The Effects of Adoption

Adoption is not about finding children for families, it's about finding families for children. ~ Joyce Maguire Pavao, founder of the Adoption Resource Canter in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Child adoption is a beautiful concept. It's the process whereby children deprived of a family get people they can call their own and childless couples don't have to remain deprived of the joys of parenting. Every child has a right to grow in a healthy environment. And this is exactly what adoption endorses. Adoption is a legal procedure that makes the birth child of one man and woman, the legal child of someone else. It is a process involving three parties, the birth parents, the adoptee and the adoptive parents. So, child adoption is likely to have effects on all three.

Major issues triggered by adoption are loss, rejection, guilt and grief. Effects of international adoption include chances of malpractices such as child trafficking and sale of children. Also, there may be no intimacy in the new relationship as it can be difficult for both parents and the child to break the cultural barriers between them. There is a feeling of loss of control in children being adopted as they have no role in choosing who they would live with for the rest of their lives. It's not easy to accept the fact that someone has 'chosen' you to be their children. Identity crisis is commonly observed in the adoptees. Many issues intrinsic to the adoption experience come together when the adoptee reaches adolescence. At this time there is an acute awareness of being adopted. There is a drive towards liberation accompanied by the determination to develop one's own identity. Living with the fact that you are an adopted child becomes difficult.

Another effect of adoption is loss, the loss of one's identity due to separation from his or her birth family. For the birth parents, it's the loss of their child. The feeling of rejection worsens the feeling of loss. Adoptive parents feel rejected. Both adoptive parents and birth parents experience role confusion. The sense of rejection leads to a feeling of shame. The sorrow about not having children suffocates the adoptive parents. Sorrow is obvious in parents who lose their child to adoption. Feelings of confused identity lead to identity crisis. Neither the natural parents of the child nor the child feels in control of the situation or the adoption process. Effects of adoption are seen in the adopted children, their adoptive parents and their biological parents. Adoption affects adoptive parents at two different levels, emotional and financial.

Effects on the Adoptee
Attention deficit disorder, eating disorders, alcohol abuse can be seen in the adoptees. There is a tendency to seek for alternative lifestyles. Worst of all is the feeling of committing suicide. Statistics say that adopted children have learning disabilities and may develop an organic brain syndrome. Adopted children become vulnerable, emotionally. They know they were not involved in the decision of adoption and thus realize that they had no control over loss of their birth family and the choice of their adoptive family. During their teenage years, adoptees start feeling lonely. They long for their birth parents and feel an intense need to search for who they were and why they put them up for adoption. Adopted children feel insecure because they are questioned about their identity. They lose one identity and borrow another from the family which adopts them. They realize that their biological parents are not parenting them, and that they are being looked after by strangers. Yes, strangers. It's difficult for adopted children to accept their adoptive family as their own. This leads to identity crisis. Separation from their real parents affects the adoptees deeply.

Effects on the Adoptive Parents
Adoptive parents are made to face the bitter truth of not being able to become parents. Many go for adoption after a failed pregnancy or the death of their child. The adoptive parents have a sense of dejection and defeat. An adoptee, who is constantly questioning, creates a feeling of rejection in the adoptive parents. Even in small actions of their adopted child, they start seeing rejection. They are unable to feel close to their adopted child. Adoptive parents may grow sadder as the child grows up, since the adoptee may not be able to meet the expectations of his adoptive parents. This may lead the adoptive parents to feel that they were never meant to be parents. They worry that the knowledge of being adopted may affect the child negatively. Adoptive parents feel depressed with the thought of they not being the real parents of their child. In some cases, this makes the adoptive parents overprotective about their child, while in some cases, they become careless.

Child adoption affects the adoptive parents at a financial level too. Having a new member in the family increases a family's expenses. The process of adoption does not end at bringing a child home. Adopting a child involves planning for his educational and other needs and giving him/her a secure future.

Effects on the Birth Parents
When it comes to a child and his birth parents, there's biology, there's genetics, there's a blood relation which cannot be broken so easily, rather it can never be. Putting up their baby for adoption is not easy for the biological parents of the child. It's circumstances that lead them to do so. It's emotionally taxing for a parent to lose his/her child to adoption and have someone else take care of him. Birth parents hate themselves for being incapable of raising their child, and so does society. They might never know who the adoptive parents of their child are. And even if they know who, they may never know how they are and what rapport they share with their child. There's always an uncertainty about what the adoptive parents must have told the adoptee about his/her family. Birth parents feel abandoned. It is observed that birth mothers who know they would be putting up their baby for adoption, have long conversations with the fetus during pregnancy. In some cases, mothers are pressurized to surrender their babies to adoption and they do so against their will. They hate themselves for their helplessness. They feel anxious about the welfare of their child. Perhaps, the most difficult thing for these parents is to live with a guilty conscience of not having raised their own children.

The Positive Aspect of Child Adoption
Today we see, that many children from underdeveloped nations are being adopted by high society individuals. This gives the children, a home to live in and a secure future. Through the process of adoption, many kids deprived of their families, get a family to be with. Many parents even after having their own children choose to adopt. It's because of adoption that many orphaned children have families. Thanks to adoption, many have a home to live and parents who love.

Adoption is indeed a life-altering event. But if taken positively, its negative psychological effects can be minimized. From the perspective of the adoptees, adoption gives them parents, a family, a home. An adoptee becomes the child of parents, for whom parenthood has not come easy. Adoption gives the adoptive parents a child who can be called their own. The adopted child gives them a reason to live. Couples deprived of parenthood by nature, get an opportunity to play this noble role of being parents. A childless couple adopts a child and their life changes, changes for the better. People who never knew each other become parent and child, and a beautiful bond is born. Even the biological parents of the adopted child have a reason to be happy, as their child gets a family, a new life and a secure future, only because someone chose to adopt. You know what it means to be adopted? It means, you didn't grow in your mother's tummy but you grew in her heart.