[SugarB]

The purpose of motherhood is to teach hope, trust, and love to her child. This relationship between infant and mother is the core of the process that humanizes us. We know that when this relationship is damaged or disrupted, fundamental emotional problems will be created for both mother and child. In adoption, wefail to recognize this primal nature and purpose of motherhood as evidenced by the name we give it. Adoption is not the beginning of the process it’s the second chapter. Before there is an adoption there is a separation. In order to create a new family an existing one is divided. The term adoption denies the existence of the mother child bond and assumes that mothers are simply interchangeable. The primal relationship between first mother and child cannot be duplicated by a new mother. Adoption creates a facsimile. Who among us would consider that the loss of a loved one can be resolved by the introduction of a new loved one? If a spouse dies, can one remarry and wipe away the grief? Can the pain of grief be ended by replacing that loss with another person? Adoption as it is practiced today, makes the assumption that mothers are simply interchangeable and there is nothing unique about her relationship with her child. Any mother will do and the child won’t know or care. Experience teaches us that this is not the truth.
There is no relationship in all of nature that approaches the primal intimacy of a mother and her child. When a child is born it has no sense of self. It shares its reality with the mother. In the beginning, there is virtually a single mother child being, emotionally and spiritually bound. Adoption separates them before they can naturally grow apart creating in them both the pain of grief and the desire to find one another later in life. By what moral sensitivity does the state or any institution stand between a mother and her child, in adulthood, keeping the knowledge of their names a state secret? What gives anyone the right to say two adults so intimately, bound cannot know one another again? That right belongs only to them. If we are truly interchangeable then our uniqueness means nothing. We may as well all have the same name or no name at all. Adoption can work if we respect the relationship of the mother and her child who make it possible.
Adoption can only work as long as we respect, and not fear the primal bond between mother and child. Only then can an adopted child accept love, only then can a mother express her love. There is no place for fear and secrecy in the adoption process.

Robert Allan Hafetz

Edited to put back in author's information....This is an excerpt from his words...
Robert Allan Hafetz is the author of Not Remembered Never Forgotten (Gateway Press 2005). A Temple graduate and former adjunctive therapist in the PA mental health system he writes and lectures on the subject of adoption.

[dmca]

I beg to differ. When my brother and I were very small, me under two and my brother 3 1/2 we were put into foster care. I can tell you from experience that we LOVED those people as OUR PARENTS. There was a STRONG bond that I miss even today. To US, they WERE Mummy and Daddy.
Unfortunately when they asked to adopt us permanently we were taken away from them ( the answer was no) and placed someplace, well, less than , erm, comfortable. THEY moved out of the country completely. I remember the day we were taken away and me asking" when's mummy coming"? INTENSE TRAUMA.
So, pardon me, if I disagree . A baby WILL bond with others besides their first parents and IT IS a bond that is treasured.
My two cents worth.
dmca

[AdamsDad]

I must agree with dmca. The infant with no sense of self is craving love warmth and caring. If the birth parents are not able to provide this then adoptive parents can certainly step in. It is the love, understanding and compasion that forms bonds, not sharing some of the same genes. Adoption is simply another way to start a family, it is not worse or a second class way as compared to natural birth. It (Adoption) is simply different not better or worse.

[whitsunday15]

I agree with the original post. I believe that there are varying levels of bonding though, depending on the pregnant mother.
I believe that bonding goes into depths that are on a subconscious level and that it can only be experienced with someone who you shared a body and a mind with. I believe that if the mother gives 100% of herself spritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically to her unborn baby and then to her baby in those very first days after birth--that the bond created cannot be broken or duplicated. If she doesn't, then maybe that bond can be broken.

I believe that there is a big, big difference between bonding and attachment. I myself may have needed to attach to my adoptive parents for survival reasons, but I would not and did not bond with either of them. I have always felt bonded to my natural mom, to the extent that I refused to call my adoptive mother, "mom".

[kune]

I think there is a measure of truth in all the posts. If there is love, and nurture, the bonding (of sense of belonging) is reciprocated. As in the saying "love the hand that feeds you".

Is adopted family different from biolgocal family?
Adamsdad wrote

........it is not worse or a second class way as compared to natural birth.

In some instances it is better - obviously in cases where the child is in danger, or where the mother is unable to parent, but believing it is the same is, IMHO, selective thinking. That would be like saying fertility problems do not put stress on the family unit.

It's been proven that there is a sense of dislocation at the time of parent/child seperation and when that occurs at birth, there are certain neurological changes. At the seperation (from someone they have bonded with for 40 weeks) a newborn withdraws emotionally from other stimuli. So....early brain development is interrupted.

Biological parenting, in the right circumstances, is the optomim - but adoptive parenting is a loving solution to poor circumstances. 36 years ago, it was the choice I made for my son when I was unable to provide the basic living needs. And although we both went on to have really good lives,.......we both have felt the loss. It is real, and for the adoptee, made more poigant when adoption is not spoken about in the home. If it was discussed openly and freely, I am sure the child/adult would feel more secure and self-assured.

Ann

[UK Trace]

Originally Posted by kune

It's been proven that there is a sense of dislocation at the time of parent/child seperation and when that occurs at birth, there are certain neurological changes. At the seperation (from someone they have bonded with for 40 weeks) a newborn withdraws emotionally from other stimuli. So....early brain development is interrupted.

