The Etiquette of Adoption

by Michael Colberg JD, CSW

As a society we use etiquette to help create a set of expectations. We like to know what to expect and we like to understand the meaning behind people’s actions. Are we being treated fairly? Are we being treated with respect? Are we at risk? When used for the highest good, etiquette is meant to convey respect and caring. When used in a more banal way, etiquette allows people to hide behind normalized behaviors and/or rituals in order to avoid expressing certain truths or unpleasant feelings. Although etiquette is intended, I believe, to make the world a more pleasant and comfortable place in which to live, there are times when we pay a high price for making comfort a priority.

Understanding the role that etiquette plays in adoption helps us to understand the complex nature of the word itself. The word etiquette, which comes from the French word ‘etiquette or “ticket” is defined as "the conduct or procedure required by good breeding or prescribed by authority to be observed in social or official life". Put another way, etiquette is a set of behaviors that reflect established norms meant to facilitate social interaction. Think of etiquette as outlining a set of behaviors which, if followed, gain us a ticket enabling us to move forward smoothly. 

How does this apply to adoption? There are many forms of adoption, each having it’s own unique set of characteristics and challenges. For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to talk about the private placement of infants as it is currently being practiced in the US. Many people think of adoption as the transfer of parental rights from one parent or set of parents (the birthparents) to another parent or set of parents (the adoptive parents). A great deal of effort is expended to make this transfer move forward as smoothly as possible. The problem is that this definition of adoption fails to take into account the impact that this move out of one family and into another has upon the adopted person and both his birth and adoptive parents. There is a lot more to adoption than the transfer of physical custody and parental rights. 

Adoption is a lifelong set of relationships that begin with the removal of a child from one family and the placement of that child into another family. This transfer has life long implications for the child and both his birth and adoptive parents. The meaning of this move, from one family to another, will be understood differently at each stage of the family’s development. When this is understood, a deeper form of etiquette is followed, one that is fueled by respect and caring for the adopted person and his long-tern needs. The groundwork is laid to understand that an adopted person faces long-term challenges that are in addition to and different from those faced by children who were not themselves adopted. 

An adopted person has to make sense of his history and reconcile and integrate those pieces of himself that come from his biological background with those that come from his adoptive family. When this is not understood, groundwork is laid that puts the adopted person and his adoptive and birth parents at a disadvantage. Emphasis is placed on a form of etiquette that makes comfort in the moment a priority. This increases the probability that these additional tasks will not be acknowledged and we are more apt to expect that the adopted person will grow up behaving “as if” he were born into his adoptive family. At times when the adopted person wrestles with those pieces of himself that come from his biological heritage, we may fail to understand that this is normal developmental growth hand think that something has gone wrong. 

How do parents conduct themselves in ways that take into account their families’ short and long-term needs? How can they use etiquette to help guide and support their parenting? In order to understand the role that etiquette plays, we must ask two questions. Facilitate social interaction for whom? Over what period of time? Are we considering the needs of the adoptive and/or biological parents alone or are we including the needs of the adopted person as well? Are we merely facilitating the ease of social interaction between the two sets of parents surrounding the period of transfer of legal and physical custody of the child or are we attempting to set a course of relationship, which facilitates interaction between triad members over the long term? 

The answers to these questions will give a context to the rest of our discussion. The role that etiquette plays in adoption depends on how adoption is viewed and what the ultimate goal of the social interactions among the adult parties actually is. If the goal is to make the placement of a child into an adoptive home go as smoothly as possible, one kind of etiquette is practiced. Pre-adoptive parents and pregnant women or couples will do everything that they can to make sure that they do not offend each other. By doing this, they will tend to focus on the present. They want this to happen and they want it to happen quickly. Each will present themselves as being totally resolved in their desire to move forward and, if there are any hard questions to ask (Have you been drinking or doing drugs during your pregnancy? Will you still want to adopt my baby if he is born with a serious birth defect?), they either go unasked or are asked by their agency worker or attorney. Everything is done with an eye on whether it affects the comfort of the other, and perhaps the surety of the adoption plan. Etiquette dictates that everyone looks toward the adoptive placement as an end point. 

