Will My Child Hate Me for Placing Them for Adoption? Talking to Kids About Adoption

By: Grant Kirsh

For many birth mothers, the deepest fear is not the legal process or the paperwork. It is this: will my child hate me for this someday? And for mothers who are parenting some children while placing another, there is an added worry: will the child I placed resent that their siblings got to stay?

These fears come from love, and they deserve honest, caring answers. At Kirsh & Kirsh, P.C., we have supported Indiana birth mothers through these exact worries for nearly 50 years. We are a family-run Indiana law firm. Here is what we have learned.

Will My Adopted Child Hate Me?

In our long experience, children who are adopted, especially through open adoption, do not typically grow up hating their birth mothers. The opposite is often true. When a child grows up knowing the truth, that their birth mother loved them so much she made a hard, selfless choice to give them a stable and loving life, they tend to grow up understanding and appreciating that love.

Open adoption helps enormously here. When your child can see you through letters, photos, updates, and sometimes visits, they grow up with the knowledge that you never disappeared and never stopped caring. That knowledge is the opposite of what creates resentment.

Will My Child Be Okay?

Yes. The children placed with the families we work with grow up in loving, stable, carefully chosen homes. You pick the family. All of our families commit to letters and photos for at least 18 years, so you will see for yourself that your child is happy and thriving. Children who are adopted into loving homes do wonderfully.

Will the Child I Placed Resent That Their Siblings Stayed With Me?

This is one of the hardest worries for mothers who are parenting some children and placing another. Here is a gentle truth: children are capable of understanding context as they grow. With age-appropriate honesty, a child can come to understand that at the time of their birth, you were not able to provide what they needed, and that you made a loving choice so they could have that.

In an open adoption, the siblings can often stay connected through photos and updates, which helps everyone feel like part of one extended family rather than divided. Counseling, covered 100% by the adoptive family, can help you think through how to handle these relationships over time.

How Do I Talk to My Other Children About Why I Placed Their Sibling?

Age-appropriate honesty is the foundation. Young children need simple, loving explanations: the baby went to a family who could take care of them, and this was a loving choice. Older children can handle more detail. The key is to be honest, to frame the decision as one made from love, and to give your children space to ask questions and share their feelings. You typically have as many years old as the child is in words to explain something to them. A one-year-old understands “adoption”, a two-year-old understand “you’re adopted,” and so on.

It often helps to keep the language positive and loving, focusing on the idea that your family made sure the baby would be loved and cared for.

How Do Adoptive Families Talk to Kids About Adoption?

The wonderful families we work with understand the importance of telling their child their adoption story with love and openness from an early age. They honor you as part of that story. They do not hide the adoption or speak of it as something shameful. They celebrate it. And they help the child understand that they were chosen, wanted, and loved by two families.

You Are Choosing Love

Whatever you decide, please know that choosing adoption out of love for your child is not something that creates hatred. It is something that, over time and with openness, children come to understand as one of the greatest gifts they were given.

Whether you are in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville, South Bend, Carmel, Fishers, Bloomington, Hammond, Gary, Muncie, Lafayette, Terre Haute, Kokomo, Anderson, or Greenwood, we are here to support you. Our services are 100% free.

Call or text us at 800-333-5736. Visit us at IndianaAdoption.com. Everything is free and confidential.

About the Author
Grant Kirsh is a second-generation adoption attorney and owner of Kirsh & Kirsh, P.C., a family law firm in Indianapolis, Indiana that has been serving Indiana families since 1981. Grant graduated from Indiana University McKinney School of Law in 2013 and has personally handled nearly 3,000 foster care adoptions and his law firm has handled over 5,000 private newborn adoptions. He practices all forms of domestic adoption, with a deep personal commitment to expectant mothers considering adoption in Indiana and Indiana’s foster care system and the families and children it serves.