Would it bother you if your relatives kept forgetting your child was adopted? - Page 2

[Tigerchild]

Yeah, I can see how it's a little more complicated when people adopt bio relatives. Because honestly, there can be some pretty huge resemblances outside of a nuclear family after all! DD and her cousin, while they are starting to differentiate quite a bit now that they're entering/in the middle of puberty...well, if you look at baby and toddler photos of them at the same chronological age it is wild how much they look like each other. They look more like each other than DD does with her brothers. And all the men in my DH's family that share his surname (vs. marrying in) do have a very distinct look, it's pretty wild to see photographs from the last 100 years!

I think it's a little less cut and dried to answer when you adopt a relative. It's one thing to (if you choose, as either aparent or adoptee) gently point out that no, you don't share a bio connection with your folks. But if you DO, then that's a little more difficult because you do share a bio connection!

[AndVeeGeeMakes3]

Originally Posted by Tigerchild

I think it's a little less cut and dried to answer when you adopt a relative. It's one thing to (if you choose, as either aparent or adoptee) gently point out that no, you don't share a bio connection with your folks. But if you DO, then that's a little more difficult because you do share a bio connection!

Right, and I don't want to sever the connection, or diminish it. My own bio-niece, so the family joke goes, is really MY child that my sister gave birth to. God bless her, she's just like me (to her mother's annoyance, often). I actually worry more about how much people point out that connection than the one with dd/dh because I'm the "big sister" who supposedly has things figured out while my sister plays the role (or is cast in the role) of little sister f-up. She's had a roller coaster life, both as a mother and a person, and I sometimes think it stings her to have it pointed out that her smartypants kid is more like me than her. It's complicated by the fact that I did raise her children for several years.

Ah, family. The webs we weave -- biologically and otherwise.

[Smithie]

My father and his sisters were adopted by their maternal uncle when biomom took off for the last time. So their relationships to grandparents, cousins etc. actually remained just the same in the adopted family as they had been in the biofamily. (Their father's side was never in the picture, if they even all have the same father, a fact which they do not care enough about to get DNA testing for.)

Anyhow, there's no doubt that my dad looked just like his uncle/stepdad when he was a baby, and that my brother continued the chain of men-who-look-alike. It would have been pretty silly not to comment on it. The other children and grandchildren carry on the distinct family resemblances to different people. The extended family remains close, 50 years after the adoption, and we all get a big kick out of the intergenerational family resemblances. There are no non-kinship adoptions in the family, and only one transracial child (who looks a whole lot like many of her white relatives - she's most definitely "ours" in the bio-sense).

One effect that all this has, positively or negatively as the case may be, is to sort of disappear this kinship adoption over time. It's been a major thing in MY life because of the huge affect it had on my dad and aunts, but sitting here thinking about it right now I'm not even sure that all my cousins (i.e., the descendants of my father's first cousins) are even aware that the adoption happened. The biomom died in 1974 or so. The extended family pattern wasn't much altered by the transferral of the kids from one sibling to another. I would not be surprised to find out that my twentysomething cousins have no idea that my father was raised by his aunt and uncle, even though it's not a secret. And there is something a tiny bit sad about that. Biograndma's story is hardly edifying, but it might serve as a warning that manic depression needs to be treated. And the uncle/dad and aunt/mom are really two people who are best understood in the context of their infertility struggle and the enormous pressure that was placed on them to adopt this sibling group. If they didn't do an awesome job as parents, well, there is some context behind that that shouldn't be lost in the mists of time.

[SpottedFoxx]

First I'll speak as an adoptee...

The first time someone told me I looked like my Mom I went into the bathroom and cried. They were tears of happiness. Crazy thing is - my Mom and I sound EXACTLY the same on the phone. Even my grandmother couldn't tell us apart.

Second, I'll speak as an adoptive, white mother of a Guatemalan child...

Adoption is a one time event, it's not continuous. He exhibits traits of both myself and my husband (learned of course). He'll do something silly and I'll tell him he's just like his father.

[CalvinTy]

Great thread, I don't know where to start. I am an adoptee myself. Growing up, I had blue eyes and blond hair. Very German-like. My adoptive mother is 100% German, so when I walk with my adoptive parents, people can make a comment how I look like both of my parents (when they know I'm adopted). To me, that's fine because even if they were aware, I could understand why they said that as it does look like that way.

Sure, I have had stories where doctors feel stuck when I tell them I'm adopted because they feel like they are blind when it comes to genetic issues (well, hello, same here, Dr. John Doe). On top of it, I am deaf and was born deaf. My adoptive parents did not know I was deaf and confirmed it with tests when I was 2+ years old. So I also get questions from people like, "do you know if you have deafness in your family?" and I have to also reply, "no, because I'm adopted and I don't know anything about my biological family."

That reminds me-- I really need to stop procrastinating and start the process of looking for biological family, mostly for genetics reasons but also for genealogical reasons, too. I meant to do the process BEFORE I married, and BEFORE I had twin girls, go figure.

Cheers,

* CalvinTy

[CI Mama]

Speaking as an adoptee, I'll just say that this is one of umpteen things with adoption that can be weird or can be totally fine, just depends. Growing up, sometimes I loved it when people said I looked like my mom or sisters, sometimes I felt all self-conscious and weird. That mostly depended on how comfortable I was in myself regarding my adoption.

Now I'm raising a daughter that my partner and I conceived using sperm from an anonymous donor and my egg (I carried & birthed her). It is a real thrill to me that DD resembles me. She also doesn't resemble me in certain ways, and that's interesting, too.

People who know exactly how we conceived still often comment that DD looks like my DP. It's just one of those funny things.

I hope that as DD grows up, if she feels like it's weird that people comment about who she does or doesn't look like, she'll feel comfortable discussing it with us. For myself, 90% of the weirdness around those issues comes from an actual or perceived taboo against talking openly and freely.

[peaceful_mama]

Adoptee from the late 70s here...

People--in family mostly, sometimes not--would say how much I looked like my oldest half-brother all the time when I was little. (20 some years older than I am, dad remarried and they adopted me) Same hair color, same eye color.

What bothered me was when my mom told me that they were actually asked what hair/eye color baby they wanted, they got to pick, so they could pick out a baby who looked similar to the rest of the family and possibly not tell! That bothered me *way* more than having anyone say I fit into the family...
(my parents when asked this, said it didn't matter, but STILL it is just the idea...)

The funniest moment though came when my DS1 was a baby, at my first LLL meeting. The Leader at that time had worked with my mom at a store, so she also knew who I was.
She commented on how much my DS looked like my mom....and I *laughed* I couldn't help it! I had never really thought about it till that moment, but it was completely TRUE--he had a *ton* of curly brown hair and big brown eyes, just like my mom!
She, of course, did not know I am adopted....so then I had to explain the reaction...and then we both thought it was doubly funny.

*I* as an adoptee who has no clue about her birth family...LOVE seeing how my kids are like me. These are, after all, the first blood relatives I have known. They're the only people I have 'that connection' with...like my mom's side of the family and "the nose."

I was never one to care one way or the other about biology vs. adoptive family, still really don't think about it, but there is something cool about finally having that connection to some people.