Risks of Adoption to the Child Adopted
Don’t discount the importance of DNA.
When we talk about the risks of adoption, many folks are quick to say that DNA doesn’t matter.
They liken that the importance of an improved life for the child in terms of opportunities, financial gains, etc. will counteract any perceived losses if they even can acknowledge those losses. It’s like a convoluted math equation, where one wants to believe that the pluses created by the adoption will more than the losses obtained by the relinquishment. But even 30 positive gains cannot take the place of certain aspects of biological and genetics that are important to human nature. No matter how wonderful adoptive parents are, they cannot recreate the experience of genetic mirroring. The loss of genetic mirroring must be counted as a cost of adopting.
What is Genetic Mirroring Anyway?
For those non adopted, it might seem easy to dismiss the importance of genetic mirroring since we do not have to think about it. It is just there. But it’s like saying that the air we breathe is not important because we don’t think about it and its just there. If we were to not have oxygen for even a few minutes, each and every one of us would be screaming to have it restored. Genetic mirroring is like that. You don’t know how important it is until it is gone and even then, so many adoptees are not even aware WHAT they missed. But something is defiantly missing; it’s just one of those adoptee concepts that is kind of ambitious and not a completely tangible concept.
To understand the concept of genetic mirroring one has to think about their own concept of “self”. Think about the mental image that you have of yourself throughout your life. I know that I don’t think of “me” now as different than I did at 16. I feel like the same “me” inside and sometimes, when I look in the mirror I am surprised to find such an older face looking back. Sometimes, I see my mother staring back and I am completely unnerved, but, and this part is important, at least she is a familiar face. I have known for many years that as I get older, I will continue to feel the same inside…just me, just Claud, but the face in the mirror is slated for more gray hairs and wrinkles. So think about your mental image of your own self and what has changed and was has not over time.
Now, we apply self image to adoptees.
Imagine if Your Face Felt Wrong
The first time I “got” genetic mirroring was back in 2007 at the KAAN conference in Boston. An adult Female adoptee was speaking about her experience of being an Korean adoptee in a rural town in New Hampshire. She was the only Korean in the area, her school, her social circles. Her New England town was not known for its Asian community.
So she spoke about seeing nice Caucasian Anglo faces in her adoptive family, in her school, in her town. Over and over, she would see blue eyes, blond hair, freckles, American faces. And then, she would catch her reflection in the mirror and it would be shocking. Her own face was unfamiliar to her and as she never got to see other Asian faces, her own face registered to her as “wrong”. She had an internal mental image of herself that did not jive with the reality of what she saw in the mirror.
Now, one might think it was her parents who failed her by bringing her to a rural racially exclusive area away live. Many adoption professionals stress the importance of culture camps and integrating an adoptee’s original identity into their lives, but it’s not quite as simple as that. Even seeing other Asian or Korean faces would not be the same as seeing her face, with her unique visual traits.
The China Adoptee I Worry About
I got into a conversation one time at the car rental counter. I was returning from a conference and the sales woman asked about where I had been, etc. She went on to tell me her own adoption story. Her father and step mother had adopted a girl from China. When the child was about 6 or so, the adoptive mother was diagnosed with cancer and passed on a few years later.
Now the woman I was speaking to, the adopted step sister or whatever, was not super young, but in her twenties and I confirmed that dad was not a spring chicken. It was his second marriage and like some folks, his 2nd wife was older, but it was her first marriage and wanted a child. So off to China they went. In my head, I hurt for this poor girl..now lost two mothers and raised by a much older gentleman who might or might not have agreed to the adoption to make his now deceased wife happy.
I’m not making this worry up. The rental lady expressed her own concerns over her “sister” and I put this in quotes because that was her feeling…not really her sister, but this child now being raised by her own father. On top of the losses already incurred, the father was about to remarry again, but this time and older woman who had already raised her children. To top it off, the father and adoptee were going to move out of a culturally diverse Area to the very rural horse counry of Virginia. Where there were almost no Asian in the general population.
The three minute retail return turned into a 45 minute discussion about genetic mirroring and the importance of it as this lady asked what she could do to help her sister. By time I left she was pretty educated and ready for a discussion with her father, but sadly, neither one of us expected him to change his plans to move. I wonder often about this girl..a lone China Adoptee living among the horsey set.
She has no one to help her feel good or even comfortable about her face. No genetic mirroring.
Natural Genetic Mirroring
Still too ambiguous of a concept? Let’s look at it from a non adoption related perspective.
We have strong genetics in my family. As stated, I often see my mother when I look into the mirror. And my daughter is pretty much, well.. my clone. At this juncture, before the teenage years, we are very close and have a good mother daughter bond.
