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Read other letters about this article
Laurel, you wrote:
"Famililies are ... blood relationships that can't be easily duplicated by legal arrangements and fancy talk."
Wrong. Legal adoption can often provide a wonderful family life that would not have been possible with birth parents.
You added:
"children ... know instinctively that they have a 'real mother' and a 'real father' out there, and that what makes one parent 'real' and another merely custodial is biological and genetic, spiritual and literal. That's why adopted children nearly always want to search for a real biological parent, no matter what decent and good people have adopted them."
Biological ties make a parent "real"? That may be true sometimes, but it's *certainly* not a given. I can't tell you how it offends me when people say, about my adopted dad, "Oh, he's not your *real* father?" My bond with my dad is not biological or genetic; it transcends that. And he most certainly is my real father.
You're right; most adopted kids eventually search out their biological parents. I did, and the experience showed me that a biological connection is important in its own right, but that it cannot compare with the love I have for my adopted dad.
