My mom was adopted as a baby, and so was her brother. She will be 60 this year and never expressed any interest in finding out any information about her birth parents. My uncle died in 2022 from a brain tumor. He did want to know more about his birth parents in the end, but the last few months of his life he was so ill, he was very angry with his father and I don’t think they got anywhere in the conversations. I was asked about my grandparents because my mom’s mother had beautiful red hair, so people generally knew she wasn’t genetically related to us. When I was struggling with infertility, I of course was asked if I would adopt, but after 3.5 years of trying we did eventually conceive when I was 31, and our daughter is now 4. I don’t really know that we had a plan of what we would do if I couldn’t eventually have a baby, but we didn’t really ever consider adoption because it was such a long expensive process that we frankly didn’t feel like we could afford.
Thank you for sharing your story- Cassie is so lucky to have so many people who love her!
I adopted my daughter 46 years ago. She is from Colombia; my stepson, African American, adopted 53 years ago, is from Kansas. One of the things that is interesting and somewhat disturbing for me is that both children have recently thanked me for adopting them; one has used the word "saving" them. It highlights for me how I do not totally understand the depth of their feelings about being adopted, about being given away or not wanted, about being rescued. For me, it is not so complicated: they are my children.
I have written about my adoption of Quin: Awaiting Quintana: A Journal of Adoption November 19, 1976-August 23, 1977
Nan Bauer Maglin
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
Vol. 3, No. 2, Mothers and Daughters (Summer, 1978), pp. 49-53 (5 pages)
very captivated by this essay. appreciate your nuance and honesty! family is complicated no matter the set up
Wonderful. The photo too. I am glad for your family’s hard-won happiness.
My mom was adopted as a baby, and so was her brother. She will be 60 this year and never expressed any interest in finding out any information about her birth parents. My uncle died in 2022 from a brain tumor. He did want to know more about his birth parents in the end, but the last few months of his life he was so ill, he was very angry with his father and I don’t think they got anywhere in the conversations. I was asked about my grandparents because my mom’s mother had beautiful red hair, so people generally knew she wasn’t genetically related to us. When I was struggling with infertility, I of course was asked if I would adopt, but after 3.5 years of trying we did eventually conceive when I was 31, and our daughter is now 4. I don’t really know that we had a plan of what we would do if I couldn’t eventually have a baby, but we didn’t really ever consider adoption because it was such a long expensive process that we frankly didn’t feel like we could afford.
Thank you for sharing your story- Cassie is so lucky to have so many people who love her!
I adopted my daughter 46 years ago. She is from Colombia; my stepson, African American, adopted 53 years ago, is from Kansas. One of the things that is interesting and somewhat disturbing for me is that both children have recently thanked me for adopting them; one has used the word "saving" them. It highlights for me how I do not totally understand the depth of their feelings about being adopted, about being given away or not wanted, about being rescued. For me, it is not so complicated: they are my children.
I have written about my adoption of Quin: Awaiting Quintana: A Journal of Adoption November 19, 1976-August 23, 1977
Nan Bauer Maglin
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
Vol. 3, No. 2, Mothers and Daughters (Summer, 1978), pp. 49-53 (5 pages)
Published By: University of Nebraska Press