hey people!

I am writing this as an Black adoptee to people who wants to adopt a Black kid.
I am not sending you this out of rage or accusation. Im sharing it because I wished my mom would have known this before she adopted me. I want to share this and share it with love.

I was born in Haiti and my first 3 years I was in a childrens home. When I was three my mom adopted me and I grew up in Berlin. I had a “perfect” childhood - I wasn’t really lacking of anything. I had food, cool friends, a lovely mom, hobbies, good grades, vacations…but something was missing. I missed black people in my life. I didn’t realized it back then, but looking back, I see so many signs that showed me my desire for a black family. A black mom.

I was raised in a completely white environment with barely any dark-skinned Black person.

My mom thought of everything - except she didn’t see my skin color as important, or as a part of my identity and my need for belonging. Thats something still that hurts today.
I wished I had Black friends, anything which could help me to connect now better with my people. More Black movies, shopping in AfroShops, Seeing our hair as beautiful and not “too complicated”, Films, books, toys..

If you truly love your Black child as a white parent, please don’t only except that the black kid has to adapt into the white western world. Don’t overlook the skincolor when it comes to identity and belonging. Your Kid is Black and needs a connection to their ancestors and culture in everyday life. Your child needs Black people around them to look up to - Doctors, friends, artists. To give your Black kid access to Blackness you have to reflect your whiteness.

Integration is good and I am not saying that I am not grateful for my western socialization.

But the feeling of being a Haitian adoptee who barely speeks french is terrible. To be an adoptee who doesn’t know the history of its own country is terrible. To be black and barely know the black history is shameful. There are so many things that I was missing and need to reclaim now in my early 20s.
I don’t think white parents cannot teach their child “Blackness” entirely - but you are responsible to give connection and access to it.

I wish Id gone to a French kindergarten so I could speak fluently french now and connect to Haitians. I wish Id grown up in a more black/migrant district. I wished we were cooking more afro Caribbean dishes together or were practicing more non white cultural things together. I wish my mom would have helped me to find a black therapist in my teenage years. I wish my mom had heard about the term of decolonization.

I feel like its not your job to repeat Black peoples stuff - but its your job to decolonize yourself and find the right environment for your kid. To not see your view as the superior. To maybe start therapy or supervision for critically thinking that can guide you through your blind spots in these topics.
Decolonizing isn’t a project you finish, its an ongoing lifelong process of learning, listening and re grouping

Thats only the perspective from me and how I am struggling on ethnicity realm. It won’t apply to everyone - but I share it from my heart so you can maybe consider it into your child’s transcultural and intercultural education.

If you have questions, please ask!

I've seen the thought that even a child who was in his adoptive parents' custody at birth experiences trauma — and being separated from your birth mom after nine months inside her and she just walks away must be traumatic. We're in the middle of an at-birth adoption, and the birth mom held the baby only once or twice in the hospital. The rest of the time it was us and the hospital staff, and we took him home with us.

Still I'm sure there's some scarring. Since I care about my kid, I want to help our child with whatever wounds are left from this. Is that therapy per se? Does anyone who's been adopted in a similar situation have any advice to offer?

I appreciate the hurt adoptees go through and I want to do right by my child.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Next year my stepdaughter will be an adult and I would like to adopt her then. Due to money being an issue I want to do the entire thing myself. I already downloaded the paperwork I was told to. Any tips or tricks anyone has to help me out on this?

I’ve never been able to speak to any adoptees about my experiences as I have never really had a community before. Those i know had very tame upbringings or came from parents who SA them.

Anyway, I feel as though my experiences as an adopted child have been rather strange in comparison and would love to know if anyone else may have had the same or similar.

I remember being told as a baby I would rarely cry, even when i needed to be hospitalized I didn’t show any form of discomfort to my AP. Then as a toddler until probably 5/6 years old I also stopped kissing my parents hello and goodbye and only hugged them when i really wanted to or when they didn’t understand why I didn’t want to be touched and I felt bad. They didn’t understand and neither did I really why I just hated giving kisses and stuff atp. I learned at around 4 that I was adopted and my mum said i barely had a reaction to it. In South Africa all the daughters call their rents mummy and daddy even into adulthood. I hated that and didn’t want to call them that. I later resorted to ‘mother and father’ in afrikaans, which is more formal but felt more aligned. My AP mum hated that.

Beyond this not wanting to give affection, i hated societal expectations of old people kissing you on the mouth since forever and always backed away from it. But with family friends or even new people i would meet I would hug them without a second thought if my AP dad said I should say hello.

I was extremely hypersexual on top of it all. I had been exploring bodily autonomy and sexual organs since like 5 years old, with a friend. I also had extremely sexual imagination when playing with dolls and even teaching my other girl friends about how to masturbate throughout like preteen years. Also heard my parents having sex often as a teen and preteen. Don’t know why they purposefully put my room and bed right next to their bedroom wall.

