Words Melissa Fick for My Child Magazine

Melissa Fick, an adoption researcher, provisionally registered clinical psychologist and mother of two, says there's much that biological parents can learn from those who adopt.

For adoptive parents, the pathway to parenthood is often an emotionally treacherous and dimly lit one. Many adoptive parents first survived the emotional, physical and financial rigours of years of infertility treatments, before even contemplating adopting a child.

That women and men invest so much in the pursuit of becoming biological parents, even if this is for only one parent, or for the sake of participating in the biological process of nurturing an embryo to the point of giving birth, is a testimony to the importance that our culture places on the biological nature of kinship.

Since, in our culture, the idea of parenthood is firmly entangled with the biological processes involved in creating a child, the idea of parenting a child who is the genetic product of someone else's family often takes some getting used to. This is one of the reasons why adoptive parents sometimes report that biological parents speak as if their relationships with their children are somehow more natural, in the sense of being organic and therefore more authentic.

Some adoptive mothers report that they have been exposed to the view that their families are contrived and that they have consequently felt excluded from the exclusive motherhood club which has unspoken entry requirements of a birthing story, breastfeeding experiences and stretch marks. Thankfully, although adoptive mothers still encounter such attitudes, they are becoming less common.

With more and more blended families, it is not at all uncommon for children to be raised with at least one parent who is biologically unrelated.

There is also much more publicity about child abuse perpetrated at the hands of biological parents which has served to undermine our idea of the sanctity of biological parenting.

Less widely known are the results of empirical research on alternative routes to parenthood, which have shown, time and time again, that parents who have acquired their child through assisted reproduction technologies and adoption are generally excellent parents, even better on some measures than biological parents.

This information is not difficult to assimilate when you consider that adoptive parents are extraordinarily motivated to parent. Not for them were the accidental, ill-timed pregnancies that interfered with cherished plans, or pregnancies they were pressured into by spouses with unsynchronised biological clocks.

Parents such as these have also made enormous personal sacrifices involving physical discomfort, financial pain and assaults on their privacy, not like the rest of us only beginning at birth, but extraordinarily in the service of becoming parents.

Not surprisingly, adoptive parents generally enjoy their children more than biological parents and view them as especially rewarding and particularly satisfying even when they are faced with challenges which anyone would consider difficult. The fact that they experience a strong motivation to parent explains why adopted kids have been found to do so well, even in some instances when their genetic and pre-adoption histories place them at risk of doing poorly. One reason for this is that adoptive parents are known to seek out professional help for their concerns regarding their children's medical and psychological wellbeing far more frequently and much sooner than biological parents, who may be more inclined to say, 'Aunty Cath had that problem and she survived well enough.'

Another less widely known empirical finding about adoptive parents is that, as a group, they experience an extremely low rate of marriage dissolution in comparison with biological parents.

Several reasons for this fascinating phenomenon have been proposed. Perhaps the most obvious of these is that the rigorous assessment process all parents who seek to adopt a child are subjected to weeds out those with shaky marriages.

In subjecting themselves to six months or more of scrutiny, not to mention prior infertility treatments, only couples who can pull together during adversity are likely to last the distance. This strength bodes well for managing the demands of parenthood, demands that can often place a wedge in less optimal relationships.

The assessment process is also likely to uncover potential conflicts over differing parenting styles, which the couple will have ample opportunity to address before becoming parents, unlike biological parents who generally only discover these sometimes insurmountable obstacles in the process of parenting.

Adoption caseworkers are required to establish that both prospective parents are committed to and equipped for raising a child.

Anyone who is a parent knows the divisive effect of one partner being less than enthusiastic about the intrusion of a child into a once exclusive relationship. Even more interesting is that empirical research has found that adopting a child has been associated with increased marital quality and less strain on the marriage than gaining a biological child.

We know that marital stability is associated with good outcomes for children. In my own research, I have found that couples who are able to endure the adoption assessment process generally have another personal quality in common, which is that, as a group, they tend to have a positive sense of their own worth and they expect others to respond to them positively. They also tend to view others as supportive and available. These are key ingredients for good relationships in general.

Parents who have reliable networks of supportive friends and family are at a distinct advantage when faced with the inevitable demands of raising children.

