I’m an adoptive mother (obviously), and I don’t refer to my children as birth son or adopted son, birth daughter or adopted daughter or biological daughter, genetic daughter, natural daughter, and so on. They are sons. They are daughters. I’m their mother. I hope you think about that. You are still a mother, from my perspective.

Parenting? You’re right… that’s a role. Many mothers and fathers are not parenting their kids, even when adoption isn’t part of the picture.

You’ve certainly given me some things to think about. I hope you come back.

Honestly, sometimes I think that she could never love him as much as I do. My love is not an act of will. My love for my birthson kind of ‘happened’ to me. I didn’t even mean to care that much. Oh, I always respected the life that was growing in me when I was pregnant, but I didn’t expect to be so overwhelmed with the strongest sense of protectiveness for him the moment I saw him . Thats one of the reasons I choose to place. I thought, and still think that I would be harmful to him if I were the one parenting. Noone told me this, its just that all my life I have been very ‘accident prone’. I HAVE dropped babies before (not on purpose of course!) and unknowing put others in danger in small ways.

I DO want my birthson adoptive mom to love him as fiercly as I do. In a way, I want her to be the love that I feel. In my mind she is a gift, the most important thing that my birthson needs. I think of it this way, when someone gives you a gift that you really really love, you think of that person whenever you enjoy the gift. I want my birthson to enjoy being loved by his adoptive mom as if I am loving him through her, because she was my choice, my gift, to him. If she doesn’t love him, that means that I don’t love him, that I was careless somehow in choosing her. That would be the farthest thing from the truth though.

This being said, I can understand being detached from children. It does not mean that you no longer have the fiercest kind of love possible. Once, my niece, who is very quiet, had a temper tantrum during a visit to my sisters house and I felt joy in just hearing her scream because she is so quiet usually. I feel weird about feeling the opposite emotion that I should have felt at her distress. Maybe this example has nothing to do with a ‘mothers’ love but we are discussing love for a child. Unlike my birthson, I did not feel instant love for my second niece as I did when my sister had her first daughter, but now my love is just as fierce for her as it is for my birthson. As human being we are prone to selfishness and are emotions reflect that. Everyone is selfish sometimes. Parenting can and is both selfish and selfless at times. I am not a parent, a first mom, but not a parent but I know that parenting can test all your emotions and sometimes they fail you. A true test of character is admitting that you weren’t always perfect.

Thank you for writing. I will be back to read more sometimes.

Tammy, you seem to have the heart of a real mother, or a lucid approach to life that is just pure. I’m glad you’re a pastor, because we need pastors like you. True-hearted, sane, reasonable, yet passionate. If we could bottle some of what you have and give it to other adoptive parents, I think there would be less suffering among adopted people who begin life with loss and then have to keep living with loss because of their blind adoptive parents.

Thank you for your comments. I was outraged when I first read the blog article I referred to. I didn’t link to it because a small part of my brain knew that wouldn’t be fair to the other adoptive mother, who is not my enemy and who must also have many good qualities (at least some modicum of honesty among them). But I also didn’t want to just let her perspective stand as factual, when her perspective is not shared by many other adoptive parents.

Your comments underscore this in beautiful ways. Thank you.

It’s heartening when other parents with both experiences can step up and speak from their reality. I understand that not everyone starts life as an adoptive parent on equal footing, equally able to give and receive love; but I do think that we can choose to grow. When I think of the kids and how they will feel always second best loved, after already having needed to be adopted, my heart breaks.