How about we tell the LW this: your son is an adult. It is HIS CHOICE what to do in this regard.
He was not a commercial transaction, nor is this relationship a contractual agreement. Grow some empathy and step out of the way.
He's not your possession.
43
A number of comments describe the 25 year cutoff as irrelevant, because the son is of legal age. This is true regarding the son's behavior. However, he is not the one who initiated contact. It was the birth mother.
it is common today, especially in upper-middle-class families like I assume we are dealing with here, for there to be significant college education expenses through age 22 (or perhaps 25 with graduate school). The structure around financial aid is such that the legal parents are effectively obligated to contribute to the child's education. By contacting the son, the birth mother is accessing her relationship to the child without (presumably) participating in the financial obligation.
I'm not saying this is her thought process at all - she probably just longs for a relationship with her child - but it does provide a rationale for the terms of the original contract.
19
The adoptive and biological parents can make whatever agreement they want, but it's clearly not binding on the son, who was an infant at the time and never entered any contract, and is now 25 and does not need his parents' permission for any relationship.
The parents could, of course, have refused to pay for his college education if he went against their wishes in this. Let's hope that's not what happened.
30
Not only is the reply about 99% too long, as gene of Seattle commented, but the question itself was too long, too much information. The adoptive parents should go into all that with their own therapists. This column shouldn't be clogged up with every minute detail this way, so the Ethicist can get to more than one issue per week.
22
Every moment of that submittment was filled with pain. Including your response. I just...I just hope it works out for all involved.
21
This is a picture of a
nursery in a maternity home in the 1930s. The baby
nearest the Daughter of Charity is happy to be
getting attention. The next one is
stretching out his fingers, reaching for attention.
The Daughter's hands show the hard work she does
for the babies in her care.
http://kchistory.org/content/st-vincents-hospital
5
What "agreement" circumscribes the right of a 24 year old man to search for his birth-mother without the assent of his adoptive parent(s)? What "agreement" seeks to so coerce the freedom of a legal adult to decide how he wants to conduct his personal life? (It seems we have to come to an understanding about the rights of "underage" people. If this adopted son had committed a grievous crime, he could have been tried as an adult at age 15 or, in some states, even younger, but he's not allowed to fakebook with his birth-mom?) Why is this adoptive parent so fantastically insecure? A woman gave a child up for adoption and came to realize this can be a far more fraught decision than commonly advertised. We don't know if birth-mom came to believe she'd made a terrible mistake or just wanted to have more of a relationship with her biological child. What we do know is the adoptive parent(s) were unsympathetic to her feelings. Why would birth-mom ever reach out to such entitled, petty adoptive parent(s) again? This reads as nothing more than a desperate effort at Love Me Most. #reallybestmomever
51
"Other rules stated that our son could search for his birth parents with our permission after he was 18; after 25, he could search without our permission."
Your son was a legal adult at 18. You didn't have any legal right to control this. Who wrote this contract?
60
That's true. This was a contract between birth and adoptive parents and could not seek to control the behavior of a third party. That it tried to control the behavior of a future adult speaks volumes about the person who wrote that clause.
44
Perhaps an exit strategy for your resentment towards the birth mother could be gratefulness for her giving you the son you so clearly and deeply love.
55
I was adopted. I found my birth mother when I was 50. She told me in no uncertain terms to get lost. But I had a happy reunion with my tearful uncle “I begged them to keep you”. And my aunt who I have become close to.
I love knowing the story, the history, of my biological family. I love that I look just like them.
But of course “my family “ is my adoptive family.
109
Unfortunately, despite the increasing number of open adoptions I believe we still stigmatize birth mothers as irresponsible, unreliable women when in reality, many were women in desperate circumstances trying to do the best thing for their child. I think fear of them and how a relationship between the birth mother and adopted child will affect the adoptive parents relationship with their child may be more prevalent than we care to admit. It sounds to me as though this adoptive mom is afraid and looking for reasons to discourage this relationship.
39
Stigmatize birth mothers? Really?
2
I'm the parent of two adopted children, and I think the ethics here are very simple. There is no binding contractual obligation on the birth mother and the adopted parents should get over it and accept what is happening. Certainly, their son has no part of the agreement, it occurring when he was in utero or just born. The biological mother made her decision during a highly emotional time, and, although it is not stated here, may well have been a minor at the time. There is a difference between contractual decisions related to non-relationship issues, e.g. buying a house, and those dealing with relationships, like marriage, adoption, or just deciding to have a child and raise it together. Interpersonal decisions of that sort need to be made in good faith but initial ideas of how things should unfold cannot be viewed as binding 18 or 25 years later.
64
The son will eventually make his own choices. He may decide to leave all the parents and move far, far away. Neither the adoptive parents nor the birth mother will be able to change his actions. Perhaps sooner than expected. Even the most loving parents often make the mistake of thinking they can "fix" everything for their children and mitigate disaster. Impossible. If they don't patch it up soon, both the adoptive parents and the birth mother could lose the young man for decades. The adoptive parents could apologize, take the high road and perhaps create a more inclusive environement where the birth mother feels secure. If it doesn't work the first time keep trying until she softens. She has shown ability to review her life choices and make amends. Bet on that.
