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ask the experts  marcy axness |
Marcy Axness
Adoption, Prenatal Parenting, Birth, Attachment and Brain Development, Conscious Conception
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My nine-year-old daughter has had virtually no contact with her biological father during her life. He last saw her when she was two and there has been no contact since. We do keep in contact with her biological grandparents and she has an older half sister whom she has met and talked to on the phone. However, at this point, her biological father won't allow her to see this sister and since he has custody of the other child that is our impasse. I met my husband when my daughter was two-and-a-half, and we were married a year later. She has always considered him her dad and even told me when she was little that she remembers being two because that's when she found her daddy. He formally adopted her when she was five. My question is about how her biological father abandoning and refusing to acknowledge her might affect her later in life and what I can do or be doing to help with those issues now.
First of all, my appreciation to you for recognizing the importance of your daughter's experience of the loss of her biological father—a loss that isn't so often recognized in its full import. Second, let me say that your daughter, at nine, is at a very special moment in life that is also not typically recognized. Rudolf Steiner, who developed Waldorf education, could see that it is at nine-years-old that we humans really finally get that we are separate individuals here on this earth. Until nine, at the soul and feeling levels of the child, she still lives in the experience of being fundamentally connected with other people, with nature, with God. Steiner calls this the nine-year change. Many people remember this pivotal moment in their lives. It is a time when a child can withdraw, become depressed, and disconnected. (This is why the Waldorf third grade curriculum is designed as it is, with much reassurance in many domains regarding a human being's deep embeddedness in the larger picture of earth, industry, music, and life itself.) I find it helps parents to know about the nine-year change, especially when there is something big happening in their lives at that time!
You didn't mention if your daughter presently explicitly knows about her biological father or not, so I'm giving you a fairly general answer. If not, then I wouldn't force the issue of having her recognize that she was abandoned by him, and that he refuses to acknowledge her. You also need to be clear and clean about what is YOUR stuff (he abandoned YOU, too... and his refusal to acknowledge your daughter is understandably very hurtful to you, especially if there is any history in YOUR past of being overlooked or invisible), and not project it onto your daughter and then see it as her problem. It sounds as if she has the most important elements going in her life, in terms of protective influences against later hurt or disappointment regarding her birth father's refusal to see her: she has you, and she has a daddy in your husband. Healthy, empowering parenting from the two of you is the best thing you can likely do to proactively help her with those potential father issues later. As in infant adoption, I think it's healthy for there to be pictures (in a scrapbook or digital album) and other straightforward, objective expressions that acknowledge what is indeed a true part of her life—that she had/has this other father, this original father, this biological father. This will become of more import as she gets older and studies genetics or reproduction in biology class, and indeed, more direct discussions of these realities may well wait until then.
And the focus, when it's discussed, should be accurately focused on HIS behavior of leaving, of being someone who left rather than the focus being on the leave-ee, so to speak. (A wonderful Lori Lieberman song titled "He's a Leaver" was surprisingly helpful to me when I myself was struggling with lingering father-abandonment issues. It helped me make a simple, yet profoundly important distinction: He didn't leave me... it's just that he left because he's a leaver. That's what he does. Wasn't about me, but him.) It will be your own equanimity about this that will most help your daughter. You might find ideas in an article of mine about simple, honest talk and open feelings (though the specifics are different, the ideas still apply) at www.quantumparenting.com/articles/1/.
My husband and I really want to adopt. We can support and love another child, but the problem comes in with the huge chunk of money you have to come up with for the adoption. Are there any options for those of us who want to love and raise a child but but can't come up with that large amount of money all at once?
While my expertise in adoption is oriented less to the ins and outs of the adoption process itself, and more toward the psychological, developmental and socio-cultural complexities of the experience—and so I may not ultimately be the one to fully answer your specific question—I do have a few thoughts to share. Adoption certainly can be a very costly process when done in the typical fashion, which is privately and independently, through an attorney, who typically helps "match" you up with an expectant young mother. But I'm wondering if your opportunities to bring a child into your home might expand (and the prospective costs diminish), were you to explore adoption paths you may have not considered? There are thousands of children in our foster care system needing homes, and families to embrace them and offer them a secure place to continue to grow and become who it is they came to life to be. Unless you are determined to adopt an infant, that route might be a rich one. If it is an infant you are hoping for, government-based agencies do indeed handle infant adoptions but in this era of independent, attorney-driven adoptions those are far more rare. There are, though, special-needs babies available through government agencies, currently in foster care, who are also in great need of homes. And as opposed to costing money, in many cases, there are state and/or federal subsidy funds and training provided for those willing to step up to parent these children. Why not look up your county's Department of Child & Family Services, where some research might open up new panoramas of possibilities for expanding your family through adoption?
