The concept that a parent will unconditionally love their own kid no matter what is familiar to us all. Some say that it is built into our genes, and by nature we will take care of our young; we naturally love our own. But how does this sit with those that are adopted?
The danger with mixing adopted kids with biological ones is that the kid will feel that he is less loved, and/or that the parents will indeed love their own kid more. But shouldn't it instead be vice versa? Sure, the parents will naturally love their own kid, but the source of this love may be genetic hardwired. Whereas with the adopted kid, the parents chose to love him; and it is because of this choice that the adopted kid should rest assured that he has something his biological counterpart will never have.
2 comments:
You're right that there seems to be an unnecessary choice on the parents' part with regard to loving an adopted child (in contrast to the so-called unconditional, and therefore involuntary, love offered to biological offspring), but does this mean that the adopted child should feel privileged, or rather that he (or she) is in possession of something more akin to a consolation prize, given that his own parents (assuming he is not an orphan) did not feel that 'unconditional' love? Moreover, given the apparent voluntariness of the love, shouldn't the adopted child also be worried that, through the slipperiness of 'choice', his adopted parents may one day 'change their minds'?
I see what you mean by it being more of a consolation prize in light of their biological parents having given them up for adoption. But i don't think you can automatically equate the act of giving them up for adoption to the child not have felt unconditional love. There's a potential that the act of giving them up was the best possible course of action for the child. Hence, the child merely needs to understand that their biological parents did in fact love them, but due to circumstances that they couldn't change, the expression of the love was by letting the child be raised by others.
Also, i guess the point i was trying to get at is that, since the love for the adopted kid was voluntary, and for the biological kid involuntary, then it MAY be said that the parents 'wanted' to love the adopted kid, but didn't have a choice in loving the biological one (due to biological hard-wiring).
But i do agree with the criticism regarding the slipperiness of choice. Without the involuntary connection with the child, it may be the case that the parents would at a later point in time just choose to 'not love' the child.
It's sad though. I guess i really wanted to argue for the adopted kids, since there are so many out there. Wanted to somehow put an optimistic spin on things...
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