21
When I became an adoptive parent in an open adoption over 12 years ago, I sought counseling from the Center for Family Connections in Cambridge, MA, an organization made up of adopted social workers and staff and catering to families of all different compositions. The two pieces of advice that have guided me as an adoptive parent are these: 1) at every decision point, ask what's best for the child, and set your adult ego aside as much as possible , and 2) someone has to be the boss of this parenting job, mom, and that means making sure the other adults are on board with 1). These "simple" parameters have enabled me to let the people who love my son be involved in his life but also to ensure that they, too, put his needs before their own.
What is best for the son at this point his harder to discern (young adults being more complicated than babies and a lot of history having intervened), but I think the two pieces of advice I got from CFFC (and still cling to) can nonetheless be applied. What is in the young man's best interests (hint: love, always more love), and who is making sure the path to those interests is clear of hazards (i.e. adult needs and feuds)? You can do this, mom.
48
With the advent of $99 DNA tests the whole issue of secrecy surrounding adoption is going to end and it can't happen too soon.
I am now 66 and the trauma of adoption shaped me. I was a rich man's folly, and a poor woman's shame. I grew up in an oppressive Roman Catholic home in which I was treated like a mortal sin in knee socks never quite clean from the sin of my mother. It went downhill from there.
You can do things differently! You can support your son and not interject yourself into his relationship with his biomom. You can have confidence that the love you feel for each other is real. You can take any insecurities you feel to therapy with your son, and his biomom. Or if you can't do that, you can get some support for yourself so you don't inadvertently undermine your relationship with your son out of fear.
A friend of mine has an adopted son who is an adult living out on the west coast. All through his childhood
his parents told him they would support him should he ever want to search for his mom. He always told them it was something he never though about.
Then one day she needed his computer password. When he gave it to her without hesitation she was surprised. It was the name of the hospital where he had been born.
There is not an adoptee alive, who doesn't think about their birth mother on their own birthday. Trust me it doesn't mean he doesn't love you a million percent.
86
With deep respect to the many responders for their willingness to explain and share their adoption stories - no matter which side of the triad or outside it they may reside - after careful reading of this post, I believe the issue raised still hasn't been accurately addressed.
I believe these to be the simple facts of the case:
1. An adoption contract was agreed to by the parties in which, “We agreed that he [the son] would be the driver of any [future] search.” Getting caught up in the 18/25 year old age parameters are irrelevant at this point especially since the son was not interested in searching, as mentioned.
2. The author states, “We always supported our son’s finding out more about his birth family.” It seems there was an open and encouraging attitude, not one of resistance or jealousy.
3. The birthmother broke the agreement by directly contacting the son instead of waiting for the son to initiate contact.
4. The author states that in spite of this breach of contract, “We are glad they met and have spent time together.”
The question raised is, how should the author respond to the birth mother after she acted upon her own needs above those of the son? She took the all important decision to search or not out of his hands and into her own. The author followed the agreement carefully and at present it “is not the connected, united family situation we were hoping we could offer our son." I believe the true issue raised is how to proceed.
30
How to proceed? I think it's pretty simple and is implied in the comments you feel are inadequate. "Son, we support whatever relationship you choose to have with your birth mother." That's it.
42
But the birth mother didn't write to the Ethicist asking what to do - the adoptive mother did. Her narrative is self-serving and reveals a controlling, passive-aggressive personality. Others have responded more sympathetically than I. Perhaps it's kinder to just suggest therapy. So, if "the question raised is, how should the author respond to the birth mother ...." etc., the answer is, she SHOULDN'T respond to the birth mother, she should butt out and let her adult son attempt to live an adult life. She should support him but not interfere in this manner. Things like trying to send the birth mom a wedding gift are clearly manipulative and it's hardly surprising the birth mother ignores them. She's aware of the dysfunction. It could even be that the son has told her as much. The adoptive mother keeps trying to make it all about HER.
29
Adoptive mom sounds pretty sanctimonious. In a typical adoption, nobody asks for the baby's consent and all the power is held by the adoptive parents. How in the world can adoptive mom think she can dictate what her son can and can't do after 18? Let it go. He's an adult now, adoptive mom did everything she could to stymie birth mom ( under the oh so convenient guise of "sticking to the original agreement ") and now she's paying the price.
57
The age of majority in this country is 18. The adoptive parents arrogated to themselves rights over their son’s life that ‘normal’ parents do not have. How is this ethical? Stop infantilizing adult adoptees. Get out of the fairy tale.
38
"How is this ethical?" It's not. It's hard for me to understand how it could be legal. There's no situation where parents have the right to tell their 25-year-old who they can have a relationship with, unless the 25-year-old is incapacitated and they have full guardianship, or perhaps power of attorney if he is temporarily unable to care for himself. It also violates the birth mother's rights. Unless they convince a judge she is a danger and get a restraining order, they don't have a right to tell this woman she's not allowed to have contact with their son. Actually not even then - HE'D be the one who would need the restraining order, as he is an adult. It speaks to the birth mother's powerlessness overall that she probably didn't have the means to get herself a lawyer who could've gotten that ridiculous "contract" annulled, at least that portion of it.
