The Family Genes

There's this girl that we met at one of our adoption workshops whose blog is a total shout-out to adoption. If I ever need ideas, or articles, or anything, her blog is the first place I go. Plus, she has so many great stories. This article is her most recent in adoption articles and I love it. Before the article, she asked these questions:

*is it wrong or selfish to expect that your children will look like you?
*didn't we all fantasize what our children would look like when we got engaged?
*haven't we all assumed that we would be able to create life?
*is it self-absorbed to desire children that look like you?

Ths article makes me feel great about being called "mom", even though I am not giving birth our little boy. Being a parent is about more than biology. I'm glad that I understand that.

THE FAMILY GENES
by Dan Clements
from RESOLVE of Maryland, October 1985
During the course of almost every battle with infertility, questions about adoption arise. One area of doubt seems to come from a belief that if our child has our genes, this child has a better chance of being like us. We want to pass along the family genes--the family hair, the family brains, the family athletic skills, the family nose. (Well, my biggest fear in having a biological child was my certainty of the expense of a future nose job.) Are we all so sure that we, and our spouses, have wonder gene pools guaranteed to produce terrific children? And do our genes really guarantee our child's future? Look around at your brothers and sisters, your spouse's brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles--are they all similar? Do they all have the same goals, interests and aspirations? Have they all turned out alike? Unlikely--in fact, impossible!
Is parenthood about having children who are like us or is parenthood about the joy of raising a child? Must our child be an expression of our personal sexual love or do we parent because we have a loving relationship we want to share with a child? Will I love an adopted child as much as a biological one? I have two nieces and two nephews, two adopted and two not. The most difficult one to love is biological, and we love them all. I fell in love with our adopted daughter Lissa the day we took her home from the hospital. I will love her if she grows up to be a waitress, a doctor, or as she indicated once upon being asked what she wanted to be when she grows up, a bunny rabbit.
To adopt requires a leap of faith and conscious thought. To parent at all requires a leap of faith but is usually accompanied with less conscious thought. The joy is in watching a child grow and seeing the world anew with a child. As for genes, look around. Notice all the wonderful people who produce not-so-wonderful children, and all the wonderful children produced by not-so-wonderful parents. It is obviously not in the genes.