A win/win in adoption cannot be achieved if the story of a child's life is that they were not wanted... in order for it to be a 'win',their story must be about a biological parent understanding the depth of a commitment to the child's life that to love them is to be selfless and allow them to bond with and love other parents for the rest of their life (not just until they are 18). That's a tremendous sacrafice from a biological parent! It's unfortunate that most people believe adoption is a betrayal and tend to judge parents who choose adoption.

I believe adoption will affect individuals differently based on their experiences. I have heard of a variety of reactions to adoption. I've met individuals who have never had an interest in finding their biological parents because they were so content in their life that adoption was just a simple fact of their life. I've met individuals who have simply 'felt' different or 'adoption' meant they were different, and just wanted to meet their biological families to connect their own 'different-ness'. I've met others who felt a sense of rejection and wanted to understand why they were not wanted. And of course you have those who have been traumatized by the circumstances in their life (e.g., abuse, foster care) and are just desperately looking for something to get a sense of identity (addiction, incarceration, etc are often common for these individuals).

My personal belief is that it depends on the age of the child at adoption and whether they had experienced trauma before they were adopted. In addition but more importantly, the ability of the adoptive parents to bond with the child and their resolve to make the very intimate connection (as a biological parent/child would connect) has an even greater impact on the child.

Children are resilient, but they MUST have unconditional love and the adoptive parents have to have the capacity to deeply connect (bond)...sometimes I'm not sure adoptive families truly understand what that means. Consequently, very few children who are adopted are so content they do not want to seek their biological parents, but there are some out there. Adoption doesn't have to mean something was missing from the child's life or that the biological parents had questionable character...

I wonder...if our hearts ache for the couple who cannot have biological children and so desperately want to adopt... how can we also have the belief that placing a baby for adoption is such a betrayal?