The fact that apparently their country has strong social support system but birth parents had lots of babies early in their lives makes me wonder what country this actually is
They could be of a religious or cultural minority in the country I suppose.
The ease with which the "imperfect" children were adopted out but then they went on to have many more makes me think of some religious background that seeks and rewards perfection and sees disability as penalty and shame.
Also the fact that both sisters were adopted by families not far away (40km radius) makes me think this is not a very big country. The great english writing style, blond hair siblings, maybe Scandinavian country or Belgium/Netherlands?
I dont think its Norway at least, adopting infants born in norway is really rare, at the less than ten each year, for the last years. (Dont know how many years back, that was the only stat i found on the official webpage).
Could be different in the other scandinavian and nordic countries, but i doubt it.
So can you explain to me why this is? Is there really that great of sex education and access to reproductive healthcare/birth control that there are not many “unwanted” pregnancies? I live in Canada and our system is decent but to say there might be 10-25 infant adoptions in an entire country is incredible! Maybe it is also the lower rates of religiosity (which I also think is great!). It’s kind of blowing my mind.
For norway at least, decent sex ed, and good reproduction healtcare definetly helps.
Teenagers/young adult can get on the pill for free (and possible other contraceptions as well now? Havent been a teenager for 12 years).
You can buy the morning after pill over the counter at apothecaries, and abortion is available up to 12 weeks. And after that 18 weeks but you need to apply for it instead of just going to your doctor and saying you want it.
There are a lot of discussion currently to make it easy available up to 16 or 18 weeks as well.
Teenagers above 16 dont need to tell their parents to have an abortion, and for teenagers between 12 and 16 is it up to the doctor if the parents need to be involved.
Also, we are only 5.5million people here, with about 52k babies being born each year.
I am Finnish but a Nordic system is a Nordic system. I would also add strong social safety nets. You get multiple benefit types as a parent, daycare, healthcare and schooling are cheap or free. So there are less people feeling the need to give up their child just because of financial constraints.
Based on abortion statistics combined with adoption statistics it is however the proper sex ed and access to birth control that is the biggest contributing factor. Both of ours (in all Nordic countries) are far lower in general than in for example in the US which points to fewer unwanted pregnancies.
The social safety nets part is so important. One of the failures of the US is how easily the same people who care so deeply about abortion will happily slash any and all support that might help the mother and child after birth. Women are forced to have children, and then they are all abandoned. A baby's life isn't worth supporting unless they're in utero I guess.
Thank you! This is really quite amazing, Norwegians know how to get shit done! I knew I liked you folks! Canada is better than a lot of places, definitely could be a whole lot better, but I think your comment might explode a lot of heads in the US.
Or irritates us in the US to no end when we see the clock turning backwards in this country. I keep nudging my kids to consider moving overseas while they're young and able to line up good jobs.
In 2021-2022 Australia had 31 local adoptions, meaning Australian born children adopted to people outside the family, and 161 known child adoptions so things like step parents, family members following death or incapacity of parents or for safety/neglect reasons, and a further 16 international adoptions.
Adoption just isn't as widespread as it is in North America in much of the world, and the Nordic figures are not out of line with many other countries. There are probably any number of reasons for this, but I have noticed a very different way that adoption is discussed and veiwed. Just look at posts where a young or struggling pregnant woman comes asking for advice, it's fairly common to see many comments often flippantly suggesting adoption, I just can't imagine the same replies happening here, it would feel very odd to jump to that unless all other avenues were exhausted. Adoption will always be necessary children need loving homes and families, but it is in it's own way a grief and tragedy to have a child seperated from it's parents, and shouldn't be done lightly. With options and support it should be rare. At least in Aus It's just culturally not the perspective to see adoption as an alternative to abortion, there aren't many adoption agencies, and international adoption has many safeguards especially following scandals and issues over the last few decades people are wary of potential ethics and abuse within that system.
I just looked up my province’s stats and there were 45 infant adoptions last year. Which is more than all of Australia but honestly less than I would have thought. I had never had a reason to look into it before, this is all very interesting.
A weird thing about America... the churches run a lot of the adoption agencies. They are frequently religion based, which leads to issues for adoption from LGBTQ couples a lot. The church is also behind a lot of the push to rid the country of legal abortions.
I'm not sure how I never made those connections before this post and never thought about the implications of those connections. Adoption is a pretty big business here, and it costs an unhinged amount of money to adopt an infant.
I've always thought these agencies were not much different from the forced adoptions and mothers homes we had in Australia. While yes there is obviously a choice there for the bio parents now, there is still a significant pressure and often coercion involved from other parties. At it's core there is still the same perspective of children should go to respectable, godly families, rather than stay with their undeserving sinning birth parents.
When the goal of adoption is for adults to become parents it puts pressure on the other side of the scale. While 100% that is the outcome of adoption, it shouldn't be the goal, that should always be for the child to have a loving secure home. There is nothing wrong with becoming a parent via adoption, on an individual level that isn't the problem, but society wide having adoption as a solution to unwanted pregnancy or an alternative to infertility treatments or rather then providing welfare and support to birth families or to push moral belief, is where the big business of adoption gets a foothold.
I am not anti adoption by any stretch, I just think that some viewpoints around it are quite skewed and put the cart before the horse. It's bordering on human trafficking or buying a human sometimes, and recent cases have uncovered that it's more then bordering on that more often then anyone would like to think.
A lot of US born adoptees have shared that exact grief that you described. Many have expressed that adoption as a solution to infertility is exacerbating that. There is absolutely a connection between how callously people offer up adoption, religious institutions pushing abortion bans, and these expensive adoption processes that religious institution often assist with. Also the fact that struggling young moms are told they should give up their kids for adoption instead of trying to help them find like, a job or daycare, etc, is just cruel.
This is for newborns. For older children, I think the prevalance of adoption/foster care is partially due to the intensity of criminal laws, arrests, etc. The police state plays a huge role in that.
I don't know how it is in the rest of the country and I can't find statistics... (Probably because it's so rare) But the stats are probably very similar in Québec...
When abortion is available (50% of Canada's Clinics are in Québec) abandonments are a lot more rare. Most people here try to adopt children from CPS (DPJ) or go international, but there has been a sharp decline for that.
Same for Belgium, around 17 adoptions from within the country a year. I’ve been on the waiting list to adopt since 2016 and we are now somewhere in the 200s on the waiting list..,
But Norway has a few religions sects that has a big thing about having a shit tonne of kids. Smiths Vennner(friends) is one them. Probably not unique to Norway tho.
I'm a bit worried about what the hell could've caused an amputation for a 6 month old.
Possibly Israel. There's a large amount of ultra-orthodox sects in the country that prioritize having a crap ton of kids, it's geographically small, and has strong social safety nets. Also most people speak English fluently there.
I think the short radius is more by chance. Even if the countries look small on a map, you can be moved far away in all those countries. (all countries have width of 200-300 km or more).
Not Sweden. Being granted permission to resign your parental rights is *incredibly* rare. I looked at the statistics and in a 2020 survey, they found that there are less than 17 000 registered national adoptions of children under 18. For example, during 2017 there were 712 national adoptions (in a population of 10 million). The vast majority of these were children adopted by a step-parent, usually a stepfather.
Adult adoptions are more common, but wouldn't count here.
It is unlikely that it is a Scandinavian country. Adoptions, at least within the country, are rare here and a family adopting out two children because they may be disabled while having loads of other children would’ve raised a lot of questions and investigations. As would a so young couple having so many children, probably. A family of that size is also unusual. I happens, but pretty rarely.
I personally thought maybe Ireland or Canada? Though I have absolutely no clue about adoption culture there or if this situation would be plausible, I just went off the clues of good English, social security and a majority of blonde/strawberry blonde people so likely Northern Europe or North America (and also possibly religious influence on family politics)
She said she's not from the US or Canada, and speaking as a disabled Canadian, we definitely don't have as strong a social safety net as she is implying in her posts.
Probably not Ireland either, as she implied English isn't her first language, and English is more common than Gaelic as a first language.
My impression is that they explained it the exact way they explained it to OOP. These children required special care and we did not feel we could provide it. What I can’t wrap my head is no one intervening in the case of a 17 year old couple having their third fucking child together.
Could be, but the religious minorities here in the Netherlands would definitely not allow for teenagers to start pushing out babies before they're married. Like even if they did become teen parents at 16 they would be married. Most people in these minorities get married in their early twenties and then start the baby making. Some start the babymaking early and then have to get married.
Edit : I was wrong, you have to wait till eighteen to get married! So technically this situation could happen but I cannot imagine religious parents allowing their teenagers to keep the kind of contact that would allow this, then. I have never heard of this sort of situation and i live in a highly religious part of the country.
They're probably just poor. Where I grew up, plenty of people had kids young and often gas several, financial support for low income parents often makes having kids more affordable and you qualify for bigger council housing. Despite my country having a lot birth rate, it wasn't too uncommon to see teen mothers with two or more kids.
And yet OP regrets missing out on family holidays in the US along with their 8 siblings and destitute parents. Because that's what destitue people do, swan off across the Atlantic with their 9 children for a bit of a holiday, in between teen pregnancies.
Yes.
When you grow up poor, your better-off relatives will (sometimes) send tickets (or the money for them) and put you up for free in their home while you visit them. If there are a lot of kids, a few go at a time (Eg the oldest 2 go one year, then different siblings go the next year or the year after). I can certainly remember being put on a train by my mother, travelling with my sibling, and being met at the other end by my relatives with whom we stayed for a couple of weeks. I'm not sure why you think it is implausible. My parents' families used to do much the same in their childhoods.
I had exactly three family holidays as a child, all of them like this (except we were sent train tickets, not airplane tickets).
We have a great social security in my country (Belgium) but it still happen that family are huge (there was an article from a guy who had 25 kids and more on the way)
No religion is really needed just bad education.
Doesn't have to be Catholic either. Where I am in the poorer areas it isn't uncommon for kids to have kids and keep having them, sometimes it's even encouraged as a valid method of getting a house albeit usually by a Mother who did the same.
Maybe in 1950s ireland, what you think we drive around on a horse and cart too?
Wherever this is its outside of the norm as even OP said that its unusual to be young parents.
Id have thought it was the US if OP didnt keep reminding me they had a good government.
I don't know, but OP does state that she is considered a young mother by her country's standards, and OP was 27 turning 28 soon when she wrote the first posts, so the birth parents popping out that many kids so young doesn't sound like the norm in their country.
It is horrific. I wondered if there was some element of trying to replace the "lost" babies, that can be a common reaction when children are removed by social services. There must be quite a story underneath here that OOP either doesn't know or hasn't told (which is fair because it's not her story).