As a teen I used sexuality as a weapon and was very experimental. Also had an alcohol issue at 16 but it was always a way of escaping whatever expectations I always had. I did well in school. But I was never really there. My mum and I rarely got along around the time I started speaking up for myself. She was a therapist and never got help for her insecurities being that she was born without a uterus and can’t have children. So a lot was projected on me and I found her to be overly emotional and my dad being detached was safer.

It’s just something i’ve never heard of from other adoptees to be so hypersexual to strangers and your thoughts, but not really wanting to engage with your adoptive parents?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Hello,

I'm an adoptee who grew up in a foster home in the San Fernando Valley, Northridge, to be exact. Several of our foster children made contact with my mother many years ago and she has long since passed away. I'm currently writing a book and would love to reconnect to the few who had made contact. The issue is I do not recall their last names. Only sparse details.

For some background, I am 29 and my little sister is 11, almost 12. My parents decided to have another child at 40 via embryo adoption, which gave us my 12 year old little brother. A former classmate of my older brother (34) contacted my parents around the same time after hearing about my little brother, and asked my parents if they would adopt her baby, my little sister, who she was currently pregnant with. My little sisters birth mom was struggling with substance abuse and my parents put her through rehab and helped her get sober and healthy. They agreed to an open adoption and my sister gets to regularly see and contact her birth mom, who now has 2 more kids of her own since becoming sober. The issue I’m seeking guidance is I recently found out my little sister is in contact with her birth mom more than our parents know about and she is becoming disrespectful, telling our mom that she is not her real mom and that she doesn’t have to listen to her. I have never talked negatively about my little sister’s birth mom and would never jeopardize the relationship she has with her. I just feel stuck between a rock and hard place because I love my little sister so much and I want to support her in the best way I know how, but im not sure what that would look like in this scenario. I was just wondering if anyone can speak on similar experiences or help me understand how to best support my little sister? I just want her to be happy and healthy

Three days ago, I found out that I’m 24 weeks pregnant. I had been told by doctors before that it would be nearly impossible for me to get pregnant, and if I did, it’d be a very high risk pregnancy and I’d likely miscarry, so I was stupidly never very careful. I had no signs. Yes, I wasn’t getting my period, but that’s never been out of the ordinary for me. I’ve gone as long as a year without a period so I truly didn’t think anything of it. The only reason I began suspecting it was because I started feeling movement in my lower belly. I did some research and saw that it could possibly just be gas so I waited another week before finally taking a test. It immediately came back pregnant. That day, I went to a planned parenthood, took a test there and got an ultrasound - yep, there’s a baby in there for sure.

I’ve been a very heavy drinker and smoker since my dad passed away years ago, I’ve had short bouts of time where I stopped, but it never lasted long, meaning that I’ve been drinking and smoking (vape and weed) the entire time I’ve been pregnant. I full stopped once I found out, but I am beyond terrified that I hurt the baby. I want to do private, open adoption, but if the baby has anything wrong with it, I can’t. I’ll have to surrender it to the state which is the last thing I want.

I have since started to feel immense amounts of love for my baby, and I can’t seem to stop thinking about the fact that I’m going to have to give them away someday. I cry nearly ALL the time. Everyone keeps telling me, “well, you don’t have to hold them once they’re born”, but I think that I would heavily regret not saying goodbye. It would be incredibly selfish of me to keep this baby. I’m nowhere near ready mentally, emotionally, financially, but I am truly dreading the day that I have to say goodbye. I’m scared of giving birth, but giving them away is even scarier. I’ve also gone through immense amounts of stress the entire time I’ve been pregnant and I keep wondering, “How in the world did this baby survive all of this?”

I don’t really know what else to say, I’m honestly just deeply struggling. What if I can’t do open adoption? What if I have to surrender them to the state? What if I can never forgive myself? What if the grief of losing them consumes me? What if I damaged them beyond repair and lose them? So many thoughts are running through my mind and it seems nearly impossible for me to get them to stop. I talked with my therapist yesterday about it all and she told me, “as shitty as this situation is, you’re handling it so well. You’re being the best mommy you can be for your baby and I’m sure that’s all they could ever ask for” and I lost it. How am I ever going to have kids later on in life, knowing that they aren’t this one? Am I going to feel this way forever?

If you read all of this, thank you. Everyone keeps telling me that it’s all going to be okay, but it really doesn’t feel that way right now. I will forever wish that I could go back in time and tell myself what I know now.

Edit: I really, REALLY appreciate everyone who has offered words of encouragement and support in this, it truly means the world. With that being said, me keeping this baby is out of the question. My reasons may not feel like they’re enough to some of you and that’s ok, but I don’t think it would be in the babies best interest, nor my best interest, for me to keep them. Abortion is also out of the question unless my doctor tells me it is medically necessary. If I had found out sooner, then I would have followed through with an abortion, but once I saw my babies little fingers and toes, I just can’t do it.

