The adoption family tree is one of the The tools you will need in Stage 3 – the education/preparation, started while preparing Session 2 – Exploring adoption family trees and the importance of attachment.

Model usually suggested

Roots mirror branches

The model suggested in the Adoption Handbook described in the Standardised Framework is based on a root-mirrors-branches family tree model.
The model relies on the idea that:

• the child is the trunk of the tree;
• the birth family are the roots, the lost past/ground on which the child grows;
• the adoptive family is the branches in which the child finds the future and support;
• each side may want/need to know something about the other side, and the child needs to have a picture of both, even if the roots are harder to see and to fathom.

I find this model flawed. Others at Pink Adoptions think it is good… so I only talk in my name here.

Why is it flawed

It sets the birth family firmly in the past.

And what happens if you dig the roots of a tree? You get dirty and you take the risk to harm the blossoming branches.

Also it tells the child that only the branches are worth showing, and that only the branches have a future and can bear flowers and fruits.

Model we would prefer to use

We prefer a model where all the roots are equally buried (and have an equal change to surface), and where the branches are really something to do with the future of the child. Rooting in her heritage and origins will still be dirty, but the child will not feel it could upset or endanger the relationship with the adoptive family: the child will be raised to be a careful gardener who can regularly check the quality of the roots, without endangering the vitality of the tree.

Such a model can be seen as a three-roots model, and to understand it we will need to explain some concepts which are never really made clear to adoptive parents.

Alternatively, two trees touching can be acceptable: a smaller tree for the biological/birth family and a larger tree for the adoptive family. All are placed in the branches like in traditional family trees, with the child belonging to both trunks.

Three-roots model

Defining some terms

Defining the meaning

Do not expect us to use expressions like “according to the dictionary, xyz means…”

Dictionaries do not define words, they exemplify their use. Otherwise dictionaries would be empty!

Dictionaries do not give the meaning, but what was meant when an author wrote what is then quoted.

So we will explain what the terms mean, but this is not the place the justify lengthily how we came about using this terminology.

Family

The term family covers the parents and their genealogical line. The child is part of that line.

Biological family (first root)

The biological family is not the birth family. It can be but it does not have to be.

The biological family is the line of the people who gave their genetic code, and from whom the child will inherit her genetics.

It could be the sperm donor, the milkman, the egg donor, et al.

Birth family (first root)

The birth family, which is more than often the biological family, consists of the line of the people who delivered the child, or are supposed to: the woman who delivered the child after her pregnancy, and the man or woman who (are supposed to) support  that birth mother and are perceived as being the child’s “parents”.

It can be the college drop out who dreads having to take responsibility, the lesbian’s wife, the surrogate mother, or the husbands who may or may not know that the biological father is the milkman. There may be no birth father at all, if the mother decides not to cast the biological father in that role.

Dialectic family (second root)

The reader will think that this is just a fancy word for the sake of it, but it is not.

In the case of adoption, it is the adoptive family. But it can also be the fostering family or a carer from social services. In the case where the child lives with her biological and birth parents, and that they are all one and the same,  the dialectic family is what they call their parents, their family.

The dialectic family is what the child shall come to perceive as their “real” parents. They raise the child, they live with the child, they go through thick and thin with the child. Ideally it is a family forever, but there are some transitional dialectic families, like in the case of State care and fostering.

When the child is not allowed to investigate/know of or about her birth/biological family, then to a certain extent, the dialectic family can include the “family fantasy” that the child builds around his lost birth/biological family. This is not healthy, and that is why openness about the child’s roots is so important.

The dialectic family is the one usually represented as the branches of the tree in the roots-mirror-branches model.

The third root: the child’s raw desire

What we call the raw desire is what makes the child who she is, but that may not be aware of . It is not to be confused with  ”sexual desire”…

It is a level of consciousness which is often refers to as the inconscient and is roughly seen as defining the child “temperament” or “character” or “personality”. Some will call it the child’s “permanent identity”. Not two theorists will agree, so let’s present our own view.

This raw desire is what the child will spend her late childhood and teenage years exploring and finding out: who am I?

