What are your expectations as an adoptee

[rainbow]

I call it the "Dr Dill" show. Unwatchable twaddle. It wouldn't surprise me what that twit came out with.

I don't like him either. I was flipping the channels and stopped when I heard what was being said.

[JohnLloydScharf]

Adoption and Secrecy

I think adoption is the best option if the mother is not ready/able to take care of the child or the alternative is abortion. What I do not believe is it is in any way necessary to keep the identity of the parents a secret.

I thought of this thread while watching part of today's "Dr. Phil" show and he was trying to talk a teenage girl into giving her unborn baby up for adoption. She wants to keep and raise her baby.

I don't usually watch his show and the episode was sickening. My heart went out to this girl. I hope she stays strong and doesn't give up her child.

I think adoption, especially forced adoption, is almost the same as baby-snatching. Constant haranguing and guilt trips and mental/verbal/emotional abuse with the facade of "what's best for the baby" also counts as forced adoption in my book.

Instead of taking a baby from it's mother (usually a poor mom) to give it to a well-to-do family, agencies should do all they can to help the mother and child stay together (and father), but adoption is big business.

[AllenUnknown]

My two cents worth...

I for one, wish to God, my mother would have put me up for adoption. Almost anything would have been better than living with her and monster step-father.

[JPHutchins]

I am 61 yrs old and I was placed for adoption as possibly the best action of a young mother. Her first child had died as a result of a new inexperienced doctor using birth tongs.

I was told from about 4 or 5 years of age that I was adopted. But I was told that my adoptive parents did not have any information about my bio-parents. I now find that might not have been true, but both of my adoptive parents are deceased.

My bio-mother went on to produce seven more children, likely each by a different father. From talking to my bio-siblings, they had a very harsh life and were taken away by Child Protective services for about 3 years.

It would appear as though I definitely had the best early life of the 8 children. My bio-mother died 2 years before my bio-siblings located me.

I have never had any regrets about being adopted. And after learning of the options, I am even more happy that I was adopted.

John

[JohnLloydScharf]

Peace Through Leaving Expectations Behind

Unlike my paternal half-brother, I did not believe our father was German. I thought our father must have been Jewish. He was not happy with my birth father. I suspect he was better with my mother and her family.

He and his brothers were taken from an orphanage in Denver to be workers in Nebraska in about 1920, which made him about seven. He was with a widow to fix/maintain her windmill. He was a workaholic and a supervisor when my mother met him. Given how he got his name, Scharf, and his brothers Shurvington, I sometimes refer to my name as my slave name.

I did not really learn to speak until I was three and he died before that. I just remember getting a spanking for spilling an ashtray and being given a rifle stock.

My mother married my Dad [stepfather] on my 6th birthday. He and I did not get along. I thought he was too tough. He said little to me and always expected more of me. I did not like him. We really had serious disagreements between the ages of 14 and 17. I thought I got a bad deal.

Reality orientation came in the US Navy. Life was a lot harder than I had dealt with at home. I found out others had seriously abusive fathers and stepfathers. My Dad hit me once for calling my mother a name. He had a problem with alcohol, but it never affected his work or home life, other than a DUII, once He was better to my sons than I was, or, in fact most fathers/stepfathers/grandparents are.

At various times, I thought my grandfather must have been a gangster, Russian Jew, et cetera. Now, given the timeframe, he could have been a Armenian escaping their holocaust.

Regarding John Hutchen's comment on birth tongs, they were never anything but a brutal instrument. I came out with black eyes and I have no sense of smell. That and putting a woman in stirrups seems to be medeval.

When my son was born I had my wife supported in a semi-sitting position. After he crowned, he came out like a torpedo. He almost went into the garbage at the bottom of the table.

Then the afterbirth came out. Then I understood the use of the garbage can, but that was after I just about passed out. I had forgotten to expect the afterbirth and I thought my wife was having a prolapsed uterus.

Doctors, DNA, and parents are like a box of chocolates. People try to make the best decision at the time and we were not there to see the reasons why.

