Musings on Adoption

Like every other adoptee, I have a dual family lineage. One line’s biological, the other cultural. One set of parents gave me life; another family cared for me as I grew up. Quite a dynamic duo. I use special words to describe my two lineage lines. One is my blood family; the other is my milk family. My milk family are my nurture kin.

Where did that phrase, milk family, come from? In the long-ago, mother’s milk was a baby’s only available food. When a mother’s body couldn’t provide milk, or enough milk, her baby was in danger of death. In the best circumstances, she or he would then be fostered to a woman who was already nursing with a plentiful enough flow to feed two. Sometimes there was an exchange of goods, or of money after coins came into vogue. But although the child was returned to her or his blood family when she or he was no longer milk-dependent, the milk family relationship was also acknowledged as one with lifelong bonds.

I was adopted into the closed legal process common just before the middle of the last century. That meant my milk family tree was the one that defined my heritage and gave me my ancestors. For many adoptees, that’s a comfortable state of affairs. For others of us, being grafted into that new trunk may have been necessary, compassionate, welcome, even lifesaving, but something vital was absent.

That’s not a complaint; it’s an observation. Imagine attempting to successfully graft a willow branch onto an oak trunk. It’s not the oak’s fault, or the willow’s, that they’re somewhat different from each other.  You have to think more in terms of some kind of symbiotic relationship. The miracle of adoption is that it’s so often successful, even seamless.

Though it’s not in vogue as much as before, I feel that closed adoption does have benefits. In many cultures, closed adoption alleviated the stigma of shame that surrounded both the surrendering mother and the child. It also prevented adopted families from living in fear of blood family members contacting, or reclaiming, surrendered children.

The secrecy explicit in closed adoption is a two-edged sword, though. With the hindsight of the years since I spit into a vial and later saw my first genetic relative’s photo on a website, I’m glad I found my blood family as late in my life as I did.

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