[Continued from HERE.]


Even in the most harrowing of adoption stories I have encountered, it was not usually the fact of adoption that was the biggest issue, but rather the circumstances the adoptee grew up in that were traumatic.

In cases where adoptees have been abused by their (adoptive) parents, many are very resentful of having been adopted and blame being adopted for all of their problems. If one is being daringly honest, though, it is the abuse that the person despises (with good reason) and which is the root of many of their issues. Being adopted just supplies a bit of an out: “If my biological parents had raised me, this never would have happened.”

Really, though? How does one know? Millions of children are abused by their biological parents in ways unimaginable. If a birth parent that wasn’t sure they could take care of their child ultimately decides to keep their child under very difficult circumstances, who is to say that the birth parent won’t become abusive as well?

Even if a birth parent ends up having a gagillion children one day and being a very “good” parent (whatever that means)under more "favorable" conditions than when they were having the child they allowed to be adopted, the person’s instincts may have been correct. They may not have been ready to be a parent. They may have been a disaster if they had tried to raise the child themselves… or not.

It really is impossible to know as there are too many variables ... and too much conjecture/wishful thinking.

When an abused adoptee ruminates, “Why did they adopt me if they just wanted a punching bag,” they are asking a very good question. Again, though, the issue isn’t that they are adopted but rather, that the person or people who chose to adopt them didn’t take better care of them after going to all the trouble of adopting them.

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