Thanks, Jessica, for your thoughtful take on this complex and deeply flawed film. Your perspective is invaluable. You’re so right–the original loss is not even mentioned, except with an offhand dismissal of a birth mother depicted as unsavory. I really appreciate your taking the time to read and reply.

The film focuses, rightfully and effectively, on the profound repercussions of being separated at birth. The practice is wrong, period. The boys continue to pay a heavy price.

What the film overlooks is the repercussion felt by any and every child who is placed for adoption: That is, the answer to the question, “Why did she give me up?”

The boys’ relationship with their birth mother is mentioned only once, in a short scene, when the brothers describe finding her name in New York Public Library records and meeting for a drink. Their mother was a high school student when she got pregnant, and for reasons not explained—Social pressure of the times? College looming on the horizon? Lack of family support to care for three babies?—she placed the boys for adoption.

I kept wanting the boys or their parents, spouses, extended family, or the psychologists involved in the boys’ case—many people are interviewed—to at least acknowledge this first, deep, primary loss. But everyone is so focused on the horror of the triplets’ separation that the core “hard thing” of adoption—being separated from your mother—isn’t even named. It’s completely overlooked. And, no matter what the circumstance or reason why, and no matter how loving and supportive an adoptive family is, being separated from your mother is a loss that never goes away.

I’m glad you called out this comment by David’s aunt: “nurture can overcome nearly everything.” I’m not a therapist, but am involved closely with many, many adoptive families. To most of us, nurture goes a long way toward helping our children heal from their primary loss, but our children are who they are and came to us that way–hard-wired for temperament, resiliency, preferences and interests, personality. This nature feels intrinsic and immutable.

I agree with your statement: “[I]t’s jarring when a film whose strength is complexity overlooks its own evidence about biology’s role to conclude with parent-blaming.”

Adoption is complicated. Period.