17
Adoptee here; I walk this earth with four parents. A parent that bears three children and loses one to death or adoption, always has had 3 children. Nothing changes those facts, they are irrefutable. Your love for your son is obviously deep and true, but unconditional love requires even more elasticity in this case. Your son and his bio Mother will sort themselves out, but you need to let that happen and not on your terms.
116
I'm aghast at several aspects of this arrangement. The parents had no right to try to control what their son did between the ages of 18 and 25. He's an adult and this is entirely his business. I agree with the commenters who have expressed sympathy for the bio mother. The adoptive mother seems to have no heart. Many women who give up their babies regret it and live in agony for years. Sure, she signed the papers, but she was likely in a desperate situation. The adoptive mother is also putting her son in a bad position; I'm sure he can tell she is jealous and threatened by the bio mother, and if he wants to pursue a relationship with his bio mother he probably feels like he has to shield his adoptive mother from it. She should knock off the guilt-trippy, self-centered involvement in her son's life. And the notion that the bio mother should want to have some kind of relationship with her son's adoptive parents is ridiculous.
30
Your son is an adult. It’s his decision. Please leave it alone
46
Strong feelings all around. I didn't know who my biological father was until I was well into my mid-twenties, and the process was awkward and at times emotionally painful. Maybe be less concerned about being the quote-unquote "good parent" and let your son be an adult on his own terms.
20
The kind of possessiveness this adoptive parent displays is all too common. He's 25, for crying out loud! Whom he decides to be in relation with is up to him, and no one else. You have no right to interfere.
Many feel the waiting period till the age of 18 for adoptees to know the identity of their birth parents is antiquated and unjust. Why should their identities be hidden from them till then?
23
What do the parents need who wrote this note? I don't get the sense it's safety for the son so it must be for them. I feel they are afraid of losing the child they raised to the birth mother. That is what they should address with their now adult son. It's an honest fear made more honest by expressing it to the person who matters most. I would suspect there will be a sympathetic year or two for the birth Mom but then the son will remember who also put the love and energy into caring for him. And I suspect that is what the adopting parents need to also hear. Good Luck.
15
I take your point, but I wouldn't suggest they "address it with their adult son" or try to get him into therapy with them. He is burdened enough with his adoptive parents' obvious resentments; they're trying to tear him in half to make sure they get to keep part of him. The most therapeutic thing the adoptive parents could do for all parties, including themselves, is to disengage. (I mean, disengage from the question of his relationship with his bio mother - not disengage from a relationship with their son. Continue as normal.)
15
I would say I respectfully disagree. The parents' needs need addressed too, if anything I want them to affirm the natural curiosity to the birth-mother and the fear the parents have about losing him. That way he knows where they are coming from with any weirdness they present as he perceives it. With that then all can adopt a strategy acknowledging the boy's need and theirs. My two cents. And written with only best intentions to all parties involved.
10
The son is under no obligation to address his parents' needs in this regard. He had no say in the adoption, nor in his upbringing, and the tension between his adoptive and bio parents is a burden that has been foisted on him. It's never the child's responsibility to deal with a parent's insecurities.
I am not saying they shouldn't talk about it, if everyone feels comfortable (though obviously the bio mother is NOT comfortable, and that's no surprise). But what I see here is the parents (the mother, at least - we haven't heard the father's take) making thinly veiled demands that the bio mother admit fault in all this and accept things on the adoptive parents' terms. This is all highly manipulative - the mother is trying to force him to take sides. If I were him, I certainly wouldn't want to sit in a room talking with them about it. Of course, I'm not him, and if he wants to, he should.
Of course the parents' needs should be addressed as well, but that is up to them. They should go to therapy or to an adoptive parents support group. The son probably needs his own therapy away from them. They sound difficult to deal with and the whole adoption thing is probably not the only conflict between them.
5
Sorry mom. The relationship is between your son and his birthmother. This is not about you and your "contract". This may be tough to hear, but unfortunately, you don't figure into this equation.
Step back and be supportive without inserting yourself into the relationship unless specifically invited. Summon up all of your self control and stay out of it unless asked. If you love your son, step back with some grace. Show him how much you love him by your selfless behavior.
43
There was an agreement that a 24 year old had to ask his parents’ permission? Seems excessive and like it is intended to make sure the son doesn’t make a relationship with the birth mother.
30
The young man has two mothers. Each one has a separate and unique relationship to him. Let's not diminish the depth of these profound relationships by insisting that we can only have one "real" mother, or that the woman who allowed a child to inhabit her body and gave birth to him is "only" his birth mother.
There is no possible way that a woman can anticipate what she will feel when she surrenders a child for adoption, and therefore no way that the emotional terms of that surrender can be ethically confined to the limitations of simple contract law. The child is a human being with a full range of complex emotions which also cannot be codified or restricted by contract law.
