Recently, my eight-year-old granddaughter asked how many children I had had. She understands that Grandpa Jay is actually her step-grandfather, the only grandfather she has ever known. She knows that her father’s father died three years ago, and she had never met him. Her maternal grandfather died the year before she was born. She knows that her dear Auntie Chris is her father’s half-sister on his father’s side. The rest has been a little fuzzy for her. She does know that Uncle Dan and Uncle David are her father’s full brothers and their children are her cousins. She also understands that Bibi is her mother’s niece, but has been raised as a sister to this child, Sarah, and her other siblings, since Bibi’s mother died. She knows Bibi is not adopted. This has all been discussed many times. But, because my relinquished eldest son is not currently in contact with us, she doesn’t remember him. So, when she asked me, I hesitated a moment and then answered, “Four. I had four sons. I raised three of them.”

That did not startle her too much. She wanted to know if he’s her uncle and I said he is, but that we haven’t seen him for a while, and that he has no children, but he is married. She soon went on to other subjects, but I began to wonder how one addresses all these issues with children, who are naturally curious and are trying to sort out various relationships. She has playmates who are cousins of cousins, her mother’s cousins who are called aunts and uncles because they are of her mother’s generation, and other complicated relationships. She won’t get it all straight at this age, but I have vowed not to lie to her or withhold appropriate information. If we’re going to discuss our genetic heritages, I believe we ought to be open about how we’re all related to each other, or how we’re not related.

I began to wonder how others discuss adoption, relinquishment, legal guardianship, step- and half-relationships with children, young ones like she is, and older ones. I went through the O.I. Lending Library and found almost nothing, only some ideas about telling (not really discussing) adoption with one’s adopted child. That is not at all the same as discussing why Grandma is a birth mother, and what that means, or even why Auntie Chris is not my daughter, or why Auntie Stefanie’s kids are her step-cousins, but Grandpa Jay is their actual grandfather. Yet, even a child seems able to sort all this out and accept that there are many kinds of cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents. It seems to be adults who have such difficulty with all of it.

When my step-daughter Chris introduced me to her adopted granddaughter, she said, “Remember I told you about the person who was my stepmother? This is her, this is Barbara.” The child immediately said, “What shall I call you?” I said, “You can call me Barbara or Grandma Barbara, whatever you like.” Looking straight at me, she said. “I’m just going to call you Grandma.” She didn’t care what the complicated legal relationship might be. She didn’t care that Chris is actually my former step-daughter, being my first husband’s daughter by his first wife. The kids don’t care about those details, but they do care about people being honest with them.

So, how do I discuss with my grandchildren that Grandma is a birth mother, and what that means? How does a 21st-century child begin to understand that, in the “old days,” as they refer to even their parents’ youthful years, Grandma had loved someone other than Grandpa Jay, and even someone other than Grandpa Ron; and that in those days, if one had a child and was not married, one could not keep the child and raise him? In her experience, sometimes a cousin has a baby at sixteen, or even fourteen, and can’t really do all the raising and go to school, so the grandma helps, or the aunties help. The concept of relinquishment is beyond her imagination. Yet, influenced by books, movies, and society in general, she imagines adopting a child herself one day. She thinks she would just go to the hospital and there would be babies there from which to choose. This is a very common idea for children of her age, but even teenagers seem to believe this. Part of that fantasy is that they have learned how babies are conceived, sort of, and at that age, they think that’s really gross. They have seen some movie about children and orphanages and don’t understand that we don’t really have those in this country, nor do they understand that if a child of any age is available for adoption, it’s because someone else gave birth to that child and now, for whatever reason, cannot raise him/her. They don’t understand that the joy of adoption for the adoptive parents comes at the cost of the birth parent’s(s’) loss. I do not want to burden my grandchildren with my own past sorrow, but I don’t want to pretend that all is as the movies and books portray, happy adoptive parents, lucky adopted child, no birth parents in the picture, as if the child just materialized out of someone’s wishes. I have a dear friend who does projects to benefit some group called “Adoption Dreams Come True.” She does not understand, even now, that those dreams are someone else’s grief and loss. It isn’t just children who don’t understand, it’s our society’s refusal to accept birth parents as valid persons with thoughts, feelings, and rights.

