To Facebook or not to Facebook? That is the question.
Of course, this post is probably only relative to those considering open adoption. I’m not talking about whether or not it’s a good idea to get your name out there via Facebook or not. It’s a great idea. If you’re going with the type of agency that has you waiting for a birthmother to contact you, then you should do everything that you can think of to “market” yourself, and that should probably include Facebook.
What I’m talking about is whether or not to be friends with your birthmother, or birthfather, or other people on Facebook.
When my wife and I adopted the first time, we tried to keep our identity a secret from the young lady that contacted us. That only lasted a couple of hours since we accidentally left our identifying information on the bottom of an email, and before we knew it she had requested to be our friend on Facebook. We accepted the invitation.
Being friends with our first birthmom actually did us a lot of good. She was a teenager and was on Facebook a lot. We did a lot of our correspondence through the Facebook chat room. Chatting is more personal than emails are, so we felt like we were better able to get to know her.
Even though we were glad that we got to get to know our first birthmom better through Facebook, when we adopted for a second time, we purposefully didn’t do Facebook with her. First of all, she lives only 20 miles away, so we were able to have some face-to-face time to get to know her. The main reason, though, was that we needed a place that we could call our own- a place where we could talk freely with our friends about what was going on. We didn’t do that with our first adoption. We knew that placing a child was going to be really tough on our birthmom, so we didn’t talk about it very much in our “status” or other places on Facebook. We didn’t want to rub it in her face since we knew that she’s probably read every single word we put on our pages.
So with our second adoption, not having become Facebook contacts with our new birthmom, we were able to write about anything we wanted. We talked freely about where we were at in the adoption process and our friends were able to follow along. Most importantly to us, though, was that we got to CELEBRATE the process with our friends. Since we didn’t have to worry about rubbing it in, I guess you could say we though a little Facebook adoption party that lasted for a few weeks. We celebrated, and our friends celebrated with us, all of the wonderful things that come with adoption.
I also agree that both sides of the adoption… birth family and adoptive families need their own support groups. To be able to reach out to others without feeling like they are being watched.
Russell is my husband and for our second adoption I think it has helped our birth mom pull away from us when needed, while trying to figure out the boundaries she wanted to create for herself. It simplified the communication. With everything so virtual now days there can almost be too much contact. Both sides need privacy and a place to speak their mind and heart.
I know when we adopted the first time; it was hard for me to see our birth mother claim motherhood so fully. I had never processed the emotions of an adoptive mother before, and some of those emotions took a while to work through. It was hard for me to read some of the topics she put on her facebook even though she wasn’t being inconsiderate, she was just telling her side of the story to her friends. Today it doesn’t bother me at all that she claims her son (our son), she gave birth to her little miracle and she loves him fully! Of course she is going to be proud to tell her family and friends about her little miracle… her son (our son).
I know that on her side of the story, it wasn’t pleasant for her to read the congratulations that came from our friends and family members on facebook. Congratulations, that in a different situation would have been hers instead of ours. I believe that during the building stages of these delicate relationships, you should consider simplifying virtual contact. If you want to add it later, then do… though slowly.
You might think… well if our birth parents don’t want to see what we have to say then they don’t have to read it. It’s not that simple. That is what you call being tortured (Smile). Can you imagine the battle they would find within… to look, or not to look? I would have been tortured as well, knowing our birth moms were posting and that I had the option to see what they were saying, though not knowing if I wanted to see the information being posted.
We have very loving and open relationships with our birth families; however, this is one area of our openness we wanted to simplify the second time around, so that we all had our own support groups. Like Russell said above… it helped us to be able to celebrate and to find the support we all needed.