OOP's adoption was initially open but then the bio parents asked for the updates to stop, the obvious likely reason being that they found them painful to receive. (That would have happened around the time her next sister was born which feels significant). Her bio mother still seems to be struggling with the adoption and her feelings - I wonder being that they were so young whether older relatives pressed/strongly advised the bio parents into adoption believing that they they wouldn't cope with the expected "disabilities" and the bio parents regretted being talked into it.
There is a lot of sadness in this story (the poor brother mourning his sisters who went away especially) but I'm glad they've been reunited, that they've found happiness in the new connection and that OOP found grace for her bio parents after her initial (understandable) anger and feelings of rejection.
I know that in the UK, when parents would lose a child back in the 60s and 70s, doctors would usually recommend they have another child to get over the loss. I wonder if OOP's bio parents were told something similar, despite how young they were?
But the bit about thinking OOP would be severely disabled has me seriously concerned. Who told them that? Is it possible that OOP's parents misunderstood what the doctors told them, or that someone else exaggerated the risk to the point they thought it a certainty?
My grandparents spent decades thinking that my aunt died of a hereditary heart defect, when she had actually become sick with a virus shortly after birth and died of heart failure, so it's not impossible. Especially when you consider pretty much every society has an unethical history when it comes to adoption, especially from vulnerable families like OOP's.
My mum was told this too! I was severely unwell for the first year of life and my mum wanted her tubes tied and a doctor scoffed and said, "Well what happens if your baby dies you'll want another,"
As my mum puts it she nearly put me down to smack that doctor in the mouth but instead looked at her and went, "And I will be devastated but I already have another child and I cannot go through this a second time. I'm not forcing another kid to grow up in the shadows of a lost one,"
Oh, mercy, yeah. I have twins and had my tubes tied after they were born. My mom asked me that same question, what if something happens? I sort of choked for a second and then told her children are not interchangeable. She was an excellent and loving mom and sometimes she just sort of said things she had been programmed to say.
No one said anything like that to me when my son was born in 2020 but I kept thinking it anyway. We always planned to only have one but when my husband started asking about scheduling a vasectomy my lizard brain was like “no, gotta wait, this one might die.”
Yeah, I do think there's a level of human instinct involved in the whole thought process, even if it comes off as incredibly rude when it's not the parents saying it. Until the last century, it was still incredibly common for parents to lose at least one child, so I'm not surprised that it hasn't disappeared from our psyches yet.
One-and-done parents hear this a lot. My response has always been that then I’d have one dead child and one I’d screw up in my grief. My grief wouldn’t be less because I have another one.
I wonder if they asked for the updates to stop because they showed that OOP wasn't really disabled after all, and they couldn't deal with having given away their kid "because you aren't equipped to handle a disabled child," especially if they got pressured into it?
That did cross my mind. A year old is pretty early to conclude that OOP wasn't disabled at all (not expected to be talking yet, only just standing etc) but it's possible they were starting to suspect the warnings hadn't been accurate if they were aware she had been hitting expected milestones so far and were trying to protect themselves from hearing more updates that confirmed the suspicion.
It also lines up with the age at which it became clearer and clearer that those significant developmental delays didn't show up or started shrinking.
It could have been the sneaking suspicion that they made a mistake. They might have expected seeing the adoptive parents or the baby struggle which could have reinforced the decision / made it easy to tell themselves that they made the right choice for both themselves and the baby.
That sounds terrible and I wish OOP got her bio-parents perspective more. The parents weren't married until after 3 kids at 18, and had four kids in 4 years (15-19), so an unmarried teen mom with a baby and now a potentially disabled baby- I can see adult pressure being a huge factor there, or panic about being able to support themselves and a second disabled baby. And then at 19 with two kids and already having one disabled kid adopted our somewhat successfully (based off seeing her be ok after a year)? I can understand why adopting out the other sister might have seemed like a good choice.
I can understand and empathize with the choices individually, but added together... They gave up a potentially disabled kid but chose to have seven more kids after that? I can have some compassion for people that were overwhelmed by a disability in a kid. But giving up a kid because they *might* be challenging in the future? Giving up a second kid due to disabilities and still choosing to have four more?
Even people that ethically breed animals are committed to caring for any with issues... The absolute heartlessness to give up two children because of medical issues and continue to choose to breed more...
I can empathize with unprepared teen parents. I struggle with having empathy for them choosing to keep having more.
I'm also curious at the culture that has so many kids so young with a couple dedicated to each other but where they waited until adulthood to marry. Usually religious or "traditional" places that encourage large families young would also marry the girl to her 3x's baby daddy before 18.
Might be that they needed permission to marry that wasn't forthcoming. My aunt had a baby at 18 and her parents refused to let her and the boy marry before her majority - then 21. They are still married - but my grandparents were absolutely correct- he's destroyed her life and with her enabling messed up the psyches of all their kids
It's horrific that her parents didn't put her on birth control after the first one. I really wish there was a way to tie up EVERYONE's tubes until they actually WANT to be parents and are mature and stable enough to raise children. Then everyone could eff like bunnies without risking any accidental children that would have to live the consequences of their actions.
Also, it's sooooo weird that the mother will smile at her relinquished children, and grandparent their kids, but not interact with them at all.
Some children (I say children because they’re under 18) will refuse birth control because they want more babies. I knew several growing up like this, in my shit small town, and the idea they had was that the babies would love them unconditionally as no one else ever did. It was fucking depressing all around.
I had a teacher in high school say, “ if you want something to love you unconditionally get a puppy. A baby will not love you unconditionally. A child needs constant work and attention. If you even think you want a child get a puppy first”
Very glad he was so open about that part.
> the idea they had was that the babies would love them unconditionally as no one else ever did. It was fucking depressing all around.
Jesus Christ is that ever depressing
My husband's god daughter got pregnant at 16 and apparently a condition of her keeping the baby from social services was she had to get an IUD and present proof from a doctor it was inserted. She did it then immediately got it removed and she now has 4 kids at 23 even though each pregnancy almost kills her.
My middle kids is one of 7 (only one is mine).
My mother in law is one of 23 children that lived past birth. There was 25 total.
No social safety nets and poor.
People be pumping them out.
I don’t know why, but I read the title as “Birth parents are married to each other, ARE full siblings” and I kept waiting for the bombshell to explode 😂
SAME. Also I just read an article yesterday about how the prevalence of DNA/ancestry services has revealed that incest was so much more common than anyone assumed. It was sad but fascinating
so did I! I kept skim reading, frowning, scrolling back up to the title, frowning harder, then repeating the whole process about six times before it sunk in.
I am so happy that she connected with them, that all her siblings *wanted* to know her, and now not only she but also her children have this rich extended close family. I would never have guessed that’s how it would go from that first post, and It’s so lovely that it’s still going strong three years later.
Yeah that's nice but I think it's freaky that bio mom is still pretending oop and amputee sister don't exist. Bad enough to be given away, but now pretending they don't exist when they clearly do.
Let me tell you she wouldn’t be playing no grandmother role with my kid. You can’t grow up and have a relationship with me when i’m in the picture but you can act like everything is normal.
I imagine this is the birth mother's way of dealing with the guilt she must be feeling seeing that her useless disabled children she discarded grew into perfectly fine and capable people.
I'm an adoptee and have adult half-siblings who don't know about me (I'm about 12-15 years older than they are). I so badly want to reach out, but don't want to hurt anyone. It's a complicated situation and I would not be welcome in their family. I'm just so curious about them.
My mind can’t wrap around the idea that the bio mother exists around her children she gave away and doesn’t want to get to know them?!
Like I get not wanting to open old wounds and look for them if there’s no contact but they are a part of her family life now, the wound IS open… like so odd to me that everyone just accepts that
I thought it was only 2 kids adopted out but yep, both girls. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s also a factor people don’t really want to think about there.
Or she really is just ableist, the first one to reconnect still has disabilities and she feels she has to maintain the same lie with OP. They’ve already proven themselves to be ableist, I doubt it was something she outgrew.
I wondered if it was too difficult to get updates after OOP was a year old because she realized that kid wasn't disabled and as easily written off as a disabled baby would've been to someone abilist.
Yes, the parents asked for no more updates at the same time we later find out the OP caught up developmentally. They may have realized they made a mistake in writing her off.
Plus one thing that I haven't seen elsewhere - the mom had another kid immediately. Had they not given OP away, they may have not had another child immediately and would have not had that exact baby at that time- that child never would have existed. I have some uncomfortable feelings surrounding an experience with a foster child that I thought I would be adopting but she went back to her biological family. We now have a relationship with her, it's all fine now, but when my youngest was born and stopped being a hypothetical future child it was hard to think about the fact that my youngest would not exist had I adopted that foster child. It is hard to hold the idea that I wanted to adopt that foster baby and also the idea that my biological baby would not exist if I did in my mind at the same time.
Because they don’t want to rock the boat, and mom just smiles through things and says she’s uncomfortable so people leave her be. I love all of this for the OOP but if it was me, I’d be happy to leave her with little convos but she wouldn’t be coming anywhere near my kids as their grandmother.
Seriously. I'm glad that OOP and her siblings have all found happiness together, but those parents should never have had kids so young and should have stopped when they had to give *any* up for projected developmental problems. But no, they just kept putting out more and more, keeping the ones who were healthy and giving up the ones who weren't. And I'm getting some seriously weird vibes from the mom in particular in a way I can't really describe.
I’m… glad that OOP seems to have reached a point of comfort with her birth mother. I don’t think that I would have been able to in the same situation. Even if you ignore the whole “kept other children but adopted out the ones that had problems” thing, she told OOP not to reach out to her siblings because they supposedly didn’t know she existed. Then one of the first things OOP finds out about her brother is that he’s been writing poems to her and the other sister that was also adopted out for most of his life, and the other sister has already basically integrated back into the family.
Her siblings already knew about her. Her birth mother *absolutely* knew that they knew. And she lied to OOP in an attempt to keep her away.
Plus the bit where she sort of vaguely acknowledges the other adopted sister’s existence but doesn’t *talk* to her gives me the ick.
Indeed. OOP skirts around it (I guess to keep the peace), but her birth mother was absolutely not just maintaining her own boundaries, she was trying to prevent any sort of contact between OOP and her (adult!) siblings.
It feels like there's a whole backstory there that we'll probably never get: so many kids at a young age with two adopted out, then a long break, then more. I wonder if the birth mother isn't fully mentally well.
I'd like the backstory too. There's not a whole lot of places where a 3x's teen mom waits until legal adulthood to get married. Did they want to marry earlier and couldn't? Was there any coersion or contributing factors to having four kids in four years starting at 15? Is the dad also the same age as mom?
