Beginning a Relationship with Your Adopted Child’s Birth Family, with the W. Family

Beth and Evan W. are the parents to three young children: Amber and Jade, ages 3 and 4, and their biological son Tommy, age 1. Beth and Evan adopted Jade earlier this year, and they plan to adopt her sister Amber soon. So it’s safe to say that the W.’s will get to experience raising children in two different contexts: when a child is your biological child, and when a child is adopted. We recently sat down with Beth to discuss how they are navigating establishing their family’s relationship with their adoptive daughters’ birth family, and how they’re thinking about that relationship when the girls are older and able to understand the complexities of adoption.

“I think, when you adopt through DCF, when you adopt children who have been legally freed from their birth parents, there’s always this anticipated unknown of what a future relationship with birth family will look like,” says Beth. “Going into it, I had this feeling of, now this child is my daughter, now this child is mine, so it doesn’t compute in my brain naturally to think of having relationships with people who would also identify themselves as parents to my daughter. Even if they’re not really in a caretaking role, from my child’s perspective, they have a similar position in her life as her parent.

“That’s a really hard thing to process and to anticipate what that will look like in your life, because it’s not how most family dynamics look. It’s a unique situation to be in.”

Beth and Evan are still establishing their own relationship with Jade and Amber’s birth dad. They’re trying to make moves now that will set them up for a relationship that is stable and sustainable, hopefully for the rest of their daughters’ lives.

“For now, we’ve told them that he cares about them and wants to see them grow up,” says Beth. She and Evan are trying to keep the family relationships as straightforward for their daughters to think about as possible. When the girls are able to understand more about adoption, Beth and Evan will share more information with Jade and Amber. They’ll tell them more about the complexities of their story as they get older.

Beth is thinking in the long term about Jade and Amber’s relationship with Matthew, “like when they enter that stage of self-discovery in high school and college,” she says. “They’ll want to know more about who they are as a person, and a lot of that has to do with where they came from. I can’t speak from the perspective of someone who’s been adopted, but I feel like anybody who has been adopted would want that connection with the person they were born from. And you would have questions about why it worked out the way it did.”

Beth and Evan are aware that they will have a lot of influence over how their daughters perceive their birth parents. We know that when adoptive parents honor and value their children’s original relationships, everyone in the family benefits.

Beth and Evan understand how important it is for Jade and Amber to feel loved and cared for by both their adoptive and birth families throughout their lives. They’re trying to remember throughout this process that the girls’ relationship with their birth father will always be valuable to them. “It’s part of this story of where they came from and how they became our daughters. And another part of that is having to take myself out of it and think about what it means for them,” says Beth.

If you have questions about adoption or are interested in adopting with CFCS, contact our Family Services team today!