What do you think is or was the worst part about your adoption...?

Well, unlike Monkeykitty, I am adopted (that's who was called to answer the question, no?) and feel I can answer for my amother, because we have discussed it on SEVERAL occasions, all in the past couple years. So, yeah, it goes BOTH ways when formerly taboo topics are actually brought out to the light of day...

My amother also feels that she was led to believe that adoption was the perfect solution to her endless infertility (she had 13 miscarriages before I was adopted) issues. She was sold and BOUGHT the "as if" theory. My abrother (we're from totally different families, of course) were going to be just like her and my afather. And given enough LOVE, and knowledge (which for her was 'you know you're adopted, isn't that enough?) we would be just fine. We would never want to meet "the women who gave birth to us".

She now knows that all of this was agency garbage that was fed to a very naive, young (22) woman who was devastated by her ability to produce a child. They told her EXACTLY what she wanted to hear.

I think my mom never really came to terms with not being able to have her own kids. Her whole dream in life was to get married, have kids and be a mother. Adoption was definitely second best. She believed also that adoption would be no different,that love was enough but it wasn't. My sister never bonded with her ever, and always resented being adopted and was very open about it. She was pretty much a delinquent and they have not talked in years. She adored my brother and I. We were easy, kids but we are nothing like her at all. She has an identical twin and her nieces are exactly like her. I think watching them grow was bittersweet.

I never felt like my mom loved me any less because we were adopted. But if I look at the big picture, it hasn't all been a fairy tale for her either.

I think the worst part for my afamily (since all of my family love me, not just my parents) was my behavior. While I wasn't - in hindsight - the most wayward of kids in the`world, I was definitely harder work than I suspect I would've been were I born into the family.We can't, of course, say for definite that this is true, but I am - as far as we are aware - the only one from my family with, for example, such a high level of promiscuity.

I think, until I recently met my bfamily, we thought that this was more to do with the whole 'adoption trauma' stuff (the wanting love because I'm obviously not worthy of it because how can I be if even my own mother couldn't love me enough to want to keep me/giving it away free on a plate in an attempt to get people to want to stay with me and not abandon me), but having met my maternal bfamily (the immediate ones at least), I've since discovered that I'm not exactly wildly different from them.

There's also the part where the ways in which I think are completely different to my afamily, and even this caused some trauma for my mom at the very least. It's difficult to explain without going specific into examples (which I'm certainly not going to be doing in here), but suffice to say, my mom's had many a tearful mom's while raising me because she simply could not understand me, nor did she have a clue how to help me. It's only very very recently that she's come to see that while I may've caused her heartache whilst growing up, she did manage to get enough of her own ethics and ways of thinking through to me to enable me to become at least someone who *tries* to be a 'decent member of society', even if I don't always manage to pull it off.

I would have to say it was the same for my ap's. I can remember as a kid my amom telling me that when I turned 18, I would be allowed to know the name of my mother, but that she hoped by then I wouldn't have the need to know. She always expressed her hope that I would realize how much they (my ap's) loved me, and I would lose the desire to search. Of course, we had these conversations because I was asking how I could get the information, and I was very young at the time. The desire to know was always there. Always. And it had nothing to do with my ap's.

From my adoptive father's POV: That I'm not model pretty, that I'm not a boy, that I'm not good enough for him.

But then again he's not really nice.

From my adoptive mother's POV: That I'm too quiet and that I don't talk enough. She doesn't really know about all that I've been through, and like you, she believes in the blank slate thing. She tries really hard, and she knows it, but it just seems that we can' connect so that would be her biggest disappointment probably.

Im not adopted, but my younger (MUCH younger brother is, so I feel I can speak from my mothers perspective, and my own because being so much older than him I think of him more as my own than as a brother, and I pretty much raised him for a year after my mother was injured in a car accident). The worst part for us has been his questions about his first mom. He was removed from an abusive home when he was 10 mths old, and its hard to walk the line between telling the truth and not bad mouthing her. Its hard to watch the same child who had night terrors and wet his bed for years after the abuse he went through, long for the person who put him through that. Its hard to say "she loved you very much but was sick from drugs and couldnt care for you right" and see him miss her. The worst of it for my mom I think, is that, while we understand his need to know about her, and his desire for her, its hard not to hate someone who would do those things to someone you love so much.

I think the fact that my Adoptive parents had no idea what they were getting into, they took in several extremely emotionally disturbed children at the same time and expected it all to be rainbows and roses.

They also totally bought into the "blank slate"/"Nurture over Nature" idea and have been really disappointed when none of their children turned out the way they wanted them to

Hello from England. A very intriguing question indeed, for which you should be congratulated.

Do you want a really candid answer here? Assuming that to be the case, I can emphatically tell you that the very worst part of being adopted was precisely that - being adopted!

Believe me, after suffering a childhood of poverty, absolute misery and abuse, I consider that any other course of action would have been preferable to being adopted. In those far-off days, it was necessary for me to be disposed of quickly - and I was.