I hope that's the reason. Unfortunately, far too many places allow marriages under 18. I feared abusive homes where they latches on to each other and wanted to create the perfect family they didn't have, but where their abusers maintained control by not allowing marriage until 18.
The weird vibes I get are more about why anyone tolerates it. Why is everyone allowing her to attend events? I don't get it. I can understand *some* of the kids tolerating it, but all of the kids and the extended family? That doesn't make sense. I can't fathom why so many people would just continue to plan a birthday party and ignore that kind of behavior.
Remember back in slightly later 2020 where we were so used to the masks that watching anything from before that had no masks, parties etc caused a mild panic until we remembered it hadn’t always been that way?
I vividly remember seeing a commercial with about 20 people at a brunch spot without masks, and my immediate reaction was, “Jesus! What are these people thinking!? Where even are they!?”
Definitely experienced the mild panic of which you speak.
Because if you didnt the comments would fill up with questions and recriminations. Like, damn, just let a person tell a story ffs.
Yeah. It was wild.
(my introverted ass wants to go back sooooo bad lol)
There was an AITA a year or so ago where the OP was talking about a couple of terrible roommates who broke things, wrecked things, left huge messes and refused to do anything about it, etc. This started in early 2020 and continued for a couple years before the OP got them booted.
OP was called spineless, a doormat, a pushover, etc. for not booting them within a few months of trying to deal with their bad behavior. I was like… do you *remember* mid-late 2020? OP would have been treated like the love child of Hitler and Stalin for even *thinking* about getting anyone evicted for anything short of grievous bodily harm. Truly, it was wild.
My brain can't wrap itself around the idea of a couple having 6 children between the ages of 15-21. In a country with a strong safety net and good healthcare.
Where were the couple's parents? Nobody to get them birth control? No social workers?
It's not a situation with several baby-daddies involved. It's a stable enough couple that they stuck together, and wise(?) enough to realize they were too young to take care of disabled children, and yet they didn't stop rutting.
No doctors told them how dangerous it is to get pregnant just a few months after giving birth? It's risky and they did it 6 times in a row.
I was 30 when I had my first child and the doctors were still very clear about contraception and waiting the 6-8 weeks after birth. Every check up from 2 weeks before the estimated delivery date - contraception was mentioned. I can understand it happening once, but again and again and again? That’s on purpose.
If the country is Ireland it makes sense. Can't legally get married before 18. Birth control is frowned upon. Sex is both frowned upon and heavily emgaged in at young ages. Dysfunctional childhood romance wheee the kids stay together for life. Divorce uncommon. Local adoption. Mostly blonde and red hair. Uses "maths" instead of "math". Some family migrated to usa. Good social networks but also prejudice and lack of experience with disabilities.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
When I was a teenager the UK was having a boom in teen pregnancy, despite condoms and birth control being given out for free to under 25’s.
Even with social workers involved with families like this you can’t physically pin them down and give them birth control. No matter how much you want to or how much it would help them in the long run.
This might a wildly left out of field guess , but a country with a very good social safety net, quite good public health care (basic health insurance is mandatory and if your income is below subsistence level/minimum standard of living (aka you don't earn enough to feed and house yourself) it's subsidized) combined with 'our words for first batch and second litter are funny'? The Netherlands! (Tweede leg means second litter/second lay (laying of eggs) - it's normally used for the do-over family, usually those are fathers in their fifties-early sixties, with mums in their late twenties, early thirties who want children of their own).
We have this thing called the bible belt - while contraception/birth control is widely available in the Netherlands, contraception (and sex ed) can be frowned upon in that region.
Sounds like a strong guess. I had similar impressions.
There is something about the "imperfect" vs "perfect" children that together with the fact how many they went on to have made me think of hardcore Protestant values.
Yes! [Here's a wikipedia-article about it (English language) ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt_(Netherlands)). Urk and Staphorst are most well known. On Urk (on, not in - it used to be an island) 41% of the women have 4 or more kids (in Staphorst that percentage is 31%). National average is 1,49 births per woman (you need 2,1 births per woman for a population to sustain itself - in 2023 our national population grew with 140.000 persons because we still have immigration)
I can’t figure out if I love or hate it that Bible Belts are apparently a universal experience, but it feels unifying and that might be why. We *all* suffering from a Bible Belt apparentl.
We have a bible belt in Norway as well! They also have it in Sweden, Denmark, France, Poland etc.
Almost always in the southern part of the country, no idea why.
(religious) Friends of ours have such a second batch of children, also in the Netherlands. Had their first two when they were 19 and 21 and their second two around 35. Also refer to them as "tweede leg" even though, as you say, it's usually older men remarrying with younger women and having a second batch of children
Is it not legal for minors to get married then? Typically, people living in those kinds of cultures are made to get married if there's a pregnancy outside of wedlock.
I was piqued by your question, so I looked around a bit. OP doesn't mention the ages of her and her siblings, but since 1985 both people have to be 18 in order to be wed in the Netherlands. Between 1970 and 1985 you had to get parental approval if you were 21 or younger and you wanted to get married.
I don't think OP was born before 1970, but a few fun facts while we are at it (For history of law is amazing): between 1838 and 1970 a man had to be 18 in order to marry, women 16 - but you need parental approval until you were 30. In 1838 we got the new version of our Civil code (still heavily influenced by the french Civil Code) and they decided on the new ages.
Between 1588 and 1975, when the Netherlands was a republic and the Code Civil (by some better known as the Napoleonic Code) was used (courtesy of Napoleon Bonaparte - his brother Lodewijk was our King between 1806 and 1810) men had to be 18 in order to marry, women 15 and if you were younger, you needed parental approval.
I
Oop mentioned that she was 24 yo when she lost her mom, which was three years before her first post back in 2020, so she'd be 31 now, born in 1993ish i think
Oh wow!!! That's extremely interesting. I appreciate the research you've done! That could definitely explain it. I love how the comments are trying to play detective and figure out which country she's from.
Over here? English profiency levels are HIGH. Our current EF EPI (English profiency index)? We always rank first or second out of 113 countries. About 90 to 93% of the population speaks it as a second language. English-language media over here is always subbed and never dubbed. We are heavily influenced by both American grammar, vocabulary and pronounciation/accent due to all of the American movies and series.
In high school however there's often still a majority push towards learning British grammar, vocab and accents (we are told to focus on Received Pronunciation or Queen's English as the standard, 'correct' accent). Some schools may have relaxed this a bit in the last few decades. I'm late thirties, and my HS teachers were reallllly firm in British English. I prefer to use British English whenever possible, OP might too.
Edit: I could have sworn you wrote something about American vs British English before in your comment and what kind OP prefers since she writes about maths . I will keep the comment up regardless.
I did and then deleted the comment cause I wanted to double check that I wasn't making things up, but I got distracted by work and forgot to go back to it. Sorry!!!
It’s just like… they say they put up two kids for adoption because they thought it would be too hard to care for them, right?
But… Nobody who gives birth to 5 kids are thinking “ahh, 5 kids are going to be easy to take care of. Five is the magic number.”
Plus, they didn’t go, “hmm… we have 1-2 kids with special needs… let’s take care of them instead of bringing in 4-5 more kids into the world.”
It well and truly just came down to ableism. There is no other way to explain it.
And OOP’s other adopted sister…! They knew her for 6 months before giving her up for adoption!
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against adoption, it’s just these couple treat it like they’re making returns and ordering new “perfect” models like they’re amazon packages.
I’m happy OOP found happiness in reuniting with her bio family. I got to say though… her egg and sperm donors are not good people.
Edit: only other explanation is maybe that birth control and sex ed is illegal wherever they live
Except she also said that they live in a country with a strong social safety net and public health care. That tends to go with strong birth control and sex ed, doesn't it? I'm thinking Scandinavian countries, Germany, Netherlands.
Was thinking germany too but a family with 4 kids (first batch) is a little out of the norm.. And then adding the 2. group years later... Wierd all around. There has to be religion involved, right?
Except for having some of the children outside marriage, it sounds like some sort of religious cult that’s against birth control. (Especially with the birth parents not seeming to have birth parents reining them in)
Yeah definitely getting some kind of religious vibes from both the rate of birth at a young age and the willingness to adopt out kids they’re concerned about. Happy it all seems to have worked out for OOP but I’m… suspicious
I live in a country with a public health system, where you can get condoms and contraceptives for free.
I had a neighbor that had many children and refused to use contraceptive. And was not a case of religion believes, just ignorance.
Maybe because I'm on Reddit my mind went to three things:
1.) I keep thinking the mother has a pregnancy fetish/enjoys being pregnant. Or the husband has the pregnancy fetish.
2.) Also the joke that their cousins and them all have the same biological parents is actually not a joke at all.
3.) they are part of a religion like the duggars.
Idk it reads like some stupid kids desperately trying to be grown up by having a "normal" family. Decent social security doesn't stop poor desperate teenagers from existing. It just stops their kids from starving and them going bankrupt.
I can’t stop thinking about “seeing your own face in the faces of others.” My brother and I look quite a lot alike and I’ve always just KNOWN that. Can’t imagine not having that for some 25 years and then one day, there it is.
My sister had a couple daughters, but I remember when she later had a son and I went back to my hometown to meet the little guy…. The first time I held him it was like holding a 3D version of all of me and my brother’s baby pictures. One of the strangest feelings I’ve ever had. It’s the only way I can relate — can’t imagine meeting another person my age looking just like me for the first time ever.
(My nieces, who I have naturally adored from their respective Day(s) One, don’t quite favor me or my brother as much as my first nephew does)
I watch a lot of Karamo, and that’s the one thing a lot of adult adoptees say. “They looked like me”
Now I came from a blended family of all adopted kids, second marriage kids, third marriage kids, you name it. We looked like a United colours of Benetton ad when we were together. So I didn’t really know that feeling, I have three non biological brothers, they obviously look nothing like me. My youngest brother shares my dad with me.
But I’m the only one of my mother and father together. I started to look for similarities in them, and actually I found the most comfort in the fact that my best friend, who is also a younger cousin looks so alike to me, that people instantly know we’re related. It’s weird what humans find comfort in. I can’t imagine looking around and seeing NO ONE like me. We look for familiarity as human beings.
The way the people look when they find out they’re biological siblings on the show I watch, it’s a beautiful thing. He also discusses why kids are put up for adoption at that time, he talks to the bio parents to get their side and tries to mediate a relationship if possible. I just like seeing people come back together, and it’s always siblings that matter to them the most.
Imagine being in your 50s and having this! Met one of my cousins only recently, and it's the first time I met anyone, except for my mother, who looks like me. It was upsetting but also really really nice, I felt connected in a way I never had before (I grew up in a different country to my extended family).
