Love By Extension

Jono Lancaster is a vocal advocate for people affected by Treacher Colins Syndrome.  I recently watched a video of Jono recounting his experience growing up with the condition.  On his adoptive papers, it reads: Both parents were horrified by the child's appearance.  Both parents felt no maternal bond.  Both parents left the hospital 36 hours later, leaving the child behind.  

At age five, Jono was adopted by a kind lady who raised him and gave him a loving home.  Still, the rejection by his birth parents was devastating.  His young life was made of dark days filled with anger.  In his 20s, he tried contacting his birth parents by sending them a letter, hoping to meet them in person.  Promptly, he received a letter signed by both of them.  Not only did they refuse to meet him, in addition, they told him that any future attempt for contact would be ignored.  It was like peeling his old wound open all over again and rubbing salt on it . . . 

On the internet, I also found a video of an adoptive father and daughter duo in Italy.  The little girl with Down's Syndrome was abandoned by her birth parents.  After being rejected by twenty families, she was finally adopted by a single man who is a volunteer worker for people with disabilities.  Ever since the adoption, the life of this happy dad revolves around his child.  Play time, activity time, snuggle time.  The little girl is bathed in undivided attention.

Stories like these are fascinating to me.  How come some strangers can see past the physical conditions of these children and take them in as their own, while others, including the birth parents, have a hard time accepting them?  What is it that makes some people love more readily than others?

I know many people who married someone who have children from previous relationships.  In most cases, although they love their spouses enough to marry them, the love does not seem to extend far enough to encompass the stepchildren.  Some become very jealous and feel the need to compete for the attention of their spouses.  Some couples have children together after they got married.  These "joint children" are clearly favored by their stepparents over their older half siblings.  In cases where both spouses have children before they got married, the parents and their two sets of children are almost always on a tribal divide.  

I only know of one single family where the spouses, both have children from previous marriages, vowed that there will never be any "your kids vs my kids", but only "our kids".  Their commitment to loving and raising the children equally and wholeheartedly is quite amazing.  Sure enough, their immense love is appreciated and reciprocated by all their children.  

My mother's father died when she was very young.  Grandma remarried when Mama was seven years old.  In an old, patriarchal society, girls were seen as a burden to the family.  Grandma's new husband did not want to take on somebody else's daughters.  Before she could join her new husband's family, Grandma gave my mother to another family and sent my little aunt to an orphanage.  

It took years for Mama to get over the fact that her mother gave up her children for her own survival.  Talking about relationships between stepparents and stepchildren, my mother summed it up very simply, "It really hurts when your new daddy does not love you."