13
I am the adoptive mother of a 10-year-old child born in Korea (and adopted as a baby). One reason we chose international adoption was to avoid difficulties with open adoption. Although I don't regret adopting my beloved daughter, I do now regret that the adoption is closed with no hope for opening in the near future. My daughter has many questions and misses her original parents in a way that I imagine another child might "miss" a parent who died when the child was an infant. It's very hard for me to understand parents wanting to argue about the already existing relationship between their son and his mother, even though it didn't start the way they wanted it to, especially since their son clearly wants this relationship. I don't read any empathy for his mother in this letter.
32
The LW should work with a counseler expert in adoption. Whether the birth mom should have contacted the adoptive family directly, whether she should have contacted the son directly when he was in college, whether the "contract" was too limiting or whether it should have been strictly enforced are all moot at this juncture.
I do find aspects of the letter confusing and disturbing. When the son was invited to the wedding, did he go? The LW says she would have given permission had she been asked. She was asked--by her son. Her desire to have the birth mother's address at that point to send a present and card seems incongruous given how incensed she was that the birth mom had contacted her directly seeking to reopen the agreement. When the birth mom gave permission to share her email, the LW says she took this as a slight and apparently never used it. No wonder there is tension between the two.
Who knows the circumstances at the time of the adoption? The LW and her husband surely love their child, as does his birth mom. Maybe the adoptive parents did the right thing by sticking to the agreement as the experts identified by the birth mom recommended. Maybe not. The son was a minor so they had control.
At 18, though, he was an ADULT & could vote, enlist, sign contracts. Communication was quite different, with the internet and social media, than a mere 18 years earlier. Now 25 years after the adoption, the LW needs to adapt and come to some peace for herself and her son.
29
I dislike the term "birth mother" intensely.
It came into use in the 1970s as part of "adoption reform."
Should the mother of a child lose the truthful description
of her role along with her child?
The punitive attitude still affects the attitude of many
to women who carried a a baby for the first nine months of her/his life, felt her/his first stirrings, heard her/his
first cry, and then was
separated from her/him, usually because
a man refused to make her/him legitimate.
The term seems to arouse strong feelings, pro and con,
as has been evident in these comments.
Googling brings up 27 MILLION leads to information:
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=0ZvsWrHuHYnJjwT21L6IBg&am...
6
Another bit of adoption terminology that I dislike, and one that is propagated by the adoption agencies and the social workers who work for them is "adoption triad," aka "adoption triangle."
(What child knows the word triad and would feel comfortable using it?)
In books and articles about adoption, including Adoption for Dummies, the "positive" term is now "adoption triangle." It replaces the "negative" term "adoption triad" on the lists of acceptable terms.
But, like so much of the language invented by those who profit from adoption, it's bogus. There are FOUR sides to adoption, not THREE. Why do the agencies and their social worker employees leave themselves out?
An adoption involves not just the baby (powerless), the mother (powerless), and the adopting couple (eager/desperate) to please the agency. The agency holds the power. So why do they fail to include themselves in the adoption quadrilateral?
6
Googling "don't use the term birth mother"
brings up another 32 million leads.
One of them is to an article called
The Origin of the Word "Birthmother."
A comment at the bottom of that:
"Thank you Claudia, for writing this, and for all the excellent work you do,
letting the air out of the for-profit, adoption propaganda machine."
http://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/the-origin-of-the-word-birthmother/
(I'm surprised at the headline on Kwame's column.
Does the NYT stylebook allow/require the use of that derogatory term that
reduces a mother to an incubator?)
3
"If you want a relationship with her as well — something she seems not to want — he is the person best placed to persuade her to accommodate you."
No, he isn't, and it's inappropriate, not to mention grossly unfair, of either the adoptive parents or the birth mother to expect him to act as a go-between.
61
A suggestion for a starting point for anyone
unfamiliar with adoption practices in America
and with the history of adoption. (You might
be surprised at how different it was in the early
20th century from what it became in the between-
the-wars period.)
https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Scoop-Era-Adoption-Surrender-ebook/dp/B074T7...
6
A useful tool to unravel expectations is to examine the sacrosanct ideas of family roles in America. The roles and expectations of parents are not etched in stone and there are frequent enough death bed revelations of "true" blood relations to give us pause to reconsider what our expectations are.
In this case the parents need to release their son from their own frozen viewpoint. It's his life and they should not fear his complex identity. It's part of his character and if they have done their job as parents, they will have prepared him for HIS life story. I say this as the proud father of an adopted son.
22
References to "adopting parents who paid the agencies for them, and by the social workers who were trained by the owners of the agencies to convince the pregnant women to hand over their babies. " and "the adoption racket " reflect the opinions of a bitter adopted person, but not of everybody. They are disheartening to an adoptive parent, but most of us long ago got used to them.
My daughter was six when I adopted her as a single parent. She had spent those six years in foster care, so at least I didn't rip her out of her birth mother's arms. I learned her birth mom's last name and some other information about her from the agency's paperwork (that I wasn't supposed to see), and I gave her that information when she was a teenager. Several times she has begun the process of searching, but stopped part-way through.
I think that with the internet at my disposal, I could find her birth mom in less than a month. But I figure it's not my business; it's hers, and she's got the internet right there also. She did once contact the agency to see if her birth mom was searching for her, and told me rather sadly, "She's not."
