Adoption is Not a Cure For Your Infertility

I am adopted. This is a fact I have known about myself for as long as I can remember. People, when they find out about my situation, will often ask how my adoptive parents broke this earth shattering information to me. The truth is, there was no ‘big reveal’. By the time I was born in the early 1990s, social workers were advising adoptive families to introduce the word ‘adopted’ into their child’s vocabulary through books and play- hence why I had a number of ‘adopted’ teddy bears, and fell asleep listening to bedtime stories about birth families and legal documentation. During these young years, the information I received was controlled and came solely from my adopted family- I had no reason to be upset by it and no cause to question their version of events. Being adopted was as much an objective fact about me as having blue eyes or a love of chocolate.

My exposure to the wider world as time went on began to hold a mirror up to how my family really felt about my being adopted, outside of the politically correct pages of social stories. I can remember proudly telling another child in the swimming pool on a family holiday that I actually had two sets of parents, and being reprimanded when we got back to the hotel room for ‘telling people our personal business’. I can clearly recall my adoptive parents comparing the physical appearance of my brother and I (also an adoptee) to that of other family members when speaking to acquaintances, and my interjections with ‘but I’m adopted’ being met with an under the table kick and an attempt to pass this off as a poorly judged joke. My passport and all official documents claim that I was born in the city that my parents raised me in, rather than the city I was actually born in- a consequence of this being declared by my parents to authorities when I was an infant. As domestic adoptees, my brother and I have the mixed blessing of being the same race as our adoptive parents- meaning the chances of somebody physically identifying us as being genetically different from our family are slim. The fact that I am pale, fair haired, short, and of slim build in a family of sallow, six foot something rugby players is easily dismissed by onlookers as genes skipping a generation. It is very easy to convince the public, and to an extent yourself, that your child is not adopted when you are in a situation like ours. The question it always left me with was- why do they want me to pretend I’m not adopted? What’s wrong with being adopted? I am not ashamed of where I came from. My adoptive parents, however, are deeply ashamed of it- though they may not be able to admit this even to themselves.

I was reunited with both of my birth parents separately when in my early twenties. Both of these reunions ended up being unsuccessful, for a myriad of complicated reasons. In both instances, my adoptive family were largely unsupportive of the reunions. Although I tried to include everyone by inviting my adoptive parents to both initial meetings, what followed both times was my adoptive father listing off reasons he didn’t like my birth parents as people, and my adoptive mother never mentioning the meetings again. My adoptive father also had incidents of great anger and emotional outbursts as I continued to give updates of how these relationships were going- incidents that I was expected to apologise for, being the person who triggered them by mentioning the names of my birth parents. One of the largest of these outbursts was on the eve of my graduation from college- an event that I cannot look at photographs of to this day, such is the feeling of anxiety that washes over me. The reunions ultimately failing was the single most viscerally painful thing that has ever happened to me, in particular in the case of my birth mother. The fact that my adoptive parents took a sense of satisfaction, and the unspoken ‘I told you so’ that hung in the room when I told them that contact had been cut, did little to help (I would like to nominate this sentence for the official understatement of the century awards). Even after years of reflection, I can see no logical reason why my adoptive parents would have such a strong dislike of my birth parents, who they know little about- other than resentment. And how can you resent the person who brought the child that you raised and love into the world, unless you have completely neglected to deal with your own emotions around infertility.

I am not trying to conceive a child myself, but I have followed online communities for people who are trying to conceive for as long as I can remember. It’s my dirty little secret; the only evidence of which is that I sometimes clumsily let my knowledge of egg optimising drugs, ovulation cycles and IVF statistics slip in casual conversation. I have always wanted to get into the heads of my adoptive parents, to try and have empathy for how adoption must feel for them, and how an infertility journey that they can’t bring themselves to talk about culminated in the family they have today. I know from reading these that adoption is a last resort; that people would rather do anything to secure a ‘real’ child before they’d consider lowering their standards to someone like me. I see the saviour complex that often accompanies it, and how couples start to convince themselves that adopting is doing a really good charitable act for a poor orphan, rather than a product of any selfish motivation. I recognise this sentiment from my own life in fact, when in teenage arguments my father would remind me that he didn’t have to ‘take me on’. I would need another ten pages to explain why this makes me so angry, but instead let me just be blunt and say- I was put up for adoption on the day of my birth, a physically healthy, blonde haired, blue eyed baby; the genetic child of two privileged, college educated people. If I had been up for auction, none of the do-gooders on the forum would have been able to afford me. Please don’t trick yourself into thinking you’re adopting domestically because you’re a good person- be honest about your motivations.

Many years ago, I asked my adoptive mother if she wished I wasn’t adopted. Her answer was instant. ‘Of course!’ At the time, nobody I confided in could understand why this hurt me in the way it did. Surely this is a compliment, for somebody to love you so much that they wished you were theirs in every sense of the world? I assure you, it is not. Because I am adopted, I will always be adopted, I will never be the child my parents clearly still wish they had. Even if getting to know me over the course of my life has caused the vague image of the child they prayed for to take on my features and my personality, I am still not her. I am an actor, standing in in her role, and that is all I can be until I am embraced and celebrated for exactly who I am and where I come from.

This may sound as if I hate my adoptive parents. I don’t. I love them, deeply and painfully; and I have an excellent relationship with both of them. But this will always be the elephant in the room, and I will always be hurt by it. Because the truth is, despite all the complications that it has brought, I am glad I am adopted. I am glad of my genetics, of the skills and physical attributes they have given me- I am happy with who I am as a physical person. I am glad of my environment- of the city I grew up in, of the schools I got to attend, of the people I had a chance to form relationships with. And I am glad of my family- of the parents who have such an intense interest in everything I do in my life, and whose regrettable actions around my adoption are genuinely motivated by the fact that they love me more than they know how to handle. I would just give anything for them to be glad I’m adopted too.

I am not saying do not adopt. I am not against adoption in theory. I am saying please do not bring your unsolved issues with infertility into an adoption. Please do not put that baggage on the back of an innocent child, and ask them to carry it because you don’t know how to. Grieve your infertility, cry for the children that you will never have- do not attempt to substitute a child born of someone else into their place. Respect the fact that an adopted child is already a person, with a story and a genetic code that has absolutely nothing to do with you, and you have no right to try and alter or cover this is any way. Do not withhold a person’s own information from them, you have no right to do so, even if they are in your care. Do not adopt if you cannot support your child in a search for their birth family, if they wish to do so. If you are an adoptive parent, you chose this situation- the child did not. I am so sorry that you have fertility issues, but speaking as a child put up for adoption, this is not my fault or my problem to solve. By all means adopt- but do so with your eyes open, and your wounds healed.