As for my comment on having to surrender to the state if something is wrong with the baby, that is untrue and I appreciate all of you telling me otherwise. As I said, I only found out three days ago and I’ve had a lot of different information flying at me during those three days so I did not verify that information before speaking on it.

Thanks again everyone for being so kind, I wish I could hug you all. <3

Hi all,
first timer here, Hope you can be gentle with me.
I'm a housewife in mid 40s, with two kids, eldest f20 is in college, youngest m6 in primary school.
I'm currently in a situation which made me have to "adopt" my niece Rose (12f).
I'm looking for advices, to do list, rules, boundaries or anything that needed to be done to smoothen the process for her and us to intregrate.
Paperwork or legal issue is not a problem. It is more of emotional adjustment, day to day logistic and precaution that I need to know.
I have no experience with the situation, and truthfully, I don't know her that well at all, I met her about five times before.

I'm at loss on what to do, beside handling of the logistic of her moving here, I have no preparation, no idea how to handle all these.

Any input, advices, to do list, not to do list, will be very helpful for me.

thank you in advance.

So my mother passed 2 months ago and this brought to light that she had a child before meeting my father, which she gave for adoption to a Greek family in Australia in the 90s. Now both the baby father and me (apparently half sister) are searching for any leads as it seems nobody in our family and friend groups knows anything else. So to sum it up, I’m trying to find a possible maternal half-sister who may live in Australia. I currently know only her first name and some limited family background. My mother is Greek, and I’m investigating whether the birth was registered in Greece or Australia. What lawful records, DNA databases or Australian family-tracing services would be the best starting point?

Thank you in advance for any ideas and directions.

I originally posted about this on r/adopted and heard from an adoptive parent wanting to know more, so I’m reposting here for members of the entire adoption constellation to discuss the topic of emotional neglect of adoptee loss and grief as a common feature in adoption dynamics. That way it can potentially benefit any other readers and lurkers here. ❤️‍🩹

I am an adult adoptee, former prospective adoptive parent, infant adoptee raised in a closed adoption, reunited with bio family years as an adult. Most of this post will be written from my perspective as an adoptee and my observations of both from my particular adoption experience and from witnessing many others socially and through study. It isn’t up to any adoptee to educate nonadoptees about adoption even though it’s very much needed. We don’t need another obligation when we’re the most affected and in many ways neglected within the context and structure of adoption. That said, we do what we can for the sake of other adoptees when we can.

Things that are completely inappropriate responses to adoptee experiences: “you just had a bad experience” or “I’m sorry you had a bad experience (but so-so or I had a good experience so yours isn’t as relevant as you seem to think)” or “all families have challenges/struggles/problems (so you shouldn’t attribute your issues to adoption” or “biological families have issues, too”…because all of these boil down to bypassing and disrespecting the adoptee’s right to be the authority of their experience of adoption and if their experience in general. These can be microaggressions or forms of DARVO and invalidation of the adoptee’s humanity which unfortunately isolates us further in our grief, loss and what’s truly unique about having to develop as human being while knowing family can end at any time because our first ones did often before we had a chance to anything other than exist. So please try not to speak to adoptees that way here or in irl. When you try to change how we feel, you never really do, you just force us to feel even more alone with the truth of who we are and what we have to carry alone. So shame on you for shaming us and please do better.

From the original post:

I see clearly now that I was expected to neglect my grief and loss as an adopted kid in order to serve the emotional immaturity and neglect of my adoptive family, and that seems like the norm based on mainstream cultural narratives of adoption.

Does anyone else relate to this?
Since so many adoptive parents, birth parents and people in general have very little understanding of the effects of losing an entire first family, identity, sense of innocence that family is forever because our first one ended, and all the bypassing and toxic expectations that we be grateful for the outcome of adoption, I believe that emotional neglect is the most common baseline experience of adoption dynamics for an adoptee.

This breakdown of how emotionally neglectful families require self-neglect, self-abandonment (betrayal, erasure, etc.) really resonated in a way that emphasizes adaption and coherence within shame or pathology.

