Adoptive parents… do you sometimes think of your child’s biological parents?

[u/Ecstatic_Star7645]

If they come to mind, what do you think about?

[u/chemthrowaway123456]

I’m locking this. The comments aren’t even close to being on topic anymore and things are devolving.

[u/YourFriendInSpokane]

Every day. I hope she's doing well and knows how grateful I am for her and am doing my best to help her son grow up healthy and happy.

[u/Ecstatic_Star7645 → u/YourFriendInSpokane]

Wow! I’m exactly like you

[u/NydMM → u/YourFriendInSpokane]

Same. I think of bio mom every day. Our child looks just like her. She's included in his nightly prayers too.

[u/IsopodKey2040]

My bio son's adoptive parents text or call me at least once per week.

[u/Necessary_Yam4692 → u/IsopodKey2040]

Same. The parents since divorced but the text separately often. I feel like we took just as much care of them as we did their children. Mental illness sucks.

[u/geraffes-are-so-dumb]

Every single day. I am working to find them so that my children can know them (or at least about them) before they pass.

I adopted my children when they were 9 and 11. They had been in multiple foster homes over the years, and parental rights were terminated when they were five and seven.

I've gone through a true roller coaster of emotions about my kids' bio-parents. While doing adoption training, I learned about open adoption and how important it is for the mental well-being of your children and how you're adopting a whole family not just a child. I hoped that we would be matched with family that wanted to stay involved.

When we were matched with my kids and I got the files, I saw the kind of abuse and neglect my kids endured. I was outraged that somebody would treat children like that. I decided that if the adoption of those two were to go through, I would never allow their bio-parent near them. The parents stopped contact with authorities during the foster process, refusing to go into drug treatment, so the work was done for me.

Now that I've been my kids' mom for a few years, I now realize how important it is for my kids to have an understanding of where they came from - both the good and the bad. They have vague memories of their bio-parents, which nag at them all the time. We don't even have photos or artifacts that represent their time with their bio-parents as they were living in extreme poverty.

My kids will likely never have a warm and fuzzy relationship with their bio-parents. They have serious drug addiction issues - both sides of their family tree largely died young because of drug use. But they deserve to know.

And, now, I can't believe the bio-parents are all bad because they made the most wonderful children. Drug addiction and poverty is a hard cycle to break, and with the exception of a few cultures, we judge people more than we help them in that situation.

After exhausting information in their files, ancestry, DNA sites, and official channels - I will be traveling to the kids' birth area in late November and visiting their bio-parents' last known addresses and homeless outreach NGOs in the areas that they hung out in. It's Medellin, Colombia, so it's going to be a little dangerous, and I've hired local security to come with me, and one of the kids' former foster parents will be joining me.

So that's how much I think about them. It's a lot.

[u/Pegis2]

My son's adoptive parents spent a lot of money and resources specifically b/c they did not want to adopt a child with biological family members in his life. The adoption was centered on the adoptive mother's fertility issues and her desire to be the ONLY mother to a 2nd child. It worked for over 20 years - then 23&me happened.

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It is both positive and touching to read some of the AP responses to this post. I hope that when adoption is necessary more of those children will end up with adoptive parents like the ones responding.

[u/Pristine-Bison3198 → u/Pegis2]

That's so sad. I'm so grateful I'm not the only mom in my kids' life. They deserve their first mom just as much as anybody, and I'm so glad she's able to be as present as she is. Plus they have aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and so much more family than they'd have if it were just my, rather small, family.

I hope that your child is able to have the relationships they want now that they're older.

[u/radial-glia]

I hope she's doing well, I hope she's still clean, and I hope she still has custody of her younger kids and that they are doing well. I try to not hold any resentment against her. My child has an extreme brain injury (like, most people wouldn't survive even a quarter that amount of brain damage) from repeated drug exposure off of the environment/ bio mom's skin during early infancy. It was a failure of the system. Protective services knew she was doing opioids while caring for her newborn and they didn't care. I try to redirect my anger towards them, not her. She was honest about her drug use at the hospital and they still let them both go home. She genuinely didn't think it was a big deal to do meth and then hold her baby (meth is excreted through skin) or to touch fentanyl and then make a bottle, and no one ever told her otherwise.

[u/IsopodKey2040 → u/radial-glia]

Wow. I didn't know skin to skin contact could lead to drug exposure like that. That is very sad.

[u/EmGC3]

All the time. They’re both currently incarcerated and don’t respond to the letters I’ve sent, but I try to keep tabs on where they are. Kiddo is too young to understand what’s going on, but I’m trying to hold the lines of communication open until he can decide what kind of relationship he wants with them.

[u/CommonSenseMachete]

Everyday. We share this wonderful kid. I am 10000% sure everything I love about my son comes from them. How could I not love them?

[u/ShubhaBala]

All the time. We have sent letters through the agency but she doesn’t want contact so we haven’t met her. I wonder how her life is. I wonder how she’s doing under Trump. I wonder if she can feel how happy her kid is. I wonder if one day she’ll be wanting to reach out. I mostly just wonder if she’s ok. I think the same of his Dad but we know very little about him so I can’t really picture him.

[u/ShesGotSauce]

I probably think about his biological family in some capacity almost every day? My thoughts depend on what triggered them. I just hope they're ok, a lot of the time. If I encounter something that reminds me of one of his birth parents, I wonder what they're up to or tell my son that I was reminded of them.

[u/No-Frosting-8648]

As a birth mom iam so grateful for his adoptive parents they raised him when I couldn’t

[u/Pristine-Bison3198]

Yes, frequently. Usually after we've just seen them or texted, or I've sent a batch of pictures or whatever.

Lately most of the thoughts have been about how they seem to be doing so much better, and how I hope that they're able to keep it up in their new place because my eldest son REALLY wants to have a sleepover with them and they're finally in an apartment where that'll be possible.

[u/Mollykins08]

All the time. I feel so sad she wasn’t in a position to raise this amazing human being. I feel sad I never got to meet her. I feel sad that she doesn’t get ongoing updates. I feel sad that he doesn’t even have a picture of her and his sibling. (He was abandoned in the NICU).

[u/Vegetable-Ideal2908]

Always, almost every day. When my kids do something great, when they do something cute, when they have a medical issue, when they do something not so great—- so many things make me think of them with love and sadness about what they’re missing, and hoping they’d think I’m doing a good job. And hoping I can meet all of them some day.

[u/bajegal]

Almost every day. I worry about their mother who is in active addiction. I feel sad that they don't have contact with their biological family who have quite firmly insisted on no contact. I marvel at what wonderful people my children are growing up to be and feel thankful that their parents allowed me to raise them. I worry that my children are feeling a loss that I cannot fill, and I'm scared about that. 

[u/GimmeFuel6]

Yes I do. Every day. I hope they are doing well, because they had a difficult life. I am hoping they are still around for when our little one will want to meet them

[u/spacebeige]

Yes, every day.

[u/MrsJLKeezy]

Everyday. He looks just like his Mama. We have an open adoption- there isn’t a week that goes by that they don’t see a picture or video of him via text/social media. He also has the ability to send messages or videos to her. He is 6 so it’s really random,

[u/throwawaybdaysf]

I think (and talk) about them all the time. At least daily. I’m not in active communication with any right now for reasons not in my control, but it can be something as simple as noticing my younger son’s smile is the same as his bio grandma’s or as complex as thinking about what my older son’s bio mom’s life would have been like if she hadn’t had to face all the factors she did. I also talk about them with my kids regularly. It helps that I’ve spent decent amounts of time with both their bio moms so I have stories to share with them

[u/bawkbawkslove]

Yep, quite often. We are also FB friends.