Is it possible to unconditionally love an adopted child?

Yes

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by S.E. Ingraham

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This is a subject that is so emotionally loaded for me personally, I hesitated to write about it. Then I decided that for that reason I alone, I could not afford to just vote 'Yes', I needed to speak to the topic.

I am an adopted child. My own children are mine by birth but had I been unable to conceive I would have adopted, no doubt about it.

In fact, I was having such a hard time getting pregnant before we had our first daughter we tried for over six years we were actually filing for adoption when I finally did get pregnant. We even debated about continuing with our plans to adopt but decided maybe that was a just a bit greedy.

My parents told me, as soon as I was old enough to understand, that I was a chosen child, and always tried to make me feel the specialness that this implied. They had several books about chosen children that they read to me all the time, reinforcing the idea that the way I came to them, while not the regular way, was still a valid way and in fact, an extremely precious way.

In the fifties, there were still a lot of misconceptions about adoption, please pardon the unintended pun.

In the Canadian province where I was born, Ontario, (and in all the other provinces for that matter) the government felt strongly that when a birth-mother relinquished her child, it was forever, and the records were sealed.

Over time I have come to believe that this isn't the healthiest form of adoption but back then, it was the only way, outside of private adoptions which were almost unheard of, and were, in any case, usually available only for the wealthy.

The most unhealthy, or unrealistic part of the old adoption scheme, to my way of thinking, is that when they handed the adopted child over to its new parents, they pretty much said, ...this is your child now...your history is her history...now go home and live your life... and that was the end of the story, as far as the government was concerned. The adopting parents were given some very brief non-identifying information about the baby's background (often inaccurate, as it turns out) but little in the way of medical history, or anything truly helpful.

My adopted mother had suffered a number of devastating miscarriages before they adopted me; she told me something like six or seven. She and my father knew only that they wanted to raise a family and were heart-broken when it looked like it might not happen.

She said the day they got the call from Children's Aid that their little girl had arrived was one of the happiest days of their lives. After they picked me up, they trotted me around to all the relatives to show me off, just the way they would have if I was a new birth baby.

I never doubted for a moment growing up that my parents loved me as much as my friends' parents loved them.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized just how true this was, and how hard it had been sometimes, to walk the path they had chosen.

In the era when I was adopted, it was still a bit of a hush-hush situation to adopt.

First of all, the unwed mother giving up the child was shunned and shamed, so some disgrace of that situation no doubt carried over to the child itself.

The way my mother explains it, women who had to adopt were seen as less than full-blooded, maternal, real women. After all, shouldn't they have been able to produce their own progeny?

Then, as I learned later, many people seemed to have the idea that adopted children also were somehow, less than and, not shy about saying so.

I found out my parents actually moved my little brother (their second adoptee) and me away from a neighbourhood, because one little girl kept telling me that my real mother had 'throwed me out with the trash' .

Mom didn't even know how this little girl knew I was adopted. By the time we moved to that house, they were wisely keeping the information to themselves, having learned how cruel, even some relatives could be about adopted children.

I mentioned my brother. He isn't my brother by blood but I can't imagine loving anyone more, we were that close. I guess that's part of the reason the 'loving unconditionally' question for adopted children always catches me by surprise. It's just never been an issue.

When my parents got my brother, he was already eleven months old, but if you can imagine no one had ever given this boy a name. Not his birth mother apparently (who abandoned him in a crib), not Children's Aid, and none of the many foster home families he had been shunted around to.

My parents were never told directly why it took so long to place him, but he had a seizure the first night he was with us and regular health problems from there on, so they had their suspicions.

Sadly, in his case, I don't think anyone could have loved him enough. My parents, my mother in particular, has anguished over this with me, asking me over and over if I thought they had shown him enough love.

I know from the way they loved me, they couldn't have loved him more. Unfortunately, by the time he arrived at their safe harbor, he was already damaged beyond repair. No one knew what was wrong with him growing up or what to do for him.

His separation anxiety was huge, but as long as he knew he could be with my parents, he was happy and loving. Things were okay until he went to school. Then everything went quickly wrong and no matter what they did to try and help him, there was no way.

After years of reflection , some therapy and much study, I've come to believe that my brother suffers from a dissociative disorder that started right at the beginning of his life when he was left to cry in a crib for four days before the neighbors called the police to complain.

This disorder prevents the sufferer from ever being able to develop any significant attachment in their life; they cannot afford to ever trust anyone again really. There is no effective therapy for the disorder and often the child or adult becomes an out-of-control discipline/behaviour problem.

For this sad little boy, I think the disorder was only exacerbated by a little understood learning disorder, dyslexia in the fifties it wasn't even identified in the public school system and the further possibility that he was a fetal alcohol child, given symptoms he exhibited in his teens and later.

Still, with all of these complications, my parents loved my brother unconditionally, going to the mat for him more times than I can count.This meant: bailing him out of jail, attending numerous court cases, trying to help him beat drug and alcohol addiction, getting him numerous tutors, and on and on.

There was never any doubt that they would do anything to help their child. Never. If that's not loving unconditionally I don't know what is.

And the same went for me. I had my own issues and many of them sprang from being adopted, but my parents soldiered on and just loved me.

It broke my heart when my mother told me some of the things that happened when I was young, things that don't happen to the parents of birth children but are the province of adoptees and their parents alone.

When I was five, I had to have my tonsils out. At that time, it meant an overnight stay in hospital. My parents were told they couldn't visit, just come in the morning to pick me up.

I was inconsolable when Mom came to get me. Either she had misunderstood the doctor or he had it wrong. All the other children who were in overnight had their parents visit them.

She tells me I wailed at her, Could only borned kids have their Mommys visit? Is that why you didn't come?

What does it mean to love a child unconditionally anyhow? Without reservation? Not contingent on something? What?

I look at my own kids and my new grandson and know I would do anything for them, literally.

I know the same about my own parents. They would do the same for me or my brother. As I said, it's never been an issue.

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