My daughter loves to tell me that I am pretty. I tell her she is beautiful and a good person. I am conscious of not putting myself down in front of her, even when I don’t feel too pretty myself because we can see that these kind of behaviors teach girls to look at themselves negatively. There has been discussion about mothers that avoid the camera or when a mother insists that she is fat and what it teaches their girls about self image. All these articles on these issues are, in part, about mirroring, but they just don’t go for the genetic aspects. Still same concept.
Anyway, one night I am tucking her younger self into bed and I go to kiss her. We are chatting and as I smile, she says, “oh Momma, I love that smile.” and my reply is “Good..because someday you will probably have the same smile.”
Now, this is essential for people growing up..both males and females…to learn how to feel good about themselves, how to love themselves.
The Subtle Nature of Generic Mirroring
It’s really not that complicated.
My daughter loves me. She has all these natural feelings of bonding and closeness that started a newborn. Study after study has proven that even blurry eyed newborns look for and know their mother’s faces first. Kids watch their parent’s faces first as that is their whole world, adopted or not. Then it spreads out to extended family, friends, school, etc, but family shapes a lot. They learn to talk by mimicking us. They learn to read people by watching us. They want to be us. They know our faces, and being their whole world, they love our faces as they love us.
So when they see the same traits on their selves, they are more apt to have good feeling about those physical traits, knowing that they are in a way “gifts” from someone they love. When she gets older and looks in the mirror and catches me looking back, hopefully she won’t be too horrified. She will have fond memories of me and (this is important) somewhere, deep inside herself, she will still believe that I’m beautiful, so therefore, she is likely to feel beautiful herself.
Everyone Loses Out: Generic Mirroring
While my Italian Irish Spanish (me) Scottish ( his father) son was adopted by Italian Irish people, he wasn’t the only one who lost the opportunity to have genetic mirroring in his life. I thought I had written about this before, but I can’t find the post where I talk about in detail, so I’ll do it again!
When we visited Max in Boston, I was very conscious of how Tristan, was ALL over Max’s face. Now, Tristan is the lone blue eyed child with Rye, myself, Garin and Scarlett all sporting a pair of browns. That is something he has asked about before, so it’s not a big deal nor a bad thing as his eyes are killer gorgeous, but he does know that no one else in the house shares his eye color. Max also has the blue eyes.
I could literally see Tristan using Max as genetic mirror while we were there. He was sitting on his lap, climbing all over him, squishing his face and just STARING at Max like he was memorizing every detail. And he was. He was loving on Max’s face and I am so thankful that Max was happy to let him do it.
Soon after we came back, Tristan saw this neat fedora and asked me to buy it for him. I wasn’t going to but then he completely got me.
“Mom, Max has a hat like that.”
Yeah, I bought him the hat.
I really do think those two.. .my blue eyed book end boys…are most alike in some ways. And Tristan needed to see himself in his big brother. I just hate that because of what I did, that adoption has taken that away from my other child as well.
The Loss of Genetic Mirroring is a Cost of Adoption
Thus it, one of the true costs of adoption. A loss for the adoptee who has no one to use a true genetic mirror and, sadly, the ripple effects can be wide spread and go down generationally.
For me genetic mirroring can be both obvious and subtle. Sometimes, it’s about the obvious resemblances, but there’s also an element of it that is harder to pin down. It’s almost subconscious — just a way that I feel with my bios. I’m aware that I let my guard down because I understand, on a cellular level, that I’m with my people. I believe genetic mirroring is nature’s way of letting us know that we are in the right place. When you don’t have it in your life at all (as was the case for me when I was younger), something just feels a little “off” all of the time.
I often wonder that about my own daughter. I see her since it’s an open adoption, but I wonder if she recognizes my husband and I. She’s only four, but looks VERY different from her aparents (Jewish) and my husband and I are Irish,French,Welsh. I swear when she became older that she had this sense of “recognition” on her face….like she knows us from somewhere. We’ve been in her life since birth, but would only visit a couple times a year due to geography.
I recently read an excerpt written by a woman who remembers seeing her father when she was around four years old, not knowing that was who he was. Years or decades later, she asked her mother if that man she saw was her father. Her mother replied yes, but was surprised that her daughter had even seen him at this event or noticed him. This woman remembered being mesmerized by, drawn to this man who was supposed to be a stranger.
So, based on what you and this other woman wrote, I can believe that your daughter “recognizes” something unique and important to her.
So much of how I relate to my biological children is about my innate understanding of them genetically. My 9 year old son is so much like me personality wise and I just inherently know why he acts or reacts the way he does about certain things. I understand his sensitivity and his anxieties so clearly because he has my DNA. My daughter, who clearly takes after my husband, has the same connection with her father. He understands her better simply because she has his DNA. When I am confused or don’t understand why she is feeling or acting a certain way, he provides clarity.
