Are biological fathers meaningless?
My own birth father has never really been more then a passing thought for me. Maybe it's because I grew up thinking that he was dead. (Iris told the SW that she was widowed as one of the reasons for placing me. This mis-information made its way into my non-identifying info). When I thought about finding my birth family, it was always my mother and sister that I thought of. Even after I found Iris and the truth came out, I was only mildly curious. And since Iris refused (and still refuses) to give me any information on him, the point is rather moot.
So why did I start to cry when she casually mentioned him by name in an email?
My father's name is Ken.
When we were first meeting with K and discussing Liam's adoption-to-be, the subject of his birth father barely came up. We did make sure that he was aware of the pregnancy, knew that K was planning on placing Liam and that he did not want to raise the baby himself. In fact, it wasn't until the day before Liam was born that we even thought to inquire about his birth father's race. Race was not an issue to us, so it never came up, but it may have been a bit of a surprise the next day if we had assumed the baby was going to be white and wasn't.
K has since shared some tidbits of information about him, scraps that I print and save in a book of all of our communication, because I'm begining to realize that this may be very important to Liam one day.
I wonder if Liam will feel more of an urge to find his birth father then I did, because he is growing up without a father?
I wonder how much my relationship with my a-father affected my outlook on fathers in general?
I look at friends, single moms raising their kids alone, and wonder what their children will do one day? Will they search out their fathers? Is being raised by a single mom different then being adopted (in the case of not knowing your father)?
To answer my question... No, I don't believe that biological fathers are meaningless. I just don't what mine means to me right now.
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3 comments:
I often wonder about our children's birthfathers, too.
Ours are both absent from our picture, and I wonder how this will affect our kids someday.
I am interested in your thoughts on Ken, as they develop, Andy.
I consider it a real gift that when we matched with Em's bparents, it was with BOTH of them. They were a couple at the time, and both were involved in the adoption process, so we spent time with both of them and got to know both of them (for better or worse...). After Em was born, her bparents split up and we've only had sporadic contact from either of them, but I am glad to have even that for Em as she gets older and we try to keep in touch with each of them from our end as well. Her bdad is a gifted artist and I cherish the drawings he has made for Em over the years, esp as she seems to have a passion for drawing now as well.
I was like you, Andy - it was always about my bmom when I was growing up, and my bfather was a passing thought. My family also had misinformation on him, and as the real information is less than ideal, I don't know a lot more about him even after talking with my bmom. Also, she asked me never to contact him (for a number of reasons) and thus far, I've honored her request. It is frustrating to me on the one hand because that is half of my medical history, genetic history, etc., but given the circumstances of my conception (nonconsensual), he hardly is someone that I would want a relationship with, so, I guess I'll never really have that half of my birthfamily history...
Great thoughts again Andy...we know the nationality of both boys birth fathers and a little bit more we do have a short video of Spence's birth father but nothing to enlightening. I have made efforts to keep a line of communication open at our agency should he ever want to have contact with him.
Debi
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