Originally Posted by
indyfabz
I was adopted by a family in a private adoption when the babysitter of a good friend of my adoptive father got pregnant. She was 15, Italian, Catholic and living in heavily Italian-Catholic S. Philly, so keeping me was out of the question. My adoptive mother couldn't have her own children and had adopted my sister the year before.
I always knew I was adopted. It's a long story, but after my adoptive mother died in 2013 an aunt ended up finding out from my biological mother who my biological father was.
I looked a lot like my adoptive father, leading some to speculate that he was actually my biological father. (I.e., guy knocks up good friend's babysitter and then adopts the child.) Kind of glad that is not the case because Polycystic Kidney Disease runs in my adoptive father's family. Usually killed them by age 50. My dad was the exception. He lived until 63. He had terminal cancer and decided to stop dialysis rather than sit around in great pain waiting to die.
It's amazing how times have changed in the relatively short span of a generation. My fathers family was old school hardcore Irish catholic- his three sisters and mother served he & his father at the dinner table, the men ate and then the women got leftovers. His sisters had no hope of anything past a high school education, they were expected to get married. Whereas he was taught Latin and got a good education.
When my cousin got pregnant out of wedlock in the 1980s, my father toyed with the idea of never recognizing her child! I was in college at the time and had to tell him: No, just No. Turns out that little baby girl she had is probably one of the best people in our family- extraordinary young woman. When her mother, my cousin, died prematurely from cancer, my 29 (at the time) year old niece, with a 3 year old of her own, sued her step father for custody of her 16 year old half-brother. And won. And has since sent him to college and had a set of twins and opened a day care. Dynamo.
Anyway, times change, mores evolve. For better and worse.