[Linds]

I'm not an adoptee (at least not in the traditional sense), I am donor-conceived. But our stories and our situations are so similar. My mother was a single mother by choice (before there was such a term), so I *always* knew I was donor-conceived, but when I was 4 she married, and from that point on my conception became a taboo subject. It really made me feel like something what seriously wrong with me, and that the story of my conception was so horrible that it was not to be spoken of. When I was 10 my step-father legally adopted me (so I'm actually half-adopted...). I think the hardest thing about that was having my surname taken away from me. It was the one thing I felt like that connected me to my heritage, and to carry the surname of my "dad" was very upsetting.

So I've been searching for my biological father now on and off for 8 years, but really only was able to get anywhere when I was given access to my mother's medical records and discovered my "donor number". When I called the sperm bank I was given a short list of non-identifying information...as was the norm in the early 1980s. From three bits of information (his date of birth, his year in college, and the year he started donating) I was able to identify a man from digitized yearbooks and Ancestry.com's public records indices, that I felt very strongly was my biological father. More research on him gave me further evidence, but I had no proof. This was last August.

So I did the FF test in June to see if I could get proof. And boy did I get the proof!! My first batch of matches (last week) had 12 close relatives including a suggested 2nd cousin (that turned out to be a 1st cousin 2x removed). And the greatest part is that they all know my story, they all are accepting me into their family, and are all extremely supportive of my contacting my biological father in the coming weeks/months.

I'm really still in shock by it all. I can't believe how incredibly lucky I got. I think for me, doing this test versus just contacting my bio father without it, is that even if he doesn't want to know me, I've found my family and at least his extended family is interested. And I would hope that if he even was contemplating not wanting anything to do with me, the idea that I have already become a member of his family through his relatives might change his mind.

[Zaru]

Wow!

I'm not an adoptee (at least not in the traditional sense), I am donor-conceived. But our stories and our situations are so similar. My mother was a single mother by choice (before there was such a term), so I *always* knew I was donor-conceived, but when I was 4 she married, and from that point on my conception became a taboo subject. It really made me feel like something what seriously wrong with me, and that the story of my conception was so horrible that it was not to be spoken of. When I was 10 my step-father legally adopted me (so I'm actually half-adopted...). I think the hardest thing about that was having my surname taken away from me. It was the one thing I felt like that connected me to my heritage, and to carry the surname of my "dad" was very upsetting.

So I've been searching for my biological father now on and off for 8 years, but really only was able to get anywhere when I was given access to my mother's medical records and discovered my "donor number". When I called the sperm bank I was given a short list of non-identifying information...as was the norm in the early 1980s. From three bits of information (his date of birth, his year in college, and the year he started donating) I was able to identify a man from digitized yearbooks and Ancestry.com's public records indices, that I felt very strongly was my biological father. More research on him gave me further evidence, but I had no proof. This was last August.

So I did the FF test in June to see if I could get proof. And boy did I get the proof!! My first batch of matches (last week) had 12 close relatives including a suggested 2nd cousin (that turned out to be a 1st cousin 2x removed). And the greatest part is that they all know my story, they all are accepting me into their family, and are all extremely supportive of my contacting my biological father in the coming weeks/months.

I'm really still in shock by it all. I can't believe how incredibly lucky I got. I think for me, doing this test versus just contacting my bio father without it, is that even if he doesn't want to know me, I've found my family and at least his extended family is interested. And I would hope that if he even was contemplating not wanting anything to do with me, the idea that I have already become a member of his family through his relatives might change his mind.

This places a new and exhilarating spin on issues confronting us in genetic testing. I cannot begin to imagine how I would work through this. The amount of questions would overwhelm me. Your issues have really shed some light on how I relate/define family. Kudos to you for pursuing this!

Whose surname did you bear when you were born? Are the legal issues similar to those who are adoptees? This is fantastic indeed.

Cheers for posting and good luck.

[gtc]

So I did the FF test in June to see if I could get proof. And boy did I get the proof!! My first batch of matches (last week) had 12 close relatives including a suggested 2nd cousin (that turned out to be a 1st cousin 2x removed). And the greatest part is that they all know my story, they all are accepting me into their family, and are all extremely supportive of my contacting my biological father in the coming weeks/months.

That is some story!

Do you yet know if some or all of your matches also donor-conceived, or are they his actual family -- so to speak?

[Linds]

This places a new and exhilarating spin on issues confronting us in genetic testing. I cannot begin to imagine how I would work through this. The amount of questions would overwhelm me. Your issues have really shed some light on how I relate/define family. Kudos to you for pursuing this!