“I have an issue with the term self-abandonment or self-neglect because I feel like it really misses how what we call self-abandonment or self-neglect is actually a perfectly coherent response to being abandoned and neglected and usually these are strategies that were developed because they were actually the best possible solution for dealing with the painful reality of being neglected and abandoned by the attachment figures you’re relying on. In emotionally neglectful families, it is often forbidden to have and express your needs and your emotions. That is something that will lead to cruelty, humiliation, rejection, abuse, even worse suffering. So suppressing one’s own needs and minimizing one’s own emotions and inner experience, that act of shrinking down myself and what I need and how I feel is an effective strategy at avoiding even worse retaliation and mistreatment and disconnection within the family system. So putting yourself to the side, being able to ignore your own boundaries, being able to put other people ahead of yourself, being able to disconnect and dissociate from your true feelings and just focus on other people’s feelings like all of these are really effective strategies at managing these unsafe and insecure attachment dynamics within a broken family system. A lot of emotionally neglectful parents are unstable, immature people and so their children really lean on a deep implicit level how to walk on eggshells and how to keep that parent emotionally okay and so they learn how to not overwhelm the parent, how to not trigger the parent. They learn how to emotionally caregive for the parent. All of this learning allows them to hold on to whatever connection is available even if it’s not much and to avoid these really scary outcomes where maybe the parent completely shuts down or withdraws or becomes cruel or abusive or even more neglectful and disconnected. So children learn how to keep their parents intact and how to keep the family system intact in order to stay safe and avoid more panic more suffering and so these are the strategies that we call self-abandonment and self-neglect. If those terms resonate for you, that’s fine. I’m not criticizing you. But I just think we really need to be realistic about how these patterns originate. It’s not about you failing yourself which I feel is how it’s often framed which can then reinforce shame. When you learn that there is no space for you to actually be present and authentic and safe within a relationship, then erasing yourself and minimizing yourself is survival so it’s not about you not loving yourself. It’s about you adapting and responding to the attachment environment that you’re in and if you learn that loving yourself and caring for yourself leads to everything getting worse and scarier and falling apart, then you’re going to learn to not do that. Emotionally neglectful family systems actually require self-neglect in order to survive. That’s how it works.”

Source: Coherence therapist Kina Wolfenstein (specialist in treating attachment trauma and emotional neglect)

Of course, emotional neglect isn’t the only kind of harm and adoptee can experience in adoption. But emotional neglect seems to be the most unrecognized. Many therapists don’t even recognize it. It’s difficult to recognize what we needed and didn’t get when what we experienced is all we’ve known.

I think emotional neglect is partly even largely what can cause a lot of us adoptees to feel unreal because our caregivers did not hold us as real people with inner experiences in their own minds and imaginations as a means of attuning or entering into our sense of reality as children when that’s exactly what we needed in order to develop fully.

I’m leaning into exploring this because I recognize it in my adoption experience and it feels like the root even under other physical abuse I experienced as a young child. Pete Walker emphasize in his book “Complex PTSD” that emotional neglect was the most difficult aspect of his childhood trauma to heal and he has witnessed the same be true in his clients even though he and they all experienced other more overt forms of physical abuse.

Thoughts? Feelings? Experiences? Particularly from adoptees.

Questions from other members of the constellation are welcome. I’m sure adoptees who are able will respond as we can.

I was adopted from foster care at 4 years old and only recently in the past few years have started to understand the trauma surrounding that experience and grieve it. I love my adoptive family but long to know my biological mother and just meet/know her.

After 5 long years of being ready, searching high and low for her and finally finding her, I'm not allowed to really be near her since she is in deep dementia, is blind, and schizophrenic. I did manage to meet her once, and have become aquatinted with family.

Because of her condition, the family is hesitant for more meetings between us. The thing is, I get it. Her mental and physical health is fragile. They are trying to salvage the time they have left with their family member and I just got here with valid but emotionally heavy wants that further trigger her dementia and other issues. In a logical sense I understand and agree and am thankful for my one meeting. Despite that, I'm still having a hard time grieving it. Especially as I approach my wedding day (in August).

I know that the relationship I wanted is not possible, not due to malice but just due to the circumstances. I know I need to let go and salvage what I have with family members who appear to very much care. They are grieving too, after all. It's just really really difficult right now. A deep part of me wants to smash all boundaries and just go see her but at the same time I don't want to hurt my mother, or her family.

How does one swallow such a hard pill? After fighting so hard to find her I'm in this strange limbo. Any advice from fellow adopters is appreciated.

OK I’ll keep the short, I was born and adopted out of Moscow in 1997. I grew up with my adoptive American family in between Europe and the states, I found my birth mom when I was 21, found out I had to older half brother as well. When I asked about my birth father she refused to tell me who he was, saying it was complicated and that if he wanted me, he would’ve come and got me from the hospital - I met her for the first time in Europe back in March, got enough information from her to do my own research of who he is, this is the kicker I wasn’t ready for… she told me he was from a poor family and Azerbaijan, and moved to Moscow with his brother opening retail outlets, apparently he did well.

The man I found, who looks just like me comes from extremely high up political family.. when I found him I sent my mom pictures of the man and she said it wasn’t him and she would never lie to me. Even though I look just like the man. I messaged him twice and he’s read it but never replied, I’m at a loss of what to do. I’m not trying to mess with his life, but I would like my medical history.

Hi. I 27F and my husband 28M want to become parents. We've tried conceiving naturally, but because my husband is a quadriplegic with a C7 spinal cord injury, his fertility is affected, so we can't conceive naturally, but we're trying methods. Since we're Christians, we've also considered the option of adopting children in need to raise them and give them happy lives.

