When we were driving around last night to get balloons to send off the girls' Father's Day wishes, the girls kept talking about sending a note to their birth parents, not to their birth fathers. I threw out a question casually: "When you think about your birth family, who do you think of the most?" Maya answered immediately -- "My birth mom." She couldn't explain why, she just did. I suspect it's because she's more familiar with what moms are, given our daddy-free family.
Zoe answered more slowly: "I think of my birth dad the most because I don't have a dad. And I don't have Grandpa, either."
That's a change in attitude for Zoe. She hasn't really displayed all that much interest in her birth father. Her acute grief and longing has been for her birth mother. I always thought that as a daddy-less family my kids would be more interested in their birth fathers (as I said here), but that hasn't really played out until now.
I think Zoe's new interest in her birth dad is really connected to that last half of what she said -- "I don't have Grandpa, either." When she was really little -- maybe 2.5 years old -- she quite consciously made Grandpa her daddy substitute. She'd say, "I don't have a daddy, but I have a Grandpa; and he's like a daddy, and sometimes Mimi calls him Daddy." All figured out, huh? Now with no dad and no Grandpa, her birth dad seems to have grown in importance.
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I rarely thought of my first Father when I was a kid, and it's ironic to me that he is such an important part of my life now.
Generally speaking, I think it is harder for kids to really get that "dad" helps create them. Women are the one's who get PG, carry the baby-- all the visibility of being PG, and then give birth. It is very concrete. Not so concrete is the dad's contribution.
I remember being a kid and wanting to know why my mom didn't marry a rich boy she mentioned dating. She mentioned that if she had, she wouldn't have me. I told her no, you would still have me, I would just have a different dad. I think I was 9 or 10 and I did know about the birds and the bees.
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