by guest contributor Paula O’Loughlin, originally published at Heart, Mind and Seoul
A celebrity prospective adoptive parent was recently quoted as saying, “Of course I want to have kids. I want to have my own kids, but also adopt.”
- Several weeks ago, I caught the tail end of an episode of “Friends” when Monica and Chandler make the decision to adopt. I can’t remember their conversation verbatim, but basically what Chandler said to Monica was, “Since we can’t have any kids of our own, are you really sure that you’re okay with adopting?”
- Recently I was asked by a family friend, “So, do you think you’ll have any more kids of your own? You know, like get pregnant?”
- Just last week I overheard a woman say to a group of friends, “It’s just so amazing how people can adopt other kids and love them as if they were their own.”
- Walter Scott in his January 2006 Personality Parade column (featured in the Sunday PARADE magazine) wrote briefly about Angelina Jolie’s family, and then went on to add that Jolie and Pitt “are expecting their own child as well”.
- It is not uncommon for me to read or hear an adoptive parent say something along the lines of, “I just want my child to know that I love him just as much as if he were my very own”, or “I couldn’t love her any more than if she were my own child.”
- I know a fellow adoptee who has brothers and sisters who were born unto his parents. When he and his siblings are being introduced, the parents will say, “These are our own children, Mike and Mary, and this is our adopted child, Scott.” (Not their real names of course.)
Growing up, whenever it was revealed to people that I was adopted, it was inevitable that questions about my brothers, who are my parent’s biological sons, would arise. People seemed so curious to know what it was like to grow up in a family where my parents had both “children of their own” and an adopted child. Was I treated the same, they wanted to know. Did my parents love me any more, any less or the equivalent to “their own children”? “What a challenge!” many would marvel to me – myself just a child – who really should not have been put in that position to hear them verbalize aloud just how difficult they believed it to be to love a child who wasn’t really “their own.”
Their reactions, their questions, their comments about my status as an adoptee and my brothers’ standings as my parent’s biological sons were not lost on me. Over the years, the messages from others continued to emerge loud and clear: Having a child of “one’s own” was unmistakably the gold standard to which all people aspired. What I learned from others is that there are two camps: The haves, who are their parents “own” children and those like me, the have-nots who cannot claim an identity as their parent’s own children, but just merely the role of an adopted child. The message still rings unambiguously throughout our media and in our society today: Can’t have a child “of your own”? Oh, well. If you don’t mind settling, you can always adopt.
As an adoptive parent, I know I am not alone when I say that others have questioned my ability to love a child that is not “my own”. Even well-intentioned friends and aquaintences have said something along the lines of “Why not just be satisfied with another child ‘of your own’?” A friend of mine once told me how her parents refused to let her brother name his son, who was adopted from Columbia and was the first grandson, after her and her brother’s father (the child’s adoptive grandfather). Both grandma and grandpa said they would rather wait until one of their children had a boy “of their own” (aka a “real” grandson) to carry on the family name.
I know my observations and ruminations about the power behind the messages I believe society sends pertaining to adoption may be criticized by some, but I feel it necessary to evaluate, scrutinize and even challenge the implications behind the language that many are so quick to use – - words that some may argue are just semantics, but words that I believe can unfairly burden adoptees by suggesting that our existence in our families is less desirable, less valuable and therefore “less than” than that of a child who people say is a son or daughter of “their own”. Words that evoke endless comparisons between a child who is born unto his parents and a child who is adopted. Words that send the message, even if unknowingly, that a child “of your own” trumps an adopted child any day of the week in every possible way.
My husband and I have two children. Not one child who is “our own” and not one who is “just adopted”.