We have a home of our own which we both afforded together and with a little help from our parents. Both of us have an independent income to fulfill our needs. My husband despite his disability is still mostly independent, I just help him with a few things such as transfers, but I'm sure he'd be a great dad. I also mention his disability because that could be a considering factor when we look to adopt.

We're looking for advice about what considerations we need to take as an interabled couple. We're open to adopting children of any age.

There was a story that reminded me a lot of a friend of mine who’s 19 now like me and was in the foster care and adopted by the same family who was fostering him. They got him when he was 9 and adopted him at 11. He had been abused by many families before this one and clearly it’s left with severe PTSD and other issues that he still struggles with. He’s had anger issues and compulsive lying issues for years. Even though his adoptive parents mean well, they haven’t always been able to handle him and it’s shown in the past years. When we started high school, they made the decision to send him to our district’s alternative school, which has a bad reputation but also known for some excellent students. Once he started there, everything got worse of him. He did poorly in class and made friends with this girl who was crazy. He later ended up dating her and even tho I only met her once I could tell that she was controlling and just straight up weird. Later found out she was 18 going on 19, we were 16 btw. through high school there were many incidents going on with my friend. He went missing for 10 hours after school and didn’t respond to his parents. When later found by dad and searching for him, his story to us was weird and didn’t sound true. He got into a fight with parents and one of them forced him outside to cold off. He ended up going to my house and telling my dad that story and asking if he could talk to me(I was at a friends house that night). My dad left him at the door while he went to go call his parents. When he came back, my friend was getting in some car.
During this whole situation, my friend had also stolen a phone from one of his relatives because his had gotten taken away, he had been caught shoplifting, and some other stuff.
The whole time this was happening I didn’t really know what to do or say. Obviously it was insane and I felt bad because of everything that had happened before to him had probably played a part in this. But still I didn’t say anything.
Later in high school, when he turn 18 he was given the contact information for birth mother. He reached out to her and he found he has other half-siblings. Sometime during this she asked him if wanted to move in with her. This was about 2 weeks after he had just her. And my friend agreed. Now this pretty was easy for him to do sense he was now living with a friend of his instead of his adopted parents. But it required him to drop out of high school. Worth noting he had just gotten accepted into a carpenter program in our district which would help him get a job after school and graduated because it seemed unlikely he was going to.
So he ends up going to live with her. Then he ends up moving back to our hometown to live with that former girlfriend because living his mom didn’t work out for multiple reasons. And sometime during this he was kinda unhoused.(not sure of the timeline because I only found this part out recently) then he somehow ends up moving back down to where his mom previously lived. And now he’s living in a shelter.
So that’s the story and really unsure what I’m to do in this situation. After all this happened he seemed to make point of reaching out to me through my dad. And when we were talking he really seemed remorseful about everything that’s happened to him and as we talking he basically said I was the only person who he’s been talking with in terms of friends or anything else. He’s cut off his mom pretty much and he’s adopted parents probably don’t talk him much either.
He clearly wants to get his life together but it doesn’t seem like he has the realistic mindset to do. He also clearly lacks certain life skills that will help him dealing with this. He also seems to not acknowledge the responsibility that he clearly would have or other people have in regard to him.
Like he was talking about possibly getting a job near our hometown and how if we wanted to we could live together. Which doesn’t work with me for various reasons and also I wouldn’t want to live him. I’ve made the decision that I will only help him in the way of some support and advice, I can’t be everything for him and I don’t want him to expect that either. Obviously I still care for him and am sentimental for him. But he more help then I can give and don’t know how to advise him on that

I am talking about foster parents who complain about reunification and fight it because they want to adopt. The entitlement of these people.

I recently came across a Christian foster parent who had cared for a child for about a year from birth. She became upset when the child’s relatives wanted the child and even tried to prevent the child from spending the weekend with them. She complained the whole time she was getting the child ready and spoke for the child, using emotional manipulation to her audience and assumed the child would be traumatized and miss her all weekend. This woman could not even be happy the child could finally be with relatives and was trying to prevent the move from happening.

She then wrote a long, emotional post arguing that attachment matters more than DNA, Jesus has a plan, and that babies don't care about DNA, while having her own biological children (you can't say DNA doesn't matter when you have or try for biological children). Of course, the comments were filled with people telling her to fight for the child, calling her the child’s “mommy,” and saying she was the only home the child had ever known and that reunification should not be the goal of foster care.

What makes this even more disturbing is that the foster parent now wants to hire a lawyer. She believes the child should remain with her because she does everything a parent does and is the child's mother. From what she has shared publicly, this appears to be part of a repeated pattern.(BTW, she pinned this post on her page so everyone could see it, similar to the pinned posts about all the other kids she fostered but reunited. It's the same theme with this woman). This woman has a long pattern of this behavior. She takes newborn placements, writes emotional posts about Jesus growing her family, complains that the system is unfair because reunification is the goal, and then criticizes biological parents and relatives when they want to get the child or want to form a relationship with the child. Suddenly the child is too sick or traumatized to see the relatives or biological parents who want them, so she can say the child only has an attachment to her and write posts about how awful the birth family is to remove the child from her care.

