|
BKAugust,
Your opinion is very valued here on this site, however this particular thread is for individuals who want to state what they feel is great about their adopted experience. Perhaps creating a thread elsewhere about your feelings concerning the connection of wealth and love/happiness in a different section of the forums may be more appropriate? I'm sure it will be a rousing debate with many people weighing in. However, I feel that it is important for those of us who have happiness regarding adoption no matter what the motive behind it to be allowed to have those feelings, as you are allowed to have yours.
For my part, my parents' financial security allowed them to dwell more on loving actions than say someone who has to think about basic fundamental needs such as food and shelter on a daily basis. There is a book called "The Five Love Languages of Children". The five languages are quality time, acts of service, physical touch, gifts, and words of affirmation. It is probably more difficult to spend quality time with your children if you are spending your time at the entrance of a supermarket with a sign saying, "No money, need food." It's probably more meaningful to snuggle your child in the safety of a house, rather than in the stressful situation of a shared cot in a homeless shelter. It is probably more difficult to provide acts of service to your child when you have no car, no money, no home, and no safety. It's probably difficult to provide a gift out of love to a child when the only gift you may be able to provide is clean diapers. You may be able to tell your child, "I love you so much!" as you tuck them into a cardboard box under a bridge, but think about how much more meaningful that is to a child in the comfort of a clean bed with good food in their tummy.
Financial well-being in a child mind probably does equal love and that's okay. Now, on the other hand, one can look at situations like the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto where there was NOTHING, no resources for the families there. They all knew that they faced certain death. But families stayed together and probably felt more love packed together like sardines in squalor facing horrible death than before, when they were living in nicer conditions. Then again, perhaps that is comparing apples to oranges. . . that group of individuals had a system of beliefs and values and a strong community.
I guess my point is that money does matter, but so does values and moral beliefs. I'm very happy that even if the government put my bio-fam up in a mansion and gave them everything that they could have possibly wanted that I was given up for adoption. While my bio-fam was never on the street after I was given up for adoption (it benefitted both of us you can see), the moral/values system of the family assured that the next generation also has had multiple problems as will probably the generation after that.
I don't believe that all mothers give up their children because they are poor and I don't think that most adopted adults think that either. That was, in fact, the situation in my case, but I've always had the realistic view that there are TONS of reasons that women give their children up and money is just one of those reasons.
So I have reconsidered the reasons I'm happy about being adopted as you suggested. I'm still happy that I never had to want for anything and to me as a child, that did equal love. I'm also happy that I didn't have to be party to multiple marriages and divorces, witness to maternal beatings, kidnappings by bio-fathers, and general emotional turmoil. . . I would not have bloomed in that atmosphere even if we were as rich as kings. And as I said before, I wouldn't have been introduced to my religious beliefs which I think would have left me in the darkest place of all.
|