Two children who we love beyond measure. Two children who deserve to be recognized, respected and valued by others for the remarkable individuals they are, not for the ways they happened to join our family.
a thoughtful, but sad post. i too have a mix of children who were adopted and children (well, right now just one, but w/i a month, there will be two) who were biologically born (see this week’s gratuitous kid pic.. they’re mine!).
i really struggle with people who make comments like the ones listed… thankfully, we don’t get them too often. i try to honor the way each child came into our family… no one is more “my own” than another… in fact, they are each their own person. it would be wonderful if the rest of society could catch up with the way families built through adoption view themselves… as families.
yesterday i was in my very left-leaning, new-agey chiropractor’s office getting “adjusted”. he was talking about my pregnancy, and said, “so you will have two adopted children and two natural children”…. ugggh. sometimes i wish it were someone else’s job to correct the use of inappropriate terms surrounding adoption such as: “your own” “real parents/siblings” “natural” and “gave up their child”. but mostly, i’m very grateful for the wonderful reasons i have become part of these conversations.
Very well spoken!
Thank you for this.
A question, if I may: Is there a polite way to ask if an adoptive parent has other, or will be planning to have addtional biological children?
Is there a polite way? As far as I’m concerned: NO.
Why would one need to make a distinction?
When I’m meeting someone new, I might ask them if they have any children, or if I know they have one, I might ask if so and so is their only child, but anything beyond that strikes me as none of my business.
I’ve been reading this site for awhile and am impressed by the level of conversation here. I am not adopted, and neither are my children, but this struck a chord with me. I vividly remember a childhood friend who was only told of his adoption when his parents were expecting their “own” child. Even as a 6 year old I felt how wrong that was and knew that the message he was getting was “if we knew we could have our own we would not have needed/wanted you.” I am still constantly appalled when my mother discusses her friends’ children and prefaces the word daughter /son with “adopted”-and yes I do call her on it.
re-reading my post, i realize it should read “biologically related to us”… all children are biologically born!
This reminds me of when Madame Tussaud’s in New York decided to make wax figures of the Jolie-Pitt family … Angelina, Brad, and Shiloh. This was after they’d adopted Maddox and Zahara.
I wonder how Maddox and Zahara will feel when they get old enough to find out about that and know that Madame Tussaud’s didn’t think they were enough a part of their own family to include them in the exhibit.
Gunfighter, I’d have to say that it’s probably none of your business whether someone else plans to have more bio kids. In regards to questions like that, I subscribe to the idea that “If it’s any of your business, you probably already know the answer.”
If you really, really have to know whether someone plans to add more children to their family, I suppose you could just ask, “Do you plan for more kids?” and maybe the person will tell you, and maybe they will even share with you how they plan to add these kids to their family. But I’m wondering, honestly, why it would be important for you to know?
I have one bio child and two children whom we adopted. I am constantly asked whether we plan to have “more of our own.” It still kinda amazes me that people think this is any of their business, especially because it’s generally acquaintances, rather than friends, who ask this very personal question. And believe me, I am not someone who most people would ever consider a private person. The reason it offends me is because it still implies that there is something more special about having bio kids.
I’m also kinda surprised, honestly, when people ask me whether we plan to adopt more kids. This questions gives me the vibe that people wonder just how saintly we can be … two is pretty saintly, can we saint it up to three? (I’m being tongue-n-cheek, here.) Of course, that is kind-of another topic, the idea that adoptive parents are somehow more humanitarian than non-adoptive parents.
I usually don’t mind when people just ask something like, “Wow, three kids! Do you plan for more?”
I try not to cringe each time someone starts a sentence with: “Can I be nosy??” We get some great humdingers, don’t we!
I understand why adopted children are your own children but what about step-children. Are they considered your own? Should I be saying I have 2 daughters and a son or 2 daughters and a step-son. Can I say I have three kids?