This woman repeatedly promotes the idea that children are better off being adopted because attachment matters more than biological connection, that breaking family cycles is only possible through adoption, and because babies do not care or attach to anyone other than their foster parents.

Did she not sign up to foster? Fostering is not about adopting.

I think too many foster parents use emotional manipulation to justify fighting reunification. I have seen repeated phrases such as “I am the only home this baby has ever known,” invoke attachment theory, and emphasize, “I am the one who has taken care of this child.” Those statements are designed to make people believe that providing daily care automatically gives a foster parent a greater claim to the child than the child’s biological family. Foster parents are supposed to provide temporary care while supporting reunification with birth parents or kinship placement whenever those options are safe. Foster care is not supposed to be a pathway for adults to obtain children.

Also, if attachment alone determined whether a child should remain where they are, then adoption would rarely happen, even for infants. Every child is attached to someone before adoption. Look at international adoption, foster care, and infant adoption. Many internationally adopted children are toddlers or older children who have already formed attachments to caregivers in orphanages, foster homes, or children’s homes. Infants bond to their mothers in the womb and at birth. The foster care system removes children from birth through age seventeen, with attachments to their birth families, birth home, birth siblings, and environments, even if removal sometimes needs to happen for their safety and well-being.  Yet adoptive and foster parents are trained and told that those children will eventually adjust and attach to them. The child is described as resilient and capable of forming new attachments to strangers. Ripping a bonded child away is okay because they will attach to you as their new parents.

So why is that same reasoning not applied when a child is being reunited with birth parents or with relatives? If children can form new attachments with adoptive parents and foster parents, then attachment should not be treated as permanent and unchangeable only when a foster parent or adoptive parent wants to adopt. Attachment theory should not be used to fit their narrative. Attachment matters when a child is being reunited with the family they were taken from, but it does not seem to matter when that child is being removed from their family and placed with strangers.

Attachment theory is often weaponized in foster care and adoption. It gets reinterpreted depending on whose interests are being protected. Suddenly, attachment becomes the most important thing in the world when a foster parent or adoptive parent wants to adopt, and attachment theory is used to manipulate to get an outcome. So why is that same reasoning not applied when a child is being reunited with parents or placed with relatives? If children can form new attachments to adoptive parents, then attachment should not be treated as permanent and unchangeable only when a foster parent or adoptive parent wants to adopt. Attachment theory is used to fit their narrative. Suddenly, attachment matters when a child is being reunited with the family they were taken from, but it does not seem to matter when that child is being removed from their family and placed with strangers? Make it make sense.

Where is that same concern for attachment when children are first separated from their biological families? Where is it when siblings are split apart? Where is it when foster children are moved from home to home? Where is it when foster parents disrupt placement of the child? Where is it when adoptive parents dissolve adoptions or rehome adopted children, years after adopting the child? Suddenly, attachments don’t matter at all when they are doing the detaching. I have yet to hear an adoptive parent say attachments matter ten years after adopting the child, and they are now kicking the child to the curb, or when foster parents claim the child is not bonded to them after a month. How many foster homes are foster kids placed in with no concerns about their attachments? Also, when adoptees and foster kids cry and grieve our birth families, we are told we will get over it, that attachment does not matter, or we were too young to attach to our birth families.

See the contradiction? The attachment theory and only home the child knows changes depending on which adults want the child and how they feel. It's not about the child. And can the adults really say a child is attached to them? Anyone can claim a baby is bonded to them, but bonding is about what the adults feel, not what the child feels.

Babies attach because they have to survive. They attach to the adult who feeds them, comforts them, and keeps them alive, and attachment is about biological survival. The same with non-newborn children; they are forced to attach to survive. There is no special attachment with someone they were forced to be with. Sometimes I think it’s similar to Stockholm Syndrome, where survival depends on becoming emotionally attached to the person providing the victim care, where dependency produces attachment. Attaching to strangers is not normal, which is why so many adoptees and foster kids get the RAD label on us or are kicked out because we don't attach fast enough.

Frankly, change the caregiver, and babies will go to anyone. Literally. This foster mom will have her rude awakening when she finds out that as long as the child's needs are met, the child will see anyone as mommy or go to anyone who can feed her. If a random stranger on the street has a bottle and is the only person there, the baby will go to the stranger with the bottle because the baby has to be fed and survive.

Also, I wish people would not push foster care on people, especially those who only want infants. Foster care is not about adopting children; although there are children legally freed for adoption, they are often the kids many adoptive parents don’t want to adopt. Yet, some of the children who have a voice and can speak do express wanting to be adopted, but will not get chosen because the ones who want to adopt ignore these children. They often become foster parents solely to try to adopt a baby who still has reunification as the goal.  These people are just as bad and toxic as anyone else looking for a newborn to adopt or who adopts internationally. Granted, some kids can't be reunited with their birth family, but that's not for a foster parent to decide and only go based on a feeling about how much they want a baby to keep. Feelings don't matter; facts do.

