Genetic Ties Quotes

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

I learned early on that just because you come from the same blood as someone doesn't mean they are family.

I certainly don't think it's inevitable that we don't love children who don't carry our own DNA. If that were true we wouldn't have millions of successful adoptions to consider. I do think that it's harder to love a child when you come into that child's life after the unrequited passion of infancy and early childhood has passed.

It's not like I want to hop on a bandwagon, because I said it 15 years ago - bringing a child into your life who is not genetically yours is one of the most beautiful things you can do. But I'm also interested in having my own baby, too.

I think blood doesn't determine who your family is.

We live in a society that celebrates familial connection above any other kind of relationship. We are shown photos of our great-grandparents and encouraged to marvel over facial similarities. We are told to take pride in our bloodlines, celebrate our ancestry.

Some's bastards, some's ain't. That's the score.

Family's the one thing you can't change. You can cover yourself with tattoos. You can get a grapefruit-sized ring going through your earlobe. You can change your name. You can move to a different continent. But you cannot change who your parents were, and who your siblings are, and who your children are.

Surrogacy used to be difficult, because the woman that was carrying the child was biologically related to the child. And sometimes you can still do it that way, but you do not have to do it that way anymore.

As comfortable as I was with my adoption, the nature-versus-nurture question has been a big one for me. I adore my parents, but I always wondered if I would feel a different kind of love-not more or less, just different-for someone who was biologically related.

You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.