One of the things that I always try to do is to make sure that my Korean adoptee hat and my adoptive parent hat aren’t on at the same time. It seems inevitable that they will crossover since both hats are an integral part of who I am. So, when Jan on the Adoption Search blog asked me what I would do if my son wanted to search for his birth parents, I would have thought this should be one of those times.

While I noted in My Korean Family posts that I have no real need to search, I am very interested in my son’s birth family. When we started the adoption process, the social worker told us that many of the children were coming with letters from their birth parents. I was fascinated and, ultimately, disappointed when my son did not have a letter when he arrived. I am very curious about who they are and what they are doing now.

So, I find myself in a position where I need to make sure my wants don’t overshadow my son’s wants. While I have to make sure that he knows that I support him if he wants to search, I have to make sure that he is the one that really wants to do the searching and he’s not making me happy. Wouldn’t that be a conundrum?

On Julia’s Jam, Julia (a Korean adoptee) has a mini-biography of herself and I found it interesting to see to what lengths her mother went to help her find her birth mother. She talks about contacting agencies, hiring private detectives, etc… and I was rather awed by the list. A lot of parents would be satisfied with contacting the agency and letting it go…they did their due diligence and now they can move on. Julia’s mother didn’t stop. She went that extra mile and that is the mark of a true parent.

Though I am both the adoptee and the parent, it is still the same in the long run. It is so important that we don’t let our feelings override the feelings of our Korean adoptees (whether we want them to search or not). So, I will be very quiet and let him make his own decision, but I don’t see why I can’t stand in the background and silently root for the “search” team. Either way, his choice will be golden to me.

If you would like to comment, but not on this site, please e-mail me at adoptkoreablog@adoptionmail.com.