THE MAGICAL MATCH
Carol Gindi
Those who have observed the process of birth parents selecting
adoptive parents for their children describe it identically: it's
"magic". Whether they are responding to a newspaper advertisement or
choosing from among photographs and letters of dozens of adoptive parents,
something about the adoptive parents catches the attention of the birth
parents.
While birth parents often have criteria for their child's adoptive parents,
there are hundreds of adoptive parents who could fit those requirements. What
is magical about the match is the intuitive way birth parents look at a photo
or read a letter from adoptive parents and find instant familiarity and
connection.
Adoptive parents who have been waiting awhile to be chosen should be careful
not to give way to feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. Birth parents aren't
looking for the most attractive parents. They are looking for people they
consider to be the best parents for their child based on who is most like the
parents they had or wished they had. While waiting to be chosen by birth
parents, adoptive parents should keep in mind that there is a child meant for
them; it just may not have been conceived yet.
When birth and adoptive parents don't have a chance to get to know each other,
there is less chance for that magical "click" to occur.
Families wanting to adopt range along a continuum from wishing to have
"adoption anonymity" to desiring "adoption notoriety".
Parents who seek anonymity are looking for a child who resembles the child they
wish they could have had by birth - a young, healthy infant of good potential,
who looks like them - and their fantasy is that this child will then be
"theirs" in the same sense that a biological child would have been.
They do not emphasize the fact that their child is adopted, but rather wish to
blend into the community and be viewed and treated like any other family.
At the other end of the continuum are parents who attract community attention
by virtue of either the size or the unique composition of the adoptive family
they have formed, or both. They adopt children whom most other people do not
wish to parent. These are the parents who adopt several children of different
racial and cultural backgrounds and who view themselves as a "United
Nations family"; or who successfully parent one or more children with
severe developmental or physical difficulties. Between these extremes are
parents who adopt children of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities for a
variety of reasons.
Adoption changes the perspective on all of the things that parents do for their
children. The adoptive parents must incorporate the adopted child into their
family in a way that recognizes the small difference that adoption makes, yet
gives full membership to the adopted child and maintains the family as a
well-functioning system for all of its members.
FOUR PHASES OF THE ADOPTION PROCESS
The first phase, the "uncertainty" phase, includes everything that
happens before the child comes into the adoptive family. The anxiety of the
adoptive parents at this time can be captured by the question, "Will we
get a child?".
The second phase covers the time from the new child's entry into the adoptive
family until the time the adoption is consummated. During this period of time,
the "apprehension" phase, the question of the adoptive parents is,
Can we keep our child?
Then follows the 3rd phase, the "accommodation" phase, which
continues throughout the period of the child's growing up.
The fourth phase, the "integration" phase, extends for the rest of
the lives of all who are part of an adoption. Then the core issue can be
characterized for the adoptive parents by the question, How is being an
adoptive parent different now?
During each of these phases, the adoptive family is coping with the
"regular" development tasks of its members, the family life cycle
issues, and the unique issues that families formed by adoption must face.
H. David Kirk, in his seminal 1964 study of adoptive families, Shared Fate (See
Kirk, 1984) was the first to clearly identify the acceptance of an adoption as
a critical variable in its success. His survey divided adoptive families into
two groups: those that acknowledged the differences made by adoption, and those
that denied those differences. His conclusion was that a balance between denial
and acknowledgment worked best, but that if a family were to err, it would be
better to err in the direction of acknowledgment rather than denial. Our
experience supports a variation of Kirk's continuum, with denial of differences
at one end and insistence on differences at the other. Bourguignon and Watson
(1987) list seven other issues that are different for the members of adoptive
families and that have the potential to be troublesome: entitlement; claiming;
unmatched expectations; shifts in family systems; separation, loss, and grief;
bonding and attachment; and identity formation.
ENTITLEMENT
The first issue, entitlement, refers to the adopted parents' sense that they
have both the legal and emotional right to be parents to their child. The legal
right is conferred in the court, the emotional right grows out of the parent's
increasing comfort with their roles as mother or father to the child. Open
adoption procedures in which the birth parent has some voice in the selection
of the adoptive family or even hands over the child to the new family are
powerful entitlement experiences.
We reinforce the sense of entitlement by sanctioning the parental role of the
potential adopters at every opportunity and by supporting the adoptive parents
in making parental decisions before they have completed the initial phase of
the process, referring to the child as "your child" and to the
adoption as a fait acompli.
CLAIMING
A second common adoption issue, "claiming", is the mutual process by
which as adoptive family and an adopted child come to feel that they belong to
each other. The process usually begins when the adopted parents find
similarities between the child's appearance or behavior and their own or those
of members of their families. During the first phase of the process, other ways
of claiming should be explored. The claiming process with an infant is
unilateral, since the infant cannot take conscious actions to claim the
adoptive family. There are a number of ways in which the adoptive parents can
stake their claim. If the infant is unnamed, they may consider giving the child
a name that ties him or her to the family; if the child already has a name,
they may choose to use a nickname or add an additional middle name with the
same purpose in mind. Not only the adoptive parents, but the members of the
child's new extended family, should claim the child. Photographs are helpful
here. Pictures both of the child and of the new family unit can be sent to
relatives; at every opportunity, pictures of the child with various members of
the adopted parents' extended families should be taken.
With an older child the claiming process can include all of these techniques,
but since the child must also claim the family, the options are expanded. The
task is to draw the new child, with all that the child "owns" from
earlier times, into the boundaries of the new family. Probably the most useful
tool in this process is a "life book". A life book is a scrapbook
that a child in placement is encouraged to keep. The child pastes photos,
cutout pictures, drawings, or comments about his or her past life into such a
book. For a child whose life has been disrupted, the book serves to provide a
thread of continuity and provides a way for him or her to access form of the
feelings about past experiences. It also is a way to bring the child's past
into the new family, so that this family can lay claim to the parts of the
child's life that the family and child have not spent together.
A "life book" prepared by the prospective adoptive family is also a
useful device in a family assessment and preparation. Like the genogram or
eco-map, such a book serves as a way of helping a family focus on aspects of
its own history and family dynamics that may be important to consider in terms
of adoption. A life book also serves as a way of helping the family to begin to
identify with some of the problems that children coming into adoption may have
in terms of gaps in their family histories.
Adoption has become a common, everyday phenomenon is our society. According to
sociologist David Kirk, one out of every five people in this country has some
kind of close connection to adoption. They either have a relative or a good
friend who was adopted, or they have adopted children or were adopted
themselves. Although no accurate data exists, estimates are that there is a
pool in this country of about eight hundred thousand adoptees under the age of
eighteen.
For several reasons, adoption is increasing. Couples now wait
longer to have children, and they often find it more difficult to conceive and
carry a healthy baby to term when they reach the age at which they feel ready
to be parents. Many researchers believe that long-term use of the IUD and the
pill have contributed to this increasing incidence of infertility.
In addition, some people still focus on the stigma surrounding an unmarried
birth mother, associating adoption with illegitimacy. Others persist in
regarding adopted children as somehow less than "real". They may
actually refer to your birth children as your "real (or natural)
children" if you have biological as well as adopted children.
When our time has come, our magical match will appear. It is not a process that
can be pushed or manipulated, it will just happen naturally. Have faith and
always hold good and positive thoughts.
MORE ARTICLES
The Blessing of Infertility
Carol Gindi
The Royal Prince
Carol Gindi
What Kind of a Relationship Should We Have
With Our Birthmother?
Carol Gindi
Making A Difference: Big or Small?
Allan Gindi
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