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Many mothers from the Baby Scoop Era prefer to say that they “lost their child to adoption.” These particular mothers were never offered the option of parenting, being forced into relinquishing their children by their families and the maternity homes which housed them during their pregnancies. You will also sometimes hear mothers who have had their children removed by Social Services use the same term as technically they lost their rights due to issues of abuse or neglect. Even some mothers from the open era who were coerced into relinquishment or simply not offered any emotional or physical support from family will tend to use the phrase to show that, had things been different, they would have chosen the path of parenting.
However, one birth family in China literally lost their child to adoption.
The story really reads like some kind of movie, one with what we all hope is a happy ending. A Chinese mother and father lost their child on a trip. He was found under a bridge by police. His parents were unable to be located and, as such, he was made available for adoption. A single woman traveled to China and was at the same orphanage where the boy in question was then living. She fell in love with him and formally adopted him. She is a gem of an adoptive mother and jotted down anything he would tell her that he could remembered of his first family. When he asked her to locate his birth family, she did so. (Bless her.) Upon locating his family, a doctor for a father and a mother with breast cancer, emails were exchanged.
I’d love to meet this adoptive mother and hug her for what she wrote.
“I hope in some small way you can find peace now knowing that during the time he was missing from your lives he was treated well and very much loved by his American family,” she wrote.
“My hope is that Christian never feels emotionally torn between two families that both love him dearly, but instead that he can think of us as one big family that now spans two great nations! I hope your family will also do the same.”
Yes, I may have gotten all teary eyed.
We can learn much from that adoptive mother, birth parents and adoptive parents alike. There’s room for love, there’s room for family. The tug-of-war that exists all too often between the opposites sides of the adult triad doesn’t need to exist. While I agree on the need for boundaries, I don’t agree with the power struggle that remains. This family is a shining example of what can happen when families come together for the best interest of the child.
I don’t know what awaits these families. I don’t want to be the finger-pointer. I want, instead, to wish them the best as they begin this new chapter of their lives. Together.
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Photo Credit.