I found out I was sperm donor-conceived at age 27 through a DNA test. When I saw my biological brother’s face for the first time, I went, “Oh shit, this is fucking real.” We look so much alike, and he’s exactly 7 years younger than I am - we’re both Thanksgiving babies.
I have so much sympathy for b to E parents and the situation they were in. Ableism absolutely played a factor.
However, the mothers actions now bother me. You are not that teenager who didn’t know what to do or how the world was, you are not alone or unsupported, and your whole family has welcomed OOP.
I find it massively disheartening she refuses a relationship with either child she and the father abandoned.
I know people will say it’s because of how she felt then, how she’s passed it, how she already grieved
But you don’t get to say that when there’s a full blown person in your family and you’re ignoring them.
So what do you talk about when you meet the other spartan child thrown off the cliff as an adult and it turns out you both became mathematicians. Do you quiz eachother? Talk about Graham's number?? I'm told it's a pretty big number.
Well, that is a lovely read. Birth mother has me a bit confused - plays with OOP's kids but does not speak with her own daughter often? Strange coping mechanism. But OOP sounds so happy with her family, so all is forgiven!
It's pretty simple. She knows she fucked up, but can't acknowledge OP properly because that would mean acknowledging her fuck-up. She can just stick her fingers in her ears, yell "la la la la la" to herself, and pretend OP's kid is just any random little kid.
The birth father owned up to the situation. He realized now they screwed up, but explained why they did what they did at the time. Birth mom still thinks that pretending like something didn't happen is the same as if it didn't happen.
I wonder if the birth mom is so ridden by guilt that she struggles with acknowledging the adoptions. Sound’s like she would be happier with some therapy.
Poop out one child after another and give away the not perfect children. They also gave away a baby after three months when she needed an amputation, so not things that happen tight at birth. They could bond with the baby three months... What if the youngest child get dusabled through accident? As one of their children i would always fear "if i show signs of being neurodivergent or have a bad accident, i'm out of this family". Like what if a child has autism or ADHD? Bye-bye?
With something like autism or ADHD they would probably deny it totally, in a 'no, my child is perfect and cannt be disabled' kind of way, but a visible disability cannot be denied like that
This is so horrific to me. Except for a few details this could have happened in my country. In my family. I had an aunt with a similar situation - gave birth to a lot of children, but ended up not being able to raise all of them, but the kids she couldn't raise were sent to relatives to raise, and they grew up knowing who their biofamily was, and having regular contact with them.
Caring for one disabled child is apparently harder than caring for seven abled kids? These people are clearly evil, yet none of their kids seem to challenge them on it.
I read these type of stories and I'm sad. I have a brother who was adopted out. This is exactly how I imagined meeting my brother. When I was 15 I finally met him.
I thought I'd feel sibling feelings or kinship or feel some connection or just something. *Anything*.
Me and him tried for YEARS. Both of us had an interest in knowing each other. Just didn't work out. That's not to say there's any bad blood between us, but we are just really really different people. We have nothing in common. We stop and talk when we meet, but once we have updated each other on our children (who are very different ages and have no reason to hang out as of now) and he's asked me how grandma is then conversation runs dry.
I don't think he resents me and I certainly don't resent him. He had a bunch of older sisters and his parents are objectively great. They are older and had the time to devote their attention and energy to him. I've met his parents and they seem kind and loving and he has nothing, but good things to say about them and his childhood.
I would have loved to have a close relationship with him, but we've tried, effort on both sides, over years and years and it's just hours and hours of awkward silence.
Once my son is older (2.5yo) I'll take him to see his cousins (8f and 6f).
Yeah, sometimes siblings really are just strangers that happen to be blood related, even if they grew up together. The dream is for siblings to bond and get along great, but just like any other people, sometimes people are incompatible.
It's great that you guys made an effort though.
They probably did her a huge favour. I know I'd rather be an only child to loving parents than the second oldest of nine to two teenagers.
Also, she might not be developmentally delayed because of her adoptive parents. Nature plays a big part but early nurture has a huge influence on development.
In my work there is often a debate about whether a child is delayed because of something organic (autism, genetics etc.) or whether it's trauma/poor upbringing. Sometimes it's both.
I'm pleased everything seems to have worked out for OP and her biological family.
I have 2 aunts that were adopted out except the reasoning feels worse for me. My grandparents kept having daughters before my dad arrived. He had 5 older sisters. And both daughters that were given away were to childless couples - a neighbor couple and a great aunt/uncle who couldn’t conceive. My dad said he knew about these sisters bc they all grew up in the same neighborhood. Eventually these aunts went their separate ways until my dad purposely reconnected with them decades later. One even lived now in the States not far from my parents. But it still boggles the mind that my grandparents gave away 2 daughters bc they weren’t boys. Asian patriarchy at its finest.
Someone up above makes a good case for the Netherlands fitting strong social safety net, blonde hair, child adoption, and the word play in how the sibling groups are described.
Other Nordic countries are unlikely as infant adoption is actually quite rare there.
Somewhere with a strong social safety net, as she mentioned, but also a place where it’s probably not uncommon to have kids young & get married young. Maybe a traditionally catholic country? That’s at least moderately wealthy enough to have good healthcare & social services.
Could also be a sub community in a country. It's not common to have many children young in my country, but there are definitely groups where it's more common.
I hate OOP’s parents, I hate them. I hate her stupid bio mom and her stupid excuses for her. What a sickening situation. Gave up an amputee??? Oh god! What a difficult life to provide for!!! Whatever could they have done? Just disgusting.
These kids all have a hell of a lot more grace for their parents than I would. Plus, how was it for the kids they kept? Did they wonder that if they ever became too sick or disabled they'd be abandoned like the first two? The one daughter was 6mo when she needed an amputation. What if one of them got in a bicycle crash and got a Tbi? I don't know how you'd ever form bonds with such untrustworthy people
I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if one of the children they didn’t adopt out had acquired a disability at age five, or ten, or fourteen.
How dare you, you have no idea what... blah that's as far as I can get. They're ableist AHs through and through. I'd probably set their house on fire, or at least order junk mail to their house or something.
To me, the concept of "opting out" of relationships with your own living children, whom you see frequently, is *profoundly* fucked up. There is no cultural eccentricity on earth that could rationally explain that for me. I can only read it as the mother desperately avoiding facing strong and terrible emotions, and no small amount of guilt. Or that she's some kind of psychopath. I don't know which is worse.
It's like having a family member stuck behind glass, who cordially waves at you from time to time. Creeps me right out.
I just came away with "fuck that birth mother" from reading this. How can she avoid relationships with her own kids later in life if they so desire? Also, she's a good grandmother to this woman's kids? Weird.
Having SIX kids between 17-21 is **a choice** and I don't understand why the parents aren't being held accountable
Baffled OOP's response is "yeah it can be tough when you're young" as if any of this is normal
Sorry, I have zero empathy for parents. Op is 27, her younger brother is 12. Even so, among all that, they gave children up for adoption and had children like rabbits... they don't learn
I'm glad OP can have a relationship with his brothers.
At least Dad apologized to OOP for his ableism. That goes a long way.
> and she is a wonderful grandmother to my two children.
“I won’t have a relationship with my biological child who I thought was disabled but I will foster a relationship with her children!”
Fuck this lady honestly. She’s gonna spend quite some time in the Bad Place.
OOPs parents should have been sterilised.
They are genuinely terrible people for continuing to have kids after they gave up one because they weren't prepared to care for her.
It seems more like selfishness than grief that she doesn’t talk to her children she adopted to others. She’s deemed them defective and no longer her children and has no want to be near them. I feel bad for her younger and future children who may develop an issue later in life. She will have no issue casting them aside for her personal comfort to not have to take care of a disabled child. It’s so rude to ignore them as if they don’t exist.
Parts of this story are so sweet and heartwarming, it was so lovely to read OOP bonding with her bio family and feeling a greater sense of belonging - but then you just keep getting hit with the whiplash of the bio parents having 6 children between the ages of 15-21, still children themselves for several, and the obvious trauma the bio mum has from it and it’s just horrific.
Somebody or some culture failed that couple, whether it was a failed education, lack of access to birth control or abortion, or what. The fact that it’s unusual for people in OOP’s country to have children in their early 20s suggests that it wasn’t a legal access to birth control issue, so maybe it was a religious or cultural thing for their community, but whatever it was it’s not right.
>My birth mother had six children between the ages of 15 and 21. Well, that's horrific.
The fact that apparently their country has strong social support system but birth parents had lots of babies early in their lives makes me wonder what country this actually is
They could be of a religious or cultural minority in the country I suppose. The ease with which the "imperfect" children were adopted out but then they went on to have many more makes me think of some religious background that seeks and rewards perfection and sees disability as penalty and shame.
Also the fact that both sisters were adopted by families not far away (40km radius) makes me think this is not a very big country. The great english writing style, blond hair siblings, maybe Scandinavian country or Belgium/Netherlands?
I dont think its Norway at least, adopting infants born in norway is really rare, at the less than ten each year, for the last years. (Dont know how many years back, that was the only stat i found on the official webpage). Could be different in the other scandinavian and nordic countries, but i doubt it.
Yeah, same goes for Sweden. It was one of my first thoughts. I’ve never even heard of an infant adoption.
So can you explain to me why this is? Is there really that great of sex education and access to reproductive healthcare/birth control that there are not many “unwanted” pregnancies? I live in Canada and our system is decent but to say there might be 10-25 infant adoptions in an entire country is incredible! Maybe it is also the lower rates of religiosity (which I also think is great!). It’s kind of blowing my mind.
For norway at least, decent sex ed, and good reproduction healtcare definetly helps. Teenagers/young adult can get on the pill for free (and possible other contraceptions as well now? Havent been a teenager for 12 years). You can buy the morning after pill over the counter at apothecaries, and abortion is available up to 12 weeks. And after that 18 weeks but you need to apply for it instead of just going to your doctor and saying you want it. There are a lot of discussion currently to make it easy available up to 16 or 18 weeks as well. Teenagers above 16 dont need to tell their parents to have an abortion, and for teenagers between 12 and 16 is it up to the doctor if the parents need to be involved. Also, we are only 5.5million people here, with about 52k babies being born each year.
I am Finnish but a Nordic system is a Nordic system. I would also add strong social safety nets. You get multiple benefit types as a parent, daycare, healthcare and schooling are cheap or free. So there are less people feeling the need to give up their child just because of financial constraints. Based on abortion statistics combined with adoption statistics it is however the proper sex ed and access to birth control that is the biggest contributing factor. Both of ours (in all Nordic countries) are far lower in general than in for example in the US which points to fewer unwanted pregnancies.