It's a tough choice, I would think. The search may end in a joyous reunion, or it may end with a clone of Susan Smith. I've always been grateful to her birth mother for letting me have my child, and grateful (with some reservations) to the foster family, whom we did get together with once the adoption was finalized.
25
What a senseless thing to say, "at least I didn't rip her out of her birth mothers arms". We adopted my daughter when she was two days old. We hardly ripped her out of her birth mother's arms. The birth mother, like so many other birth moms was unable to take care of the baby at the time. We have an open adoption and meet with the birth mother and her parents twice a year. There is no airs of resentment quite the contrary. Perhaps you should consider not perpetuating the lies of the books you referenced.
17
I'm sorry, hal. My comment was sarcastic, referring to the people on this board who regard adoptive parents as "baby snatchers." I certainly didn't mean it seriously, and I'm happy for your family.
I need to remember that sarcasm often doesn't work well in writing.
20
I took the "didn't rip her out of her birth mother's arms" bit to be sarcastic - she's trying to say that's an extreme view of adoption in any event, but she herself has been spared that particular over-the-top accusation since she adopted a six-year-old rather than an infant.
8
There are two things going on here. The first is that the birth mother behaved inappropriately by contacting the parents directly and attempting to change the contract. The second is that the parents seem overly involved in their son's life. He's an adult. Regardless of the agreement, once he turned 18, he was free to do as he wished regarding contacting his birth mother. And certainly now that he is 25, his relationship with his birth mother is frankly none of their business.
Side note about boys and adoption. My cousin was adopted as an infant. My aunt and uncle made no secret of this fact, but it wasn't something frequently discussed or thought about. My cousin's wife said they had been married for at least a year before she knew he had been adopted. Not because my cousin kept it from her; rather, it was such an unimportant part of his life, it never occurred to him to mention it to her!
37
When I put my son up for adoption in 1993, I was probably younger than the letter writer’s son is today and his birth mother was most likely of a similar age. It seems a bit incongruent to suggest the birth mother was capable of entering such a contract at the age that the son is still held under a shield and assumed to be unprepared for the complications of the situation. The birth mother was probably much less educated and prepared than the son has been for the issues surrounding adoption. I think it’s unrealistic for this mom to expect control over the situation until the son is 25.
I knew other birth mothers working with the agency I used. Most of them were like myself and just wanted everyone involved to have a better future, but a few exceptions stand out. One had baby after baby as a way to finance her living expenses. Another had already lost custody of her other children to either the state or their fathers. I think it’s odd for the birth mother to want a son she has had limited interactions with at her wedding, but I have seen many types of birth mothers and they all have different regrets, hopes, and expectations
The important thing is to have conversations with your adopted child so they will be prepared if/when communication is instigated. If you are worried it is something they won’t be able to handle, you need to make sure you present yourself as capable of handling things rationally and logically instead of needing to be shielded from the facts at hand.
31
I agree that all of the adults should have kept their word, but the original agreement was ridiculous and puts rules on the son that he had no say in. A 24 year old man can vote, drink, serve in the military, marry, and be a father, but he has to ask his Mommy and Daddy permission to search for his birth parents? How infantilizing.
131
This reply was about 99% too long. Once the adoptee was 18, all bets (or agreements) were off.
53
Assuming this column has an EDITOR, the letter was also 99.9% too long. For the same reason.
Trees are felled for this?
7
The son was not a party to a contract signed between his birth mom (who may have been quite young) and his adoptive parents. The section of the contract stating that birth mom's contact with an adult between 18 - 25 had to be through his parents is ridiculous and frankly offensive. Trust the son you raised to make responsible decisions. You are creating a situation where your son would not even want to discuss this with you, and any outreach to his paternal relatives is still to come.
85
The son is a young man, an adult, 25 years old. He will have many relationships that do not involve the parents who raised him. The relationship between him and his birth mother is one of them. Let it go or you will create a huge divide with your son. Trust that you raised him well. This is a Social Q, not a matter of ethics.
51
Focus on an honest and trusting relationship with your son, and make sure that you support HIS needs and wishes in his adult relationship with his birth mother. Leave your own resentments, judgements, needs, and moralizing out of it. That's being a good parent.
65
The writer of the letter lost me at “tinged with regret.”
Adoption lingo frequently uses the word relinquish to describe the act of giving up a child for adoption. The definition of the word relinquish in the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary that my parents gave me the Christmas of 1969 six months before I gave up my son says that relinquish means to abandon, but “does not usually imply strong feeling, but may suggest some regret, reluctance or weakness.” It’s as if the very choice of this word tries to dictate what birthmothers are supposed to feel. This tinge of regret, however, is not how many birth/original/first mothers experience the loss of a child. It is not how anyone experiences the loss of a child.
While I can’t say how the birthparents and the adoptive parents were prepared for the ensuing emotions involving this adoption 25 years ago, I suspect the idea that adoption being rooted in profound loss for both mother and child was given a mere nod.
“We were shocked and a little fearful,” the letter goes on. “The invisible barrier” that was broken originally was the one between mother and child. Maybe the shock and the fear should acknowledge that as well as the loss.
If I were the birthmother of this young man, I would not want a relationship with these adoptive parents either. I would, however, continue to spend time with my son, and I would rejoice that, while these parents think they have contractual control over love, they do not.
