This is in response to the bitter birth mother. I too am a birth mother who has reestablished a relationship with my birth daughter (she found me), so I may have more than the average insight here. I think Prudie is mostly on the right track to suggest that this birth mother has unresolved issues and unrealistic expectations that are clouding this issue. In part the media is too blame. We have all seen umpteen Oprah and Oprah-imitators facilitate tearful emotional reunions between birth moms and adoptees. This creates the false expectation that the maternal bond will emerge instantly and automatically. It may for some people, but probably not most. The parental bond comes from all those diapers you change, watching your child learn to walk, talk, and hopefully a lot of shared laughter and kisses.

I notice those shows always focus on the tearful reunion and maybe a “weekend” of getting to know each other-“here are pictures of your biological grandparents, cousins, etc.” and “you like spinach, me too.” But after that it takes time to build a relationship and there isn’t really a good model for what that relationship should look like or feel like, or for that matter what she should call you. You aren’t “mom,” she already has one of those, "birth mother" sounds a little touchy feeley. I kind of like "bio-mother". You are close in age, so maybe a “friendship” is the best option-but that takes time, but it is a challenge to form a friendship with someone from a different generation with whom you may not have anything in common, just because you “should.”

Then, there is the inevitable realization that the idealized picture that you and she have had of each other is not consistent with reality. This is inevitable-nobody can live up to an ideal, but is especially difficult if your child has problems. When you give up a child for adoption, you do so for a variety of reasons. At least some of the motivation to give up your child is altruistic. You could have had an abortion, so on some level you must have had some attachment and hopes for that child's well being. So, when it turns out that your child has not turned out to be the class valedictorian, it isn’t surprising that you might feel a bit resentful (how dare she not have taken full advantage of my sacrifice?) and maybe a little guilt (maybe I could have done a better job myself).

I think it is also important to acknowledge that there are selfish reasons too. With the aid of social service agencies, you could probably have kept your child, but that probably would have gotten in the way of your educational goals (Although I have never hidden the fact that I have a daughter that I put up for adoption, I have to get to know someone pretty well before I share this info. Inevitably I get the “Saint Nancy” look which makes me terribly uncomfortable). From your daughter’s perspective, this may feel an awful lot like rejection. It might have been easier for her if you were a little more of a mess instead of a successful woman who has successfully parented another child.

I met my daughter 19 years after I put her up for adoption. Her parents are supportive of our continued relationship, so that helps. Our relationship is good, but not great. I think that my desire for her to be entirely mentally healthy and happy has gotten in the way of building a truly intimate/trusting relationship. She is a smart, beautiful, troubled girl, who is still trying to “find herself.” I hope that over time our relationship can make a positive contribution to that goal.

I hope the Letter Writer takes in your thoughtful and balanced advice. You are wise enough to view the whole situation with compassion and wisdom. They will never be a 'cure' or easy remedy for the situation, but they can get you through the rough patches and awkward moments with your sanity intact. I agree that it is wise to 'hold on loosely' and give her time to grow.

Best of luck to you with your family situation.

Nancy - this was such a thoughtful, lovely response. I hope that the LW reads this and is able to take the advice to heart. I also hope that things go well for you and your daughter in the future, and that she is able to find her way in life...

Nancy, excellent point on the media and unrealistic expectations. Good luck to both of you.

Nancy, thank you for sharing your story.

I intensely dislike LW here on account of her attitude. It seems that indeed, she has not really dealt with this painful episode from her past and may be intentionally framing the daughter she gave up in the worst possible light in order to feel better and more justifed in her own mind about the decision to give her up. I have to say, though, I find her extreme marginizing and dismissal of this newfound daughter to be incredibly inhumane, seeing as LW was the one, not the daughter, to initiate contact.

Adoption is an emotional landmine, whether you're the birth parents, the adoptive parents or the child who was adopted. I have known some adoptees, and a good number of them were bitter toward BOTH of their mothers, despite having been raised in a loving family who chose them to be their child. From my perspective, this felt ungracious, to say the least--but then, since this isn't my story, I can't chime in and say how I think adoptees or the parents involved should be feeling or accepting their situations.