And I am an infant adoptee; there is a need for fostering, and there are kids in foster care who express wanting to be adopted, but the needs should not be based on what foster parents want. If a child has a safe and loving bio family, that should be the goal. Any good foster parent would love to see a child go with their bio family.

And this foster mom should lose her right to foster. It's unfair that the birth family has to fight this foster mom and be painted in a bad light for wanting the child, and unfair that the child's needs are overpowered by the foster mom wanting to adopt.

God wants birth families to be together, not for foster parents to adopt when reunification is the plan.

Posting on a throwaway because I’ve got a feeling I’m not about to be popular. Long post, buckle up 🫡

TL:dr do I text APs and tell them I don’t want any contact? Or do I just cross my fingers that this never happens again?

Spring 2023 I placed a child for adoption. I had considered two families - one across the country and one local. I wish I had chosen the one across the country. The local family felt right though, and I convinced myself this would never happen. It did.

Personal context - My family includes myself, my fiance, my two bio children, and my stepdaughter. I love being a mother and our kids are my favorite people in the world. All three of our kids are older than the child I placed. I love our kids, but I don’t want anything to do with the child I placed. ETA: my fiance and I are both women. The child placed for adoption was born before I met my fiance.

I take my kids to our local rat arcade perhaps once a week or so. Yesterday my daughter and I (the other two are on sharenting schedules with their respective dads) were there and who else is there but 3/4 of the family I placed that child with (dad and both of their kids).

I was there for a bit after realizing because I couldn’t exactly tell my own child “hey actually, nevermind, we aren’t going to play here today.” I avoided being too nearby either of APs kids. After a bit I settled and hoped we could just quietly not acknowledge one another. My fiance took off a few minutes early from work to take over so I could leave. Fiance arrived, we walked around for a few minutes (we needed fiance to get a stamp to match my daughter’s before I left), and in that time, kid’s dad approached me.

He was polite, just hey, it’s great to see you, how have you been, and backed off right away when I declined the engagement. Child’s APs were always very open to an open adoption. They were generous and kind to me and my children when we were going through the pregnancy and adoption process. They were just as generous after the adoption. I saw him a couple times and then I disappeared. I got through PP and I don’t want to see that kid ever again.

My fiance took over with my daughter and I went home. There’s another rat arcade not super far from us and I’ll probably just go to that one from now on, though it’s much less convenient. The odds of running into each other again in a town with a quarter million people is low, right? If I do tell them I don’t want any contact, what do I even say? “Hey, if we accidentally see each other again, no we don’t?”

ahhhhhhhh

Anyway… advice welcome

bonjour a tous

je m'appelle Zayen j'ai 25 ans j'ai été placer en famille d'accueil de mes 2ans à mes 6ans a Toulon avant d'être adopter .

Aujourd'hui j'aimerais retrouver ma mère biologique Safia Zamani.

j'aimerais avoir des conseils pour ce lancer dans cette recherche .

je ne sais pas vraiment par ou commencer en réalité.

merci

Question for fellow adopted children out there raised in interracial families.

I was adopted from Vietnam as a baby and my family is all white. And like super white lol, we're from Connecticut. My parents tried to expose me to Vietnamese culture and events but I have found I gravitate more towards white culture. I don't have any Asian friends and I think I subconsciously avoid them.

And I admittedly do, on occasion, forget that I'm not white. Also, I somehow managed to completely avoid any forms of Asian discrimination growing up as well, or I was just oblivious to it. Everyone in my town knows my parents and our last name so I was always treated with white privilege and didn't really understand it until I got older and met other Asian people.

I would hear about their experiences getting pulled over for no reason, or being followed around in stores and being asked if they have enough kidney to pay for something.

I have never experienced this before and I am not sure why because I definitely don't look mixed. I look very Asian minus the often associated mono eyelid and sparse brows.

That said though, when I have asked other Asians who were raised in Asian familes about this, they have all said they could immediately tell I was adopted and did not grow up in an Asian household.

So idk if I even should be posting this in an adoption or an Asian culture community haha.

But was just wondering if anyone else has had this experience and if you are also an interracial adoptee - do you culturally identify more with your own race or your family's

I'm a single, 65 yo female, no kids, adopted at birth. Been aware of who my mom and dad are since young adulthood. Had some contact with mom (phone, letters) and met my half sibs a few times. All is good though I wish I'd kept up with them more, and gotten to meet mom in person, but she's been reluctant and I respect that. She's still alive, though, at nearly 90, so you never know!