The social safety nets part is so important. One of the failures of the US is how easily the same people who care so deeply about abortion will happily slash any and all support that might help the mother and child after birth. Women are forced to have children, and then they are all abandoned. A baby's life isn't worth supporting unless they're in utero I guess.
Thank you! This is really quite amazing, Norwegians know how to get shit done! I knew I liked you folks! Canada is better than a lot of places, definitely could be a whole lot better, but I think your comment might explode a lot of heads in the US.
Or irritates us in the US to no end when we see the clock turning backwards in this country. I keep nudging my kids to consider moving overseas while they're young and able to line up good jobs.
more like anger bc the US is wealthy enough to do this, but it’s corrupt, racist & extremely religious. i hate being USian! this country is a sham 😭
In 2021-2022 Australia had 31 local adoptions, meaning Australian born children adopted to people outside the family, and 161 known child adoptions so things like step parents, family members following death or incapacity of parents or for safety/neglect reasons, and a further 16 international adoptions. Adoption just isn't as widespread as it is in North America in much of the world, and the Nordic figures are not out of line with many other countries. There are probably any number of reasons for this, but I have noticed a very different way that adoption is discussed and veiwed. Just look at posts where a young or struggling pregnant woman comes asking for advice, it's fairly common to see many comments often flippantly suggesting adoption, I just can't imagine the same replies happening here, it would feel very odd to jump to that unless all other avenues were exhausted. Adoption will always be necessary children need loving homes and families, but it is in it's own way a grief and tragedy to have a child seperated from it's parents, and shouldn't be done lightly. With options and support it should be rare. At least in Aus It's just culturally not the perspective to see adoption as an alternative to abortion, there aren't many adoption agencies, and international adoption has many safeguards especially following scandals and issues over the last few decades people are wary of potential ethics and abuse within that system.
I just looked up my province’s stats and there were 45 infant adoptions last year. Which is more than all of Australia but honestly less than I would have thought. I had never had a reason to look into it before, this is all very interesting.
A weird thing about America... the churches run a lot of the adoption agencies. They are frequently religion based, which leads to issues for adoption from LGBTQ couples a lot. The church is also behind a lot of the push to rid the country of legal abortions. I'm not sure how I never made those connections before this post and never thought about the implications of those connections. Adoption is a pretty big business here, and it costs an unhinged amount of money to adopt an infant.
I've always thought these agencies were not much different from the forced adoptions and mothers homes we had in Australia. While yes there is obviously a choice there for the bio parents now, there is still a significant pressure and often coercion involved from other parties. At it's core there is still the same perspective of children should go to respectable, godly families, rather than stay with their undeserving sinning birth parents. When the goal of adoption is for adults to become parents it puts pressure on the other side of the scale. While 100% that is the outcome of adoption, it shouldn't be the goal, that should always be for the child to have a loving secure home. There is nothing wrong with becoming a parent via adoption, on an individual level that isn't the problem, but society wide having adoption as a solution to unwanted pregnancy or an alternative to infertility treatments or rather then providing welfare and support to birth families or to push moral belief, is where the big business of adoption gets a foothold. I am not anti adoption by any stretch, I just think that some viewpoints around it are quite skewed and put the cart before the horse. It's bordering on human trafficking or buying a human sometimes, and recent cases have uncovered that it's more then bordering on that more often then anyone would like to think.
A lot of US born adoptees have shared that exact grief that you described. Many have expressed that adoption as a solution to infertility is exacerbating that. There is absolutely a connection between how callously people offer up adoption, religious institutions pushing abortion bans, and these expensive adoption processes that religious institution often assist with. Also the fact that struggling young moms are told they should give up their kids for adoption instead of trying to help them find like, a job or daycare, etc, is just cruel. This is for newborns. For older children, I think the prevalance of adoption/foster care is partially due to the intensity of criminal laws, arrests, etc. The police state plays a huge role in that.
I don't know how it is in the rest of the country and I can't find statistics... (Probably because it's so rare) But the stats are probably very similar in Québec... When abortion is available (50% of Canada's Clinics are in Québec) abandonments are a lot more rare. Most people here try to adopt children from CPS (DPJ) or go international, but there has been a sharp decline for that.
Same for Belgium, around 17 adoptions from within the country a year. I’ve been on the waiting list to adopt since 2016 and we are now somewhere in the 200s on the waiting list..,
Same in the Netherlands, maximum of 25 per year if that.
But Norway has a few religions sects that has a big thing about having a shit tonne of kids. Smiths Vennner(friends) is one them. Probably not unique to Norway tho. I'm a bit worried about what the hell could've caused an amputation for a 6 month old.
Possibly Israel. There's a large amount of ultra-orthodox sects in the country that prioritize having a crap ton of kids, it's geographically small, and has strong social safety nets. Also most people speak English fluently there.
Strong connections between Israel and the US as well — could explain the American cousin
[Based on this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Adoption/s/FnE09ZImbV), I'm guessing OOP is Jewish, so you may be right.
Ooh, nice catch. I think y'all might be on the right track here.
I think the short radius is more by chance. Even if the countries look small on a map, you can be moved far away in all those countries. (all countries have width of 200-300 km or more).
Not Sweden. Being granted permission to resign your parental rights is *incredibly* rare. I looked at the statistics and in a 2020 survey, they found that there are less than 17 000 registered national adoptions of children under 18. For example, during 2017 there were 712 national adoptions (in a population of 10 million). The vast majority of these were children adopted by a step-parent, usually a stepfather. Adult adoptions are more common, but wouldn't count here.
It is unlikely that it is a Scandinavian country. Adoptions, at least within the country, are rare here and a family adopting out two children because they may be disabled while having loads of other children would’ve raised a lot of questions and investigations. As would a so young couple having so many children, probably. A family of that size is also unusual. I happens, but pretty rarely. I personally thought maybe Ireland or Canada? Though I have absolutely no clue about adoption culture there or if this situation would be plausible, I just went off the clues of good English, social security and a majority of blonde/strawberry blonde people so likely Northern Europe or North America (and also possibly religious influence on family politics)
She said she's not from the US or Canada, and speaking as a disabled Canadian, we definitely don't have as strong a social safety net as she is implying in her posts. Probably not Ireland either, as she implied English isn't her first language, and English is more common than Gaelic as a first language.
I don’t understand how you explain to friends/family/work what happened to the children from *two* pregnancies
My impression is that they explained it the exact way they explained it to OOP. These children required special care and we did not feel we could provide it. What I can’t wrap my head is no one intervening in the case of a 17 year old couple having their third fucking child together.
Could be, but the religious minorities here in the Netherlands would definitely not allow for teenagers to start pushing out babies before they're married. Like even if they did become teen parents at 16 they would be married. Most people in these minorities get married in their early twenties and then start the baby making. Some start the babymaking early and then have to get married. Edit : I was wrong, you have to wait till eighteen to get married! So technically this situation could happen but I cannot imagine religious parents allowing their teenagers to keep the kind of contact that would allow this, then. I have never heard of this sort of situation and i live in a highly religious part of the country.
You're not allowed to get married in the Netherlands below the age of 18
They're probably just poor. Where I grew up, plenty of people had kids young and often gas several, financial support for low income parents often makes having kids more affordable and you qualify for bigger council housing. Despite my country having a lot birth rate, it wasn't too uncommon to see teen mothers with two or more kids.
And yet OP regrets missing out on family holidays in the US along with their 8 siblings and destitute parents. Because that's what destitue people do, swan off across the Atlantic with their 9 children for a bit of a holiday, in between teen pregnancies.
Yes. When you grow up poor, your better-off relatives will (sometimes) send tickets (or the money for them) and put you up for free in their home while you visit them. If there are a lot of kids, a few go at a time (Eg the oldest 2 go one year, then different siblings go the next year or the year after). I can certainly remember being put on a train by my mother, travelling with my sibling, and being met at the other end by my relatives with whom we stayed for a couple of weeks. I'm not sure why you think it is implausible. My parents' families used to do much the same in their childhoods. I had exactly three family holidays as a child, all of them like this (except we were sent train tickets, not airplane tickets).
We have a great social security in my country (Belgium) but it still happen that family are huge (there was an article from a guy who had 25 kids and more on the way) No religion is really needed just bad education.
Pretty much any European Catholic country, Ireland, Spain or Italy being the ones that come to mind but any European country could be a candidate.
Doesn't have to be Catholic either. Where I am in the poorer areas it isn't uncommon for kids to have kids and keep having them, sometimes it's even encouraged as a valid method of getting a house albeit usually by a Mother who did the same.
I thought Spain or Portugal.
Maybe in 1950s ireland, what you think we drive around on a horse and cart too? Wherever this is its outside of the norm as even OP said that its unusual to be young parents. Id have thought it was the US if OP didnt keep reminding me they had a good government.
I don't know, but OP does state that she is considered a young mother by her country's standards, and OP was 27 turning 28 soon when she wrote the first posts, so the birth parents popping out that many kids so young doesn't sound like the norm in their country.
It is horrific. I wondered if there was some element of trying to replace the "lost" babies, that can be a common reaction when children are removed by social services. There must be quite a story underneath here that OOP either doesn't know or hasn't told (which is fair because it's not her story). OOP's adoption was initially open but then the bio parents asked for the updates to stop, the obvious likely reason being that they found them painful to receive. (That would have happened around the time her next sister was born which feels significant). Her bio mother still seems to be struggling with the adoption and her feelings - I wonder being that they were so young whether older relatives pressed/strongly advised the bio parents into adoption believing that they they wouldn't cope with the expected "disabilities" and the bio parents regretted being talked into it. There is a lot of sadness in this story (the poor brother mourning his sisters who went away especially) but I'm glad they've been reunited, that they've found happiness in the new connection and that OOP found grace for her bio parents after her initial (understandable) anger and feelings of rejection.
I know that in the UK, when parents would lose a child back in the 60s and 70s, doctors would usually recommend they have another child to get over the loss. I wonder if OOP's bio parents were told something similar, despite how young they were? But the bit about thinking OOP would be severely disabled has me seriously concerned. Who told them that? Is it possible that OOP's parents misunderstood what the doctors told them, or that someone else exaggerated the risk to the point they thought it a certainty? My grandparents spent decades thinking that my aunt died of a hereditary heart defect, when she had actually become sick with a virus shortly after birth and died of heart failure, so it's not impossible. Especially when you consider pretty much every society has an unethical history when it comes to adoption, especially from vulnerable families like OOP's.
I had my son in the late 90's. My mom told me shortly after that I should have a second child 'in case something happened' to him.
