No big deal?

What are adoptive parents saying when we say, “biology doesn’t matter to me at all” - when we declare this idea (while projecting complete conviction) that biological ties to people in our lives are of absolutely no importance?

I find it a very curious statement, at best – especially when most of those who make these comments have a least one or two, if not tens or even hundreds of biological connections in their lives. The world is literally made up of people who have biological connections – and for the vast majority of folks, these connections are present in on-going, every-day relationships. So how is it that some of us can so easily disregard the significance of being connected to life in such a way?

In adoptive-parent circles, we are usually discussing whether or not we love our children by adoption as much as we love (or would have loved) our children by birth – and since we feel that we couldn’t possibly love our adopted children any more than we already do (i.e. even if we had given birth to them or were biologically related to them) we write off ‘biological connection’ as if it is some strange, backward concept that people make way too big a deal about.

By the way, I think these proclamations about biology also shine the light of truth on adoptive parents’ excitement over surprise sibling referrals. Because if biology is of absolutely no meaning to us, then these highly-desired surprise sibling referrals are of no more significance than ‘getting’ another child, everything else be damned. Actually, maybe biology is completely meaningless to some APs – because if it weren’t, we would ALL realize that, when sitting around and hoping, praying, and wishing upon a star for our coveted “sibling calls”, we are actually wishing horrible misfortune upon our beloved children’s biological mothers.

Mostly I see people alleging the insignificance of biological connections in attempt to validate adoptive-family structures. It’s fine for us to say that we couldn’t possibly love our (adopted) children any more than we already do. But to declare ‘biology’ to be a falsely-revered connection in our societies, I wonder if the message some people are sending is that our children’s roots are no more important to us than yesterday’s garbage. Not to mention how hurtful it must be for first mothers to know that (some) adoptive parents quite frankly don’t care two whits about adoption loss and suffering. After all, losing a simple ‘biological connection’ isn’t any big deal??