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TELLING Part 5 – WHAT ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE THAT ASK? - Extract from the Adoption Network News - Quoted from “Melina L, Making Sense of Adoption & Adopted Child Jan 1991”
“The Waiting is over. The Great Day arrives. With your newly adopted baby tightly cradled in your arms you arrive home to an army of family and friends. Congratulations. Shared joy. Treasured moments. Then someone, often a close family member, pops in a question like: How old was his “real” mother? - Do you know who the “father” is? Were “they” university students? From the moment you become a family you will find yourself talking about adoption. You will be telling your child about his origins and how he joined your family. You will be informing and educating family and friends about new adoption practices and views. Doctors and nurses sometimes need medical information about the genetic background of your child. Strangers will ask intimate personal details at unexpected moments. Sometimes, however, we do not like the responses we get about adoption even from our own family or close friends. People with no knowledge of adoption may use language or express attitudes that adoption, especially transracial adoption, is a second-best way of forming a family. Nevertheless, it is considered best parents reveal their adoptive status rather than not reveal it and be considered ashamed of it or their children. It also allows adoptive parents to be honest about their lives. Myths and misunderstandings about adoption can also be discussed openly. Because adoption is so misunderstood by society, all of us involved with adoption have a responsibility to be advocates of adoption – to educate people about what it is really like. Yet information about a child’s origins is private information belonging to the child. Parents are guardians of that information, acting in the child’s best interests.
Explaining Adoption to friends and relatives and other children Adoptive parents often find that their personal journey to understanding adoption forms the basis for an educational campaign among their relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues. Often, the biggest challenge is deciding what to tell children outside the family.
Educating friends, relatives and neighbours
When someone adopts, their friends, relatives and neighbours, often take the opportunity to teach their children about adoption, just as parents use a friends pregnancy as an opportunity to teach children about reproduction. However, those who have not been educated about adoption themselves may explain aspects of adoption to their children differently than adoptive parents want them to. Adoptive parents cannot control what other people tell their children, but they can control the information they provide to other adults, which they might then share with their children. Parents should not share information about a child’s origins with anyone outside the family – even a relative or close friend. This not only respects the child’s right to privacy, but it ensures that the information will not be passed on by the friend’s or relative’s children – even inadvertently. Parents can explain to their friends and relatives that they have information about their child and they are satisfied with the information, but they plan to share the information with their child before sharing it with anyone else. These guidelines may be found useful by those who wish to help friends, neighbours, relatives and their children with their attitude towards adoption.
Guidelines for helping friends and relatives Children can’t understand adoption until they can understand reproduction – around the age of six. While there are other reasons to introduce the subject of adoption to adopted children younger than six, preschool children outside the family would probably gain little from an explanation of adoption. Pre-school children will probably not think it is unusual that a friend or relative is adding to their family by adoption because even though they may have known people who were pregnant, they don’t fully understand the connection between pregnancy and birth.Children may wonder if they were also adopted, but may not ask the question directly. Parents should include in their discussion of another child’s adoption a matter-of-fact explanation about how their children joined the family.Children of nine or ten can become fascinated with the topic and fantasise about being adopted. They may begin to realize their parents are not perfect and the idea of unknown but ideal birth parents provides them with a romantic fantasy. These misconceptions need to be gently dispelled.Adoption should be explained as another valid way of forming families – not as better than or less than other ways. Children may try and determine whether being adopted is better than or not as good as being born into a family. They can do this by making statements about adoption and then assessing the reaction. Watch out for children receiving more than necessary attention for talking about adoption. Adopted children are not to be pitied, nor are they to be described as special. The adoption of a child should not be compared to the adoption of a pet, since the acquisition of a pet is not as permanent.It is very difficult for children to understand why birth parents make an adoption plan because they aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the dilemma they are faced. In explaining the decision, parents should emphasise that it was the birth parents’ problem that necessitated the adoption plan, rather than a problem with the child. They can explain that the birth parents, for reasons that may be unknown to them, were unable to care for any child born to them at that time in their lives. Birth fathers as well as birth mothers should be mentioned, otherwise children may conclude that the adoptive father is the birth father.Children should not be told that birth parents make adoption plans because they love their children, or children may conclude that parents who love children “give them away”. Parents should explain that birth parents who make adoption plans experience a great deal of pain when they transfer their parental right to the adoptive parents, but that they do so because they think the other parents are better able to care for a child at that time. Children in the elementary school years and above can be encouraged to talk about the qualities necessary for good parenting.Birth parents do not make adoption plans because of their age, income, marital status, or educational level. They make adoption plans because of their perceived ability to parent.Some children ask adopted parents questions about adoption or about their adopted child. Parents may feel obligated to answer these questions even when they are inappropriate. They may be concerned that anything less than total honesty will communicate that adoption is something ‘bad’ and therefore not to be discussed. However, parents are not obligated to respond to children when questions they ask invade their privacy even when the adopted child is over-hearing the conversation.When children have questions about adoptees or their birth parents, parents can explain that they can’t answer all their questions because the information is private. It is important that parents convey the concept of privacy and not secrecy in these situations. They can sometimes explain what is often the case without discussing the personal story of the child concerned.In discussing adoption, certain terminology is believed to present adoption in a more positive light: birth mother and birth father (rather than real mother, natural father), make an adoption plan, place for adoption (rather than put up for adoption, give away or relinquish), and choose to parent (rather than keep the baby).
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