Whose surname did you bear when you were born? Are the legal issues similar to those who are adoptees? This is fantastic indeed.

Cheers for posting and good luck.

I agree, in many ways it opens a whole new can of worms...and I've always stood by the opinion that anonymous donors of today will not remain anonymous forever, there is simply too many ways to trace them. And with the amount of information provided in donor profiles today, it's really amazing.

I bore my mother's Armenian maiden-name until I was 10...it also didn't help that I look more Armenian than anything else and am a spitting image of my late grandfather and his sisters.

The toughest part of the surname change was that I was 10 and I had to go back to school with a new last name. Needless to say I was bullied for the next 4 years for various reasons until I got to high school where by then everyone had forgotten.

As for legal issues...for donor conceived children born to heterosexual parents, there are no legal issues - the "dad" is on the birth certificate and is the legal father. The only legal issues are for same-sex couples (the non-biological parent must adopt the child), and to a lesser extent single mothers by choice, as no father is listed on the birth certificate.

However, for those conceived from heterosexual married parents, the obvious injustice is that their OBC's are actually fraudulent!! And most clinics/doctors/sperm banks destroy records after 7 years, so for the majority of offspring there is little or no hope of knowing anything.

I was grateful that my mom still goes to the same OB/GYN today that did the insemination 27 years ago, so she was able to get her medical records and the doctor (who had been a young doc, it was his first DI procedure ever) thankfully recorded the "vial number" in her records. If that hadn't happened I wouldn't have ever gotten information from the sperm bank on that donor, so even if I had done the FF test, it would not have been easy to determine who my bio father was -- though simply having a suggested 2nd cousin and a bunch of 3rd and 4th cousins who were also all related to him would have helped.

That is some story!

Do you yet know if some or all of your matches also donor-conceived, or are they his actual family -- so to speak?

So far it appears that all my (67) matches are paternal. Which wasn't all that surprising. My bio father's family are all southern colonials and DAR-listed, and intermarried to an extent. My mother's family are 20th century immigrants, where besides one 3rd cousin on my Czech side whose done extensive research on the family back to the 1600s, nobody else is all that interested (I'm the family historian for my Armenian side of the family).

Since I'm fairly well-known and outspoken in the donor conception community (I have a blog...), I know a great majority of adult offspring and none are matches. I also started a project for donor conceived adults and former donors here on FTDNA. But among donor-conceived people, using the FF test is a relatively new idea, so still not too many have ordered it yet.

[gtc]

But among donor-conceived people, using the FF test is a relatively new idea, so still not too many have ordered it yet.

Assuming the majority are interested finding paternal cousins if not bio fathers, I would imagine FF ought to really catch on among the donor-conceived.

[Zaru]

"I agree, in many ways it opens a whole new can of worms...and I've always stood by the opinion that anonymous donors of today will not remain anonymous forever, there is simply too many ways to trace them. And with the amount of information provided in donor profiles today, it's really amazing."

This begs the question: how do you conceive of your paternal "donor"? In a traditional setting, the father and mother shared an intimate and salient relationship. On the one hand, even if you were adopted, you can take solace knowing that your bio parents had a bond, at least for a moment. In a donor situation, I don't know how I would classify my paternal donor, bio father? Is the title of father an earned one? Must they have nurtured you in any particular way?

I am inclined to think that sperm donors have financial motives behind their generosity. But once they have time to absorb the magnitude and effects of their actions, it me makes me wonder if the desire for a bond with their offspring is imminent or desired in any way.

"The toughest part of the surname change was that I was 10 and I had to go back to school with a new last name. Needless to say I was bullied for the next 4 years for various reasons until I got to high school where by then everyone had forgotten."

I went through a surname change at 18 and it really weighed on me and my family. In my case, there was a NPE two generations before me and I felt it right to return to my supposed "biological" surname. It hasn't sat right with anyone personally, and on a professional level I took some initial ribbing but that subsided rather quickly and has worked in my favor. I still have yet been able to verify the NPE through genetic testing and as a result am feeling the heat about my decision.

"However, for those conceived from heterosexual married parents, the obvious injustice is that their OBC's are actually fraudulent!! And most clinics/doctors/sperm banks destroy records after 7 years, so for the majority of offspring there is little or no hope of knowing anything."

Ugh. I know that you are thankful that your circumstances were different!