My Adopted Kids Don’t Need to be Grateful

Three of my kids celebrate the anniversaries of their adoptions this month. It’s a time of year we tend to have a lot of big and small conversations about adoption within our family. We talk about what know about their lives before they came to us, what we remember about the day we first met them, the adoption process, and their ongoing feelings about being adopted.

During all these conversations, I am very conscious that whatever message we give them within our home, there is a constant message society will give them. The moment they entered our lives and likely anytime they tell their adoption story for the rest of their lives there will be an expectation on my kids. People will expect them to be grateful.

Photo by Maddie Hinrichs

It’s true that adoption doesn’t generally happen because things were going so well in the biological family. Adoption often happens because there was a major breakdown in the family structure. There may have been abuse, neglect, addiction, domestic violence, dysfunction, mental health problems, poverty or medical issues. (I want to be really clear that this is not always the case. I have good friends from stable families who chose to place children for adoption because they wanted those kids to have the same kind of upbringing they had, but wouldn’t be able to provide at that point in their lives. I have so much respect for those women and their families.) When we can see this dramatic before and after of a child’s trajectory, it is easy to project on them that they should be grateful to not be raised in that difficult environment. We can see how they have “escaped” a painful life and been handed a sweet one in exchange, but when we see things that way we fail to acknowledge the very pain of adoption.

My kids have lost everything they knew. They’ve lost what was familiar to them. They’ve lost the ability to blend in with their family. My transracially adopted kids have lost the ability to go anywhere without people knowing (or at least assuming) parts of their adoption story. They may have lost a language they would have known, cultural traditions they would have experienced and extended family that loved them dearly. They’ve lost access to their medical history and the ability to get some of their important questions answered.

All adoption starts with loss. It doesn’t end there, but that’s where it starts. There are things we can do as adoptive families to make that better or worse for our kids. When we can allow them to feel safe to express their losses, we help them make peace with them. When we do our best to give our kids access to members of their biological family as it’s safe and our kids desire it, we can help them find answers to their questions. When we connect them to racial mirrors and help them find relationships with other adoptees (both peers and mentors) to normalize their experience, we can help them know they aren’t alone.

All of this takes intentional work on our part and requires realizing that adoption creates unique struggles for our kids. These struggles require unique parenting solutions that families on the outside may not know anything about. So while we’re working hard inside our home to validate and mitigate the losses our kids have experienced, we also know it won’t be long until someone once again refers to our kids as “lucky” to be adopted or reminds them how thankful they must feel.

I’m not requiring gratitude from my adopted kids. At least not for their adoption. I teach them to be thankful. I require gratitude when it comes to thanking me for the dinner I made for them or acknowledging the birthday gift from their grandparents. I want them to be people who have grateful hearts, but I love them because I am mostly selfish. They are a treasure to me and I am forever thankful that I get the honor and privilege of being their mom. They don’t need to be thankful that I love them any more than my biological kids need to be thankful.

No one tells my biological kids how “lucky” they are or how thankful they should be that they have parents who meet their needs and care about their wellbeing. That’s because we assume biological parents will love their children. We assume biological kids are inherently worth being loved. The assumption that adopted kids only get that kind of parenting because they’re lucky and their response should be gratitude. . . I don’t like what that implies about their worth.

I was listening to a song with my son that referenced people going to “rescue” an orphan. I told him I had mixed feelings about that language. I liked that a song was pushing people to consider what they could do to help, but we never adopted in order to be rescuers. My son said, “You weren’t trying to rescue me, you just wanted to be parents.” It’s true and I’m glad he understands that. My goal is not to create a sense of perpetual indebtedness in my child, but to point him to Jesus who rescued both of us.

As I think of my own life and my own parents, I’m very thankful I was raised in a loving home with that beautiful balance of nurture and structure, where my needs were always met. I am grateful for my parents, although there were predictable seasons throughout my life where I struggled in my relationships with them. My hope is that my kids may someday have similar feelings about me and about their upbringing. I hope they will have the same feelings of thankfulness that many adults (adopted and not) develop about their parents and their childhoods. I hope they will be grateful to have had a loving home, although I never expect them to be grateful to be adopted. I validate the pain adoption has sometimes brought into their lives. And I’ll continue to push against that societal view that my kids need to be thankful for what every other child can take for granted.