Parental Perspective on Preparing for Adoption
Anyone who is considering adoption should carefully examine why they want to adopt and be prepared to undergo an extensive process revolving around many complex state and national regulations about adoption. While these are designed to protect the child and parents, they often result in series of big decisions followed by long periods of waiting and can leave the parents feeling vulnerable and powerless at times. In order to prepare for the adoption process, Welfare Information Gateway provides a list of questions to consider:
- How will a new child fit into the parents' lives and their relationship?
- How will a new child affect family dynamics--especially if the family already has children?
- What changes are the parents willing to make to ease the child's transition?
- How do the parents feel about "open" adoption, that is, contact with the child's birth family?
- How do the parents feel about welcoming a child from the foster care system or an orphanage who may have experienced abuse or neglect?
- In cases of transracial or transcultural adoption--how do the parents feel about accommodating, helping, and promoting the child's positive cultural and racial identity?
- How will the parents inform family members and friends, and how they will deal with questions from family, friends, and strangers about adoption?
- How will the parents answer their child's questions about adoption, the child's background and history, birth family, and the parents' reasons for adoption?
- How willing and able are they to seek help for themselves or their child when necessary?
If a family decides to go through with the adoption process, there are a number of steps which need to be completed. The video on the left explains the typical process for infant adoption within the United States, breaking it up into the following steps:
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Dealing with the Seven Core Issues of Adoption
1) Loss
2) Rejection
3) Guilt/Shame
4) Grief
5) Identity
6) Intimacy & Relationships
7) Mastery/Control
Information from (Silverstein & Kaplan, 2014) & (7 Core Issues in Adoption, 2009)
- Adoptive Parents: turn to adoption because they cannot have children of their own, and the loss of not being able to bear a child affects the adoptive family at different points throughout the time they are raising the adopted child. Adoptive parents also must come to terms with the fact that their adopted child will not carry on their bloodline. They may fear losing their adopted child as well, leading to an overprotective parenting style.
- Birth Parents: experience multiple losses, including loss of the role of a parent, loss of contact with their child, and often the loss of the other birth parent. They may feel guilty for giving up their child and have a decreased self-image, often resulting in social isolation.
- Adoptee: faces the loss of biological, genetic, and cultural history. Adoptees will usually have a greater fear of abandonment than normal children and fear any separation from their adoptive parents.
- Losses in adoption are often pushed aside and the grief process in adoption ignored. However, it has an unmistakable effect on the lives of all who are involved in adoption, and it is important for everyone to recognize those losses and the effects of them on their lives.
2) Rejection
- Adoptive Parents: often feel betrayed or rejected by God if they adopted due to infertility. They may question if they were meant to me parents and struggle with not feeling entitled to be a parent. This may lead them to interpret childish actions on the part of their adopted child as rejection.
- Birth Parents: often condemn themselves for being irresponsible and feel looked down upon by society for not being able to raise their child.
- Adoptee: often sees being adopted as being personally rejected by their birth parents, leading to lower self-esteem and to anticipate rejection in life.
- Those involved in adoption are usually more sensitive to rejection, and they may avoid situations where reject is possible or do something in order to provoke rejection in order to validate their negative self-perceptions.
3) Guilt/Shame
- Adoptive Parents: may be ashamed of themselves and their inability to have children if diagnosed as infertile. They may see their childlessness as a punishment or curse, leading to a religious crisis.
- Birth Parents: are in a double bind, as they do not feel it is okay to keep the child, neither feel like it is okay to give him up. They may feel like others are judging them for giving up their child and be ashamed of having a child they could not care for.
- Adoptee: may feel like there was something wrong with him that caused their parents to not keep him. The child might feel that he deserves misfortune and be ashamed of being different, which may manifest in defensiveness or outbursts of anger.