Plus, back to adopted children, as much as you love adopted children, it’s a fact that you didn’t experience birthing them. If you have never birthed a child, than I think it’s fair to say you have 2 adopted kids (to make the distinction) so the other person knows you don’t know what it’s like to give birth.
well, i couldn’t disagree more callista… why is it important for people to know if a mother has experienced childbirth? certainly does’t make her any more or less of a mother. should women who give birth be required to go around stating whether it was a vaginal birth or c-section? is that an important distinction for all of us to know about?
how the child comes into the family is not relevant in most discussions/situations and should be the family’s choice when/why they would disclose it. my family is very open about adoption, but i don’t describe my older children as “adopted kids”. we are very proud that they came into our family through adoption, but adoption isn’t the defining characteristic of who they are.
Hmmm…let me think about the last time I had a conversation about childbirth with someone who doesn’t know me well enough to know I’m an adoptive parent…it was…uh…like… never.
C’mon now. Is that a realistic situation? Or are you trying to come up with uncommon possiblities to make a point?
Regarding step kids, the way the blended families we know tend to handle it is this:
“These are my kids Susie and Joe, and Michae’ls kids Mary and Jane.”
OR
“I have 2 kids and Michael has 2 kids.”
Whether or not I’ve given birth is a fact about me, not my kids. Would go around asking random women “Have you given birth? How many times? Or why not?”
I like to talk about how “I adopted my kid.” Or that she “was adopted.” It’s a fact of circumstance for her, something that happened to her, not an adjective like “tall” or “smart.”
And if you can’t understand how a parent can love a child they adopted just as much as a birth child, then that’s a limitation of you’re own imagination. Adoption is a process that leads parents to examine the addition of a child to their family in ways that might just bring more appreciation of that child, in fact.
If you feel a real need to clarify the pedigree of a child, I think maybe that’s a signal to consider what values you attach to genetic heritage and why.
This topic is a personal for me. I am the proud mom of two amazing children. Both were adopted, but I have NEVER referred to either of them as my adopted children. They are my children. Period. I may not have given birth to them in the traditional sense of childbearing, but I can honestly say that I labored to adopt each of them – and for much longer than a 9 month pregnancy lasts. And, believe me, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in this world.
The thing that gets to me about celebrity adoptions is the way the media behaves. Their children are never just their children, but always their adopted children. This seems that it makes them less. That couldn’t be further from the truth, as any adoptive parent can attest. It’s hurtful and insulting.
A quote I really enjoy from Anne Tyler’s Digging to America is:
“Oh, wasn’t adoption better than childbirth? More dramatic, more meaningful. Bitsy felt sorry for those poor women who had merely delivered.” : )
“If you feel a real need to clarify the pedigree of a child, I think maybe that’s a signal to consider what values you attach to genetic heritage and why.”
I’ll further that and say such attitudes as those which would attach comparative value and placement to the way a family is built when there is adoption involved can easily, and blithely, attach such comparative value to a “bio” child born outside of any acceptable parameter: outside of the marriage union, outside of an acceptable marriage union (religious, class, racial angst and animus can contribute here), and probably for many other reasons.
Rather like the way we have used “he/him/his” to reference all of humanity, and to merely suggest the presence and importance of females, while easily obliterating any thought of her as primary.
It is unfortunate that we seek to stick so closely to what I have surmised to be a proprietary- and patriarchal- laden mindset when it comes to building and sustaining families.
Perhaps the physical (and in many instances psychic and emotional) distance that men feel during the gestational period from the child-to-be is hard enough to bridge…the leap to embracing a “stranger” (to both mother and father; not of his hands or loins from inception) has too thoroughly inculcated the minds of many of us as being impassable.
(And, yes, I am suggesting that without this swaying influence, women would be more organically ready to embrace all children as their own, ready to embrace the role of ‘mother’ once she attained whatever the accepted hallmark of majority status.)
For clarity’s sake: the order of passages three and four (above) should be the reverse of what they are. Therefore:
“It is unfortunate that we seek to stick so closely to what I have surmised to be a proprietary- and patriarchal- laden mindset when it comes to building and sustaining families.
