On Adoption
A sometimes necessary but never without wounds scenario.
*A quick note to my readers. I do not expect you to take my word as authority, regardless of my expertise, education, or experience. I do, however, expect you to do your own research. When I make claims about stats, it is with the information I have as of this essay. You are entitled to disregard my claims. You are not entitled to my years of work, research, time, and energy via demands for citations. I have done multiple podcasts/seminars about this topic in which I provide citations. If you do not want to believe me and also do not want to look up the research on your own, you can search for my previous work or move right on by.
I come to the topic of adoption from the perspective of a therapist who has worked with adoptive families, birth families, and adoptees. My perspective has also been impacted by the abortion debate and my experience as a post-abortive woman.
Adoption, in my opinion, has little to do with abortion. Both statistically for women and from a child right’s perspective, adoption is not the answer to a mother in a situation where the death of her child and the deconstruction of her biology seems like the only viable answer.
Of course, being adopted is better than having no opportunity to live your life. Attempts to suggest I think death is better than suffering can only come from those who are uninformed about my philosophy regarding suffering and the human condition as well as my own personal history with suffering. In short, all humans suffer. We cannot avoid it. We either grow in ways only suffering can bring or we become trapped in victim mentality and drink our own poison. I digress.
The suggestion women choose one or the other is a false dichotomy driven by a culture that places nearly 100% of the responsibility of reproduction on women, much of that driven by women entrenched in feminist narratives. However, not wanting to parent isn’t the reason most women who choose abortion do so. Most women choose abortion because, for one reason or another, they don’t feel capable of parenting.
Had I been presented with the option of only adoption or abortion back when my abortion occurred (I wasn’t), I can confidently say I would have chosen abortion. You can view that as selfish, and you would be accurate. You could choose to walk away feeling righteous. You would be missing a vital bit of information, though, that would lead to a deeper understanding of the issues around adoption and societal trends that fuel fractured families.
The truth is I would have been a mother unable to tolerate being separated from her living child. Abortion is a finite event. It begins and ends in a relatively short amount of time. The grief goes on, but the event is over. I wonder, sometimes, if Christians read the story of Sampson and the two mothers (1 Kings 3:16-28) and assume the choice the actual mother of the baby made is a synonymous situation as women choosing abortion or adoption. It isn’t the same because of physicality and society.
The reality is the cognitive dissonance we cultivate in our culture about the humanity of the preborn and our constant striving to overpower our own biological limitations both fuel a disconnect when pregnant women are faced with the death of a child they have never held in their hands versus the handing over of a child they have held.
Women, and men but to a lesser degree, are disembodied. Women have received messages for decades that our reproductive systems are deadly and inconvenient to us and those around us. Women have been convinced our freedom requires the sacrifice of our children and the deconstruction of our healthy biology. The cling to abortion as a right isn’t based on logical arguments of human or civil rights (See a brief explanation at the end of this essay). It is based on the fear of our own bodies and anxiety about a future made harder by parenting.
I digress. Being separated from a living child is an ongoing event. Every day is its own new loss event, another opportunity for actual physical connection gone. This is not a pain many would willingly choose if the other option were to live in cognitive dissonance that reaffirms your child never really existed. I spent 18 years in that denial. Even after the weight of reality came crashing down and I was faced with what I actually lost and did, I still know I would have chosen the cognitive dissonance. It is hard to fathom a future trauma of an unknown child than it is to fathom the trauma of a known child existing separate from you.
Many birth mothers who choose adoption tell me they loathe being labeled as heroes. The see themselves as a forgotten demographic of exploited mothers. They, like women who choose abortion, didn’t simply not want to parent. They felt they couldn’t parent.
Statistically, more women regret adoption than regret abortion. It is true we don’t have very good stats on abortion regret and the reality of it may be much higher. A solid case built on common sense, biology, and psychology could be made for the number of women who regret abortions being at least similar to the number who regret adoption. That is another Substack for another day. What research suggests as of today is that when given the option between the two, more women choose abortion.
You can vilify women if you want. You may sleep better at night, but the problem will persist. Mothers are biologically programmed to nurture their children. Yes, sometimes biology is impacted by genetic mutation, illness, disease, trauma, or social contagion. In some rare cases, mothers have no desire to parent. In some rare cases, mothers even regret or loathe their children. Those cases are neither the norm nor normal. Those cases are a sign that something is amiss either personally or societally.
Both abortion and adoption are the separation of a mother and child. Neither are natural or normal for mother or child. In our current society, both are offered to women as a confirmation they are incapable of parenting. The truth is that no one is capable of parenting alone. Single parents struggle significantly more than dual parents because parenting is a 24/7 relationship, not a profession.
Parenting is neither biologically nor relationally meant to be a solo adventure. We do not reproduce asexually. For a child to exist, a biological mother and father are required. Children require both the genes, knowledge, history, guidance, nurture, protection, provision, and perspective of their mother and father to have a well-rounded understanding of themselves and the world. Humans are not created in a vacuum. Epigenetics is very real and inescapable.
From the perspective of what a child needs and has a right to, the most fundamental answer is their biological parents. Without them, the child doesn’t even exist. We are multidimensional creatures. Our physical, mental, emotional, relational, financial, educational, intellectual, spiritual, legal, and environmental health is all interconnected. We like to pretend we can divorce ourselves from our biology and be fine. The reality is we face ongoing and serious complications when we tamper with nature, including our natural selves.
In the world of therapy, there is a joke that therapy wouldn’t be necessary without parents. The joke isn’t based on the idea that parents are bad for our mental health. It is based on the idea that unhealthy relationships with our parents lead us to unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. Attachment patterns are learned by our first relationships.
Attachment begins neurologically during pregnancy. A baby is born with all of the necessary neurological hardware to bond and an awareness of mother as their safe person, but the pathways (software) are still being established. The separation of child from mother is not a neutral or positive event for the child. It is a loss of the only environment, symbiotic relationship, physical regulation system, source of nutrition and biologically driven response system the child has ever known.
Mother is the child’s source of life, comfort, and nourishment. We can attempt to replicate it. However, attempts to do so are neither the norm nor normal for the child. They, like a mother who regrets her child, are a sign something is amiss.
(Regarding abortion as a right, the argument fails in these ways. Human rights are biologically driven. For those of us who are Christian we see that as Intelligent Design by our Creator. Atheists may see it as survival of the fittest. We are biologically driven to resist premature death, captivity, and pain. We are also biologically driven to sustain our lives, freedom, and pursuit of pleasure. We are not biologically driven to destroy healthy biology. While a case could be made that a government can legally grant the civil right to abortion, it would be at a base level the legal right to destroy healthy biology. Based on the years of data we have regarding the effects of surgically altering our healthy biology, that would not result in a sustainable society. Transhumanism can only ever end in the destruction of humanity. In addition, we can already see the negative impacts legal abortion has brought upon women who are attempting to live fully embodied. For a thorough explanation of those impacts, I recommend you read The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Erika Bachiochi.)