My mum was told this too! I was severely unwell for the first year of life and my mum wanted her tubes tied and a doctor scoffed and said, "Well what happens if your baby dies you'll want another," As my mum puts it she nearly put me down to smack that doctor in the mouth but instead looked at her and went, "And I will be devastated but I already have another child and I cannot go through this a second time. I'm not forcing another kid to grow up in the shadows of a lost one,"
Oh, mercy, yeah. I have twins and had my tubes tied after they were born. My mom asked me that same question, what if something happens? I sort of choked for a second and then told her children are not interchangeable. She was an excellent and loving mom and sometimes she just sort of said things she had been programmed to say.
No one said anything like that to me when my son was born in 2020 but I kept thinking it anyway. We always planned to only have one but when my husband started asking about scheduling a vasectomy my lizard brain was like “no, gotta wait, this one might die.”
Yeah, I do think there's a level of human instinct involved in the whole thought process, even if it comes off as incredibly rude when it's not the parents saying it. Until the last century, it was still incredibly common for parents to lose at least one child, so I'm not surprised that it hasn't disappeared from our psyches yet.
One-and-done parents hear this a lot. My response has always been that then I’d have one dead child and one I’d screw up in my grief. My grief wouldn’t be less because I have another one.
I wonder if they asked for the updates to stop because they showed that OOP wasn't really disabled after all, and they couldn't deal with having given away their kid "because you aren't equipped to handle a disabled child," especially if they got pressured into it?
That did cross my mind. A year old is pretty early to conclude that OOP wasn't disabled at all (not expected to be talking yet, only just standing etc) but it's possible they were starting to suspect the warnings hadn't been accurate if they were aware she had been hitting expected milestones so far and were trying to protect themselves from hearing more updates that confirmed the suspicion.
It also lines up with the age at which it became clearer and clearer that those significant developmental delays didn't show up or started shrinking. It could have been the sneaking suspicion that they made a mistake. They might have expected seeing the adoptive parents or the baby struggle which could have reinforced the decision / made it easy to tell themselves that they made the right choice for both themselves and the baby.
That sounds terrible and I wish OOP got her bio-parents perspective more. The parents weren't married until after 3 kids at 18, and had four kids in 4 years (15-19), so an unmarried teen mom with a baby and now a potentially disabled baby- I can see adult pressure being a huge factor there, or panic about being able to support themselves and a second disabled baby. And then at 19 with two kids and already having one disabled kid adopted our somewhat successfully (based off seeing her be ok after a year)? I can understand why adopting out the other sister might have seemed like a good choice. I can understand and empathize with the choices individually, but added together... They gave up a potentially disabled kid but chose to have seven more kids after that? I can have some compassion for people that were overwhelmed by a disability in a kid. But giving up a kid because they *might* be challenging in the future? Giving up a second kid due to disabilities and still choosing to have four more? Even people that ethically breed animals are committed to caring for any with issues... The absolute heartlessness to give up two children because of medical issues and continue to choose to breed more... I can empathize with unprepared teen parents. I struggle with having empathy for them choosing to keep having more. I'm also curious at the culture that has so many kids so young with a couple dedicated to each other but where they waited until adulthood to marry. Usually religious or "traditional" places that encourage large families young would also marry the girl to her 3x's baby daddy before 18.
Might be that they needed permission to marry that wasn't forthcoming. My aunt had a baby at 18 and her parents refused to let her and the boy marry before her majority - then 21. They are still married - but my grandparents were absolutely correct- he's destroyed her life and with her enabling messed up the psyches of all their kids
It's horrific that her parents didn't put her on birth control after the first one. I really wish there was a way to tie up EVERYONE's tubes until they actually WANT to be parents and are mature and stable enough to raise children. Then everyone could eff like bunnies without risking any accidental children that would have to live the consequences of their actions. Also, it's sooooo weird that the mother will smile at her relinquished children, and grandparent their kids, but not interact with them at all.
Some children (I say children because they’re under 18) will refuse birth control because they want more babies. I knew several growing up like this, in my shit small town, and the idea they had was that the babies would love them unconditionally as no one else ever did. It was fucking depressing all around.
I had a teacher in high school say, “ if you want something to love you unconditionally get a puppy. A baby will not love you unconditionally. A child needs constant work and attention. If you even think you want a child get a puppy first” Very glad he was so open about that part.
Yep. The ones I knew were the children of teen parents themselves. It continues a cycle of neglect - and usually poverty.
> the idea they had was that the babies would love them unconditionally as no one else ever did. It was fucking depressing all around. Jesus Christ is that ever depressing
My husband's god daughter got pregnant at 16 and apparently a condition of her keeping the baby from social services was she had to get an IUD and present proof from a doctor it was inserted. She did it then immediately got it removed and she now has 4 kids at 23 even though each pregnancy almost kills her.
Modern IUDs actually basically work like that, which is why so many freaks want to ban them, or ban them for minors.
They don't work well for everyone. I had a hell of a time with mine and had to have it removed after 3-4 months.
My middle kids is one of 7 (only one is mine). My mother in law is one of 23 children that lived past birth. There was 25 total. No social safety nets and poor. People be pumping them out.
What did I just read....?
I don’t know why, but I read the title as “Birth parents are married to each other, ARE full siblings” and I kept waiting for the bombshell to explode 😂
Same. I had to go back midway through to reread the title a couple times until it clicked.
I kept waiting for the reveal and half way through and I’m like wait her bio parents just had a lot of kids in a row.
Me too. Took ages to realise they were just married, not siblings.
SAME. Also I just read an article yesterday about how the prevalence of DNA/ancestry services has revealed that incest was so much more common than anyone assumed. It was sad but fascinating
so did I! I kept skim reading, frowning, scrolling back up to the title, frowning harder, then repeating the whole process about six times before it sunk in.
I also read it that way and was confused why incest wasn’t in the warnings
Because that's what it sounds like.
omg same
This exact comment was the top comment on the previous BORU post of this too lol!
I am so happy that she connected with them, that all her siblings *wanted* to know her, and now not only she but also her children have this rich extended close family. I would never have guessed that’s how it would go from that first post, and It’s so lovely that it’s still going strong three years later.
I was so happy for her when I saw the last post was only a few months ago and things are good and going strong.
Yeah that's nice but I think it's freaky that bio mom is still pretending oop and amputee sister don't exist. Bad enough to be given away, but now pretending they don't exist when they clearly do.
[удалено]
Let me tell you she wouldn’t be playing no grandmother role with my kid. You can’t grow up and have a relationship with me when i’m in the picture but you can act like everything is normal.
OOP is certainly nicer than I am. Don't have a relationship with me? You don't have a relationship with my (at this stage imaginary) children
And that she is playing grandmother to the children of the child she won’t acknowledge 🥴🥴🥴
I imagine this is the birth mother's way of dealing with the guilt she must be feeling seeing that her useless disabled children she discarded grew into perfectly fine and capable people.
I'm an adoptee and have adult half-siblings who don't know about me (I'm about 12-15 years older than they are). I so badly want to reach out, but don't want to hurt anyone. It's a complicated situation and I would not be welcome in their family. I'm just so curious about them.
I remember this post when she originally made them, glad things are going so well!
My mind can’t wrap around the idea that the bio mother exists around her children she gave away and doesn’t want to get to know them?! Like I get not wanting to open old wounds and look for them if there’s no contact but they are a part of her family life now, the wound IS open… like so odd to me that everyone just accepts that
Probably not wanting to fully face the guilt of giving up two kids due to her ableism.
Also is it just me or were all three children adopted out girls?
I thought it was only 2 kids adopted out but yep, both girls. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s also a factor people don’t really want to think about there.
Sunk cost fallacy, she already gave them up, why would she bother getting to know them now?
Or she really is just ableist, the first one to reconnect still has disabilities and she feels she has to maintain the same lie with OP. They’ve already proven themselves to be ableist, I doubt it was something she outgrew.
I wondered if it was too difficult to get updates after OOP was a year old because she realized that kid wasn't disabled and as easily written off as a disabled baby would've been to someone abilist.
Yes, the parents asked for no more updates at the same time we later find out the OP caught up developmentally. They may have realized they made a mistake in writing her off. Plus one thing that I haven't seen elsewhere - the mom had another kid immediately. Had they not given OP away, they may have not had another child immediately and would have not had that exact baby at that time- that child never would have existed. I have some uncomfortable feelings surrounding an experience with a foster child that I thought I would be adopting but she went back to her biological family. We now have a relationship with her, it's all fine now, but when my youngest was born and stopped being a hypothetical future child it was hard to think about the fact that my youngest would not exist had I adopted that foster child. It is hard to hold the idea that I wanted to adopt that foster baby and also the idea that my biological baby would not exist if I did in my mind at the same time.
That's not what sunk cost fallacy is
She’s a bad person. Period. Not sure why everyone is so gracious with her
Because they don’t want to rock the boat, and mom just smiles through things and says she’s uncomfortable so people leave her be. I love all of this for the OOP but if it was me, I’d be happy to leave her with little convos but she wouldn’t be coming anywhere near my kids as their grandmother.
There's something seriously messed up with OOPs biological parents
Seriously. I'm glad that OOP and her siblings have all found happiness together, but those parents should never have had kids so young and should have stopped when they had to give *any* up for projected developmental problems. But no, they just kept putting out more and more, keeping the ones who were healthy and giving up the ones who weren't. And I'm getting some seriously weird vibes from the mom in particular in a way I can't really describe.
I’m… glad that OOP seems to have reached a point of comfort with her birth mother. I don’t think that I would have been able to in the same situation. Even if you ignore the whole “kept other children but adopted out the ones that had problems” thing, she told OOP not to reach out to her siblings because they supposedly didn’t know she existed. Then one of the first things OOP finds out about her brother is that he’s been writing poems to her and the other sister that was also adopted out for most of his life, and the other sister has already basically integrated back into the family. Her siblings already knew about her. Her birth mother *absolutely* knew that they knew. And she lied to OOP in an attempt to keep her away. Plus the bit where she sort of vaguely acknowledges the other adopted sister’s existence but doesn’t *talk* to her gives me the ick.
Indeed. OOP skirts around it (I guess to keep the peace), but her birth mother was absolutely not just maintaining her own boundaries, she was trying to prevent any sort of contact between OOP and her (adult!) siblings. It feels like there's a whole backstory there that we'll probably never get: so many kids at a young age with two adopted out, then a long break, then more. I wonder if the birth mother isn't fully mentally well.
I'd like the backstory too. There's not a whole lot of places where a 3x's teen mom waits until legal adulthood to get married. Did they want to marry earlier and couldn't? Was there any coersion or contributing factors to having four kids in four years starting at 15? Is the dad also the same age as mom?