I worry about the son I gave up. I worry that no one in his life will be able to understand him the same way my husband and I understand our children. Another fact I wish I had known before adoption entered my life.
Genetic mirroring is a myth. Biology doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make one friggin’ bit of difference if a child looks like his parents, acts like his parents, ages like his parents, etc. Because by some mysterious process of osmosis, as long as genetic strangers have enough lurve, they magically become the child’s REAL and ONLY parents. It’s exactly the same as if the egg donor and the sperm donor never even existed.
And when you take this belief to its logical and delusional conclusion, you end up with an outcome like Adoptive Couple vs. Baby Girl.
I remember the first time I laid eyes on a biological family member. I was thirty-five years old and I was meeting my natural mother for the first time. I had no idea what she looked like, as she never sent photos; she had only mentioned that we resembled each other.
As I was walking down the ramp into the airport, I instantly spotted her in a crowd of people. I knew that second that she was my mother. My heart rate increased and I felt like I was walking slow-motion, as though in ether. I can only describe it as an out-of-body experience. It felt like something shifted deep within me.
I never told anyone this, because I thought I was imagining it, until I started reading about other adoptees with the same experience.
I feel a great sense of comfort and “effortlessness” when I am with my biological family, especially my brother. I feel as though I finally belong.
As an adult adoptee who recently reunited with her birth family, I can speak to the amazing awe with which I looked upon my birth family for the first time and saw my own features in theirs. It was beautiful and phenomenal. As an attachment therapist and adoptee, however, I disagree with the underlying assumptions of this article. While I am sure genetic mirroring can help the bonding process, what MATTERS, from a neurobiological level, the only thing that matters, is that parents can emotionally and psychologically attune to their infants affect. That is what creates secure attachment. Adoption creates an attachment disruption, for certain. A traumatic one. But if the adopted parents can provide solid attunement to their child’s affect, it can do immense good and forge a lasting bond. Vice versa, in my case, now knowing my birth mom, I can say with fair certainty, with the emotional and environmental stressors in her life around the time I was born, along with mental illness she would not have had the capacity to attune to me. I am so grateful that I was given to a family who could.
I’m not sure what “underlying assumptions” you think I am making; I am saying quite outright that genetic mirroring can be important and that it is lost with adoption. Didn’t say it was the most and of only importance; but that it cannot be replicated.
Being where you are in your journey; you can see your own adoption from a certain level and decide whether or not it was of value to you and of course, you have the full right to decide if relinquishment was beneficial to you. I do however, think it becomes dangerous territory when we apply what I like to call “adoption math” to all situations based on personal experience, though I am often guilty of ding the same. For instance in your case, when you add up all the pluses and minus, you came out on top. So the loss of the genetic mirroring was out gained by having other needs fulfilled in capacity by your adoptive parents and the potential positive aspects of having genetic mirroring would have been cancelled out by the situation should you have stayed with your original mother. But again, that’s just your equation. For another adoptee, who’s original family could have been equal as the adoptive family, and when the benefits of the adoptive family are on par or lesser, then the genetic mirroring loss could very well be amplified.
And that’s why we shouldn’t be looking at the “math” and this piece doesn’t talk about other aspects; it’s looking at to understand ONE issue, one loss, one negative.. that no matter what the other circumstances WILL BE MISSING.
Happy Adoptee,
I’m also not sure what you disagree with this opinion on genetic mirroring. I thought she made it quite clear that genetic mirroring shouldn’t be discounted or ignored or fully replaced. If you replace apples with oranges, you don’t get apples, you get oranges. Oranges and apples grow differently, respond to environmental conditions differently, and taste different. Even if you move them to Florida, they will still be apples vs oranges and will behave according to their genetic disposition. As an adult adoptee, who has studied biology, medicine, psychology, cultural anthropology, and childhood development, I agree with everything this author has written here and am grateful that she wrote about this topic so well. Psychological and emotional attuning is important and a good start, but doesn’t replace the lack of genetic mirroring.
It’s great that you, after reflecting on your own circumstances, are at peace with your own story. But that still doesn’t negate that you grew up without knowing other people biologically related to you. You’re fortunate that while knowing very little about your family medical history, you weren’t diagnosed with a hereditary, life-threatening illness, while being unable to have potentially life-saving answers. And I don’t know what efforts were made to help your birth mom during that stressful time, but if she had wanted or tried to keep you, but had to deal with those stressors at that time, I can imagine there could be some sadness and regret at having to make such a permanent, emotional, and life-changing choice without adequate support. But, I don’t know your story as well as you, and I’m glad that you have gotten answers to your satisfaction and are content with the decisions other people made about you.