Years ago while traveling—to speak at an adoption conference, actually—I was seated on the plane next to a friendly woman about my age. As we got to talking about the reasons for our respective trips, she confided something that has stayed with me ever since: a few years earlier, she and her husband had registered with the county for an infant adoption, and had become terribly frustrated after waiting for so long with no progress, no phone calls to announce that they had a baby. There came a point when they did some soul-searching and prayer and realized in a kind of an "ah-hah" moment that maybe they had been orienting their intention slightly off-base: they had been focused on what it was they were hoping to get. They made a slight shift in their thinking and began instead to focus prayerfully upon what they as parents had to offer, that a baby out there would need. They began to orient around a bigger question̬something along the lines of "What does Life need us to be, for one of her sons or daughters who might come to us?" Within a month they got a phone call: there was a baby boy for them.
As Jim Gritter, author of The Spirit of Open Adoption, wisely points out, when we shift from a "What can we get?" to a "What can we give?" orientation, paradoxically we open the doors to unexpected blessings. Much good luck to you.
I have two questions that may be seen as sides of the same coin: how does being abandoned as an infant affect the emotional growth and stability of a person? What are the lasting repercussions on a single mother, or father, who chose not to raise their child, and hence, gave their baby away?
When you say "abandoned," I'm going to assume that you mean, "How does it affect an infant to be permanently separated from his biological mother?" (Usually in this situation the infant isn't technically "abandoned"—as in the fairy tales of babies left alone in the woods—but has other caring adults around to care for him.) Certainly a newborn already has a potent connection to his birth mother at birth; we know this from lots of research into fetal learning, etc. And there is an actual biological process already in place for laying down important circuitry in the brain of the baby (and of the mother, too!) in the hours and days following birth. So when this process is disrupted by separation (for adoption, but even for the shorter periods virtually mandated by standard hospital protocol, to "clean the baby up," and do all the other unnecessary things like pricking, prodding and testing), the baby does suffer at a psycho-biological level (as does the mother.) The cascade of pleasure hormones (including oxytocin, the "hormone of love") that nature designed to make mom and baby enraptured with each other when they remain in skin-to-skin contact in the hours following birth may also play an important part in establishing lifelong "set-points" for feeling pleasure, satisfaction, and contentment. But when separated, and this does not occur, levels of cortisol (stress hormone) rise in the baby's blood, which—depending upon variables such as the infant's temperament and upon any protective factors in the baby's environment—can impact the level of growth hormone and even negatively impact immune function. (As an adopted infant, I contracted pneumonia as a six-month-old—definitely not normal!!) This kind of cascade of stress hormones (especially when it is happening instead of the cascade of pleasure hormones) is suspected to contribute to the baby growing up with a decreased tolerance for stress. And though there may be other caring adults around, we do know that newborns know who their biological mothers are, and who they are not—via pheromones, voice quality, heartbeat, "vibe"—and it is their mothers they want, and need. In fact, from the newborn's perspective, he or she is not differentiated from the mother: they are a mother/baby dyad, at the levels of neurobiology and physiology—a single unit. So for a baby to be made prematurely "an individual" in his or her earliest hours, days or even months does indeed present a challenge for that individual's future growth and stability. Does this mean adopted people are doomed? Of course not! The key is in understanding and knowledge, which brings empowerment.
One longstanding puzzle in the social sciences is that the research consistently shows a slightly heightened psycho-social vulnerability of adoptees, even those adopted at birth. I believe that it wouldn't be a puzzle if researchers would address this perinatal aspect of maternal separation, as author (and therapist and adoptive mother) Nancy Verrier did in her 1993 book The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. Again, this is NOT a hopeless "diagnosis!" Although this news can certainly come as a discouraging shock to some—especially adoptive parents, as well as biological parents who have relinquished babies—it can actually be a VERY empowering thing to know what's really going on. Adoptive parents needn?t feel hopeless in the face of these revelations, for one of the most powerful healing forces is available to every parent, free of charge—empathy. Empathy allows a person, even a tiny baby, to feel and release his feelings, rather than repress them. Babies who have lost their original mothers—permanently or just temporarily—or have suffered other painful or traumatic experiences, need to express their feelings of grief and loss.
