In Her Eyes, ‘Real’ Parents Are Biological

I applaud the reunion of Ken Herman with his natural parents (“Now They Know,” Oct. 10). Most adoptees do want to find their roots. I am reminded of an article I read recently in which male peacocks, separated before they’re hatched, find their siblings when they become adult birds. If peacocks have such strong genetic tendencies, imagine how much influence genetics has on humans.

As an adoptee, however, I would like to say that not all of us feel such compulsion to protect the people who raised us that we deny our real mother and father. While the people who adopted me are wonderful and they gave me love and financial security, those qualities alone do not make parents. It has become standard adoption rhetoric for people to believe that an adoptee’s real parents are the people who raise the child.

This 20th-century belief, propagated by the adoption industry, encourages separating children from their parents for the best interest of the child. This separation process denies the genetic influence of the natural parents and the influences of a child’s nine months in the womb. Even Herman’s natural parents were caught up in this rhetoric, believing that they can only be responsible for what [their] genes have given him. “The man that he has become is a product of his adoptive mother and father.” Genetic influence is so strong that one cannot deny its existence in adults, even in those who are adopted. While I am grateful to the people who adopted me and while I will always love them, they cannot take the place of my real and natural parents.

--TRICIA SHORE

Sherman Oaks