Hi Kym and Claudia,
Thank you for your thoughtful replies. Indeed, my comment was not meant to negate the importance or profound power of genetic mirroring. Having people in my life now who look like me as AMAZING! I’m still awe struck every time I get to hang out with my bio family and see the resemblances. However, just because that was a loss from adoption, it was not an acute pain throughout my upbringing that made me resentful or less well-adjusted. I did want to share my personal, positive experience as an adult adoptee, however, because, indeed, I think it is harmful to make sweeping generalizations about any particular group of people. From my experience online and in real time, sharing experiences with other adoptees, I have discovered that everyone’s story and subjectivity is their own. I have cousins who are also “happy” adoptees, a friend who has had a more negative experience. Same with birthmothers – my adoptive mom actually relinquished her child when she is 20, and she is still glad she made that decision due to her life circumstances at the time. She had a large, supportive family who helped her grief and were open to hearing the torrent of emotions she felt in the years to come. She also had a fair amount of information about the adoptive family that gave her a sense of peace. I am aware that many birthmothers were not lucky enough to have such supportive environments, including my own birthmother. I agree that birthmother’s should be far more supported, and am abhorred to know that my own birthmother was subtly coerced by the Catholic home she spent her pregnancy in to give me up for adoption. Again, however, my personal circumstances are so that despite it being traumatic for my birthmom, I selfishly have to admit that I am relieved that she adopted me. Despite not knowing the details of my family medical history, I am still SO, so, so grateful I was adopted.
I guess, after reading several posts and comment threads on this site, I am left wondering if ya’ll think there are ANY situations in which you feel domestic infant adoption could be an ethical, viable and beneficial route? Indeed, in an ideal and more just world, we would live in a society that provides social services and infrastructure that would make it possible for young, single or otherwise financially disadvantaged mothers to be able to raise their children without it being devastating to their ability to financially provide for their families. Unfortunately, that is not the country we live in, which is an outrage. In the case of my birth mom and my (adoptive – but no less a brother) brother’s birth mom, they were both women with severe and persistent mental illnesses. We are both grateful to have been adopted. My own birth mom does not regret her decision, as she admits she does not believe she could have given me the type of nurturing environment I needed as a child. I wish that she would have had more support from her family and community, and I am deeply saddened to know that she was shamed by the religious community she was in for becoming pregnant. All that said, from my knowledge and study of infant/caregiver attachment, I believe that in cases where a birth mother would not be able to provide the nurturing and attunement needed for a infant to develop into a healthy adult, adoption may be a good route. Am open and curious to hear opposing opinions.
Dear HappyAdoptee,
With all due respect, I believe you’re not proposing the best question. Your question focuses on domestic infant adoption, which is not where I believe the concern should be. I feel a more worthy discussion would focus on children’s welfare. Our goal, as a society, shouldn’t be on how to make domestic infant adoptions possible or acceptable or to increase their frequency, but how to best take care of children while respecting their lives and rights when in vulnerable circumstances and throughout the continuum of their lives.
I understand that we don’t live in an ideal, perfectly just world, but it’s a disservice to the many vulnerable children and families to steer ourselves away from the welfare of these children.
And, I agree with you – it is harmful to make sweeping generalizations about a particular group of people. Your experience is your experience, and it’s great that you’re happy with how life has evolved for you. Hopefully, it will continue to make you happy. Many other people haven’t had the same beginnings or continuations in life as you, and thus shouldn’t be pushed into feeling as happy about their own lives as you are about your own experience. I hope you remember that in your counseling practices and allow your clients to express their differing perspectives on their own realities.
Respectfully,
Kym
Dear Happy Adoptee,
I just reread what I wrote. I want to clarify my middle paragraph: I feel that adoption can be discussed as a PART of children’s welfare, but we should commit to focus on children’s welfare, irrespective of adoption.
Kym, I feel like you are misunderstanding my statements and the purpose of my question. I am focused primarily on the welfare of children, which is why I asked the question. In my case, my brothers case and also in the case of many kids, adoption has been the best option for them. I’m asking the question not because I want an increase in the number of domestic infant adoptions, but because I am really curious if it can sometimes be held as an ideal option for a child.
This site’s foundational premise is the belief that domestic infant is ALWAYS wrong. That seems like a broad, sweeping generalization to me given that their are many people, both birthmothers and adoptees, who disagree. The negative, harmful experiences of adoptees and birthmothers should be heard, respected and listened to. But so should other stories. I am not staunchly pro or anti adoption, I am seeking to shed a light on the gray- the complexity, subjectivity and in-between views that make it impossible to hold black and white views