Post-Adoption Depression article excerpted in Adoptive Families Magazine

POST-ADOPTION DEPRESSION

The new issue of ADOPTIVE FAMILIES Magazine includes a condensed version of my "Post-Adoption Panic" article.  [Click RECENT ARTICLES on this website for the fuller version.]

Post-adoption Depression ("PAD") is one of the rarely-discussed secrets in the adoption world. 

It's a not-uncommon malaise that tends to afflict parents who have brought home a child older than infancy, a child who is not their first. Research seems to indicate that first-time parents of babies are the least likely to suffer this bewildering let-down.  

PAD has remained rather hidden because sufferers blame themselves.  Sufferers are MORTIFIED, after months or years of planning for, saving for, preparing for, working towards, and finally realizing an adoption, to be less-than-thrilled.  Sufferers--no matter how chatty they've been on every relevant internet chat-list—suddenly log off.  If anyone asks, they bravely try to put a happy spin on the new family constellation, which in fact is making them reel in exhaustion and regret.  

Jan de Hartog, in his marvelous & funny & honest book, THE CHILDREN (NY: Atheneum, 1969) devotes Chapter 6 to “The First Panic.”

“Maybe you are so experienced, well balanced or just plain lucky that this will not apply to you,” he writes.  “The majority of us however are, within the first few days of the arrival of our new child from Asia, likely to go through a blind, witless panic. It will not last long, but it is an experience that none of us will ever forget.  The worst of it is… that it takes you completely unawares and that while it lasts you are convinced it will last forever..."

Later he describes being hit by despair on the very night his first little Korean daughter arrives, delivered to the de Hartogs out of a disrupting adoption. Jan is sent out the door by his wife and the social workers to buy milk and bread for the child:  “I went to the garage and pushed up the door;  that was the moment the panic hit me.  Suddenly, as I stood there in the darkness fumbling for my car keys, my knees gave way.  I leaned against the wall, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of despair that made me cover my face with my hands.  I saw my pleasant, well-organized life collapse in confusion… Everything I cherished and cared for—my peace, my middle-aged comfort, my serenity—was shattered by this stranger calling me ‘Daddy.’…"

Searching for milk at the grocery, he writes: “I roamed along the counters feeling old and hysterical, utterly unsuitable to be anybody’s father, let alone an Asian child’s.”

The good news—which is why it’s a shame to conceal the whole situation—is that, in time, all parties—parents and children—tend to find their places in the new-built family, and contentment is yours once again. 


tranquil scholarly and refined evening at friends' home with non-depressed family circle