e-mail
Sometimes I hear adoptive moms say that people wander if they can love adopted children as much as biological ones. Since I have never adopted a child, I cannot speak to that issue. However, it seems possible to me that you can love all your children as much, but maybe sometimes in different ways.
Parenting through adoption can be “as good as” parenting biological children, but in some ways it might feel different. Love is love though, right? Does it make a difference? There’s no good answer. In some ways, it makes no difference at all, but in some ways it can make all the difference. So many factors are involved.
Does it sound as though I am talking in riddles? Maybe so, but I think adopted children can feel as loved as biological children. Growing up as an adopted child is often all they know. It is their norm, so they may not know what it feels like to grow up in a biological family. They cannot know the difference. Sometimes, they may see it and yearn for it. Several adoptees have told me that they married into close families and envy their connectedness.
Other adoptees feel no longing for a different time of family because they seem to fit fine into the adoptive family that raised them. And other adoptees seem to loom in between both of these two different scenarios.
I can only suppose how adoptees and adoptive parents feel – I will never have their experience. However, I can tell you how I as a mother who relinquished a child to adoption feel about all three of my children – the two I raised the one I did not. I love my children in equal amounts – not the same, but each as much as the other. For any of my children, there is little that I would not do for them, the ferocity of my love for them is that strong.
The son I did not raise is every bit as much “my son” as the one that I did. We do not have the shared history and memories as I do with my other son. That makes our bond different, but no less. Although we do not share memories of time together, those nine months I carried Chris created a bond that nothing can destroy – ever. Whether we are together or apart, he is with me always, a part of me. I love both my sons as much, but not the same. They are different people and our relationships are different – only the love is the same.