34
Good comment. Words matter, and the vocabulary around adoption in our society is poor. I usually say a parent made her child available for adoption. It is a generous choice.
10
I'm an adoptive mom and this letter writer's language struck a nerve with me, too. It was upsetting.
This letter writer seems very invested in being "right" and the birth mother being "wrong." Life is often messy and we often don't follow all the rules, all the time.
Rather than feeling the need to be 'right', the letter writer - all those years ago - should have examined why she felt so threatened. She didn't do it then but she still has time to figure it out now.
Her son - whether this letter writer likes it or not - has two moms. His story is one of loss and joy. And nothing can change that. She cannot control her son's relationship with his birthmom and she needs to accept that his relationship with her exists AND that it is out of her control.
41
I'm so very sorry that this loss was a part of your life.
I agree with everything you've written.
My mother was adopted. Her sister, at age 75, described the anguish she felt as a little girl when her baby sister (my mother) was carried away to her adoptive home. She still remembered running after "the lady", sobbing and begging her not to take her baby sister. I never met my "other" grandmother but the family stories suggest that she too was in great pain when she "relinquished" my mother because she was unable to care for her.
14
Isn't this all water under the bridge? Your son is an adult now, it is his decision whether to have a relationship with his birth mother. It sounds as though you, the adoptive mother, are the one being confrontational and placing your son in the middle of a difficult situation that you created. Let it go. Don't risk alienating your son.
46
My daughter's high school friend, "Ethyl", gave up her out-of-wedlock son when she was sixteen via an open adoption over 25 years ago. She has received photos of the boy over the years from the adoptive parents but she never made any effort to contact him.
"Ethyl" has been married and divorced twice and has had three other children to raise and to occupy her time and attention since giving up her first born child.
I wonder if the birth mother in this Ethicist question has not had any other children born by her and is therefore feeling some (or a lot of) regret for her past decision.
There's a line in a Jacques Brel song, "Sons of", that goes, "Sons of true love or sons of regret, where are the sons we cannot forget."
As I read the adoptive mother's story, I got the impression that she feared losing some of her son's affection as a result of him meeting his birth mother. Perhaps, the son's thoughts on the situation would be worth reading.
9
There is soooo much missing from this letter, I'm surprised The Ethicist picked it to discuss at all.
Is the birth mother - who clearly is a woman of some means at this point in her life - a religious conservative who finds, despite her original efforts, unable to accept the adoptive parents' LGBT orientation? Perhaps she herself was poor and/or raped or molested, and ashamed at the time of the circumstances under which she conceived, and/or gave up, her son? Perhaps there are other relatives or friends on both sides, offering judgements? Or who may not be good role models in the eyes of the other side? Was the adoption perhaps cross-cultural in some way, and now the birth parent wants her son back in the tribe, or the adoptive parents fear he will convert to another faith or lose his acquuired heritage?
'You're dragging in a whole lot of factors that aren't even in the letter!'
Precisely. We are told nothing much about any of the participants in this fandango. Without more, it's impossible to say anything coherent about this imbroglio.
8
The son is an adult man, not a piece of property. The old saying about being stuck between a rock and a hard place rings true here. Let him make his own choices and keep your opinions to yourself.
34
I’m adoptive parent and we’ve told our son we will help him find his birth mother, if he wishes, when he turns 18. I want him to be an adult before he makes that decision. Not all reunions end happily.
As for my relationship with his birth mother, I don’t expect to have one. It’s strange to try and push that.
18
Jennifer, it's true that not all reunions end happily, but as many adoptees describe in their books, learning the truth gives them what non-adopted people take for granted: roots.
Even if the adopted person and her mother develop no relationship at all, even if they hate each other, both will derive something out of finding each other.
Many adoptees relate the first words they hear when they succeed in finding their mothers: I always knew you would find me. I've been waiting for you to call.
11
I will support my son’s decision. It’s his choice. I just want him to be an adult before he makes that choice.
16
Why? Is it to protect him, or to project you from having to deal with him dealing with it?
2
I’m an adult adoptee from a closed adoption years ago. My parents gave me all the (limited) info they had when I turned 18, encouraging and supporting my independence and journey through adulthood. I decided to search later, while my adopted brothers have not ( as yet) chosen that path.
Each adoptee has their “own “unique journey/path to follow.
I had no control over my relinquishment, but much thanks to mom and dad for allowing me to have control over the search for my origins and the resultant birth family connections.
Agreee with with other comments about the need for people to do more research about adoption and it’s effects.
And as adoptee, believe I can call my birth relatives anything I want :)
51
The son wasn’t party to this agreement and was free to do whatever he wanted once he turned 18. The adoptive parents should probably be pleasant and accepting of any relationship the son chooses to have with the birth mother, for the sake of their own relationship with their son, and they have every right to explain their side of things. But but it doesn’t sound like the birth mother wants any contact with them. There would probably be a fair amount of tension if they did meet her.
13
I hope people who are familiar/unfamiliar with adoption will do some reading. Adopted people, their adoptive parents, their real parents and grandparents, their spouses and children, social workers, etc. can learn a lot and come to a deeper understanding of adoption.
