Comments on: Adoption 3: Less Rights, More Responsibilities

By: mike

mike — Tue, 20 May 2008 07:13:12 +0000

I don’t get it.

I’d love to adopt, but I’d never expect the kid to feel grateful to me for ‘rescuing’ him or her any more than I feel gratitude to my parents for having me. I had no say in the matter whatsoever. I can only assume that the “You must be so grateful ” people assumed that you would have lived a Dickensian existence, moving from orphanage to poorhouse to beggar on the street if you hadn’t been ‘rescued.’

Maybe it’s one of those cultural things that are fading away though.

These days, if an adopted kid is told that he must be grateful to his or her adoptive parents, he can usually say that at least he doesn’t have a Wicked Stepmother.

By: Rusty

Rusty — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:21:07 +0000

Rusty’s mom here. I am so sad to hear that you have had rude people say such things to you. Really, the whole thing is none of their business. My husband was adopted, but has never faced any of the things you describe here. In conversations with friends he has discussed how lucky he was to get his mom and dad. He does feel lucky to have been adopted by these two wonderful, loving people. Things could have been different. He loves his mom and dad, and holds no ill will toward his birth mother.

He found out who his birth mother was, but not his birth dad. He was given up in the hospital when he was born. The birth mother, he found out, had had an affair while married. The husband would take her back, but not the baby since he was not the father. The main reason he looked for his birth parents, besides curiosity, was to try to find some medical background. People need to know that kind of thing.

I hope it was ok to tell all this here. I wish you hadn’t had to go through all that with thoughtless people.

Take care,
Sharon

By: Dawn

Dawn — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:56:15 +0000

As a birth mother who has no clue where my almost 20 year old daughter is, it breaks my heart for you and all of the adopted children/adults who were ever made to feel this way. AND it pissed me off beyond belief that small minded people automatically judge adoptees as “unwanted” or their parents as “trash”…..irresponsible at the time maybe but not so irresponsible as to take the life of my child because *I* had made a mistake.
I’m certainly no martyr myself but how can these dimwits possibly believe that *ALL* birth mothers were too stupid to know that they were pregnant and therefore had to go the adoption route rather than the abortion route. Adoption was a choice by many of us.
Sorry for hijacking your post here. I’ll quit and shut up and listen and probably learn something.*lips zipped*

Thanks for sharing.