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Birth Parents

A big issue for adopted children is the prospect of meeting their birth parents.
Some children want to. It fills a piece of you that was missing, its been said.
Other children have no desire to. Their parents now are their real parents, the
ones that raised them. Of course genetics play a big role in family, because fam
ilies are usually by definition genetically related. However, if people not gene
tically related to you fulfilled the role of being your parents and raising you,
is it fair to say that theyre not really your parents?
Its true that theres something about blood that binds people together, and its hard
to explain. You have some sort of connection to relatives even if theyre distant
, just because you share the same genes. Theres something special about giving bi
rth to your own children, and seeing the similarities they have to members of th
e family. Thats the normal course of things, but there are always exceptions to the
rule. Sometimes youre separated from your family, sometimes parents and relative
s arent there for you, or sometimes youre not able to conceive children. There are
various reasons why it happens that birth parents arent able to take care of the
ir children and that the parental role would be taken up by someone who isnt part
of your real family.
Can it be said that birth parents are real parents? The answer is obviously diffic
ult to come up with, and the best we can think of is yes, no, maybe so, which any
kid on the playground could have told us. Maybe is self-explanatory. Why would the
answer be yes? Maybe because the role of parents is to nurture and raise children
to be self-sufficient, capable adults and anyone who does this should be consid
ered a parent according to the looks and talks like a duck rationale. Why would th
e answer be no? Because parent and child share genes, which no one can deny the im
portance of. Genetics make up a significant part of who we are. Our lives are he
avily influenced by our genes, which determine how we look, any conditions we mi
ght have, what kinds of donors we can receive and all environmental factors inte
ract with our genes.
It would be hard to say that abusive birth parents are really parents, but at th
e same time its difficult to stop acknowledging them as parents altogether except
in a symbolic sense. But in the end, the most important thing is that the paren
tal role is filled in a childs life, and its up to the child to decide who the real
parents are and who are not.

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