In re-reading several books in the lending library, I was struck by the continued use, even now, of such terms as “illegitimate,” “gave away her child,” “bastard,” and “real parents.” In one of the better books, it is still suggested that adoptive parents tell the adopted child, “I think your birth mother used poor judgment in choosing not to parent you, but I’m glad you’re my daughter.” The author does caution that young children hear “poor” and associate the word with being financially poor. In any case, does a child need to believe her birth mother had no money or no judgment? The fact that none of these books even mentioned how a birth parent might discuss adoption at all seems to indicate that birth parents are still expected to hide the very fact of their parenthood forever, or somehow just vanish from existence, even in this day and age, even in so-called “semi-open adoptions,” which usually means “just not totally closed adoptions.” Yet birth parents generally are still alive (they were not killed in car wrecks and had no other relatives), and many of them have subsequent children and partners. Birth fathers are generally regarded as even less socially acceptable than birth mothers, except that they usually went on with school, sports, careers, etc., and might even become U.S. Senators 1auded as very upstanding and religious!

Grandparents are supposed to be nearly perfect, with nothing questionable in their pasts. Birth parents, on the other hand, are to be forever feared. These are quite often the same people! And what of parents who did not relinquish, but are raising, or have raised, their children as single parents, or with partners to whom they are not or were not, married? This is fairly common today. Are they to be thought of in the same derogatory way as birth parents who relinquished, or are they better? They also have to discuss these issues with their children at some point, and we don’t have adequate, positive, neutral vocabulary in our language (perhaps not in any language) to discuss the various issues. One article referred to “recidivist unmarried mothers,” which would imply that these young women were the same as felons, grouped with robbers and murderers!

This topic is important, not only to birth parents, but to adults who were adopted and are or will be discussing their own adoption with their children or grandchildren. What are the attitudes they observed and/or internalized about birth parents, adoptive parents, themselves and their siblings or other relatives? Was adoption a big secret, or was adoption celebrated but birth parents considered nonexistent, or a threat to everyone’s well-being, or were they honored or even known? Many people who are not adopted have siblings who were, siblings who were birth parents, or other close relatives who were adopted or who were birth parents. Did anyone talk about these situations? If a relative is relinquishing, or not relinquishing now, how is the family handling that? Does it seem to make a difference if adoption is across cultures or different ethnicities, or even different socioeconomic backgrounds?

Children with both adoptive grandparents and birth grandparents may have different attitudes about these various older people, depending only partly on whether they always knew them, or have only recently met them. One O.I. member’s child, upon learning that she had two sets of birth grandparents, as well as two sets of adoptive grandparents, said, “Well, I guess that might mean even more Christmas presents!”

It is no wonder people might be confused about more than two sets of grandparents, although children usually accept however many there are. I had a close friend once, however, who insisted that, as the maternal grandmother (she had been single many years), she was the real grandparent, while her son-in-law’s parents were not as important! I was aghast, having all sons, that I might be considered less than the children’s maternal grandparents. Before we discuss things with grandchildren, we ought to be sure our own minds are not clouded by fears and negative attitudes, because children will immediately pick up on them. It is also important to distinguish between privacy and secrecy. Privacy means you don’t need to tell strangers details of your life, while secrecy implies there’s something bad about the facts and we must be fearful. It is also important to be truthful with children, but one must take the children’s parents’ attitudes and decisions into consideration. Sometimes there are surprises there, too. One of O.I.’s former members told her nieces about her own search for her birth parents, and her adoptive brother became furious at her even mentioning it, and made her leave his house! He himself was afraid to search, although the adoptive parents were supportive of search.

In preparing this article, I read five books from the O.I. library, none of them recent, and found each of them helpful. They are listed at the end. The best one, however, was written in 1991, when open adoption was quite new. It was written by a birth mother’s mother, from her point of view, about her daughter’s pregnancy and decision to have an open adoption, fully disclosed, with frequent contact with the adoptive parents. She explores her own thoughts, feelings, fears, and joys as they all develop new relationships and change existing ones for the better. (This book, My Child Is a Mother, by Mary Stephenson, will be reviewed in the next issue of this newsletter.)

There are no best or only ways to discuss adoption with children. Each family’s situation is different, everyone’s experiences are different, and what works for one situation or family may not for others. The worst thing, though, is to avoid any discussion of adoption, or only talk about it once or twice, giving children (and adults) the idea that open discussion is dangerous, fearful, or shameful. In the book mentioned above, the adoptive father said, “Don’t get hung up on whose child this is. You can’t own a baby. All you can own is the responsibility.”

We would particularly welcome input and personal experiences from readers on this topic, as it seems not to be covered adequately by anything in print so far.