I really can’t speak for the majority of adoptive parents when it comes to relationships with a child’s birth family. Each adoption is so unique. When we adopted through our state, we’d assumed our adoptions would be closed.
When we adopted our first son, our adoption was completely closed. We had quite a time searching for birth siblings as a result. Though we know where the birth parents are, for safety reasons we have not and will not pursue openness of any degree. Thankfully because of the information we have acquired more recently from his other birth family, any questions our son may have should be answered. Because his adoption was completely closed, we never experienced the feeling of him feeling like “someone else’s”. I know this must come off very self centered of me, but I didn’t want to look at my son as an adoptee; I just wanted to see him as my son—period! The relationship we have with his birth siblings’ families and others related has been totally on our terms and has never felt awkward. We are thankful to have found them for our son should he ever wonder.
So when the time came to adopt again and there was birth family automatically in the picture and things felt so much different. We mediated with paternal grandma and birth father initially offering minimal contact. This situation had been much more difficult than expected for our family. When we don’t hear from them, our youngest isn’t put in any different light than our oldest, and our family feels “normal” because we aren’t reminded of our son’s adoption. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we are able to contact his birth family; the problem is we see their interest is in our youngest more so than our oldest and I worry about our boys sensing this. We’re a family and what a birth relatives feels in their hearts is one thing, but our son is ours and the sense of entitlement that some have implied because of “blood” can be bothersome.
We have the responsibility of looking at our family as a whole though and if certain things are disruptive to our family, it’s better if they don’t happen. It’s difficult to convey here the emotional difficulty in feeling pressure to “share” your child, or to feel someone may be viewing one child “more special” than the other because they share the “same blood” with that relative. It’s hard too when you feel like you have to mail out a progress report as agreed upon for your own child. Regardless, mediation and contact isn’t about me, it’s not about the birth family, it’s about our son and what may be best for him under the circumstances and for his future.
Melissa is a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog