Quotes & Sayings About Adopted Parents

As anyone who's ever adopted a dog will tell you, there's always the fear that one day the birth parents will come scratching at the door ... — Dana Gould

All from other lands, who by the terms of [congressional] laws and a compliance with their provisions become naturalized, are adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural born citizens. Gentleman [sic] can find no exception to this statement touching natural-born citizens except what is said in the Constitution relating to Indians. — John Bingham

When I ride the subway back and forth, sometimes I look at the other passengers and wonder if any of them are children who have been adopted or parents who have adopted. — Marcus Samuelsson

I'm a naturalized Italian, but I'm from Ghana. I was abandoned by my parents and adopted by two angels. I suffer with racism everyday. I'm the first black to wear the jersey of Italy. I'm not angry, but my life experiencies make me act differently from other people. Then, try to learn more before you criticize me. — Mario Balotelli

I had a sister who was killed in a motorcycle wreck when I was around 4 years old. My parents adopted her son, and so my nephew became my brother. He was three years older than me, so through him, I was exposed to hip-hop. — Big Smo

I moved up over Lower East Side and I was adopted by eight foster parents; I lived all over New York City with these parents, man, till I was about ten years old. — Gregory Corso

Others work among the spirits that have just arrived in the world of spirits. Again others raise the children who have died in infancy. Swedenborg ensures the parents of these infants that 'All children whether born within or outside of the church, are adopted by the Lord and become Angels'. — Emanuel Swedenborg

There are times in every person's life when they feel lonely, isolated, like maybe they don't belong. For adoptees, this is often exacerbated by the circumstances. Because you were given up, you have a built-in scapegoat; you can blame everything that you feel on the fact that you were adopted. But, I want you to know that this is a fallacy. Finding your biological parents will not fill in the void that you feel. You will get answers to your questions, but no one can fill in the missing pieces except for you. Before you go on a search, take the time to get to know yourself very well. Heal the hurts you've experienced. Acknowledge the past and how it has affected you. Become a whole person who is seeking roots, not a damaged person who is seeking fulfillment. — Janet Louise Stephenson

I grew up on a farm in Oregon, an adopted child, with one sibling, and parents the age of all my peers' grandparents. We lived in isolation from the people around us, and it was always a struggle to cope with as a child. The heart can really expire under those conditions. I always felt like I was looking at the world from the outside. — Larry Harvey

She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice. — Jeanette Winterson

Dear Mama,
I am being stalked by not one but two men of exceptionally high birth. One is a madman who tortured me and promised to make me love him forever. The other is a madman who gave me his shadow and lives to make my life difficult. No doubt you would be pleased, but I intend to deny you grandchildren for the foreseeable future. Henry is a dear, but I suspect the only reason his parents were willing to consider me for his bride was that he does not, in fact, like women at all. In place of comforting news about my marriageability and future grandchildren, please know I have adopted a bird. You would like him.
Much love,
Hopeless Jessamin — Kiersten White

My son, who is five, was adopted from Ethiopia. My daughter was adopted from Guatemala. Her parents died of typhoid and malaria. We got her from an orphanage. They are the lights of my life. — Lisa Kristine

My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood. — Michael Franti

These are often the children of overbearing narcissistic parents who cannot tolerate the teenager's growing need for separateness and threaten the child with psychological or actual abandonment as a punishment for exercising independence. The child considers the risks and decides prematurely to do what is expected, becoming a doctor. . .without first engaging in a journey of self-discovery. When the parents' or culture's roles and values are adopted wholesale and without examination, the process of establishing a personal identity is short-circuited. Some of these individuals rework this struggle more successfully later in life, while others are never free from the narcissistic web and only feel good when they are pleasing someone other than themselves. — Sandy Hotchkiss

I certainly never felt rejected because they had given me up. My parents knew nothing about my birth mother, yet always explained with certainty that she didn't "give me up" or "give me away" - she made a plan for me, the best one she could make under her circumstances, whatever those were. — Emily Giffin

At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion [on television], and then I realized this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of fin de siecle America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents ... — Elizabeth Wurtzel

When I was little, I knew that I was not adopted, but I actually imagined and hoped that I was - and that my real parents were going to come get me. — Gloria Steinem

