What are the emotional effects of adoption on adoptees and adopting parents?

Lillie

Well, try to imagine your mother abandoning you.

Then try to imagine being sent to live with strangers, having your entire history sealed away like some dirty secret, and be expected to be "grateful" for losing your mother (and family) and having that information kept from you.

If you're an international adoptee, try to imagine losing not only your mother and family, but your language, your culture, your heritage, and having to assimilate into a NEW culture where people look different and act different and even the foods and smells are different.

What do you suppose the emotional effects would be for you?

Mei-Ling

Experiencing the psychological deaths of my mother and father.

JennaBear

identity confusion
ethnic identity confusion
fear of abandonment (hey it happened once what's to stop it from happening again?)
fear or rejection
low self esteem
genealogical bewilderment
anger
sadness
pain
grief over loss of natural mother, father, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc. etc. etc.

gratittude

wait, just kidding with that last one....

The adopted child, no matter how happy he or she is with their APs will always wonder why they weren't wanted by their birth parents.

They can grow up feeling abandoned and unwanted.

Internationally adopted children- if they do not learn about their culture growing up they will not feel like they fit in anywhere. Not fully with people of different ethnicity and not fully with their own ethnicity.

There is the loss of culture and language which is something that is very regretted.

If the child is older there is the hardness of leaving one place and trying to adapt to a new place with new people and just new everything.

Renee King

As an adoptive parent I feel I have to live up to a higher standard than biological parents. I want my son to feel he has the best mother who has taught him about life, loved him unconditionally, who laughs and cries with him. I do not want him to ever regret that he was adopted. I feel adoptive parents try to be better parents because they want to feel loved just as much as the child wants to feel loved.

gin

there are so many emotions when going threw this, me and my husband are going threw an adoption and have been for several months. We are taking PATH classes which help explain everything that is going on and how to deals with it and also how to help the children adjust once you get home with them. We are adopting a 10month old little boy so he will be to young to remember but will still possibly have some effects from this.. If you are adopting i would suggest going to PATH classes they help alot.. Good luck

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