Adoptive parents whose children search for their birth parents often interpret the search as a threat to the parent-child relationship. Most adoptees who search say they love their adoptive parents and do not seek to replace them. They seek, rather, to regain a part of themselves that they feel is "missing," even if what is missing is information rather than a relationship.

During my years of involvement in the adoption community with adoptees in search I have learned that many (I estimate half) never told their adoptive parents that they were searching. They were afraid that their adoptive parents would disown them, or be very upset and threatened by the search. In fact, there have been some adoptive parents who did threaten the adoptee with abandonment if they searched!

Thinking about a cousin in my adoptive family who is also adopted and has showed interest in searching for her natural parents I realized that her adoptive parents are having a hard time dealing with their daughter searching for the natural parent who abused their daughter before she was placed in their home. The reality is that adoptees do search and even establish relationships with natural parents who are still dysfunctional or even imprisoned.

I have a friend who found her natural mother institutionalized and she visited her regularly in the state psychiatric hospital until her mother died some ten years later. She never had the opportunity to tell her adoptive parents about the relationship but said that the few glimpses of her mother's real self during that decade gave her a sense of wholeness and understanding that she'd never before experienced.

I believe that adoptive parents must do the best they can to encourage security in their adopted children and themselves while they are raising minors. Once a child reaches adulthood, parents should have some faith in themselves and in the loving bond they have established with their kids. With some children there will be a stronger bond than with others; but my experience shows that consistent reliability, trustworthiness, and love always is best for the adoptee. Adoptive parents must learn to let go of their adopted children and of their own need to control or possess the adoptee. All adoptees have two families, even if one family did not raise the child and did not provide reliability, trustworthiness, and love. The original family provided the adoptee roots, and when these roots are rejected the adoptee is being rejected. The adoptive parents may need to work on their inner selves before they can grow gracefully into their child’s adulthoods.