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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Adoption question - only just occurred to me.

4 replies

LighthouseTheme · 09/07/2024 00:37

Quite some time ago, a "long-lost" brother got in touch - via an agency.
He has been adopted at birth, and we have the same mother and father.

I have almost no relationship with my parents, and they certainly don't have a relationship with one another.

I didn't know about him - no-one had ever told me.

When he was born, my mother - apparently called him, and he said he had no interest; he had abandoned us (including my younger sister) already by this time, but still MUST have known she was pregnant.

The 2lb baby stayed in an incubator for 6 weeks (so I am told) and went to adoptive parents immediately after that.

My father denies that he ever knew about him, and when they finally met - 12 years after my brother located some of his birth family (i.e. me, and grandparents) - said that the only resemblance was dark hair and brown eyes (he is the spitting image!). They share so many characteristics and quirks of personality that it is 100% certain that he is his son, but my father refuses to acknowledge it.

Even now, he is saying he would want a DNA test if they were to meet up again (unlikely), and that I knew about him long before I passed the information on to my father. A gas-lighting lie; I told him almost immediately (my mother too).

But after all this, my question is - how could she have had him adopted without the father's consent? Is that possible? I know my father is a liar and the absolute definition of a narcissist - but it bothers me that he would go so far as to say that he didn't even know about him.

He forced his second wife to have a baby adopted as well, but apparently he was trying to locate her a few years ago.

I can't ask either of them, due to the total lack of relationship these days.... But it puzzles me, and I would like to have a clearer understanding.

OP posts:
AmelieTaylor · 09/07/2024 00:43

The world was a very different place back then. I think it wouldn't have been difficult at all for your mother to have him adopted out without your father's consent. I imagine she said she didn't know where he was, that he'd abandoned her & you kids.

im sorry you drew such a short straw!

ARichtGoodDram · 09/07/2024 00:45

Were your parents married and is your father named on your brother’s original birth certificate?

LighthouseTheme · 09/07/2024 00:52

ARichtGoodDram · 09/07/2024 00:45

Were your parents married and is your father named on your brother’s original birth certificate?

Yes they were married. (Shotgun because of me I think)
I assume, but don't know for sure, that he would have been on the birth certificate. There was a fear that the baby would die, but I don't suppose that would stop him having a full birth certificate.
I believed my mother when she said she called him, and he didn't care.
Which does not match with him saying that he never knew of his existence.

There was a period of time when I was sent (age 2-3) to visit my father's parents (and him too as that was where he was for a while), and feel sure he must have known about her pregnancy, even though she told me it happened on one of those occasions when she was trying to persuade him to come back, if you know what I mean.... And I also would have thought she WOULD have told him she got pregnant, not "simply" waited until baby arrived.

OP posts:
LighthouseTheme · 09/07/2024 00:54

@AmelieTaylor
Thank you. It really has been quite sad overall - and never got better with time. Obviously (ha ha).

Yes, it probably was "easier" back then. And he did abandon us. But continued to mess with our lives for quite some time.

OP posts:
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