Adoption Week e-Magazine Article

Sandy Glassman

Ideally, adoption is a positive experience. However, there are numerous cases of adoptive parents who have experienced significant difficulties with their adopted children. Often, these problems are a result of birth mothers who did not adequately care for their bodies during pregnancy or suffer from mental illness.

Birth mothers need to be more responsible for the child they are carrying, regardless of who will be raising that child. Prospective adoptive parents need to be cautious and questioning of a birth mother’s drug and alcohol habits and psychological health prior to adopting a child.

My husband and I adopted an exquisite baby girl 28 years ago through a private adoption. She was so beautiful that we could only imagine our lives filled with joy from our dream child. Since experiencing significant problems with our daughter from learning disabilities to oppositional defiant behavior to an eating disorder, we have consulted many professionals over the years and the consensus is that our daughter was a fetal alcohol syndrome baby. We believe our adoption attorney was aware of her biological mother’s abuse, but that his only concern was his own financial gain.

Raising a child such as ours is heartbreaking and sad. Her life is filled with psychological turbulence due to the lack of respect and responsibility of a young and most likely troubled biological mother. Our story is not unusual. In fact, it is very common and seems to be the untold story concerning adopted children.

My husband and I have learned to erase our bitterness and focus on the positive side of life. However, situations such as this should serve as valuable lessons to those contemplating adoption. There are safeguards people can take to try to eliminate the possibility of problems such as our family has faced and continues to struggle with.

Although our daughter’s life is filled with chaos practically every day, we have stuck by her. Many friends say we should disown her. However, I am married to an amazing man (her adoptive father) who despite the problems of her life will never give up on her. He stays the course and I follow his lead. Without a doubt, he is truly her lifeline and for this she is a lucky young woman.

While little can be done to remedy our family's situation, my focus is to raise the awareness of others who are contemplating adoption.