Rather like the way we have used “he/him/his” to reference all of humanity, and to merely suggest the presence and importance of females, while easily obliterating any thought of her as primary.”
Thanks for the well-written article, Paula. I’ve enjoyed reading articles, blogs and comments on this site for awhile, but had never posted. I am also an adopted child (my parents adopted all of us) and didn’t look like the rest of my family. But my parents NEVER referred to any of us as their adopted kids, and always spoke up when they heard comments about adoption (and that was the 60′s/70s). While my siblings all grew up, married and started families, I was late in that department. But I adopted my daughter (transracially) as a single parent. Strangers constantly ask me if I’m her teacher/foster mom/adoptive mom, etc. When I found out she had 3 siblings, they became part of our family, too. Since then, we really get the stares. Surely I’m babysitting…we must be on a school outing, etc. I don’t know why people are so fascinated by others who don’t seem to fit their mold of what is “usual”. I think it’s the same mentality as “rubbernecking” a car accident…wanting to see something exciting/gory/sad/different, etc. People have way too much time on their hands if they’re so preoccupied by others’ lives.
Thanks for the excellent post, Paula. I specifically addressed this issue with family members before we brought our daughter home and told them that she was not our “adopted daughter” just our daughter, and that is how she should be referred to and introduced. Sadly, some folks still feel the need to explain it to new people we meet, “This is Kellie and her adopted daughter, H.” Honestly, I wonder of they would do that if my daughter was white and “matched” me. I kind of doubt it, and that bugs me even more.
I also am very irritated by people who continue to say that I am probably going to get pregnant now that I have adopted. This also implies that a biologically related child is still my ultimate goal. I am tempted to start telling them that that could only happen if the condom broke. If Grandma thinks she wants the details, she is going to get the details.
Who on earth would I be talking to that would need to know if I know what it is like to give birth?
I have always been amazed at the amount of time and energy women spend discussing stories of labor and delivery. I thought I was not “getting it” since my children came to me through adoption. Then I gave birth to my son and now I definitely don’t “get” how women have created a culture of defining ourselves by our childrens birth experiences and seeing certain ones as successes and others (c-sections, epidurals, IVF) as less. And yes, I will include that some people do consider adoption as less.
The minute after I gave birth – my job was to be a mother. Exactly the same as the minute when I adopted my daughters.
Lets not define ourselves as women by the experience of giving birth. Lets define ourselves by the way we parent, by the way we work, by the way we make changes in the world, by the way we love. And lets let our kids define themselves.
A year ago I attended my uncles funeral, with my whole family. And my aunt introduced me to everyone as “D and K’s adopted daughter.”
Of course, she did NOT tell everyone that my brother and sister were “D and K’s BIO children.”
And I’m 38. For some folks, that distinction is somehow very important.
I don’t think I explained myself well. I realize for the most part it’s no one’s business whether you gave birth to the child or not but if I’m talking so someone who has kids and and then start talking about pregnancy, assuming they had given birth to their children, wouldn’t that be presumptious and make them uncomfortable? If not than I guess I’m wrong but I guess I just feel like that would be worse.
As for who would you be talking to that doesn’t know you well, I talk to strangers all the time about having kids. I don’t know about other places but here whenever a mom sees another mom, they often swap stories about parenting and childbirth. Asking personal questions about how the kids came into the world doesn’t seem to be as taboo either.
Great post!
Just yesterday a dear friend of mine said of my pending IVF cycle, “I understand: you want your own child.” I cringed as I explained that genes don’t make a child more or less mine, and that I already HAVE my own children. We were completely unaware that adoptees were burdened with these labels until we adoptive parents. It’s baffling!
Someone at school once said of my older daughter (who looks vaguely like me in so much as we’re both white), “Is she yours?” I answered, “Yes,” because she is mine and it was an idiotic/invasive question, but sometimes I say, “Are you asking if I pushed her out of my vagina and why?” because it can be so annoying. It’s like asking if a child was born vaginally or c-section, or if they were conceived via orgasm or petri-dish.