It was a very big moment that's burned into my mind. When I realized that I was smarter than my parents, I felt tremendous shame for having thought that. I will never forget that moment. This discovery, he later told friends, along with the fact that he was adopted, made him feel apart - detached and separate - from both his family and the world. — Walter Isaacson

I came into this environment where there was so much love, so much positive energy. I never heard my parents say, 'We have adopted kids.' The minute my sister Linda and I landed in Sweden, we were their kids. — Marcus Samuelsson

I have one brother, John, an airline pilot, who is seven years younger. He's adopted, though we're still blood related - he's my cousin. My parents couldn't have any more children after me, so when Dad's brother died, they adopted John, then just a baby. — Gary Numan

I was a violent, self-destructive teenager, who was adopted right at the end of World War II. I was lied to and abused by my parents. I hated life in Utah. I resented the Mormon Church, its sense of superiority and its certitude. I escaped through the Beat writers and discovered poetry and have devoted my entire life to the practice of poetry in varying ways. Poetry gave me a reason for being. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that. — Sam Hamill

I was a sickly baby, and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home, they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say, the third time's a charm, because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into their home where I was raised in a family full of love. — Rodney Atkins

I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don't know how I can ever express my gratitude for that, because my parents would have been a mess, you know. — James Earl Jones

The truth is, the very act of adoption is built upon loss. For the birth parents, the loss of their biological offspring, the relationship that could have been, a very part of themselves. For the adoptive parents, the loss of giving birth to a biological child, the child whose face will never mirror theirs. And for the adopted child, the loss of the birth parents, the earliest experience of belonging and acceptance. To deny adoption loss is to deny the emotional reality of everyone involved. — Sherrie Eldridge

The first four months of my life were spent in care, before I was adopted by my wonderful parents - my mum and dad - Ernie and Christine. They went on to adopt my sister, who is profoundly deaf, and invested both of us with a love and support that informs everything I do today. — Michael Gove

I was adopted legally around age three, but it's not like this thing I think about when I wake up every day. I was adopted by my foster parents, so I was comfortable with them. I wasn't in this alien place. — Angel Olsen

Adoptive parents often say about adoption day: "It was the happiest day of our lives!" While most of us are happy to be adopted, our own hearts tell us that adoption day was the most painful day of our lives, for the person with whom we shared deep intimacy suddenly disappeared from our world. — Sherrie Eldridge

My father has passed away. He was African-American. My mother is white. So I was adopted by a couple that was of a similar dynamic as my biological parents. — Keegan-Michael Key

Both of our children are adopted, and my wife and I didn't go out of ways to find kids that looked like us. We were just happy to have some kids. And people tell me all the time that they look like us, and that's because they learn to smile and laugh and move their head a certain way from studying their parents' faces. — John Wells

By the late 20th century, the idea that parents can harm their children by abusing and neglecting them (which is true) grew into the idea that parents can mold their children's intelligence, personalities, social skills, and mental disorders (which is not). Why not? Consider the fact that children of immigrants end up with the accent, values, and norms of their peers, not of their parents. That tells us that children are socialized in their peer group rather than in their families: it takes a village to raise a child. And studies of adopted children have found that they end up with personalities and IQ scores that are correlated with those of their biological siblings but uncorrelated with those of their adopted siblings. That tells us that adult personality and intelligence are shaped by genes, and also by chance (since the correlations are far from perfect, even among identical twins), but are not shaped by parents, at least not by anything they do with all their children. — Steven Pinker

I've had a lot of different lives. I was adopted, I grew up in Nebraska, and then I went to Northwestern ... Then I had this really extraordinary, different life than my parents. — Dan Chaon

If we were created from the very fiber of our birth parents' physical and emotional beings, don't you think our need to think about them would be innate? If we had primal conversations with our mother in the womb, wouldn't you say it is natural for us to think about her as we are growing up and growing old? And if our birth father's DNA helped determine the color of our hair and eyes, wouldn't you say that he is just as much a part of us as our mother and it is normal to want a relationship with him? Wherever we are in the spectrum of perceptions about our birth parents, we must rest assured that our thoughts are normal and healthy. They are part of the fiber of our being. Part of the package of being adopted. It is all about our identity ... our dual identity. — Sherrie Eldridge

I have my three brothers, and then I have my adopted sister from El Salvador, who is actually the oldest. My brother and I were already born, and then my parents adopted my sister from El Salvador during the war and had two more kids. — Carrie Coon

At first i thought you were one of the human students, when you'd told me about your parents i thought they'd killed your real parents and adopted you. I figured you didn't know what you really were — Claudia Gray

I'm glad you were both here, I finally manage, thinking how strange it is to be standing with the two people who made you, something most kids take for granted every day of their lives. — Emily Giffin

But Nita had always seen having a child as selfish. Why bring another soul into this world, she'd say, when there are so many out there that need our help? — Ramez Naam

Before it was decided that I was going to be adopted, my mother was going to abort me. I was born with tangled legs; they never thought I'd be able to dance ... without knowing it, as a child I overcame a lot thanks to really doting, loving parents and a great family and a hard work ethic on my part. — Lindsay Pearce

Cindy and I are adoptive parents. We know what a treasure and joy it is to have an adopted child in our lives. — John McCain

That's how it was on Irving Circle and how I was raised: You made the best out of what was within reach, which meant friendships engineered by parents and by the happenstance of housing. I stayed with it because we both had queenly older sisters who rarely condescended to play with us, because Shelley was adopted and I was not, because Shelley had Clue and Life, and I did not — Elinor Lipman

What many black and biracial transracial adoptees were not prepared for was that the societal realities they faced were the same as those facing other people of color. The information that white transracial adoptive parents needed to give their children did not exist in the white world; these parents would have to interact with black America in order to understand the problems most likely to trouble transracially adopted children. — Rhonda M. Roorda

My sister is Korean and my parents adopted her about three years before I was born and that is how I grew up. — Katherine Heigl

A son or daughter in any human family is either born to or adopted by the parents. By definition, a child can't be both. But with God we're both born of Him and adopted by Him. — Jerry Bridges

My parents adopted me, and then, by the age of four or five, I was asking all sorts of questions, and they found themselves with a son who was interested in the sorts of things that they valued but weren't natural to them. — Michael Gove

I'll tell you if you tell me," I say, washing my hands of maturity. I'm tired of the double standard-she keeps secrets, but I'm not allowed. Also, I'm tired, period. I need sleep. Which means I need answers.
"What do you mean? Tell you what?"
"I'll tell you what we were really doing out there. After you tell me who my real parents are." There, I opened it. A chunky can of wiggling worms.
She laughs, just like I expect her to. "Are you serious?"
I nod. "I know I'm adopted. I want to know how. Why. When."
She laughs again, but there's something false in it, as if it wasn't her first reaction. "So that's what this is about? You're rebelling because you think you're adopted? Why on earth would you think that?"
I fold my hands in front of me on the table. "Look at me. We both know I'm different. I don't look like you or Dad."
"That's not true. You have my chin and mouth. And there's no disinheriting the McIntosh nose. — Anna Banks

You may not know it, but I was adopted as a baby by my wonderful parents, Allan and Margaret Atkins of Cumberland Gap, Tenn. — Rodney Atkins

I am Cuban, my parents are Cuban, and I was not adopted. — Oscar Nunez

When I reached the age of five, I was told I was adopted as a baby, at that time I was gun and holster mad, a bit of a lone ranger, as was the rage in those days. My parents, Tom and Brenda, told me they went to see all these special kids and they picked me out from them. Waiting for my reaction, I looked up at my parents and chimed, 'Did I have my guns on? — Stephen Richards

I think most children who are adopted ultimately want to meet their biological parents and often do. I think that is an important journey for children who are adopted to go on. — Madonna Ciccone

We have looked into the general problems with adoption in the United States, and we discovered - on the basis of the reports written by American NGOs - we discovered that not only Russians but kids from other countries and the American-born kids have been subject to very unfortunate behavior on the part of their adopted parents. — Sergei Lavrov

Best friends are always together, always whispering and laughing and running, always at each other's house, having dinner, sleeping over. They are practically adopted by each other's parents. You can't pry them apart. — Jerry Spinelli