought out an infant adoption.
I don’t have anything against adoption, nor do I feel like I was traumatized by my own. I definitely feel there is a need for families to adopt children who would otherwise not have a home. It takes a special kind of person to adopt a child. Prospective adoptive parents need to weigh all their options thoroughly to decide if adoption is right for them.
While I was growing up, people would often comment on how much I looked like my mom (adoptive mom). There were some similarities, but it was more of a vague resemblance. We both had blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. I was always curious as to what my birth parents looked like, but I definitely think all of the comments about our appearance played a large role in my desire to share physical features with my kids.
Adoption is a complicated thing. Just like adoptees who have chosen to adopt, some choose to place their biological child in a closed adoption. That’s another thing I couldn’t do. I have never had any ill thoughts toward my birth family. I do wish I could go back and whisper in their ears while they were deciding whether to place me. I would never trade my adoptive family for anything, but I would have wanted to know them growing up.
The decision to adopt a child or not is a very personal one. We, as adoptees, do not necessarily possess a collection of similar ideas. Instead, our circumstances have shaped us differently, and that’s why our paths to creating a family vary.