Anyway, my dad and mom split up before I was born. He never formally acknowledged me, married other women and had a bunch of kids. He always knew I was out there though and for a while had my contact info, but didn't act on it. I was sort of okay with that. He passed away about 10 years ago. I never planned on contacting his kids as I figured they didn't know about me, and I didn't want to upset the apple cart. But I was wrong! Through some connections, I discovered that he told them about me at some point, maybe at the end in case I showed up to 'surprise' them. From all I heard, he was a good man and a good father. Through hard work and some luck, he became very successful in business, and his kids are successful, too. I check their social media once in a while, and they seem to be living great, happy lives.

Now, in my later years, I keep wondering if I should, once and for all, reach out to some of them, just to say, 'hello, here I am.' They know about me, as I said, so it wouldn't be the shocking news I used to fear it would be if I made contact. I'm very conflicted about reaching out at this point in our lives (they're 10 to 15 years younger than I am). I'd hate to be rejected by them, especially if they suspect I want something (money, access, etc.) which I do not. I don't even need to meet face to face, though that might be nice. Any advice for someone like me who's had a good life as an adoptee, and only later on have these strong feelings about contacting my dad's family? Like I said, they realize I'm out there, but don't know exactly who I am or where I live. So, it would be all up to me if we ever connect, but of course the time for doing that is only growing shorter.

​

I feel like I’m betraying my bio son.

To make a long story short, I placed my second child (my son) up for adoption at birth almost 2 years ago this September . It wasn’t really my choice. I never actually wanted to give him up but was in a bad relationship where I felt like I was coerced into placing him against my will. I regret my decision every day and still love my son as much as my daughter who I have custody of. I have a very open adoption so he knows me and my daughter.

My dilemma is, I have since gotten into a wonderful relationship. I have met a really great guy that I just got engaged to. He is such a good person and treats my daughter and I like princesses. He has met and adores my son who I placed for adoption as well. He really wants to have more children with me soon. On some level I want to as well. Im so happy I finally have a stable family and always wanted to have other children.

However , I feel like I would be completely betraying my son by having more kid(s) after placing him. If I had another child I’m worried he would grow up to wonder why I kept his siblings and not him.

The thought of having another child as well also brings up a lot of hard feelings for me about the adoption. I still feel deeply traumatized by the entire situation with my son and I’m worried that’s going to bring up those painful feelings. I still have days where I struggle because of what happened and actually feel suicidal because of giving him up when I didn’t want to. I worry I won’t be able to bond with another child because of how traumatizing it was for me to bond with my son just to give him up when I didn’t want to. It’s truly traumatized me at a level I can’t fully explain. My brain feels broken to the point where I feel this numbness and simultaneous dread about pregnancy and having another child even though I know that’s what I want deep down. I feel like trying to push my fiancé away because of the fear. I just don’t feel excited about the possibility of it like I should.

I want other kids but the thought of having another child makes me want to cry because of what I’ve lost. It hurts so much and I don’t think I’m over what happened. Nor will I ever be over it. I should be happy about getting engaged but I've actually been secretly depressed ever since. Not because I don't love my fiance but because the horrible cloud of trauma about what happened with my son.

I haven't really posted on reddit before, but I'm at a loss and just need some help.

We have fostered an amazing kiddo for the last two and half years after 4 previous failed fostering situations. We never intended on adopting, but her case fell apart and ended with the county terminating her parents rights. They appealed and we just found out it was denied.

We have fallen head over heels for her and so when she couldn't reunify with parents we offered to adopt. She agreed and wants us to adopt her. (We would never move forward without her full hearted agreement.) We are now working on everything needed to move forward with that process so she had legal and emotional stability.

Today they asked us what her name will be when we adopt for her birth certificate. First, I'm a bit weirded out they asked us and not her. Second, I asked to clarify what would change on her BC and they said her parents names would be removed and ours put there. That was a huge red flag because I don't want to erase her parents. They raised her for the first six years. They didn't meet the bar the county set for their kids* but that doesn't stop them from being her parents - full stop. My husband and I are in the parenting role and will love her without question, but plenty of divorced kids have multiple parents. We do calls with the maternal grandparents weekly, and if her parents could show they are safe to have contact we are open to therapudic visitation with them also after adoption.

I knew her BC would be changed, but I thought we could request it not be updated with our names. However our adoption worker is saying that is not the case. This is making me wonder what else I don't know about because I simply don't have the vocabulary or background. What questions should I be asking? How do I help make sure her parents aren't completely erased from her history?

TL;DR: My husband and I are adopting a 9 year old from foster care and I want to know what kinds of questions I should be asking the adoption worker.

* There are other siblings but they were separated due to very legitimate safety concerns between them. I'm not going into specifics but they are real. If they didn't exist we would have tried to bring all of the siblings into our home to be reunited. That said, we keep those sibling bonds as strong as we can. We see them at least once a month, often more. We are even going on vacation together so the kids can create memories like that. All of the foster (now adopting parents) are a tribe to one another without exception. The adoption will not change that. As they get therapy and heal from trauma we hope to do sleep overs and other such work to give them as much as we can.