As a child who grew up in my own birth family, I note the supreme irony that, where adoptees usually want nothing so much as to meet their 'real' parents (who are presumably movie stars or exiled European royalty), I had my moments of adolescent frustration where I was sure that finding out I was adopted would be something of a comfort--because then I'd have an explanation for why I felt like an alien when trying to communicate with my parents, with whom I had a lot of the usual teen conflict. To this day, I don't feel like I either look or think anything like the woman who birthed me. The grass is always greeer-looking from the other side.

LW handled her delicate situation all wrong. In essence, she should not have reestablished contact with her firstborn daughter if she was not mature enough to accept the girl, and the fraught situation, for what it is. In general, I believe it's better for adoptees to leave things as they lie, and be happy with the loving adoptive parents they have. I can only imagine the knife in the heart of adoptive parents to be in essence made to feel, after years of sacrifice for the child they consider fully theirs, to not be considered 'real' parents; as for the birth mothers . . . their heartwrenching decisions were made years ago, and they still carry that pain, too. Meeting the child they didn't get to raise will not heal all the lost years, and as for the adoptee--finally meeting the woman, a stranger, who couldn't keep them is not a recipe for peace of mind, either. They need to work to find self-acceptance another way, because meeting a birth mother produces no guarantees, and most likely, as we see with this letter, just exacerbates old wounds.

I'm only looking from the outside, but such is my take. It hardly seems like a mother-child reunion could have gone worse than the one we have here.

Yes. She did not present herself in a very sympathetic way did she? As I ponder her letter, I wonder about whether she had much of a "choice" about putting her child up for adoption. I wonder whether she came from a family in which abortion was not an option, ergo she did not really have a choice.

In cases in which a girl is essentially forced by her parents to "choose" adoption, resentment can and does stunt emotional growth. Ditto situations in which the girl doesn't have a support network to help her through her pregnancy and talk about her feelings after she gives her child up. Perhaps I am projecting here, but I have some compassion for this woman and her feelings.

I'd like to add something here- in some defense of the LW...dealing with teenage girls and even those in their young 20s can be tough. They are not often at their most emotionally mature...and I think that today's culture perpetuates adolesence much, much longer than in the 1970s and 80s. Add the tough economy to that- and you have a lot of folks in their 20s and up still living with, and financially dependent on Mom and Dad. In this case, I think that the parents have got to be exasperated with their daughter for getting pregnant and not being able to idependently raise the child on her own.

On the whole, this is quite an exhausting situation for the birth mom to step into- and I'm sure she feels some guilt in the fact that there really isn't much she can do to 'fix' things beyond being loving and supportive of the girl and her parents without interfering. She's got to give them room to do it on their own. The LW needs to drastically scale back her expectations from this girl and her family and heal herself own her own.

Although this is a Totally different situation...I have a stepdaughter now in her late 20s and happily married. She's a joy to have in my life, but in her teens and early 20s, she was self-absorbed and kind of a headache. ("Dad, there's a Police Officer downstairs, and he wants to talk to you...(!) I had to detach from the relationship at times for my own sanity and focus on other things.

You've offered some great insights, and I couldn't help feeling that Prudie was unnecessarily harsh on a LW who is obviously wracked with guilt. One of my close friends' older sister is adopted. Somehow she (the adopted sister) has always been the odd one out of the family, and has had many more troubles than her siblings. I don't know how unusual this situation is, my friends mother adopted b/c she was unable to conceive, and somehow the alleviation of stress after finally having a child allowed her to physically bear two more.

Though I have always had a very warm relationship with her parents, they, like many families, have their share of problems...including both parents being highly functioning alcoholics (her father has now passed due to health problems that were at least exacerbated by the drinking). Even without adoption this could cause a lot of familial problems. I can't say why the younger siblings, including my friends, have been able to forge quite successful careers in very competitive industries while their older sister has been fairly lost since H/S...but I do think that it's hard to know how knowing that you are adopted can impact your life. And in the end, though agencies try hard to screen adoptive parents, they cannot predict how things will change over decades.

Another friend of mine found out she was adopted very late in her life (H/S), and it took her many, many years to fully accept the consequences. She is now actually quite close to her biological siblings, but I know the feeling of being unwanted by her birth parents really took a lot of time to get over and she had a very self-destrutive period while she tried to accept this.

