I would really to know what you think is?

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My definition:

A Happy Adoptee - is one who has connected with others and is in the process of healing. Someone who is freeing themselves of the group-think, shame and Stockholm syndrome mentality that they lived under. Someone who feels empowered to finally speak their truth. Someone who is working to make the world a better place for other adoptees. The adoptees who answer questions here are, to me, happy adoptees. I know they make me happy and I think they make the world a better place.

An Angry Adoptee - someone who is so shackled by guilt, shame and denial that they lash out at other adoptees. Someone who feels the need to repeatedly proclaim their lack of curiosity regarding their origins. Some are so angry, they even go so far as to lobby against restored access.

I think happy adoptees got that way through the company of other adoptees and the ability to speak freely. Angry adoptees are caused by the secrecy and lies of the adoption experience and the burden of gratitude society places on them....Show more

I am an "aoptee" and can only speak for myself.
1. A happy adoptee would be a child/infant adopted into a warm loving home to parents who are wonderfully happy loving people who have enough warmth in their hearts to welcome and share their lives with a child that is not biologically connected to them. Being able to bond together as a family.

2. An angry adoptee which a lot of people instantly assume is the child that resents being given up and is angry and possibly ungrateful.
I fall into this category but not for these reasons. I understand why I was given up for adoption and can accept it for what it is. I am the angry adoptee: my mother was terribly physically and verbally abusive to us ( my adopted brother and I) I was told by her not to call her mom, that she wished she never adopted us, that she hated us, we have been called every degrading name possible and one of my earlier memories is her shoving my brother into the f**k'n oven. Adoption is not always a skip through the daisies as i'm sure these things happen to "normal" people as well. Those are some of the nicer memories we have.
3. Under "normal" circumstances "how an adoptee got that way" and I am assuming that to mean the angry adoptee, we all have primal instincts that we are born with, when the woman is carrying the infant in her womb the infant learns the sound of her voice, her heartbeat, her habits - sleeping, her breathing, feels her emotions. When the infant is born, learns her smell feels her touch along with everything else the baby knows to be its mother, and without a choice is taken and placed in the arms of a stranger all be it loving people, are not the safety and security of the woman the child has connected with for the past nine months of its life and all though the infant, still an intelligent creature that at such a young age can even realise that this is not my "mother". That has to be terrifying in itself.

4. I think there should be a transitioning period for the baby to get used to it's "new" mother. I believe there should be a rigorous screening process for prospective adoptive parents, as well as pre and post adoption parenting courses to be taken up to at least the first year of the childs life. A lot of people who adopt throw parties to celebrate bringing home the new baby, while a lovely idea, who is recognising and nurturing this baby through such a traumatic time in its life (and as crude as this sounds) where it has been pulled from its mothers arms and placed with strangers....Show more

Well, I just used those terms because I've read them a lot here, and I didn't know how else to put it. So I went with the phrases in common use.

By a happy adoptee I meant someone whose glad they were adopted and/or thinks adoption is a good thing.
By angry adoptee I meant someone who is angry or upset that they were adopted and/or thinks adoption is a bad thing.

3) No idea. A lot of people here who are upset say they didnt have bad experiences.
4) Open adoption would reduce the pain of loss. Although I don't think children should have contact with abusive biological parents. Contact with the rest of the family would make a big difference. I lost one side entirely and that was an indescribable loss. I moved 15 hours drive away from the maternal family and that was hard and painful but I still had contact with them so I got over it....Show more

1. On this forum, I define a "happy" adoptee: An adopted person who has taken an honest look at the effect (or lack of effect) adoption had on his/her life and the issues surrounding adoption. They are able to discuss adoption, adoptive parents and adoption agencies with an open and balanced view. Not all "Rainbows and unicorn farts" but not always "greedy, entitled baby-stealers" either. A "Happy Adoptee" is comfortable enough with their own feelings on the subject to engage in a respectful and rational discussion without resorting to name-calling or dismissing the experiences of another. A "happy" adoptee may have had a terrible adoptive parents or may have had wonderful adoptive parents, but they can acknowledge that everyone has valid perspectives, even if it doesn't match their own.

2. An "angry" adoptee is an adopted person that defines the entire experience of being adopted for everyone, solely on their personal feelings on the subject. If their adoptive parents were abusive, then everyone's adoptive parents must have been abusive at some level. If their experience was happy growing up, then everyone's experience must have been happy. An "angry" adoptee cannot enter into a rational discussion about adoption without marginalizing or minimizing the experiences and opinions of those with different perspectives, whether that is always jumping to the conclusions that an AP *must* have done something illegal or unethical, or that the first parent *must* have been pressured or coerced, or that an adoptee *must* have some kind of psychological issue that is *really* the problem. Angry adoptee use words like "get over it" or "drinking kool aid" or "in a fog" in order to attack the opinions of others that don't fall in line with their own thinking.

3. How did they get that way? I think it's largely a personality type, combined with a sense of maturity. Maybe there's a Nature/Nurture component. Some people are so insecure about their own feelings that they need to attack people who don't share them. Some people are secure enough in their own feelings that they can listen to another opinion and respect it, even if they don't agree with it.

4. Not sure. Kinda like leading a horse to water, I guess....Show more

A "happy adoptee" is an adopted person who eats rainbows and farts butterflies. Basically, that person agrees with everything the Kool-Aid drinkers spout...particularly that searching is bad and that their REAL parents are the ones who raised them.

An "angry adoptee" is an adopted person who is ticked that they don't have access to their OBC, don't know who their first parents are, and don't know anyone who looks like them. Angry adoptees don't buy into the whole "your mother gave you a great gift by giving you up" B.S. Pissy little bastards, aren't they?

Adoptees "got that way" by being educated. They had questions about their origins and weren't daunted when others said to 'leave it alone' or 'it's best this way.' They became more angry when they realized that their identities were a state secret.

How can we be sure "angry adoptees" don't happen? Well, a few things come to mind:
1) Treat adoptees like any other humans in this country -- allow them access to their OBCs!
2) Stop pre-birth matching and coercion of pregnant women.
3) Fix the system in the U.S. to be more like the ones in Australia and the UK, which make it illegal to have private adoptions....Show more