:

Some how this paragraph sparked something off in me....I wanna know more bout the withdrawal of emotions....its like deep inside a part of me knows this...remembers this...

[jenn_e_ritter]

I am from the closed era and have read so much about this. What I have read has been an eye opening experience. I never knew there was so much pain that was buried deep in my subconscious. From what I have read the withdrawl from the first mother can result in a child being very sick with consistent crying. My aparents told me that I was given a pill that way I would stop crying (crying stopper). I guess I must have been a wailer. At five days old is when my withdrawl process started for me. I was diagnosed with colic and put on medication. At one month I came down with pnemonia.

After I was adopted my aparents dealt with my consistent crying, only at night. I became addicted to the crying stopper. Why would someone do that?

At seven and a half I am not going in details, but I was in and out of hospitals.

Adoption has its good points and bad.

[shelleyb2323]

SugarB

I have to say I appreciate how you worded everything in your post. I have not heard it stated so simply yet eloquently. Your thoughts are so right in that we need to understand there WAS a relationship, bond what have you, with our birthmothers and that we (as society) can no longer try to sweep that under the carpet and ignore it's existence. Yes, children can and will often bond with the adoptive parents but to expect us to forget the "primal intimacy" we shared with our birthmothers is absurd!
Of course there will be grief and many of us suffer our entire lives for denying it ever existed.

Thanks for sharing these thoughts, they really hit home for me.

[MlynnBrrtt]

I think many people forget that an infant is not born a "clean slate". An infant knows the diffrence between his/her mother and a substitute. An infant can...at birth...seek out & identify its mother as he/she knows her smell, her voice, and the exact rythom of her heartbeat. Some research has indicated that infants have the capability of identifying their mothers in a mirror/photo shortly after birth. There IS trauma at seperation. The bond is deep...deeper then any other that can be formed throughout the infant's lifetime. You can't duplicate or re-create the emotional, physical, and pyscological bonding, growing, and attachment that happens inside the womb & connects 2 beings as one....no matter how much love you give a child. As a person who wants to be a foster mother & hopes to adopt some day this is a reality that I accept.

[shelleyb2323]

Mlynn
It's refreshing to know that you are thinking in this way about fostering and adopting. There are so many children who need foster and adoptive homes but I cringe thinking that their biological histories being suppressed and denied. I know there are many adoptees who had wonderful lives in their adoptive homes but for the most part many of us suffer from denial of our identities.

I remember as a fairly young person going to the doctor and having them ask my amother about "our" family history. She would rattle off this and that from her side then continue rattling off info from my afather's family history. I sat there thinking to myself "but this has nothing to do with me" why didn't she just say "she is adopted and her history is unknown". I have to believe it was just a way for her to deny how I came to be. Just my thoughts...

[MlynnBrrtt]

Thanks. I have to say that perhaps my reasons for wanting to become a foster/adoptive mother are diffrent from others. I don't want to become a foster/adoptive mother ONLY to become a mother. I only want to help a child or children & I don't believe that denying their true self is part of the process of "helping". I am not infertile so I don't understand or have the need to make a child "as if born to". A child is who he is & I can't change that by changing his name exc. A childs first family(or lack there of) is a large part of who he is & his identity as a person. That doesn't mean that I can't have a possitive impact or shape his life with love.

My best friend S's mother has fostered a child B for her boyfriend K's (and the father of her daughter) sister T(did you catch that?) sence birth. S's mother fostered S's boyfriends nephew..is that clearer? My best friend S & B's mother T were good friends & everyone always thought my friend S & K would get married(making them sister-in-laws). It has been 8 years and S's mother never had "legal" custody of B. All this time the mother T just left him with S & her mom and he see's S as a sister & her mom as mom & her family as his family....but also knows T as mom. He is not confused at all. No one called T "birthmom" or S adoptive mom. The people just are who they are to him and he accepts it as normal. He spends a great deal of time with T and his 3 other siblings. He spends the night & goes on family vacation. There is no pressure or weirdness between the 2 families. He knows he has this large extended family. No one ever tells him his mom made an adoption plan or didn't want him exc. For 8 years they had a great relationship that way. Then T got sick with cancer - T now also has 3 other kids with a diffrent man - and B's father died a few years ago. T finially signed over legal guardianship of B to S's mom so in case she passes away B will have a legal solid "home". S KNOWS who she is in B's life & they are not going to pursue adoption or change B's name to make him part of the family. He is who he is & he knows who each adult is in his life. Changing his identity would only cause him confusion & probibally some degree of trauma. Hopefully S's mom will take in the other 3 children if something happens to T. Thier father is still living so he will most likley get custody....but he is also a bit of a "deadbeat dad" and doesn't work exc. S has also been involved in the 3 other children's lives as S and T remain good friends & even lived together. S & B's uncle K have a baby together so B is now "biologically" linked to S & her family through his new baby cousin.

I don't understand why we can't just let children be who they are by birth....why must we change their names in order to feel like they are "ours". I don't really understand it....especially with older child adoption exc. I think it just causes more hurt and confusion...and identity issues in the long run. I might get slammed for this oppinion but it is what it is....and it comes from a place of experience and knowledge of having been a part of B's life & extended family.

[whitsunday15]

I agree with your opinion Mlynn. 100%.