The Adoption Life Cycle,by Elinor Rosenberg, fills a niche in adoption literature by talking about issues such as separation, loss, identity and family relationships not only as they emerge at different stages of children’s development, but also in the context of family systems.
Rosenberg has seen adoption from several perspectives—as a social worker working with birthmothers, as a therapist working with adopted children in residential treatment centers, and later as an adoptive parent of two. She devotes her first chapter to the myth of adoption as “the perfect solution”. While strongly supportive of adoption, she recognizes that it usually leaves a family with extra issues that non-adoptive families do not face.
The next three chapters focus on birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees at different stages. For birth parents these stages include making the adoption decision, the period of pregnancy and birth prior to relinquishment, the relinquishment itself and the grieving period afterward (which may include stages of shock, alarm, anger and guilt, loss of sense of self, and identification with the lost child), the “middle years”, and late in life.
For adoptive parents the stages Rosenberg discusses are the decision to adopt, the adoption process, the placement, the adoptive family with a preschool-age child, the child’s school years, adolescence, and young adulthood, and the adoptive parents’ later years.
For adoptees Rosenberg talks briefly about possible effects of the circumstances of conception and birth, postpartum experiences, infancy, preschool years, school years, puberty and adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, and later years.
Rosenberg goes further than many books with a chapter on how these needs may interrelate. For example, a couple who has never resolved infertility issues and feels undeserving of being parents may have trouble setting limits for a child, who needs limits to feel secure during the early years and boundaries to separate from in young adulthood. Parents may have subconsciously felt they were raising the child on “borrowed time” and be fearful that the relationship will end when the young adult leaves home. They may then be overly controlling. Or the adolescent may have the same fear, and may decide to leave himself in an angry manner rather than feel abandoned by the adoptive parents.
At this point, I was tempted to feel that the book was “psychologizing” excessively, seeing pathology where there well might be done. However, one strength of Rosenberg’s is her realization that not all adoptive families will have the same experiences, and that they may interpret similar experiences in very different ways.
Rosenberg provides examples of things said by adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents who differ widely in their beliefs and feelings. I found these quotes thought-provoking. They raised some issues I hadn’t thought about. They may never arise in my family but it is good to be aware that they are not abnormal for adoptive families. Awareness of the roots of one’s feelings, Rosenberg says, means less likelihood of the feelings being acted out inappropriately.
Rosenberg then includes a chapter on adoption issues in therapy. There are notes for clinicians, and then a detailed case study of a family with two adopted children, each of whom began to act out in their adolescent years. Family and individual therapy explores the adoptive parents’ experiences in their own families of origin and their expectations, and also the teens’ fantasies about their birthparents and how this influenced their perceptions of themselves.
Rosenberg’s concluding chapter summarizes the needs that many birthparents, adoptive parents and adoptees seem to have in common, and discusses its implications for adoption practice.
The book was written in the early 1990s, and focuses mostly on domestic adoptions of newborns, with a few anecdotes about biracial adoptees or adoptees adopted at an older age.
Please see these related blogs:
Book Review: Real Parents, Real Children
Should Adoptive Parents Search For Their Children’s Birth Parents?
Can this child really be mine?