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At a recent American Adoption Congress meeting, attendees - including birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptees - had the following words encircling each of their nametags, "May the circle be unbroken." That is the lesson that they are asking the rest of us to learn: there are connections in families that should not and cannot be broken. Adoption, as a response to a social problem, has had to be a part of an interrupted circle, oftentimes with very troubling consequences.
My hope is that people working in reproductive medicine will begin to talk with adoptees and that they will listen. I suspect that what they will hear are words of caution and that the message they will take away is that love is not enough. Children need loving parents, but most tell us--in one way or another--that they also need roots, a history, a sense of connection. Those who do not know their full histories, say that it feels "like a piece of me is missing."
The stakes are high: we must be careful lest there come a generation of children in search of roots. I fear for their longing, their desperation and disconnection and for the questions they will ask of those who so boldly, blindly gave them the "gift" of life.
© Ellen Sarasohn Glazer, LICSW