When the goal lies elsewhere, when it lies with an awareness of the long-term nature of adoption, discussions can take a more direct, difficult and rewarding turn. A different form of etiquette underlies the interactions when the goal is to convey respect and caring for all of the people involved, even the unborn child. In these instances there needs to be the potential for respect and caring. It is not possible to build this kind of relationship with just anybody. Everyone has people with whom they can and cannot relate. Therefore it is very possible that the adoption process may take longer if one is looking to build a relationship that contains a deeper level of respect than that offered by merely being polite and acting in a way designed to avoid conflict or friction. Both pre-adoptive parents and pregnant women/couples need to look until they feel that they have found someone with whom they connect. Normally, people need time and must invest energy if they are going to get to know each other. Pregnant women and couples have time pressure, a baby will be born. Likewise, the pre-adoptive parents have typically been trying to create a family for quite awhile before they turn to adoption. They too are feeling pressure to move quickly. A different sort of etiquette exists in these situations. They cannot afford the luxury of sitting back and taking the time it usually takes to get to know someone. They have to jump in and begin to form a serious relationship right away. 

Pre-adoptive parents and birthparents often confuse intensity with intimacy. In situations where people have the time to get to know each other they have the luxury of being polite and slowly deciding whether or not to develop a relationship. If they choose to form a relationship, over time they begin to sense that they are being shown respect and caring and they develop the ability to trust in and depend upon what is being communicated. This is how people develop trust. Trust is one of the foundations upon which intimacy is built. In pre-adoptive situations, people do not have the luxury of time. They are sharing an intense experience and yet they are strangers. Often, people fall back upon the kind of etiquette that is, in many ways, similar to that shown a foreign dignitary during a state visit. We need him/her in order to accomplish our goals. The stakes are high. We have a short time to create an understanding and use our behavior to send signals. We are polite and careful. We are out to make a good impression. Our government follows a very carefully choreographed protocol during the visit in order to send the appropriate signals. 

The same patterns exist in many pre-adoptive relationships. In the end, people have used “the conduct or procedure required by good breeding or prescribed by authority to be observed in social or official life” in order to send a message. In the end they don’t know each other any better and they have not developed the kind of relationship where caring and respect are relevant. The goal is to create an adoption. However, we do ourselves, and our children, a disservice when the focus is on becoming parents rather than being parents. When a parents’ goal is to be the best parent that they can be, they learn enough about adoption to take into account both their present needs and the needs and challenges that they and their child will face in the future.

An adopted person has many developmental challenges that are unique to his having been adopted. He needs to make sense of what it means to have been born into one family, placed out of that family and then moved into another family. He has parts of himself that come from his biological background and he has parts of himself that come from the family that raises him. Think nature and nurture. The goal of an adopted person, as I see it, is to be able to find value in all of those pieces of heritage - at the same time. This task is made a great deal easier when the adopted person grows up knowing that deep respect and caring exists between his adoptive and his biological parents. He has integration of identities modeled for him through his experience of the feelings his two sets of parents have for each other. Remember, adoption is supposed to be about what is in the best interest of the child. We do well when we create an etiquette that includes the child’s long-term needs. When we do not, when we are solely guided by the kind of etiquette that limits our actions to making sure that the two sets of parents are comfortable during the placement period, we set the stage for later living “as if” adoption plays a minor historical role and does not set the stage for a series of important developmental challenges. Keeping the child’s needs in mind leads us to conduct ourselves in ways designed to help the child become whole. It is through the development of a real relationship that people follow this deeper etiquette, one designed to help the adopted person grow up feeling good about who they are in all senses of the word. 

How do we do this? How do we create this deep level of relationship in a short time? We cannot. What we can do is be very honest in expressing our intention to create a relationship that meets the child’s long-term needs. Each set of parents will have something to offer the child that only they can provide. The adoptive parents are parenting the child and are responsible for all that that entails. The birthparents are the only ones who can let the child know that although they have been placed for adoption, they have not been rejected, are not forgotten and are a loved and included member of the biological family as well. People show each other respect and caring by having the courage to mention and discuss differences or uncertainties that emerge when these truths are faced, confronted and integrated over time. It is hard to expose your insecurities and vulnerabilities to another, especially someone you do not know and whose acceptance you need. Generally, if the match is a good one, it is this exposure and a shared vulnerability that leads to building trust. Each person understands that they are being shown respect and caring by the other and they understand that it is important that they reciprocate. The process that this entails forms the foundation for a relationship that will develop over time. 