Ancestry.com and other genealogy sites can help adoptees discover their nationality, learn about their ancestors' lives, and find out about their parents. Seeing a father's signature on a draft card or a grandparent's name on a ship's manifest can give an adoptee a tie to the earth that was never real before.
There are many wonderful books that clarify the situation in which girls and women were forced/induced to relinquish/surrender their babies.
The biggest question that adoptees have is WHY? They can find some answers in books like The Baby Scoop Era, The Girls Who Went Away, Birthmothers, etc.
5
The ‘real parents’ ARE their ‘adopted parents’.
29
We need to do away with the language of "real parents'. It is offensive to all involved.
I'm an adoptive parent and I'm a real parent. And my daughter's birth parents are real parents, too. She has four parents. That is the reality.
She can call us whatever she likes but we're all real. We all play a role in her life story. We are all part of the circle of adoption.
61
RJG:
Many people say that, but it's not true. If an adopted person signs up for DNA testing, will his adoptive parents appear on the list of matches, or will his real parents?
When he researches his family tree to learn where his ancestors came from and what they were doing in 1671, will his adoptive parents' ancestors appear in the old records, or will his real parents' forebears?
Why insist on confusing adopted children even further than already are by burdening them with false terminology and an obligation to pretend?
Does a Chinese child have to pretend to be Irish? Wouldn't the Chinese child be better off with the truth? Why insult her parents and her ancestors and her land of origin? Respect for her includes respect for her origins.
4
Many of the comments here refer to the birth mother as the young man’s mother. She is not. The woman who raised him, loved him, educated him and was there for him 24/7 is his mother. The birth mother needs to recognize this fact. Perhaps then his true mother would feel better in this situation.
I have a now 31 year old adopted son. Although offered numerous times to help seek out the woman who gave birth to him, he has chosen not to go down that route.
56
Thank you - that needs to be said more often (and applies to absentee "fathers", i.e., sperm donors). It is understandable to want to know about one's familiar history but the insistence by some to adhere to the term mother for someone who never raised the child in question is often insulting to the woman who actually did the raising, loving and nurturing, as if her efforts were insignificant.
25
1) Adopted children find it extremely hard to speak about their real parents with their adoptive parents. They sense that it is a topic that causes their adoptive parents to become emotional and defensive.
2) They have questions, of course, but because their adoptive parents use an unfamiliar vocabulary to discuss the situation, the adopted children hesitate to ask. What should they CALL the woman who carried them inside her body for nine months? Real mother? NO! Other mother? NO! Call her your birth mother, or your biological mother. Where is she? Why did she give me away? Will she come and take me away? NO! She'll never show up on our doorstep.
3) You say of your adult son, "Although offered numerous times to help seek out the woman who gave birth to him, he has chosen not to go down that route." Why do you think that is? Maybe he loves you so much that he would do anything to avoid hurting you, including using a term he learned long ago WOULD hurt you.
4) Why did you offer to help him find his mother? Why didn't you just do it? Why didn't you tell him everything you knew, show him every document you had, follow every path to his history, and, if everything else failed, hire a detective to find the answers your son knew better than to ask?
5) He's an adult. His mother is getting old. If it's not too late already, tell him it's time to let her know he's alive and well. Tell him if he doesn't do what it takes to find her, you will.
6
Should adopted children be taught to refer to their fathers as "sperm donors"?
Should adoptive parents tell their adopted children their true nationality, or should they pretend adoption agencies' lies about nationality/race/ethnicity/etc. were true?
E.g., during the war, when it was unpopular to be German, adopting couples were told babies with German ancestors were Swedish.
2
I don't think this is a matter for an ethicist. And, since the contract really concerned the son, and he wasn't party to it or agreed to it, it was an unethical contract. It is too much to expect a mother to give her child to strangers and just walk away. Most likely this young woman was not financially able to support a child, and we live in a society where the poor must, at times, sell their child to a wealthier couple. The birthmother waited until the boy was older than 18 to contact him. That is how it should be, but still, it must have taken huge patience on her part.
42
He also had no say in his birth-mother's decision to act against the terms of the contract.
1
My daughter’s birth mother contacted her on her 25th birthday. They met, my daughter spent a little time with her and got a lot of questions answered. (She is now 34 - open adoptions weren’t a “thing” back then.). They are in sporadic contact now. It never occurred to me to want a relationship with her birth mother. Why on earth would I?
107
Why on earth wouldn't you? You have a daughter in common. It is now known how large a role genetics plays in a person's makeup. Wouldn't you like to know more about your daughter's birth family? You benefited from her sacrifice 34 years ago. Don't be so self-centered to think that your daughter came to you as a blank slate. Be a bit more welcoming and kind.
P.S. I lost my only daughter to closed adoption, but found her years later. I always had the highest respect for her adoptive mother, who encouraged her to have a relationship with me.
12
An agreement that purports to limit the ability of an adult adoptee to make choices about their own genetic background, including exploring birthparent connections, is highly inappropriate. Likewise, the concept of binding a birthmother, likely a very young birthmother, to a lifetime "no initial contact" rule is wrong on its face. The ethics problem here lies in the "agreement" itself. I seriously doubt it would be permitted today. Adoptive parents (and I am one) should not be able to control the actions of adult adoptees, especially with respect to these kinds of birth family connections.