4) Grief
- Adoptive Parents: the initial grief of a parent over not being able to have a child of their own may be pushed aside by their friends and family who think that adopting a child will completely fill the void that has been created by not being able to have children. However, if not addressed, the grief of adoptive parents only increases as their adopted child grows up and exhibits characteristics that are different from the adoptive parents.
- Birth Parents: may experience intense grief after giving up their child, but grief is often buried by their sense of shame, and it often remains buried for up to ten years.
- Adoptee: often has his grief overlooked in childhood, as adults try to divert or block the child's attempts to express the pain felt. This may lead to depression and/or misbehavior.
- Losses in adoption are difficult to grieve, as there is no set process to grieve the children who were not born, the loss of birth parents, or unknown families. It is usually more pronounced a times of subsequent loss or developmental transition.
5) Identity
- Adoptive Parents & Birth Parents: experience role confusion, as both are missing an element of parenthood.
- Adoptee: will most likely be missing information about his birth parents and history. The unanswered questions may plague him, leading him to have a greater need for acceptance among friends and resulting in early pregnancy as a way of seeking their identity.
6) Intimacy & Relationships
- Adoptive Parents: their unresolved grief over losses may cause marital tension and lead them to subconsciously withhold parts of themselves from the adopted child for fear of losing the child as well.
- Birth Parents: may associate intimacy and pregnancy with pain and loss, leading them to fear intimacy in relationships with the opposite sex, family, or future children. They may also question their ability as a parent and lack confidence when raising their own children.
- Adoptee: may avoid closeness with others for fear of losing them. It is often more difficult for the child to bond with others, resulting in a lower capacity for intimacy.
7) Mastery/Control
- Adoptive Parents: may experience "learned helplessness" through the rigorous adoption process, which can lead to laxity in parenting or a desire to regain the control they lost by being overprotective towards the adopted child.
- Birth Parents: experience adoption as the resolution of a crisis situation. However, surrendering their child for adoption also requires surrendering their volition, which may lead to feeling victimized and powerless.
- Adoptee: is award that they had no control over losing one family or gaining another. The child may try to gain a sense of control by engaging in power struggles with the parental and authority figures.
Information from (Silverstein & Kaplan, 2014) & (7 Core Issues in Adoption, 2009)
Children's Perspectives on their Adoption
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As an adoptive parent or teacher, it may be hard to understand why a child who is adopted is acting out. In the video to the left, a number of children discuss their memories of being adopted. They were adopted from anywhere between 5 and 15 years of age, and many of them explain that if they acted out when first placed with their adoptive parents, it was because they had been bounced around so much and doubted that anyone would want to adopt them. They needed their adoptive parents to prove that they truly cared about them by not sending them away even after they acted out before they could believe that their adoptive parents really did want to make them a part of their family. (AASK, 2009) |
References
7 Core Issues in Adoption. (2009, July 5). Retrieved from The Center for Adoption Support and Education: http://www.adoptionsupport.org/res/indexcoreb.php
AASK. (2009, November 28). Adopted Children Part 1. Retrieved from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka_0RKEBcKc
Silverstein, D., & Kaplan, S. (2014). Lifelong Issues in Adoption. Retrieved from Adopting.org: http://www.adopting.org/silveroze/html/lifelong_issues_in_adoption.html
View, T. M. (2013, November 9). The Adoption Process. Retrieved from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCf3E52w-8o
AASK. (2009, November 28). Adopted Children Part 1. Retrieved from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka_0RKEBcKc
Silverstein, D., & Kaplan, S. (2014). Lifelong Issues in Adoption. Retrieved from Adopting.org: http://www.adopting.org/silveroze/html/lifelong_issues_in_adoption.html
View, T. M. (2013, November 9). The Adoption Process. Retrieved from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCf3E52w-8o
Illinois State University |TCH 210 Sec 001 Spring 2014 | Amy Frederick, Spanish Education | Grace Heim, Speech-Language Pathology & Spanish | Created 3/26/2014 | Last Updated 4/1/2014