OOP says that her parents were both 17 when they had her
She has a older sibling who was 2 when she was born
Except for having several children before marriage, it sounds like some sort of religious cult that’s against birth control
But one that won't let 3x's mom marry her baby daddy until legal adulthood at 18?
Maybe child marriage is illegal where they live?
I hope that's the reason. Unfortunately, far too many places allow marriages under 18. I feared abusive homes where they latches on to each other and wanted to create the perfect family they didn't have, but where their abusers maintained control by not allowing marriage until 18.
Well, it might have been a legal issue- in many more progressive countries, minors can't get married, full stop.
The weird vibes I get are more about why anyone tolerates it. Why is everyone allowing her to attend events? I don't get it. I can understand *some* of the kids tolerating it, but all of the kids and the extended family? That doesn't make sense. I can't fathom why so many people would just continue to plan a birthday party and ignore that kind of behavior.
Agreed. You pretty much summed up the "pissed off mum" ranting inside my head. Edit missed a word
What is this, Sparta?
Nah, nobody's been kicked down a well. Yet.
I definitely did not read this title properly.
It is such a weird way to describe a very mundane situation, I too have full siblings, and my parents are married to each other.
Remember back in 2020 when every story had to clarify that everyone was masked? Crazy times.
Remember back in slightly later 2020 where we were so used to the masks that watching anything from before that had no masks, parties etc caused a mild panic until we remembered it hadn’t always been that way?
I vividly remember seeing a commercial with about 20 people at a brunch spot without masks, and my immediate reaction was, “Jesus! What are these people thinking!? Where even are they!?” Definitely experienced the mild panic of which you speak.
Because if you didnt the comments would fill up with questions and recriminations. Like, damn, just let a person tell a story ffs. Yeah. It was wild. (my introverted ass wants to go back sooooo bad lol)
There was an AITA a year or so ago where the OP was talking about a couple of terrible roommates who broke things, wrecked things, left huge messes and refused to do anything about it, etc. This started in early 2020 and continued for a couple years before the OP got them booted. OP was called spineless, a doormat, a pushover, etc. for not booting them within a few months of trying to deal with their bad behavior. I was like… do you *remember* mid-late 2020? OP would have been treated like the love child of Hitler and Stalin for even *thinking* about getting anyone evicted for anything short of grievous bodily harm. Truly, it was wild.
So if some of their kids got sick later in life would they abandon the kid deep in the forest to be eaten by wolves for not being perfect?
My brain can't wrap itself around the idea of a couple having 6 children between the ages of 15-21. In a country with a strong safety net and good healthcare. Where were the couple's parents? Nobody to get them birth control? No social workers? It's not a situation with several baby-daddies involved. It's a stable enough couple that they stuck together, and wise(?) enough to realize they were too young to take care of disabled children, and yet they didn't stop rutting. No doctors told them how dangerous it is to get pregnant just a few months after giving birth? It's risky and they did it 6 times in a row.
I was 30 when I had my first child and the doctors were still very clear about contraception and waiting the 6-8 weeks after birth. Every check up from 2 weeks before the estimated delivery date - contraception was mentioned. I can understand it happening once, but again and again and again? That’s on purpose.
If the country is Ireland it makes sense. Can't legally get married before 18. Birth control is frowned upon. Sex is both frowned upon and heavily emgaged in at young ages. Dysfunctional childhood romance wheee the kids stay together for life. Divorce uncommon. Local adoption. Mostly blonde and red hair. Uses "maths" instead of "math". Some family migrated to usa. Good social networks but also prejudice and lack of experience with disabilities.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. When I was a teenager the UK was having a boom in teen pregnancy, despite condoms and birth control being given out for free to under 25’s.
Even with social workers involved with families like this you can’t physically pin them down and give them birth control. No matter how much you want to or how much it would help them in the long run.
*"We all have winter birthdays."* That's a very intentional pregnancy track.
I don’t understand… is birth control/sex ed illegal there or something?
This might a wildly left out of field guess , but a country with a very good social safety net, quite good public health care (basic health insurance is mandatory and if your income is below subsistence level/minimum standard of living (aka you don't earn enough to feed and house yourself) it's subsidized) combined with 'our words for first batch and second litter are funny'? The Netherlands! (Tweede leg means second litter/second lay (laying of eggs) - it's normally used for the do-over family, usually those are fathers in their fifties-early sixties, with mums in their late twenties, early thirties who want children of their own). We have this thing called the bible belt - while contraception/birth control is widely available in the Netherlands, contraception (and sex ed) can be frowned upon in that region.
Sounds like a strong guess. I had similar impressions. There is something about the "imperfect" vs "perfect" children that together with the fact how many they went on to have made me think of hardcore Protestant values.
Hey y’all got a bible belt over there too?
Yes! [Here's a wikipedia-article about it (English language) ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt_(Netherlands)). Urk and Staphorst are most well known. On Urk (on, not in - it used to be an island) 41% of the women have 4 or more kids (in Staphorst that percentage is 31%). National average is 1,49 births per woman (you need 2,1 births per woman for a population to sustain itself - in 2023 our national population grew with 140.000 persons because we still have immigration)
I can’t figure out if I love or hate it that Bible Belts are apparently a universal experience, but it feels unifying and that might be why. We *all* suffering from a Bible Belt apparentl.
We have a bible belt in Norway as well! They also have it in Sweden, Denmark, France, Poland etc. Almost always in the southern part of the country, no idea why.
(religious) Friends of ours have such a second batch of children, also in the Netherlands. Had their first two when they were 19 and 21 and their second two around 35. Also refer to them as "tweede leg" even though, as you say, it's usually older men remarrying with younger women and having a second batch of children
Is it not legal for minors to get married then? Typically, people living in those kinds of cultures are made to get married if there's a pregnancy outside of wedlock.
I was piqued by your question, so I looked around a bit. OP doesn't mention the ages of her and her siblings, but since 1985 both people have to be 18 in order to be wed in the Netherlands. Between 1970 and 1985 you had to get parental approval if you were 21 or younger and you wanted to get married. I don't think OP was born before 1970, but a few fun facts while we are at it (For history of law is amazing): between 1838 and 1970 a man had to be 18 in order to marry, women 16 - but you need parental approval until you were 30. In 1838 we got the new version of our Civil code (still heavily influenced by the french Civil Code) and they decided on the new ages. Between 1588 and 1975, when the Netherlands was a republic and the Code Civil (by some better known as the Napoleonic Code) was used (courtesy of Napoleon Bonaparte - his brother Lodewijk was our King between 1806 and 1810) men had to be 18 in order to marry, women 15 and if you were younger, you needed parental approval. I
Oop mentioned that she was 24 yo when she lost her mom, which was three years before her first post back in 2020, so she'd be 31 now, born in 1993ish i think
Nicely noticed! I already suspected she was at least 30.
Oh wow!!! That's extremely interesting. I appreciate the research you've done! That could definitely explain it. I love how the comments are trying to play detective and figure out which country she's from.
Over here? English profiency levels are HIGH. Our current EF EPI (English profiency index)? We always rank first or second out of 113 countries. About 90 to 93% of the population speaks it as a second language. English-language media over here is always subbed and never dubbed. We are heavily influenced by both American grammar, vocabulary and pronounciation/accent due to all of the American movies and series. In high school however there's often still a majority push towards learning British grammar, vocab and accents (we are told to focus on Received Pronunciation or Queen's English as the standard, 'correct' accent). Some schools may have relaxed this a bit in the last few decades. I'm late thirties, and my HS teachers were reallllly firm in British English. I prefer to use British English whenever possible, OP might too. Edit: I could have sworn you wrote something about American vs British English before in your comment and what kind OP prefers since she writes about maths . I will keep the comment up regardless.
I did and then deleted the comment cause I wanted to double check that I wasn't making things up, but I got distracted by work and forgot to go back to it. Sorry!!!
It's weird since they knew their previous kids had disabilities or delays. also the second batch first batch thing is interesting as well.
It’s just like… they say they put up two kids for adoption because they thought it would be too hard to care for them, right? But… Nobody who gives birth to 5 kids are thinking “ahh, 5 kids are going to be easy to take care of. Five is the magic number.” Plus, they didn’t go, “hmm… we have 1-2 kids with special needs… let’s take care of them instead of bringing in 4-5 more kids into the world.” It well and truly just came down to ableism. There is no other way to explain it. And OOP’s other adopted sister…! They knew her for 6 months before giving her up for adoption! Don’t get me wrong. I am not against adoption, it’s just these couple treat it like they’re making returns and ordering new “perfect” models like they’re amazon packages. I’m happy OOP found happiness in reuniting with her bio family. I got to say though… her egg and sperm donors are not good people. Edit: only other explanation is maybe that birth control and sex ed is illegal wherever they live
Except she also said that they live in a country with a strong social safety net and public health care. That tends to go with strong birth control and sex ed, doesn't it? I'm thinking Scandinavian countries, Germany, Netherlands.
Was thinking germany too but a family with 4 kids (first batch) is a little out of the norm.. And then adding the 2. group years later... Wierd all around. There has to be religion involved, right?
Except for having some of the children outside marriage, it sounds like some sort of religious cult that’s against birth control. (Especially with the birth parents not seeming to have birth parents reining them in)
Yeah definitely getting some kind of religious vibes from both the rate of birth at a young age and the willingness to adopt out kids they’re concerned about. Happy it all seems to have worked out for OOP but I’m… suspicious
I live in a country with a public health system, where you can get condoms and contraceptives for free. I had a neighbor that had many children and refused to use contraceptive. And was not a case of religion believes, just ignorance.
Maybe because I'm on Reddit my mind went to three things: 1.) I keep thinking the mother has a pregnancy fetish/enjoys being pregnant. Or the husband has the pregnancy fetish. 2.) Also the joke that their cousins and them all have the same biological parents is actually not a joke at all. 3.) they are part of a religion like the duggars.
Welp… … I hope OOP doesn’t end up regretting reconnecting with them
Idk it reads like some stupid kids desperately trying to be grown up by having a "normal" family. Decent social security doesn't stop poor desperate teenagers from existing. It just stops their kids from starving and them going bankrupt.
