The decision to place a child for adoption has life long implications for you and your child. Those who reach the decision to place a child for adoption, begin to plan for a great loss in their own lives with the hope that placing their child for adoption will result in a better life for their baby and themselves.
A loss occurs for birth parents when adoption takes place. The losses associated with adoption have varying significance and impact for birth parents. Some of the losses that birth parents have identified are loss of the parenting role, not being there to see the first step, first day at school etc. and more generally loss of a future together. Loss through adoption therefore involves a grief process not unlike other types of grief such as death or separation. The particular type of loss involved in adoption is complex as it may not be publicly acknowledged as a loss. Well meaning family or friends may minimize the loss or encourage you to “move on”. In some cases secrecy may have surrounded the pregnancy and adoption.
The natural response to loss is grief. Grieving requires birth parents to identify their losses and fully acknowledge them. Grief can be characterised by feelings of sadness, hopelessness, numbness, anger and even guilt. Grief can also manifest itself in physical symptoms such as sleeplessness, lack of appetite or aches and pains.
Grief is a positive, beneficial response because grieving allows you to come to terms with the loss. If feelings are granted expression, they gradually become more manageable.
Many birth parents may feel that although they eventually come to terms with parting from their baby and move on with their lives, feelings of loss
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may re-emerge in later years for instance, on the child’s birthday or when the child is due to start school or to reach other developmental milestones.
Many birth parents continue to mourn the loss of their child throughout their life time but with varying intensity.
There is no easy way around the grieving process. It is important to remember that everyone goes through it in their own way and in their own time. This leaflet only serves to highlight the complexity of loss through adoption. Your social worker will discuss these issues in more detail with you and provide ongoing support and counselling if required.
The Effect on the Child
Children are unique and all are effected differently by their life experiences including the experience of being adopted. The effect of adoption on children will depend on a number of factors such as their personality, their age or stage of development, their access to background information, the support and openness of those around them.
Adoptive parents are advised to tell their child from an early age that he/she is adopted. It is generally accepted that a child’s understanding of adoption and the meaning he/she attaches to it changes as they grow and develop. In infancy and early childhood a child does not understand the concept of adoption but adoption still has meaning for a child. At this stage of development a child begins to attach ‘good’ and ‘bad’ values to different things and so can begin to attach positive and negative values to experiences and words related to their adoption. Therefore how others around them speak about adoption can be influential in terms of the values a child begins to place on adoption.
From the ages of eight to ten there can be a marked change in a child’s understanding of adoption. This change coincides with a child beginning to distinguish more clearly between adoption and birth as alternate ways of joining a family. The “penny seems to drop” for many children in that they realise that for their parents to have adopted them, their birth families had to part from them. The story of how they came to join their families may no longer be enough and children can become very aware of feelings of loss.
The complexity of adoption may begin to emerge for the child and this greater level of understanding can bring with it a sense of confusion or
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uncertainty that may be upsetting for a child. This confusion, however, may be seen as a normal part of coping with adoption and marks the beginning of a normal process described as adaptive grieving. A child, because of his/ her more mature understanding, is able to understand not only the positives of the adoptive situation but also the losses and needs to grieve them. Grieving these losses may take many forms and may result in changes in a child’s behaviour at home or school. A child may experience some emotional, behavioural or academic related difficulties at this time. Such difficulties may reflect the normal process of grieving.
The pre and early teenage years are associated with a level of understanding that is more secure than the previous one with a child having a greater comprehension of the legal nature of adoption. This sense of security and permanence allows a child to explore the more complex, abstract and possibly sensitive reasons for adoption.
In adolescence teenagers are trying to put together a picture of themselves, to form an identity and a sense of who they are. This process can present extra challenges to the young person who is adopted. Adolescents may have questions about their background that their adoptive parents cannot answer, for example they may wonder what characteristics they inherited from their birth parents, what their birth parents were like at their age. The availability or access to background information can be very helpful to teenagers.
Many birthparents worry that their adopted child will feel rejected. It is true to say that some young people go through phases where they experience feelings of rejection or feeling ‘there had better be a good reason why she placed me’. However there are others who do not experience these feelings and whose focus remains around school, discos and sport.
It is important to remember children are all unique and their experience and understanding of adoption will be unique to them. The stages outlined above provide a general picture however, there are wide individual variations.
Cúnamh 2015
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