Pre-adoptive parents and pregnant women and couples need to understand that the relationship that they are building will exist for the rest of their lives. Even if they never see each other again, they will not forget the connection that they have and they will continue to occupy a permanent place in each other’s psyches. It will, for the adoptive parents, inform and flavor how they think about their child and the way that they teach their child about his background. If this is understood from the beginning, this lifelong nature of adoption, then people begin to place a deeper level of importance upon how they conduct their pre-adoptive experience and they follow a form of etiquette that truly honors the purpose behind the word.

It is also true that honest discussion creates an opportunity to look into the future. The placement period is one moment in time. Interestingly, although adoption is supposed to be about the welfare of a child, during the pre-placement period (in infant adoption) there is no child. There is no need to consider his present needs because he has none. When people are being polite, they tend to limit their view, they don’t look too closely. Adoption etiquette, as it is often understood, encourages pre-adoptive couples and pregnant women/couples to limit their focus to the pregnancy. They do not focus too much on what will come later. Their concerns lie in the present. The pregnant woman or couple wants to make a plan that addresses their untimely pregnancy. The pre-adoptive parents want to become parents as quickly as possible. Little thought is given to what it will mean for the pregnant woman or couple to become a mother or father but not parents and little thought is given to what actually being a parent is all about. 

When pre-adoptive parents and the pregnant woman/couple begin to discuss who they are and what their goals for the child are in a more real way, they are provided with an opportunity to realize that the baby that they are talking about will become a toddler, a child, an adolescent and then an adult. Along the way, he will have different needs and although he cannot at this moment in time represent himself in the discussions about his future, the pregnant woman/couple and pre-adoptive parents can take the time to learn about the long-term nature of adoption and the needs of adopted persons throughout their lifetimes. 

Adoption etiquette as it is most often practiced, works against addressing long-term needs. Private adoption often has a certain rhythm to it. Pre-adoptive parents contact an attorney or agency who will help guide them through the steps that are necessary to prepare for an adoption. Usually the clear goal is to become parents through adoption - usually as quickly as possible. Likewise, pregnant women or couples who are considering placing a child for adoption find their way to a private agency or attorney or put themselves directly in touch with pre-adoptive parents and go from there. Their goal is to find a solution to their current situation. They are about to give birth to a baby they do not feel it right to keep and parent. This they must do in a timely manner. So there is a complementarity of needs. One set of adults longs to become parents and another is making an adoption plan. This complementarity sets the stage for their initial interaction and often forms the basis for what comes after.

Often there is some form of contact between the woman or couple who is going to have the baby and the pre-adoptive parents. Sometimes this contact is conducted through intermediaries and sometimes there is direct contact between the pre-adoptive parents and the pregnant woman or couple. Sometimes it is through the exchange of letters or phone calls and sometimes it is in person. The attorneys or private agencies involved have the responsibility of guiding this relationship as it continues toward the goal that everyone has subscribed to: the transfer of a child out of one family and into another. The professionals who guide this relationship have a responsibility that ends just as the adoption begins. Their focus is limited to the needs of the pre-adoptive parents and the pregnant woman or couple prior to and up to the placement. They cannot have much awareness of what the child’s needs will be in the future and therefore cannot take those needs into account.

Situations where polite interaction is the goal differ in significant ways from situations in which people are reaching for a deeper form of etiquette – for ways of getting to a place where their interactions are filled with care and respect. When people are trying to be polite, they tend not to question things that they are told or asked to do. They forget their needs and behave in ways designed to please the authority figures. This desire to appear as attractive potential parents tends to place the attorney or agency in the driver’s seat. The adults worry that the professionals will reject them if they ask too many questions or express ambivalence. Being afraid to ask certain questions of the adoption professionals can be hidden in being polite Couples tend to minimize any differences of opinion that they may have. They tend to remain silent about their doubts and fears about being adoptive parents. The entire discussion tends to limit itself to becoming rather than being adoptive parents. 