Not only that, parents who are generally comfortable in close relationships will typically be comfortable in their relationships with their children too. Through my research, I have also found that adoptive parents, in general, have better coping skills than biological parents. Perhaps this is another prerequisite for surviving the adoption assessment procedure. They tend to be far better than the average biological parent at examining all available information and all their options in solving problems, and far less inclined to let strong emotions get in the way of settling on a solution. It is easy to see that this strength is yet another ingredient for parenting success.

This is not to say that there are no losses in adopting a child. Most adoptive parents wish that they had nurtured their child in their womb, given birth to their child and experienced his or her first few months. For some, this is a recurring sadness that rallies at times when exposed to family members or close friends experiencing what they never will. Some parents carry the scars of miscarriages or of long-ago terminations and they may grieve for the children they will never have.

Experts encourage adoptive parents to permit themselves to grieve and to engage in any rituals which give expression to their loss, if they experience this, even after they become a family through adoption. After all, adoption is only a solution to becoming parents, but cannot provide the biological experiences on which our culture places so much importance.

Adoptive parents cannot pass their adopted child off as their biological child as their child has a right to know his or her biological roots. As most adoptions these days are inter-country adoptions, due to very limited numbers of Australian children available for adoption, their children are public advertisements of their parents' probable infertility. So adoptive parents have to come to terms with their infertility to the extent that they are comfortable telling their child about how they came to be adopted into their family and also comfortable enough with the fact to have this made public, in the case of more obvious trans-racial adoptions. Many parents find that the rewards of adoptive parenting more than make up for these challenges to their privacy.

One of the joys of biological parenting is being able to seek out evidence of themselves and their partner in their child and this is both a source of great pleasure, and sometimes pain, for these parents.

Adoptive parents gain a child who has, to a larger extent, unknown potential. Their child may have very different academic potential to themselves or may have a proclivity for interests outside his or her parents' experience.

Behavioural genetics research has shown us that genes outweigh environment in determining who we become but that environment does provide the parameters in which we can express ourselves. Parenting is only one small aspect of the environment that influences how we turn out.

Most adoptive parents realise that they are not to be provided with a child who is a blank slate for them to create into a facsimile of the biological child they had once dreamed of. They are, instead, excited by their child's gradual self-development process, and they will take their child's lead in providing for him or her, as good parents should.

Perhaps there is a certain liberation for the child in such families where there are fewer projected ambitions, fewer demands placed on the child to achieve what parents had been thwarted in achieving by the restrictions placed on them by their own parents: 'I would have loved to have played the piano. You will, too, because you take after me. Therefore you must keep up with your lessons and I won't hear of you stopping.' Perhaps this is one of the reasons why adopted children have rated their parents as more caring, nurturing, comforting and helpful, with more predictable standards and more protective concern, than children raised in their biological family.

There are, of course, challenges that adoptive parents face which biological parents do not, such as having a child with an unknown social and medical history, especially when their child needs serious medical investigations.

Inter-country adoptive parents have to try to understand and manage the impact of racism on their child and deal with long-term effects of neglect or abuse, especially in children adopted at an older age.

Another challenge faced by all adoptive parents is helping their child understand the difference between their biological heritage, which some find essential to working out their identity, and their adoptive family ties. To most adopted people these ties are inevitably stronger than blood in that they are complex webs spun of cords of commitment, devotion and love, over years and in everyday tasks.

Many adoption resources and web-based forums are heavily biased towards the losses associated with adoption, and the attending grief undergone by some members of the adoption triangle. Such resources may be consistent with practitioners' experiences when helping people going through these very valid difficulties, which arose, in part, because of deficiencies in past adoption practice.

It should be noted that current empirical research paints an overwhelmingly more positive picture of the experiences of all three members of the adoption triangle (empowered birth parents, educated adoptive parents and adopted persons as informed as possible about their genetic heritages).

The stories of loss and dislocation are important in documenting the dangers of secretive adoptions and the long-term impact of disenfranchised mothers who were forced to relinquish their children. If you are considering adoption as a means to forming your family, do not be put off by these stories because they reflect a time and place that was substantially different to today, or circumstances that do not reflect the current norm. We now know that a birth mother who makes an informed decision to relinquish her child does not generally experience long-term grief, but instead feels relief and satisfaction at having found a positive solution to her predicament. Most adopted people fare comparably to people raised in their biological families and adoptive parents generally experience their families as tremendously reinforcing.

This article is brought to you by My Child Magazine.
Words Melissa Fick

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