Perhaps nothing strikes more terror in the heart of many adoptive parents than the question of 'The Search'.
Surely if we provide a happy, loving, secure home, they will feel no need to seek out their biological parents!
Most of us have at one time or another shared some of this fear. It might serve us well to consider what the likelihood is that our children will undertake the search, and if they did, what it might mean in regard to our relationship. Many adoptees who have wanted to seek out detailed information about their birth parents or who have tried to find them have waited until after the death of the adoptive parents. Such is their fear of hurting them. How fair is this? What would really happen to all of us if the children did, indeed, locate their first parents? If we consider children's need to work out the adoption dilemma, to actually know their birth parents would probably free them more than anything else. Will our children undertake 'the search'? We do not know. If they decide to try, will we be afraid? I think we may well be, despite our conviction that they have the right to do so. The results are so uncertain. Will they find what they are looking for? Will they be hurt? I suspect we are not the only ones who will be afraid; the children probably will be too. Will we lose our children? In some ways, of course, when we chose to become parents, we, along with all other parents, took on one of life's most difficult roles. We have had to build a very close relationship, the object of which is to 'let go'. When our children become adults, they will no longer need the same kind of parenting that they need as children. Hopefully by then, we will have earned their love and respect, but if we have been successful as parents, then they should no longer "need" us. Each is his own person with a right to make what he wants of himself and his life. As parents we do what we can to free children enough so they can make that life worthwhile. That is the ultimate challenge of parenthood.