[fauxgina]

My adoptive father is also an adoptee. Although I'm not sure exactly what the circumstances were surrounding his adoption (either he didn't talk much about it or I didn't listen), he was born in 1947, so I imagine it was to a young unwed mother, pregnant with her first child, who had no other choice but to give him up. I didn't learn this until a couple of years ago, but apparently when he was 19 or 20, he and his first wife adopted a 17 year old boy! I'm really not sure how that was allowed to happen, or why they adopted someone who was so similar in age, but as far as I know Dad had no further contact with the boy after he and his wife divorced.

He chose adoption because he felt there were more than enough children in the world without him contributing to overpopulation. He was in Pakistan as a young man (probably after he'd been drafted to fight in Vietnam), where he saw a woman trying to nurse her dead baby. He decided right there to have a vasectomy, and that's just what he did.

I doubt if I'm likely to become an adoptive parent myself, for several reasons. I completely empathize with your so-called "selfish" views about adopting and relinquishing; I don't think it's so much selfish as self-aware. There is no reason to push yourself into doing something you don't feel comfortable with, especially when a child's life hangs in the balance. It's better that you know how you feel about it and act accordingly than try to be selfless and end up in a tragic situation. For me, my dad's feelings about overpopulation rang very true (still do), but I don't want children by any means, so it's not a matter of preferring to have "my own." Also, I found my dad to be a very difficult parent to have at times because he'd been through so much in his life that he hadn't dealt with that he acted more like a child than we kids did. He threw tantrums, shouted and swore, demolished things--and when it was over, he was as calm and collected as ever. He still has trouble controlling his emotions at 60, but as he ages he mellows out. I figure by the time he's 90 he'll be the kind of father we should have had as youngsters. Anyway, I'd hate to think that my own experience as an adoptee and daughter of a volatile adoptee would negatively affect my own parenting skills.