Do Adopted People feel an emotional connection to their birth mothers? One woman says NO.

"What birth mothers often don't understand is that their adopted children feel no emotional connection to them. That's not about our 'anger'. It's just that we don't relate to your emotional world because we've lived in the world made possible by our adoption and we have lives that are separate from yours. I met my birth mother after my own son was born. Nada zip sense of emotion toward her one way or another. It was helpful to get some medical history, but that was perfunctory."

Well, that is bracing. It is from a comment by OnceUponADiva and posted at the site mentioned in yesterday's blog post about the Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva, after I left my comment dissing the plot lines of the last two episodes at the show's website.  If anonymous OnceUpon is right...then we have the answer to why so many reunions go south after the first meeting, why adopted people come forward and then slink away leaving many birth/first mothers sad and clueless about the lack of relationship with their "found" children. Yes, I know it happens both ways--birth mothers slink away too, but today let's discuss it from the perspective of the adopted person.

I beg to differ with OnceUpon on her blanket statement that "adopted children feel no emotional connection" to birth/first mothers. Many do, as evidenced by the comments of adopted people who visit FMForum. If there was "no emotional connection" then even seeking a reunion would not happen; if there was no emotional connection, we would not have the adopted people writing here, writing memoirs. There would hardly be the commotion over sealed birth records that is being played out in state after state.

My daughter and I had hills and valleys in our quarter-of-a-century relationship; she would come and she would go and she would come back. Though I have to speak for her since she is now longer here to do so, she gave plenty of evidence that she felt a strong, unbreakable, emotional connection with me.

What I have noticed in my unscientific observations over the years is that when the adoptee is raised in better social, educational and financial circumstances than that of her birth, there is a greater sense of distance from the biological parents than otherwise, as well as a certain relief that one was raised in a better social class than if one had not been adopted. This is especially noticeable in the memoirs of Sarah Saffian and A.M Holmes. A man I once knew who had been adopted into a Town & Country lifestyle was somewhat devastated when he learned that his birth mother had been a laundress. He was Harvard educated and wealthy, though he had practically no relationship with his adoptive father, who had divorced his mother; he felt letdown and somehow betrayed by his mother's lowly station in life. None of this class distinction and distancing is particularly surprising, I suppose, but must be somewhat devastating for the birth mother to sense and then hear that she "did the right thing" from her child.

So, dear reader-who-is-adopted, what do you think? This blog today really needs your input. If you have met your first mother, do you feel an emotional connection to her? As far as you are able to acknowledge, have class differences between you and your birth mother come into play? Please comment here--this is a hot topic--and I urge you to leave your thoughts as well as at the Drop Dead Diva website.--lorraine
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