When my husband and I decided to adopt, after a seven year battle with infertility, we had a lot of emotional vulnerability, but an intense desire to still become parents. Adoption was offered up to us as a solution to the many feelings we were experiencing. Adoption was also promoted to us as providing an option, for a mother who might find herself unprepared to parent her child. Not a lot was ever said, about the conflicting feelings that could be experienced by the birthmother of any child we might adopt. We did not know that those feelings would change and morph, and we might over time find ourselves the focus of a birthmothers grief or anger about the placement decision.

Adopting parents are encouraged to believe that adoption brings few emotional challenges after the finalization, when that is really just the beginning. If you do things “right” then you are supposed to expect a happy outcome, and a happy relationship with a birthmother who has found peace with her decision. Very little is often said about how the birthparents of your child may process their own emotions over the adoption, and how those emotions change over time. Their reactions to the adoption will be very different from yours, and different that what you might have been told to expect. Little is also said about how you will feel, if birthparents share feelings or emotions with or about you that are hurtful or upsetting.

Adoption is often promoted as a win-win situation, something that adoptive parents can expect most birthmothers to eventually feel confident about, especially with an open adoption. The truth is there really is no guarantee about how a mother will feel after placing her child for adoption. You will remain vulnerable, all emotions remain subject to change.

The same mother who selected you to adopt, could become angry later that you did not stop the placement, when you stood witness to how difficult it was for her. While you would expect placing a child to be difficult and emotional, most of us also trust in the decision of the birthmother at that moment. Only she can fully make that choice, and understand why she is choosing it. If you are not in an open relationship, you are not likely to have to confront some of these hard to hear feelings from birthfamily. These are things, however you must confront head on in an open adoption.

Honestly one of the worst things I could imagine now, would be for one of my children’s birthparents to tell me that they hate me. That the grief they feel about adoption is all somehow my fault. If they expressed that I should have known better or somehow stopped their decision to place, I believe I would be very hurt. I trusted their decision to place, and in their ability to make that decision for their child. To hear later that they regret their decision, and that in their opinion I as the adoptive parent am to blame, would feel like a huge betrayal of trust.

Actually I have had a similar experience, when my daughter’s birthmother shared those kind of feelings with her extended family last year. She never said them to us directly, but things do have a way of coming out eventually. Her family, whom we had enjoyed a very close relationship with, heard her complaint, and then vented their frustration on my husband and I. All of this almost completely destroyed our relationship. It has taken a lot of tentative steps to begin to work our way back, but unfortunately some of the original trust is forever destroyed.

Adopting parents should be told before they bring their child home, that birthparent emotions can and often do change. While sometimes, there is just nothing in any way that could prepare you to be hit from the very deep corners of regret that some birthparents could find themselves in, at the very least people should know that it could happen. People change, emotions change, and what seems positive and sure when you first adopt, may change.

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Photo Credit- Angela R. Goodman


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