Divorce after adoption
Divorce for children of adoption can activate or reactivate core issues of adoption. Rejection, loss, guilt, shame, grief, identity and control are issues that many children of adoption struggle with even when living in a stable home with parents who are loving and connected. After divorce the issues that stem from the wounds of losing an original birth family and sometimes country may resurface or intensify for children of adoption.
Adopted children aren’t the only ones who struggle with these issues however. In my post, Divorce: An Interview with Ellen Bruno director of the film SPLIT, Ellen talks about the impact divorce had on the kids in her film who were not exclusively adopted. SPLIT, like Sliding Into Home, looks at divorce through the eyes and words of the children. What is apparent is that divorce raises questions and concerns for many children, adopted or not.
So how is it different for children of adoption? Children of adoption may sometimes feel like outsiders among their peers due to the make up of their families when trans-racially adopted and in knowing they were not born to the parents they live with. When they see and hear comments made about how other kids look just like their mom or dad or siblings they notice. When school assignments ask for family histories they don’t have they are set apart from their peers and in some ways their adoptive families as well. Even when they have positive feelings about being adopted they may still feel like a minority among their friends and classmates. Add divorce to that story and the feelings of separation, and hurt are compounded.
In Divorce: An Interview With Ellen Bruno, Ellen talks about the ways in which we as a society fail children of divorce by not talking more openly about divorce among ourselves and with our children. Adoption was once veiled in silence and seen as a topic better not discussed for the benefits of the child until it was plainly seen that normalizing adoption, talking about birth family, and about the ways adoption impacts children and family is a healthier model for all involved.
Where divorce after adoption is concerned we may need to once again look deeply into the ways in which divorce reopens the wounds that children of adoption spend a life time trying to heal. Frequently loss, rejection and abandonment impact an adoptee’s relationships with not only their parents, but their peers as well. The security an adopted child may have felt in their adopted family can be threatened when parents divorce. After all for a child of adoption, separated from their birth mothers, the “Forever Family” is an ideal that they know very well may not last. Divorce involves separation and loss. So often divorce involves the demise of the stable, dependable, loving relationship between two parents. Their forever family has been torn apart and the family structure once again has changed and is beyond their control. They had no say, no decision making power in being placed for adoption, and the same is true in the case of divorce. This lack of control over such basic and important aspects of their young lives creates a host of insecurities and attachment issues for many children of adoption.
Are there ways to help children of divorce, adopted or not, transition and thrive even in the face of divorce? Are there ways in which we as parents can work together with our children and one another to hold family as the highest priority while still getting our needs to be apart met? How do we open dialogue about the underlying issues for children of adoption who are also struggling with the meaning and impact of divorce?
Sliding Into Home hopes to open just such dialogue and to show children of divorce and adoption that what they are feeling is difficult and normal. Because it is told from the perspective of the child, hopefully parents, educators and children will hear and feel the experience of divorce for a child of adoption in his own words and from his own heart offering a spring board for conversation among readers. The parents in Sliding Into Home don’t do the perfect job at communicating and following through with maintaining meaningful family connection in the beginning of their story. It is not an ideal divorce, but they do what they can and we see how their lack of communication and cohesive connection impacts their children in a real and sometimes painful way. This enables readers to ponder together how they might do a better job for themselves and their children in this difficult situation.
Look for the up and coming interview with Maria Freebairn-Smith, a Creative Co-Parenting Coach who works with parents to find loving attentive ways to problem solve, build trust and respect in order to maintain connection and a sense of family while moving through conflict, separation and divorce.