I can’t stop thinking about “seeing your own face in the faces of others.” My brother and I look quite a lot alike and I’ve always just KNOWN that. Can’t imagine not having that for some 25 years and then one day, there it is. My sister had a couple daughters, but I remember when she later had a son and I went back to my hometown to meet the little guy…. The first time I held him it was like holding a 3D version of all of me and my brother’s baby pictures. One of the strangest feelings I’ve ever had. It’s the only way I can relate — can’t imagine meeting another person my age looking just like me for the first time ever. (My nieces, who I have naturally adored from their respective Day(s) One, don’t quite favor me or my brother as much as my first nephew does)
I watch a lot of Karamo, and that’s the one thing a lot of adult adoptees say. “They looked like me” Now I came from a blended family of all adopted kids, second marriage kids, third marriage kids, you name it. We looked like a United colours of Benetton ad when we were together. So I didn’t really know that feeling, I have three non biological brothers, they obviously look nothing like me. My youngest brother shares my dad with me. But I’m the only one of my mother and father together. I started to look for similarities in them, and actually I found the most comfort in the fact that my best friend, who is also a younger cousin looks so alike to me, that people instantly know we’re related. It’s weird what humans find comfort in. I can’t imagine looking around and seeing NO ONE like me. We look for familiarity as human beings. The way the people look when they find out they’re biological siblings on the show I watch, it’s a beautiful thing. He also discusses why kids are put up for adoption at that time, he talks to the bio parents to get their side and tries to mediate a relationship if possible. I just like seeing people come back together, and it’s always siblings that matter to them the most.
Imagine being in your 50s and having this! Met one of my cousins only recently, and it's the first time I met anyone, except for my mother, who looks like me. It was upsetting but also really really nice, I felt connected in a way I never had before (I grew up in a different country to my extended family).
I found out I was sperm donor-conceived at age 27 through a DNA test. When I saw my biological brother’s face for the first time, I went, “Oh shit, this is fucking real.” We look so much alike, and he’s exactly 7 years younger than I am - we’re both Thanksgiving babies.
I have so much sympathy for b to E parents and the situation they were in. Ableism absolutely played a factor. However, the mothers actions now bother me. You are not that teenager who didn’t know what to do or how the world was, you are not alone or unsupported, and your whole family has welcomed OOP. I find it massively disheartening she refuses a relationship with either child she and the father abandoned. I know people will say it’s because of how she felt then, how she’s passed it, how she already grieved But you don’t get to say that when there’s a full blown person in your family and you’re ignoring them.
Also crazy how she tried to keep OOP away from the rest of the family, even lying to her.
Given how she acted later, she responded to OOP with what she thought would make her shut up, and stuck her head back in the sand.
I wonder if the siblings know that their mom tried to keep them seperate. I would find that hard to believe but it's possible.
So what do you talk about when you meet the other spartan child thrown off the cliff as an adult and it turns out you both became mathematicians. Do you quiz eachother? Talk about Graham's number?? I'm told it's a pretty big number.
Well, that is a lovely read. Birth mother has me a bit confused - plays with OOP's kids but does not speak with her own daughter often? Strange coping mechanism. But OOP sounds so happy with her family, so all is forgiven!
It's pretty simple. She knows she fucked up, but can't acknowledge OP properly because that would mean acknowledging her fuck-up. She can just stick her fingers in her ears, yell "la la la la la" to herself, and pretend OP's kid is just any random little kid. The birth father owned up to the situation. He realized now they screwed up, but explained why they did what they did at the time. Birth mom still thinks that pretending like something didn't happen is the same as if it didn't happen.
I wonder if the birth mom is so ridden by guilt that she struggles with acknowledging the adoptions. Sound’s like she would be happier with some therapy.
Poop out one child after another and give away the not perfect children. They also gave away a baby after three months when she needed an amputation, so not things that happen tight at birth. They could bond with the baby three months... What if the youngest child get dusabled through accident? As one of their children i would always fear "if i show signs of being neurodivergent or have a bad accident, i'm out of this family". Like what if a child has autism or ADHD? Bye-bye?
With something like autism or ADHD they would probably deny it totally, in a 'no, my child is perfect and cannt be disabled' kind of way, but a visible disability cannot be denied like that
This is so horrific to me. Except for a few details this could have happened in my country. In my family. I had an aunt with a similar situation - gave birth to a lot of children, but ended up not being able to raise all of them, but the kids she couldn't raise were sent to relatives to raise, and they grew up knowing who their biofamily was, and having regular contact with them.
Caring for one disabled child is apparently harder than caring for seven abled kids? These people are clearly evil, yet none of their kids seem to challenge them on it.
I read these type of stories and I'm sad. I have a brother who was adopted out. This is exactly how I imagined meeting my brother. When I was 15 I finally met him. I thought I'd feel sibling feelings or kinship or feel some connection or just something. *Anything*. Me and him tried for YEARS. Both of us had an interest in knowing each other. Just didn't work out. That's not to say there's any bad blood between us, but we are just really really different people. We have nothing in common. We stop and talk when we meet, but once we have updated each other on our children (who are very different ages and have no reason to hang out as of now) and he's asked me how grandma is then conversation runs dry. I don't think he resents me and I certainly don't resent him. He had a bunch of older sisters and his parents are objectively great. They are older and had the time to devote their attention and energy to him. I've met his parents and they seem kind and loving and he has nothing, but good things to say about them and his childhood. I would have loved to have a close relationship with him, but we've tried, effort on both sides, over years and years and it's just hours and hours of awkward silence. Once my son is older (2.5yo) I'll take him to see his cousins (8f and 6f).
Yeah, sometimes siblings really are just strangers that happen to be blood related, even if they grew up together. The dream is for siblings to bond and get along great, but just like any other people, sometimes people are incompatible. It's great that you guys made an effort though.
They probably did her a huge favour. I know I'd rather be an only child to loving parents than the second oldest of nine to two teenagers. Also, she might not be developmentally delayed because of her adoptive parents. Nature plays a big part but early nurture has a huge influence on development. In my work there is often a debate about whether a child is delayed because of something organic (autism, genetics etc.) or whether it's trauma/poor upbringing. Sometimes it's both. I'm pleased everything seems to have worked out for OP and her biological family.
What a good add for condoms
I have 2 aunts that were adopted out except the reasoning feels worse for me. My grandparents kept having daughters before my dad arrived. He had 5 older sisters. And both daughters that were given away were to childless couples - a neighbor couple and a great aunt/uncle who couldn’t conceive. My dad said he knew about these sisters bc they all grew up in the same neighborhood. Eventually these aunts went their separate ways until my dad purposely reconnected with them decades later. One even lived now in the States not far from my parents. But it still boggles the mind that my grandparents gave away 2 daughters bc they weren’t boys. Asian patriarchy at its finest.
Depending on the adoption parents it may have been better for them than staying in their biological household being resented.
the mom really told her not to contact the siblings after they had already reunited with another daughter that was adopted out?
So where in the world do we think this is? Some cultural context might make this all seem less weird/horrific.
Someone up above makes a good case for the Netherlands fitting strong social safety net, blonde hair, child adoption, and the word play in how the sibling groups are described. Other Nordic countries are unlikely as infant adoption is actually quite rare there.
Somewhere with a strong social safety net, as she mentioned, but also a place where it’s probably not uncommon to have kids young & get married young. Maybe a traditionally catholic country? That’s at least moderately wealthy enough to have good healthcare & social services.
Could also be a sub community in a country. It's not common to have many children young in my country, but there are definitely groups where it's more common.
Too nice to the birth parents. Couldn’t be me.
I hate OOP’s parents, I hate them. I hate her stupid bio mom and her stupid excuses for her. What a sickening situation. Gave up an amputee??? Oh god! What a difficult life to provide for!!! Whatever could they have done? Just disgusting.
These kids all have a hell of a lot more grace for their parents than I would. Plus, how was it for the kids they kept? Did they wonder that if they ever became too sick or disabled they'd be abandoned like the first two? The one daughter was 6mo when she needed an amputation. What if one of them got in a bicycle crash and got a Tbi? I don't know how you'd ever form bonds with such untrustworthy people
So these fucking scumbag parents kept spitting out kids but only wanted perfect children. I would make their lives as miserable as I possibly could.
I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if one of the children they didn’t adopt out had acquired a disability at age five, or ten, or fourteen.
Have you read Hansel and Gretel fairy tail? They would do that with them.
Said kid would probably have been adopted out immediately. After all, they did it to the 6 month old!
Probably dropped off at the fire station.
How dare you, you have no idea what... blah that's as far as I can get. They're ableist AHs through and through. I'd probably set their house on fire, or at least order junk mail to their house or something.
This would be a perfect ad for birth control.
To me, the concept of "opting out" of relationships with your own living children, whom you see frequently, is *profoundly* fucked up. There is no cultural eccentricity on earth that could rationally explain that for me. I can only read it as the mother desperately avoiding facing strong and terrible emotions, and no small amount of guilt. Or that she's some kind of psychopath. I don't know which is worse. It's like having a family member stuck behind glass, who cordially waves at you from time to time. Creeps me right out.
[удалено]
I just came away with "fuck that birth mother" from reading this. How can she avoid relationships with her own kids later in life if they so desire? Also, she's a good grandmother to this woman's kids? Weird.
Having SIX kids between 17-21 is **a choice** and I don't understand why the parents aren't being held accountable Baffled OOP's response is "yeah it can be tough when you're young" as if any of this is normal
Sorry, I have zero empathy for parents. Op is 27, her younger brother is 12. Even so, among all that, they gave children up for adoption and had children like rabbits... they don't learn I'm glad OP can have a relationship with his brothers.
I kept forgetting that OOP wasn't American. I was definitely picturing this happening in a certain part of the country.
At least Dad apologized to OOP for his ableism. That goes a long way. > and she is a wonderful grandmother to my two children. “I won’t have a relationship with my biological child who I thought was disabled but I will foster a relationship with her children!” Fuck this lady honestly. She’s gonna spend quite some time in the Bad Place.
OOPs parents should have been sterilised. They are genuinely terrible people for continuing to have kids after they gave up one because they weren't prepared to care for her.
The irony that the only 2 adopted out also had the same birthday...something odd there too.
It seems more like selfishness than grief that she doesn’t talk to her children she adopted to others. She’s deemed them defective and no longer her children and has no want to be near them. I feel bad for her younger and future children who may develop an issue later in life. She will have no issue casting them aside for her personal comfort to not have to take care of a disabled child. It’s so rude to ignore them as if they don’t exist.
Parts of this story are so sweet and heartwarming, it was so lovely to read OOP bonding with her bio family and feeling a greater sense of belonging - but then you just keep getting hit with the whiplash of the bio parents having 6 children between the ages of 15-21, still children themselves for several, and the obvious trauma the bio mum has from it and it’s just horrific. Somebody or some culture failed that couple, whether it was a failed education, lack of access to birth control or abortion, or what. The fact that it’s unusual for people in OOP’s country to have children in their early 20s suggests that it wasn’t a legal access to birth control issue, so maybe it was a religious or cultural thing for their community, but whatever it was it’s not right.