Who Are Your “Real” Parents?
Julie McGue
Author
The battle over which set of parents deserves the label of ‘real parents’ is one with which every adoptee is familiar. When I was in elementary school, a classmate leaned over my desk during in-school lunch period and asked, “What do you know about your real family?” I remember that at the time this question was posed, I’d been sipping through a straw in the milk carton I’d paid a nickel for, and I’d almost choked. Finding words through strangled breaths, I recall gazing into my Snoopy lunchbox as if Lucy or Charlie Brown could answer for me. I shook my shag haircut free of my flushed freckles and said something like: “I was a baby when I was adopted. I live with my real family.”
My answer seemed to satisfy my school friend and she never brought up the subject again. At the time, I’d been blindsided by the question, and I hadn’t been certain I’d answered it the way I’d intended. In the 1970s, talking about being adopted wasn’t something I did. Besides my brother and sister, I didn’t know anyone who was adopted. Not only had I not sought out this adoption conversation, I hadn’t welcomed it. It made me feel uncomfortable about being different. I just wanted to blend-in, be accepted for being me: a smart, tall, gangly tomboy who happened to be a twin.
When I got home that night I know I didn’t tell my Mom, but I probably discussed it with my sister. My twin and me had a habit of crawling into bed together, tickling each other’s feet, and whispering in the dark. Just having her to grow up with helped both of us sort out a lot of belonging issues (Catholic Charities has a policy of not separating multiple birth siblings). I’m certain as I lay in my own canopy bed waiting for sleep to come, I’d have noodled that question and others further (see 3 Things Adoptees Think About on 7/17/18).
If I were to answer that same question now, almost fifty years later, I’d be more challenging to the questioner. I’d say, “Are you talking about my birth parents or my adoptive parents?” Today I have more confidence about being adopted. I have spent eight years answering that question and more difficult ones. Today, I am ready and willing to talk about my adoption and all the complicated issues surrounding it. And I would probably say, “To me, both sets of my parents are very real.”
So who is the ‘real parent’? If you ask an adoptee you might get a similar answer to the ones I provided above. If you are an adoptive parent because you’re the one staying up all night with a fevered child, plastering a Bandaid on skinned knees, and putting in all the hours of a dedicated parent, you may think you are the ‘real’ parent. If you are the birth parent and you know that you gave a child life, then you may think you are the ‘real’ parent.
In closing, I would suggest that this ‘real’ label is outdated, irrelevant and divisive. From where I sit, as an adult adoptee, all my parents are real. My heart is big enough to love them all, even the ones that have refused to include me in their daily life.
“From where I sit, as an adult adoptee, all my parents are real.”
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The thing is, words are meant for communication. When people ask an adoptee that question, they are hardly asking with judgment. You knew and all adoptees and actually all people know, exactly what is being asked. The word real has eight different definitions depending on which dictionary you look it up in and the definition being used when you are asked, “Do you know who your real parents are?” is different than the one you use when you answer with “They are both real.”
I don’t think that when people (especially kids asking kids) ask they are intending offense because it’s pretty silly to suggest that people are asking if your adoptive parents actually exist…right? The question really is why were you or your adoptive parents offended….it’s like you said, adoptees and adoptive parents want to pretend they aren’t different. But, you know what? They are and it would work so much better if adoptive parents accepted what they really are…adoptive parents instead of being offended by projecting intent and taking offense at a word with a meaning that was interpreted correctly. The offense they feel comes from within and reflects their own insecurities about being adoptive parents. Adoptees are hurt by it because being adopted hurts and having the fact they you are adopted (different) hurts…not because the person who asked had malintent. The solution to the problem is to prevent adoption so there is no difference (pain) not to ask everyone to pretend it doesn’t exist for the people living it.
Asking people, especially kids, to use a complicated work around like,”Do you know the people who created you?” is probably unreasonable and the question then is, if asked liked that, is it still offensive?