Mom Wonders If She's Wrong For Not Telling Her Boyfriend That Her Son Is Adopted — 'I Don't Think It Changes Anything'
"It never came up, and I didn’t see the point in mentioning it."
ESB Professional | Shutterstock Adoption is undeniably complex. Even when a child is adopted as a baby, the experience impacts everyone involved in major and often unanticipated ways.
Yet one mom kept the knowledge of her son's adoption to herself. After a medical emergency, her boyfriend learned of her son's biological parentage and was upset that his partner didn't share such a huge piece of her life.
The woman didn’t tell her boyfriend her son Arthur was adopted.
“I have a 10-year-old son we’ll call Arthur,” the 34-year-old mom explained. “I adopted him when he was 2, as his godparent, after his mother passed away and his father was never in the picture.”
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“Arthur has always had trouble making friends, but he made a great one this past year — a 10-year-old boy in his grade who we’ll call Elliot,” she shared. “I didn’t plan on it, but Elliot’s father, who we’ll call Edward, and I became very close.”
They soon began "loosely dating" Edward, with the agreement that "the boys would always come first."
The mom didn't think to tell her boyfriend that Arthur was adopted until a medical emergency forced her to do so.
“A few weeks ago, Arthur got really sick while Edward was watching him,” the mom recounted. “I was an hour away fixing something at a friend’s house, and Edward took Arthur to the ER when things got worse. His appendix had burst. When I got there, Arthur was in surgery, and he went into anaphylactic shock due to the anesthetic.”
Naturally, the doctors asked about the boy's family medical history.
"I couldn’t provide any information since I’m not biologically related to Arthur,” she lamented. “I never knew his mother’s family.”
In the heart of the moment, she lashed out at Edward, who had attempted to help, and told him that Arthur was not her biological son.
After a few weeks in the hospital, Arthur is OK. However, her relationship is far less so.
The mom admitted that she and Edward got into an argument and have hardly spoken since.
“Edward was upset that I hadn’t told him Arthur was adopted,” she explained. “I can understand why, but it never came up, and I didn’t see the point in mentioning it.”
“I wasn’t hiding it,” she insisted, “but I didn’t have concrete plans to tell him, either.”
She tried to find some common ground in their circumstances, but it didn’t work.
“From what I knew, Edward raised Elliot on his own. I feel like our situations are similar, but Edward insists they’re different," she wrote. "He says it’s relevant that Arthur isn’t biologically mine, but I don’t think it changes anything."
Redditors were more concerned about another aspect of this mom’s story.
Hidden amid all of this information about her relationship with Edward was one very important detail that commenters latched onto: “I didn’t want Arthur to know he was adopted before he could fully understand.”
American Adoptions addressed the common question of when a child should be told they’re adopted. Their answer may surprise some — including this mom.
“There should be no moment when your child ‘learns’ they are adopted; you should tell your child they are adopted from before they can remember, and adoption should just be a natural part of their personal story,” they wrote.
Instead of waiting for a specific age or maturity level, it’s best to let children know they are adopted from the very beginning. Based on this information, it seems like the person who is receiving the greatest disservice here is Arthur.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.