mom2boyz:
That’s why sex outside of marriage is not “free.” Lots of people get hurt. I’ve walked in a lot of shoes. I was the one who suggested that someone I love consider adoption for their child conceived out of marriage.
So if you are adoptive parents does that make you the artificial parents?
No. What does that have to do with the conversation?
The term “parents” obviously has two meanings; one is genetic (often refered to as “birth mother” or “birth father”). The other is the people who raise you. They may be the same, or one of them may be the same, or they may be different.
The discussion in this thread has to do with the legal rights of birth parents as opposed to adoptive parents. You mad a rather interesting suggestion about the rights of fathers. I have not seen a large number of cases where the birth father refused to grant permission to adopt. The results (long term) varied; in a couple of them, the father and child did well. In the larger majority, neither did very well. In the larger majority of cases I’ve seen, the child would in general appear to be much better off if the adoption had occured.
However, coupled with that is the not entirely uncommon experience that a number of adopted children go through, and seem to suffer from, and that is the feeling of abandonment by their birth parents, and the search that has often gone on to find them.
While this thread is really a question from the standpoint of adoptive parents who went through the emotional trauma of adopting and then having it unwind, there are more players on the scene than jsut them. It is easy to be dsimissive of the birth parents, especially the fathers. What you might keep in mind is that their children do not as easily dismiss that parent, even into adulthood. It is also easy to dismiss the father as one who was just “out to get a little”, and while that may be true in many, if not most circumstances, it is not a universal truth. They are not always responsible for the loss of contact; at times that is due to the mother’s choices (and on occasion, the mother’s parents’ choices). I believe that there need to be acknoledged rights of not only the parents, but the grandparents, and that in general, a child may (not
will,
may) be better off in the long run with it’s natural family.
Please do not try to twist that arouand to make me anti-adoption. I am not, by any means. But simple solutions to complex problems don’t generally exist; and when one gets applied, often the results are far less than what we wanted.