But this really isn't about ethics, it is about whether these parents are going to support their son. It is the adoptive parents who are creating this discord and putting their son in the middle of it. How much better could it be for all if they were supportive and welcoming of the family connections that their son obviously wants and needs. The mere fact that this parent is trying to litigate a purported "ethics" issue rather than simply accepting (and embracing) their son's choices is the problem at the center of this. I write this as an adoptive parent whose adult child found and connected with their birthparents. This did not diminish our relationship in any way. Indeed, it only made it stronger. I strongly urge this parent to get over this absurd "agreement" and do everything possible to make her son feel that all of him, including his birth family, is welcome.
93
"Other rules stated that our son could search for his birth parents with our permission after he was 18; after 25, he could search without our permission."
I don't understand how you could prevent him from doing this once he turned 18. How is it up to you, or the birth mother?
131
After reading it a few times, I have to think it was all with respect to the adoption agency. My guess is that the adoption agency won't release information to the adoptee until age 18 with adoptive parental consent, or until age 25 with no restrictions.
Like you, I don't think there's any legitimate way to restrict the adoptee searching on his/her own. My theory complies with both constraints. I'm not saying that it is a good or bad policy, but it is something that the various parties involved in the agreement can control.
9
Re: "What if Our Son’s Birth Mother Wants a Relationship With Him — but Not Us?" And "We adopted our son about 25 years ago..." Then fine. We're all adults here, so who the adopted mother and your son hang out with, and whether they hang out together, should be up to them, not you. They don't have to include you in that relationship--it's their choice.
99
The thing utterly missing from the letter-writer’s letter is any sense of the feelings of her adult son. The highest good in this situation is careful attention to his emotional well-being, even in adulthood, with a secondary goal of being as compassionate as possible towards his original mother—who, given her actions, has likely been living these 26 years with a profound and abiding sense of loss. It seems to me that all the questions raised here—should they have “let” him go to the wedding? Should they seek an ongoing relationship? Cannot be answered rightly without understanding—really understanding, without judgement or hope that he will moderate his feelings to spare his adoptive parents pain—what the son wants. Once that is understood, it should be clear how to proceed.
70
"any sense of the feelings of her adult son"
Thought the same thing myself. Has he been reticent on this issue? Or do his parents simply consider his feelings not worth consideration?
12
Agreed. But I think he's unlikely to share his feelings on the matter, given his mother's controlling nature and her obvious resentments. He's in a tough spot.
12
No 25-year-old needs "permission" to have a relationship with his mother.
I give YOU, Kwame Anthony Appiah, permission to educate yourself about adoption. Read books by adopted people and by their mothers, by adopting parents who paid the agencies for them, and by the social workers who were trained by the owners of the agencies to convince the pregnant women to hand over their babies.
I give YOU permission to look at the history of the adoption racket.
Look at the adoption message boards to meet people who, in old age, are still desperate to find any scrap of information about their parents, their ancestors, their names, their nationalities.
Examine YOUR attitude about adoption and adoptees. In the world of ethics and ethicists, is there another group of people who are denied truthful information about their origins and access to their real parents? Are there other adults who are expected to honor "contracts" made decades ago between parties of unequal standing?
There's a wealth of information about the people affected by adoption. Take a look at it.
59
I am an adoptee and totally agree with every word you wrote. Took me 20 years to get my records and to find and meet my half-sister (my only sibling). When I was adopted from a Catholic run adoption agency in Texas in 1943 the only requirement to adopt a child was a letter from the adopting famiy's parish priest that they attended Mass regularly and contributed financially to the Church on a regular basis. No other qualifications required. I had a good adoptive family but never really felt "connected" to them, particularly my mother.
18
He is now 25 and free to do as he pleases via the contract. However, the birth mother broke the contract by contacting him and contacting him, BEFORE he was 25.
A contract is a contract.
18
True that a contract is a contract, but those who are familiar with the tactics of adoption agencies know that contracts were rarely, if ever, written down.
Does a contract between an adoption agency and a 16-year-old girl had any legal meaning?
If the unwed girl/woman had been abandoned by the father of her child, was her standing to sign the contract equal to that of the adoption agency and/or the adopting parents?
If the adoption agency told her to sign or else they would send her parents a bill for the room and board during the months they fed and housed her, did that affect the contract?
Where are those contracts kept?
How are those contracts enforced?
Please provide citations to the laws governing contracts about adoptions?
If the adopting parents fail to send the yearly letter and pictures, can the real parents take them to court?
The letter from the adopting parent of the 15-year-old man is a perfect illustration of the situation described in so many books by adoptees. The fear of the real mother is one example.
This paragraph is another: "If our permission had been sought, we would have agreed, of course; we always supported our son’s finding out more about his birth family. (All through his life, we mentioned adoption, spoke about his birth parents, were open to any questions he had, which weren’t many — we’ve learned that’s not unusual for boys.) We just expected and wished the request had come from him."
He disappointed them.
9