I think that the LW definitely has to give her daughter the benefit of the doubt. She sought her out, after all. Obviously the LW was not perfect in her late teens, I think it's unfair to expect the same of her daughter. At the same time, hopefully some information on how to consider it from her daughter's perspective will help her find some resolution.

I have a friend who eventually adopted when she couldn't conceive. After she received her son, she discovered she was 4 months pregnant with her daughter which means the two children are only 7 months apart in age. It's too early to see how things will work out since they're still toddlers.

A woman in my circle of acquaintances had the same experience. The result? The biological daughter is doted upon excessively by the mother and spoiled rotten; the adopted daughter is less spoiled and clearly "Daddy's Little Girl."

(Note: Mom herself is more than a bit spoiled, with a $40K credit card debt she's hiding from her husband.)

That was a beautiful and heartfelt response. Also very wise.

"Our relationship is good, but not great. I think that my desire for her to be entirely mentally healthy and happy has gotten in the way of building a truly intimate/trusting relationship. She is a smart, beautiful, troubled girl, who is still trying to “find herself.” I hope that over time our relationship can make a positive contribution to that goal."

This quote from your letter could also describe my relationships with my various daughters (4) at various times in our lives.

Mostly I also have a wish that "our relationship" will make a positive contribution to her life. Whatever her life turns out to include.

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing it.

Get over it. This doofus made a mistake, but it wasn't the one you're thinking about. Her mistake was in trying to re-enter this young woman's life. The only act of love she ever gave this girl was to give her up in adoption to parents who could love and raise her. Certainly, nothing she has done in the recent past was driven by love. It was driven by guilt, jealousy and self-loathing. Up until the point when she contacted the girl, she had nothing to feel guilty about. She did what was best for the baby. Now, however, she is trying to meddle in the life of an absolute stranger and has the moxy to think she has the high moral ground? Give me a break. If an adopted child wants to get to know their birth parents because they want to understand their geneology for medical purposes or whatever, then that is OK. But in an act of love for the baby, the mother gave up any right to a future relationship. The birth mother should NEVER initiate contact to try to retrieve what was freely given away...all parental rights. Such efforts cannot lead to anything but heartache for all concerned (including the second daughter). At this point, she should tell her ex-daughter that she will be there for her if she needs help or information, but then leave it to the young woman to decide if she wants to establish any kind of relationship. Whether or not that happens is totally up to the daughter...NOT the birth mother. She should back off NOW.

"At this point, she should tell her ex-daughter that she will be there for her if she needs help or information, but then leave it to the young woman to decide if she wants to establish any kind of relationship. Whether or not that happens is totally up to the daughter...NOT the birth mother. She should back off NOW."

Perhaps. I agree that she should leave it to her daughter to establish the kind of relationship that she wants to have. However, people don't always express their wants in logical ways. However, since bio-mom has opened this kettle of fish, she has some responsibility to make sure the girl does not feel rejected again.

Feelings are not always logical and we don't know the full story here.

While it is true that people do not always use logic (as evidenced by most of Prudie's letters), if this woman does anything except backing out gracefully, she will just add more complication. She has identified herself to the young woman. Any further moves should be left to the daughter. If she wants to continue to give the young woman gifts, she should act like a godmother, who hopes for gratitude, but doesn't ask for it and doesn't base her generosity on it. I meant it when I said that a birth mother gives up all parental rights when they give their child up for adoption. To me, that truly takes an act of love for a birth-mother, but she can destroy all the good she did in giving the baby up by interfering with her life now. This situation is every adoptive parent's worst nightmare.

I agree with your advice, but worry a bit about the tone. The woman was 17 when she had her baby (probably 16 when she got pregnant). Her family was "unsupportive." Before we go too far on the judgment train, it is useful to remember that we know nothing about how she got pregnant-rape, incest, or just a jerk off boyfriend that dumped her. All of these scenarios rank high on the trauma-meter. We also don't know what "not-supportive" means -perhaps it went something like "you slut, your pregnancy embarrasses our pristine fundamentalist family, so we are going to ship you off to Aunt Tilly until you pop it out and social services can take it from you" or "no abortion for you, paint a scarlet P on your forehead you sinner."

Her letter sounds like someone who has never really grown up or differentiated herself from her family of origin. People don't become that narcissistic over night.