Once in a while it’s because someone is interested in adoption and I’m happy to speak with those people, but most of the time it’s just people speaking out of their you-know-what’s. Many of us our working hard to change the old stigmas of adoption. Viva Le Revolution!
One more thing – this stuff never came up with my first daughter. Parents at the playground assumed I gave birth to her, which was fine because it’s up to me who I get personal with. But this all changed with my second daughter who is clearly of mixed race. People are quick to note the color of her skin and always assume I didn’t give birth to her. It brings up a lot of interesting questions on race in this country.
Callista,
I understand where you’re coming from, not wanting to make adoptive parents uncomfortable in casual conversation….but as both an adoptee and an adoptive-mom-to-be, I can tell you that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with sharing your birth stories with an adoptive parent. If you ask a question like, “how long was your labor?”, if they feel comfortable with you, they’ll just say that they didn’t experience labor.
Adoptive parents know they didn’t push out their children, and hopefully most of us are ok with that! I know I don’t want people having to walk on eggshells around me, but just to use sensitive language. Mostly, it’s not about me as an adoptive mom, but the child who will be standing next to me. If he hears himself always described as my adopted child, instead of a child who was adopted, he’ll hear that he’s second best, and this little boy has been prayed for, wished for, hoped for so much and is already loved by so many. My hope is that he’ll always understand his story and grow to own it, so that he can choose who to share it with on his own terms.
I think one of the hard things we do as adoptive parents, especially with transracial adoptions, is choosing when to share our story and when to give ourselves privacy. We need to show our children that the adoption isn’t secret or shameful, but at the same time, people…don’t we all just want to go grocery shopping without being hassled?! I don’t think there’s any right answer.
For all you visitors, it’s not that we don’t want you to ask questions, but just realize that families come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Just think about your words and the impact they could have on our kids before you use them.
Fascinating discussion! I’m not a parent yet, but am hoping to adopt soon. I’m quite certain that I will feel no more or less love for a child I adopt than for one I might have birthed. But we can’t ignore the fact that adoption and birthing are very different processes, and will color the lives of all members of the family in different ways. How we and our children come to be in our families is an important part of our life stories, and should not be glossed over as an inconsequential event that happened once and is now over.
And it is perfectly natural to be curious about these things when we’re getting to know people. The point is to be sensitive and respectful, and not make assumptions or judgments about another person’s life story. If we are coming from this place, then we will know in our hearts when it is OK or not OK to ask a person a particular question. We won’t need rules about what is or isn’t our business.
And it is not wrong for people to have a deep longing to pass their genes on to their children. Nor is it wrong to long to carry a child in one’s own womb. I used to want both of these things very much, but life circumstances and biology have denied me these choices. I definitely had to go through a hard “letting go” process before I felt ready to pursue adoption. This is a piece of my life story that I cannot ignore. But now that I gone through that letting go process, I am quite sure that a child I adopt will never be second best to the bio child I might have had. I am quite clear now that what I want is to love and raise a child, no matter what their genetic heritage. I also understand that heritage is an essential part of a person’s identity and life story, and I will do my best to honor my child’s heritage and help them to learn about the family and culture their genes came from.
All that said, I think the choice of sensitive, non-judgmental language is extremely important as we raise our children and interact with the children of others. Just get in touch with your heart, and think before you open your mouth.
It is no one’s business how my children came to be my children. I agree that if you have to ask, you probably aren’t close enough to the family to need to know.
When children and adults in a family do not appear to ‘match’, it does not neccesarily mean the child is adopted. I have learned that “Are they all yours?” or “Are some of them adopted?” and similar questions about my children are often a semi-polite attempt to ask if I have had multiple partners–again none of their business.
Multiracial families are formed in many different ways. Questions about “how” family members came to be connected are often not casual conversation, especially when children are present.