In part 1 of "Do Birth Moms Love Their Children?" I mentioned that one of our challenges as birth parents in reunion is to convince our children that we love them. Maybe "convince" is the wrong word. We just want our children to feel our love for them and believe that it is unconditional and real. No "convincing" should be involved.

Mothers generally love their children. Who can argue with that premise? To love your child is the most natural instinct on the planet. Few mothers, in my opinion, do not love their children. There may be some few women with little or no love for their children, however, I believe that they are extremely rare.

I love my children dearly – all three of them. Two of my children I gave birth to and raised. My first son was relinquished to adoption as a newborn. Even now 36 years after the fact, I feel a jab at my heart as I type those words. Intellectually, I understand what factors led to his adoption. However, like many birth moms I know – even many decades after the fact – we still ask ourselves how on earth could we have given our babies away.

The fact that I did not raise one of my sons has nothing at all to do with my feelings for him. I love him with the all the depth and passion that I feel for the two children that I did raise. Relinquishing him was never about a lack of love for him. I believe that it rarely is.

Few people have difficulty understanding that adoptive moms love the children that they adopt. After all, they may have dreamed about, longed for and prayed for children for years. In some cases, parents adopt after many years of unsuccessful fertility treatments and failed pregnancies with a great deal of heartache ensuing. Therefore, most people assume that anyone who goes to that much trouble to adopt a child must certainly really want a child. It is also generally accepted that if they went to so much trouble, time, effort and expense to adopt that child, that they will love that child and be wonderful parents.

For birth parents, however, many people are convinced that if we loved our children, we would never consider placing them children for adoption. In hindsight, many birth mothers may wonder the same thing too.

Three of our 26 blogs here at adoption.com are birth moms and we all relinquished sons. If you read all each of our three blogs, I believe it is clear that we love our sons and wanted to raise them.
Read Heather's Blog for a similar view on this subject.

Are we the exception or the rule? Do most birth moms love and want to raise their children? I believe that they do. At reunion, those of us who had closed adoptions offer our love to our children and hope for the best.