To support them in this process, we need to empathize with their experience and their feelings, in its various forms. In babies, these powerful feelings are expressed physically, through such behaviors as inconsolable crying (or the other extreme, virtually no crying at all), extreme startle responses, arching or stiffening at being held, "spacing out" or sleeping all the time, severe colic or other illness. The feelings of loss, abandonment and rage that may result from the trauma of separation are overwhelming to a newborn, who hasn?t yet developed an ego, much less ego defense mechanisms. Thus, they need our help in processing these powerful feelings, and this help needs to take the form of active empathy—saying the words, out loud, that let the baby know that what he or she is feeling is allowed, and that the caring adults present truly see and hear the baby and what that baby is experiencing.
"You miss your mother. You miss your connection. You've lost something very important, and I understand. I'm not the mom you expected, I don't smell like her, I don't sound like her. I'm a different mom, and I love you, and I'm not going away. I am here for you forever, even when you feel sad."
This kind of empathy and attunement lays a foundation for the most important ground of healthy development—a secure attachment relationship between parent and child. This kind of empathy is also necessary for a biological mother (or father) who has made the choice not to parent their baby and has relinquished the baby for adoption. This is a tough one, because we in this culture don't recognize this as a loss: we talk about how courageous birth mothers are, how they're doing the right and noble thing by giving their baby a stable home, etc., etc. And all that is often true—but it's also true that it's very painful! Birth parents need the empathy of those close to them for the very real and true pain involved in this kind of loss—and it IS a loss, even though was a choice for they made, for adoption. They also need to cultivate their own inner compassion for themselves, for that inner mother or father who is grieving, who feels disconnected, who feels that something basic about the world just "isn't right." (This will also tend to bring up primal memories of their own earliest days, and if there were disconnections involved it will intensify the pain.) As when dealing with any acute loss, it is important for them to be tender with themselves, to be kind, to be loving—which so often doesn't happen, since there is often a lot of shaming, blaming, and other negative stuff going on regarding the "mistake" of the pregnancy. But even in the best of circumstances, for example in an open adoption, when the birth mother has a good relationship with her baby?s adoptive parents, and feels she has made an empowered decision with the full support of her family and friends, there is still pain, and it is important for her inner well-being to not try and "push it away" because everything seems so right.
There are lifelong aspects of the adoption experience for everyone involved, and it is a sign of health to recognize and address those aspects rather than pretending that "we're just like everyone else." Adoption is an interruption, a disruption, of the natural order of things. Yes, it can bring tremendous blessings, and can be a way to address the challenges of many people involved—relieving birth parents of the untimely responsibility of parenting; offering adoptive parents an alternative way of bringing a child into their lives; and most importantly, providing a loving, healthy and stable home for a child whose biological parents cannot provide that—but in order to reap adoption's greatest blessings, we need to first acknowledge and tend to the losses that accompany it as well.
Just in case you are asking me this question because you are dealing with a crisis pregnancy yourself, I just want to add one more idea: it is a commonly held belief that if you are planning or even vaguely considering adoption for your baby, that it is your "job" to begin the process of detaching now, while you're pregnant...that it will make it easier to separate when the time comes. This "conventional wisdom" is not true! For most pregnant women—regardless of the circumstances of the pregnancy—their instincts are to embrace their babies... but there are so many messages dissuading them. You need to be supported and guided in following your instinct to connect with your baby. The unknown future of your relationship together need not—and should not—keep you from connecting with your baby now.
In such difficult circumstances, it is important for your baby to feel your loving recognition—to feel claimed by you—and for you to know that you are everything to your baby, if only for this precious time in your womb. If and when you must later separate, your earlier connection will have laid a stronger foundation for your baby's optimal brain development and his or her fundamental self-esteem, and will make healing more possible for each of you.
And you will always know you gave your baby a blessed beginning.
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