This Salon.com piece is worth the one-day pass if you are not already a subscriber--And the comments are worth a read, too.
...I hoped proximity would breed devotion. But I felt like a liar when we went out and people said what a pretty baby I had. Not my baby, I wanted to tell them, anxious not to take Jessica's credit."She even looks like you!" some gushed. Of course this wasn't true. Her smooth coffee-with-cream skin is nothing like my own rosy complexion. Such was their strong determination to fit her to our family.
"She looks just like her birth mother," I'd reply. I wanted them to see Jessica, to acknowledge her. I couldn't stand to have her obliterated, even in casual conversation. It was if they were trying to deny the truth of Madison, the fact of who she was beyond being my adoptive daughter. I didn't want to pretend that she came to us without her own history. But at the same time, polite society seemed to want to dismiss her origins. Per United States law, Madison's post-adoption birth certificate even listed me as the woman who gave birth to her...