The Truth About Birth Parents
Birth parents, are they a hero or are they a selfish human being? I know every situation is different but after meeting my children’s birth parents and hearing so many other stories of other’s birth parents, I have my own very personal views.
Please know that I am talking about birth parents who have made the decision on their own. I am NOT talking about those who have unwillingly had children taken from them, as in almost all cases regarding children in the care of social services.
Birth Parents… or should I say Birth Mom
Before I jump into this topic, I want to make it very clear that I KNOW every situation is NOT the same. There are definitely exceptions to EVERY rule.
From what we have seen and what others have told us, occasionally a birth father is involved in the beginning stages. Most often, the birth father is only involved in the conception aspect. Sometimes, they are there during the stages of helping the birth mother choose adoption and sometimes choose the family. Occasionally, a birth father may be present for the child’s birth, sign the papers, and disappear from there. Unfortunately, the birth father in about every case I know has walked away after the birth of the child (if not before).
I am not sure why birth fathers do not stay involved but after 15 years of processing this very topic, I have come up with some conclusions of my own. There is no science here or any studies I am going off of other than just what I have perceived over the years.
- Guys don’t have motherly instincts. A motherly instinct gives the birth mom extra emotions of wanting to ensure a great home for the baby, and seek after a relationship after the baby is born.
- Guys don’t like to show emotions. They are typically good at blocking out anything that might make them feel too emotional. Women are more bound to truly FEEL every feeling that is known to man during this time (and all the time).
- Guys connect more over time than instantly. A woman has 9 months to truly bond with the baby living inside her. The birth father can, of course, feel the baby moving from the outside but the bond is different than with the mother. It is much easier to disconnect when the connection was never truly formed. The baby is typically taken straight from the hospital during adoptions, which is before the bonding process has time to take place.
- Sometimes, guys are just jerks! I know that is harsh but it is a reality. Guys look at women as a piece of meat (AGAIN, NOT ALL but some). Girls get emotionally attached to a man and think he is in love with them when in turn, he is only using her. Therefore, after he gets what he wants, conception happens, the woman is no longer the attractive piece of meat she was prior to stretch marks and extra weight, so he moves on to someone else. His heart is not focused on her let alone a precious life he has never even met.
The Birth Mother
Yes, there are some birth moms who may not be what you would want for them to be. Who IS? None of us are perfect. However, this woman may have slipped up and conceived a child when the timing was not appropriate, yet even if when she “messed up”, she still made the hardest choice anyone could ever make. She made a mature decision in knowing that this little life deserved a future that she may not have been able to give them. Instead of choosing abortion, she chose life and chose to place that baby in the arms of a family who COULD fully take care of her baby.
A birth mom makes the choice to love this baby enough to take room inside their body for NINE months. They endure the aches and pains, the kicks and frequent bathroom trips. They go to the doctor to have uncomfortable check-ups. They breathe through the labor pains and cry from the emotional pain their decision is bearing on them. Yet, after many tears and deep grief, they graciously hand this precious baby on to another family to love and raise.
To me, these women are heroes. They could have chosen to abort the baby. They could have chosen to keep the baby and work the three jobs they would have to have to be able to provide for the child leaving the child to basically raise themselves. Instead, they make a gut-wrenching decision. A decision that can ONLY be made by true love.
It is a decision that can seem so unnatural and selfish to those who have never been in their shoes. I may never have been IN their shoes but I have sat on a couch with a tear-stained lap from the constant cries of a birth mother stretched across my lap crying uncontrollably the night before signing the relinquishments. She knew she was making the right decision but sometimes, the right thing hurts in unbearable ways. Until you have experienced it yourself or you have stood by a woman making this choice, you may judge and criticize them for “giving up their baby”. To me, they didn’t “give UP their baby”… they “gave LIFE to their baby”.
Here is where they get an even bigger hero status in my books. They stand with boldness and courage in the eyes of adversity and loneliness. Most birth moms are solely on their own to make the hardest, most personal decision of their life. More often, they catch a lot of flack from friends and family for the decision to place their child for adoption. They have felt abandoned by a birth father who ran and hid as soon as he heard the words, “I’m pregnant”. YET, these women have had the courage to stand alone and make a courageous, extremely difficult decision. They didn’t run the other way and “get rid of their baby”. They chose life. They chose another mom for their baby to call mommy. Could you imagine the pain of having to make that kind of a decision?!? But they do it because they love the little baby!
Be careful next time you think “I can’t believe she could give up her baby”. I promise you, it was not an easy thing to do. She had plenty of other choices she could have chosen but instead, she chose the hard option. Giving someone else a piece of her. I am so beyond thankful for the decisions my boy’s birthmothers made and am honored that I get to be a part of not just my boy’s lives but also the birth mother’s lives. They stood strong even in the most vulnerable of times.
National Adoption Month…
This month, come back each day to read a little more about adoption. I will be sharing stories about our experiences and even have some guest writers who have experienced adoption from all different aspects! I hope to not only bring you “stories” but I hope that you can walk away saying that you are far more educated about adoption. Please be respectful of any comments made below. Remember that not every story is the same and there ARE some out there hurting because of adoption.
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I have the attitude that no matter what the biological parents reason for giving up the child, it is better than 1) abortion if the child is an infant, and 2) just ignoring your child and/or possibly abandoning them. Giving them up for adoption usually results in love, family, home, stability for the infant/child. Now I won’t even say in 100% of cases that is true either. I personally know of a little girl that was 7 when she was adopted (she would live around the block from us for about 7 years) into a family that had two sons that were 3 and 5 years older than she was at the time. That girl ended up being nothing but a slave to the parents. She got stuck doing all the housework, the laundry, the cooking, the yard work. She called social services numerous times wanting to go back to the orphanage she had been in (run by some nuns that made the children do lots of chores by the way). She kept trying to tell them that life in the orphanage was easier than in this home. The social workers didn’t believe her. She got brave and ran away when she was 14. Finally the brothers in that home told the social workers the truth about how the parents wouldn’t let them do any chores anymore and expected her to do them all. They did find the girl about a year later. She had prostituted herself. However the nuns at the orphanage wanted her back. So social services took everything to court and had the adoption annulled (I guess that is what they call it) and she got to go back to go back to the orphanage. They even let her stay a year past her 18th birthday so she could finish high school since she’d missed a year out on the streets. So I know there are exceptions to the rules on both sides, but for the most part those giving up the children are usually hoping for a better life for their children and for the most part those adopting are wanting to do so to love and cherish a child and make them a real part of the family. God bless to both sides whose real reasons are for the betterment of the baby/child.
Amen. Very thankful for the gift that I was given by a very special Birth mother.