I personally know many dozens of adoptive families. It is clear to me (though I admit this is anecdotal) that adoptive parents don’t feel any “distance” from their children based on perceived lack of biological relatedness. It’s really odd, isn’t it? No problem for adoptive families, but God forbid if a hospital accidentally swaps babies. Then it’s a huge problem (and I would be upset too, I admit).

These all seem like cop-outs to me. But why, then, can’t these people bring themselves to love a child that looks a little different?

This issue reminds me of how many adoptions were handled in years past. Many of the adoptive parents never told their children that they were adopted. Those parents sometimes felt ashamed of the situation, perhaps belittled by their ability to have bio children.

I am an adoptive parent. My wife and I adopted two girls from China. My daughters look a bit different than I do, which is what I expected. Before adopting, I asked many parents how important it was that their bio children were biologically theirs. Most of them said that it was a significant part of what it meant to be a parent. This concerned me, of course. Then I talked with the parents of two families who had both bio children and adopted children. I asked whether they felt any stronger bond with the bio children than the adopted children. They both said absolutely not. They both said that as soon as you hold that baby in your arms, it is your baby 100%.

The parents of one of those two families had no indication that they couldn’t have bio children. Nonetheless, they went out and adopted their first child because “there were children out there who needed homes.” Simple as that. A few years later, they got pregnant.

As an adoptive parent, I often notice other adoptive families. I know that this is anecdotal, but I truly can’t see that adoptive parents are any less attached to their children. If anything, they sometimes seem to be more attached. But my observations are certainly confounded by age. The parents of adopted children (who my children’s classmates/friends/acquaintances ) tend to be older than the parents of my children’s acquaintances who are not adopted.

Bottom line: I don’t believe that a biological connection is necessary for a wonderful parent-child relationship. Or perhaps I shoud rephrase: All humans are highly related to each other (we share more than 99% of our genome with every other human on the planet). This inevitably close relationship is apparently an ample basis for a close and loving parent-child relationship.

Therefore, the news that one’s purported bio child is not actually one’s bio child, though such news might be earth-shaking, need not damage an established relationship between such a child and the “unrelated” parent.

Texas Dad: Thank you for writing to share your experiences. I wish you the best in working things out.

And that’s for species that are rigidly monogamous, unlike our own.

Men who can love childen and invest a major part of their lives in their upbringing *only* when they are convinced they are the biological fathers, do not distinguish themselves from lower vertebrates. Lions somehow spring to mind here. In my opinion lions are simply programmed to behave in their particular way and I have not yet heard of examples of male lions accepting anything other than their own offspring.

Man however has the capabilities at his disposal to negate this kind of hereditary programming and become a better man. And so he should.