Pregnant women/couples often feel an enormous amount of stress. They may feel some shame about being in a situation where they will have to place a baby for adoption. They want this period in their lives to be over. They are no longer experiencing the present but are trying to reach for a time when this experience is behind them. They are often easily led down a path that works against learning about and questioning their own long-term needs, their confusion about parenting or placing or their understanding of what it means to be a birthparent. They are often allowed to believe that their “problem” will be solved once the baby is placed with adoptive parents. One of the ways that this urgency is communicated is that pregnant women or couples allow themselves to be referred to as birthparents even before there is a baby. They are asked to behave as though their decision is final even before they have given birth. Nobody explains to them that adoptive placement does not end their relationship with the child or with his adoptive parents. That will continue, whether in fact or fantasy, for the rest of their lives. The truth is that birthparents are changed by their experience and have their own ongoing developmental challenges to address. 

When the baby is born, the complementarity of needs ends. The pre-adoptive parents wonder whether the adoption will actually take place and the pregnant woman/couple need to decide whether to parent or place the child for adoption. This can make for some anxiety and confusion during the hospital stay following the delivery. This is the period of time during which people may have an inkling that the relationship that they have built based upon superficial politeness and established adoption etiquette may not have given them all of the security that they now need in order to feel comfortable with the other set of parents.

Once a decision has been made to move forward with an adoption plan, physical custody of the baby is placed with the pre-adoptive parents who are now called the adoptive parents. Sometimes arrangements are made with the biological family to remain in contact and sometimes they are not. Whatever the arrangements are, people cling to them. The adoptive parents realize that they are not yet the legal parents of the child and they do whatever they need to do to convey to the birthparents that they have made the right decision and that the baby is now in the right place. The birthparents are encouraged to move on with their lives. Haven’t they longed for a time when all of this is behind them? If the adoptive and birthparents have based their relationship on the more superficial form of etiquette, they may feel embarrassed at some of the feelings that now emerge. No longer are their needs complementary. The adoptive parents want to create their identity as a family and the birthparents need to come to some understanding of what it means to have given birth and not be parenting. Each set of parents is feeling feelings that are not polite. They are feeling the intensity of the feelings that come with an adoption. If the foundation has not been built which allows them to acknowledge these feelings, they tend to pull away from each other.

In situations where a real relationship has begun, it is possible to acknowledge the present needs and realize that they are just that – they are needs of the moment. Both new adoptive parents and new birthparents have to address challenges that do not include the other. Each must adjust to their new identity. If people have done the deep work that real etiquette demands, they have developed a relationship which allows them to trust in the intentions of the others. They know that as needs change, their counterpart will be available to renegotiate their participation based upon what is in the best interest of the child. As the child’s needs change, the adults, who have built a relationship based upon the long-term will feel free to be in contact with each other, each feeling willing and able to do their part in helping to make the child feel whole. 

As the years pass the adoptive parents realize that their interest lies not, as it was in the beginning, in becoming parents, but rather in being the best parents that they can be. The birthparents realize that placing a child for adoption did not end their relationship to that child nor their concern for that child. It becomes apparent that the child has needs and depending upon which form of etiquette guided their earlier relationship they either have or have not built a foundation which makes it easier to facilitate their child’s wellbeing.

The relationship that it is most important to honor is the children’s relationship with themselves. That is the relationship that we want to make easy. We therefore need to act in a child-centered way. We should ask ourselves, is what we are doing, when viewed through a child-centered lens, making it easier for the child to value all of who they are – at the same time? If the point is to help the child become whole, can we afford to limit ourselves to following rules of etiquette where priority is placed on the adults’ comfort or do we need to reach further. Do we need to practice a form of etiquette whose underlying purpose it is to ease a child’s relationship with himself, a respectful relationship which models for the child the integration of the pieces of himself that come from both birth and adoption. Parents are acting for the highest good and are practicing the highest form of etiquette when they honor the truth and think about the long-term ease of relationship regardless of whether, in that moment, it is awkward. They are providing their children with a “ticket” toward a fulfilling future. 

This article is In Press and will be published in “Etiquette: Reflections on Contemporary Comportment” by State University of New York Press