It would include a number of what could be simplified as being identities: gender identity, sexual identity, artistic identity, biological identity (we do not agree with the terms “racial” or “ethnic”), political identity, coping styles.

The child’s main task, in oder to build a healthy self-image and self-esteem, will be to “choose” who they are, and who they want to be from there.

Race

There is no race. But there are racsist.

This is not the place to expend on it, but the term “race” means only one thing: nothing.

Race has no basis in biology or in any other science.

But the perception that the child belongs to a “race” will impact the child’s identity in the eye of others and in her own eye. It is a mistaken conception but the conception exists. The child needs to know there is no reality to the concept of “race”, but that the ignorant perception of “race” needs to be addressed and dealt with.

It does not mean that we have to use racist terms. If we reduce a child to the color of their skin, and the wrong color with that (no child alive has a skin which can be described as “black” or “white”) , we tell them that the racists are right in theory about people being different because of their skin, and we also tell them that the difference is more than skin deep.

If we have to describe the skin, let’s describe it correctly: we all have different skins, different skin colors and hues, some have freckles some don’t. That is what makes us all the same: we all have a skin color. But you have to be color blind to put all sorts of browns under the heading “black”! So let’s not use the racist’s terminology lest we pass for racists in the eyes of our child.

It is not about us being “color” blind and pretending that the child will not be discriminated against. It is about letting the child know their true colors, and letting them know that racism is never right, never true, has no foundations and is never valid. What they do not value will not hurt them as much.

Impact of each of these elements on the child’s development

The bonzai effect

To create a bonzai from seed, you need to let it grow a bit, and then cut one or two of the three main roots.

Cutting off a child from any of her three roots will reduce the “growth” of the child. In Being adopted, the lifelong search for self, one of the children physically stops growing once it is clear that his parents do not want him to investigate his birth family. He grows at accelerated speed from the time he leaves home for college and is free to investigate.

Not recognizing and nurturing any one of the three will turn your child into an eternal child, protected from the rest of the world but threatened by anything in the world: your own personal “China Doll”.

Loss and grieving

In adoption, the child has to grieve for the loss of some of her roots, some of her heritage, some of her genealogy: she has to deal with her “genealogy wilderness”.

Loosing her biological parents means she is  loosing information about how her genetic code is likely to express itself. For instance, what she will look like as a grown woman, why she is so dramatically physically different from the rest of the family, so visibly “out of place”.

Loosing her birth family raises the questions of why she was relinquished or abandoned. We cannot expect the child to be forever satisfied with the “your parents could not take care of any child at the time.” It is not enough for the child. It can damage their sense of worth and feed into the “family fantasy” about being stolen from a rich family, or bought from a decent but poor family, or being salvaged by adoptive parents that you just can’t never repay.

Grieving is a terrible phase for the adoptive parents, because it is ongoing, and it is a source of pain for the child, even when they do not express it. It is also a source of anger towards themselves and/or the adoptive family.

And the worst is that the adoptive family cannot control that process, they cannot do anything to make it less painful. What they can do is not make it worst, and support the child so they can deal with that pain and grow stronger out of it.

Conclusion

Be fair to the child, not easy on yourself

We suggest that in order to be fair to our kids when it comes to dealing with their roots, we do not place ourselves above the biological or the birth families, and that we do not deny them the right to deal with their loss.

These families are also families, they are also entitled to the title of “family”, even if they are not as fully involved as we are.

It does not resolve the questions about openness, and the age at which children need to know, but at least it makes clear that the child is entitled to know, and that we cannot lie to them: once they are old enough to ask, we have to be bold enough to tell. the question is how.

Make it simple, the child can understand complexity but not complications

Of course the child will not understand terms like “biological, birth, dialectic”.

So we can instead use terms like “seed daddy, egg mummy, tummy mummy (not sure about the term for birth daddy!).

We can also name this people by first names or foreign terms to avoid confusion with the “real” mummies and/or daddies… the adoptive parents: Mummy Leha is your tummy mummy; Ubaba Bandile put you in Umama Amahle’s tummy.

Add to this the complexity of same-gender dialectic parents! That is usually resolved by using first names (Daddy Patrick and Daddy Joe), or  foreign terms for multicultural families (Daddy [Patrick] and Papá [José])