by Marla A Davis

Created on: July 02, 2008   Last Updated: March 12, 2011

Whether it is a lifelong yearning for children, or a sudden desire for nurturing, adopting late in life is a mistake. The mistake becomes a problem about thirty years later, when the adoptive parents die.

When older adoptive parents die, they leave a child with less than thirty years of intense immersion in the "Christmas" syndrome. Each of thirty Christmas seasons becomes a spectacle, with loads of gifts and sensory input; and then suddenly nothing, after the parent dies. It's a set-up for eternal disappointment and mourning.

Thirty seasons and birthdays would seem like enough, and it isn't. Normally, one can hope to grow out of the ribbons and ornaments, and graduate into a more mutually satisfying experience during holidays and hallmark celebrations. Older adoptive parents tend to overindulge the children, sensing the clipping of the parental timeline.

As young adopted adults, the expectation of ongoing showers of gifts is abruptly discontinued. Another five to twenty years is needed to gradually reverse the direction of giving. As parents grow older, adult children normally learn to bring more to the party than the parents have customarily provided.

Between seasons, older adoptive parents are acutely aware of their precarious position as custodians and caregivers of adopted children. When the seasonal wrappings are taken away, and the dried pine needles and Easter grass are swept up and discarded, the giving continues. It is as if the adoptive parent is either making up for a perceived loss in the child's life, or taking extra precautions against potential accusations of child deprivation or neglect. One picnic, movie, or circus after another, and those thirty years, three groups of ten years each, go by quickly.

All the town's eyes are on an older adoptive parent. Just as quickly as a child is given to a willing and able parent, the agency that made the dream come true could come any day to remove the child. All it would take would be a bruise, a child's tears of torment over not getting something blue and shiny in the store, and it could become a nightmare for the parent.

Whether fear of reversal of the adoption is based on imagination or fact, is unimportant to older adoptive parents. For those parents, it's a race to success against time from the moment the child is placed with them. There is no time for battles with agencies, or defense against frivolous accusations of abuse or neglect. Furthermore, there is a reluctance to discuss parental mortality with the children. The risk of frightening them is too great. An older adoptive parent takes no chances in the face of time.

The parental lifetime fear, as well as the sudden absence of an abundance of gifts, becomes amplified at the time of the parents' deaths. And it will take five to twenty more years of adjustment to reconcile the wonderful three groups of ten years, lavished upon the child of fortune, with the sporadic and unpredictable appearance of gifts from surviving friends and family.

Learn more about this author, Marla A Davis.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.