But in fairness that was a lifetime ago, now. From the age of seventeen, when I left home, I was - and indeed am - very happy indeed.

Thank goodness the laws governing adoption have changed since those far-off days. You might find this difficult to believe, but all those years ago, a child born out of wedlock suffered the indignity of being awarded a "certificate of bastardy". Of course, this word in those days simply meant one who was born out of wedlock: it was not used as a profanity, or pejoratively, as it is today.

To finalise on a humorous note, if someone referred to me as a b****** I could not argue with them, because they would be one hundred per cent correct!!

It really is a good job we can smile.

Regards.

I have no clue for my amom but for my adad the worst part was getting me as a daughter. I was nothing but a huge disappointment.

On the plus side my nmom is very happy with who I am and extremely proud of me. Nature all the way baby!

ETA

I am NOT putting words in anyone's mouth. I am quoting what I have been told, to my face, numerous times.

I was a disappointment, he has told me that so many times I can't keep track. He has also wondered, out loud and in front of me, why I can't be a happier adoptee just like his natural daughter, who he surrendered, turned out to be.

I'm sorry but before I actually get into my answer I have to LOL:

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~

Thanks, that felt good. I couldn't contain myself after seeing "cecee" call a level six, top contributor in THIS section, who has been here for ages and is a regular, legitimate participant in the Q&A here a "troll".

Aaaahhh... I can barely breathe. :-)

Okay... I feel better now.

As to what I *THINK* my APs might call the worst part about my adoption is that I'm such a stinker. I'm (and I always have been) a "very difficult child" [child being THEIR term, even now, as I sit here typing at age 37]. I stopped telling them the "happy lies" around age 7. I stopped loving myself, which I believe was difficult even for "bad" [abusive, cruel, self-centered, image-conscious... as mine are] parents to witness. I refused to be affectionate, especially with the a-mother, or to accept affection. I started telling her, "DON'T TOUCH ME" by the time I was 4. I became cruel right back to them [and being more intelligent than they are, I could really 'hit them where it hurts'... I knew all their 'buttons' and I pushed them, with relish]. In a nutshell, I was a sh!t. I didn't give a crap about them and IN SPITE of them and their abuse, the fact that I wanted nothing to do with them, and their 'anguish' at my lack of love and gratitude, I EXCELLED in everything I chose to do and graduated from high school early, having made near perfect grades [I've always had major issues with utter perfection so I ensured I DIDN'T make perfect grades... hmmm, I wonder if that's adoption-related. :-)], and won more than one scholarship to more than one college. I attended the college of my choice, both because it had the best program in my state (I had to be practical, as I was forced to 'go it alone' as to financing college) in the field I chose and because NONE of my a-family members had attended there. I lived in the dorms on campus [less expensive than off-campus apartments] even though the school was only a 20-minute drive from my AP's home because I didn't want to live with them. In truth, they didn't want me to live with them either, but I was still a minor when I moved out and they were embarrassed by that because I made it CLEARLY known in the neighborhood that I was moving out as a 'kid' because I felt ANYTHING was better than living with them for one more day -- and was willing to pay actual money to NOT live with them.

I *THINK* they also blame me for 'turning my little sister against them'. This in spite of the fact that they started beating her [at least the a-mother did] BEFORE she turned 2. I think they blame me for the fact that she 'gave up' their religion and 'went down the road of paganism'. [I am NOT a pagan and she didn't learn it from me... it's pretty cool, though, and it works for her. :-)] They blame me for her moving out at age (barely) 17 into the home of a 31 year old man with a son to 'live in sin'. In truth, I *DID* show her the hidden 'third option' that exists in the rest of the world, outside the black-and-white existence they crushed us with throughout our childhood years. That revelation probably did lead her to choose leaving and I can't fault her for that, so I'll take the 'blame' if they want... whatever. They blame me for 'enabling' her to keep her firstborn 'bastard' child, thus ending their 'hope' that she would relinquish/lose 'the baby' and return to 'her faith' [which was, actually, THEIR faith and had not been HER faith for a number of years by that time]. I'll declare loudly and proudly that I *DID* prevent her from losing her daughter -- MY NIECE -- by moving her into my home, giving her a car, helping her apply for all available assistance resources and [once she was born] caring for my niece for free while my sister worked and continued her education.

As I have no children and was not reunited at the time, my sister and my niece gave me my first 'experience' (as an intimate observer) of a truly natural and primally-bonded mother-and-daughter relationship. It was, and still is, the most beautiful thing I have EVER witnessed.

But, I digress...

To summarize, I THINK the worst part of my adoption, from my APs perspective, is that I don't love them, I'm not grateful and they didn't 'get' what they 'paid for' in me.

Oh well... sucks to be them.

Take care~

ETA: (to MonkeyKitty) "So when it comes to the other side, as long as adoptive parents are clear that they are saying what they *think* their adopted children or the adults they raised feel and don't state is as a certainty, that's all good too?" Yes, that's fine... at least, it's fine with me. I can't speak for Linny. LOL!