When I first heard about ABC's reality show Find My Family, which began airing in November, I was prepared to hate it.

Each Monday-night episode tells a couple of reunion stories of adult adoptees with birth parents. Emotions run high. Tears flow. In other words, it's good soapy television—but does that make it a good depiction of adoption?

Yes. It's far from perfect; it's finessed and biased and occasionally silly. But I've let go of my need to dismiss this show as hokum.

Don't get me wrong: There are things about Find My Family that are "stomach churning" in the words of a fellow adoptive parent. There's the literal "family tree" on a sunny hillside where the reunions are filmed. Earnest hosts Tim Green and Lisa Joyner keep insisting they understand the feelings of those involved because they were adopted, too. (Joyner is also an adoptive parent.)

In staged scenes, Tim or Lisa knock on doors and introduce themselves—"it's so great to finally meet you in person!" The reunions are always joyful. Everything seems keyed to one emotional note that doesn't match the ups and downs of real relationships.

Adoptive-parent groups have rumbled on the Internet. Some mainstream TV reviewers have called the show "grotesque." When it was first picked up by ABC (it's based on successful "relationship reality" programming in Holland and Australia), Variety ran this headline: "ABC adopts 'Find My Family' show." The wording is a typical trivialization of the family bonds formed by adoption—right up there with "Adopt a Highway" programs—that often makes adoptive parents froth at the mouth.

The thing is, the adult adoptees and birth parents who appear on Find My Family really do warm the heart. That was clear to me after watching the first episode. I won't deny that I bristled: Where were the adoptive parents? Their response was simply excised. Reunions are rarely as easy as this one seemed, and the impact of race and economic class continue to be airbrushed away.

But subsequent episodes have touched on how difficult it can be for adoptees and birth parents to find each other. Birth certificates get changed; in many states, the records are sealed and adoptees aren't allowed access. In last night's episode with 43-year-old adoptee Maria, her adoptive mother was part of the story from the opening shots.

Reality TV is often about throwing people into false, highly charged situations. The motivations for dumping your guts on film—or at least pretending to—are usually fame; a chance for a dream job or rich husband; and, of course, money.

Yet with reunions between parents and children who haven't seen each other for thirty-plus years, there's no need to trump up anything. These situations are genuinely charged. In many ways, the situation of adult adoptees searching and longing for their first parents is what reality programming has always wanted to be: fraught with human drama.

I also can't help comparing Find My Family episodes with Daughter from Danang, an infamous documentary in the Vietnamese adoption community that comes with a seemingly more legit pedigree. (It even won a Sundance award in 2002 and was an Academy-Award nominee.) In it, documentary filmmakers with a political agenda—exposing American imperialism—helped an adult adoptee reunite with her birth mother in Vietnam.

At first this filmed reunion is joyful, too. But the young woman, who grew up in Tennessee and appeared quite naive, was unprepared for the cultural differences and her inability to speak the language. When her birth family asked her for money to help support her mother, she was devastated.

Meanwhile, the cameras kept rolling, turning viewers into voyeurs. When I first saw this film, which aired on PBS, I remember how angry I felt that the filmmakers just sat and watched as the woman melted down. Many Vietnamese adult adoptees and other critics have expressed a loathing for the way the film turns her into a victim.

All of which is to say that, despite the soap and scripted set-up, Find My Family's bias may be what gives its protagonists dignity.

It's easy to roll your eyes at host Joyner's "I know, I've been there" cheerleading. Green often looks tearful and exudes false intimacy—except what if it's not completely false? It just might be that their personal knowledge of the adoption community shaped an end product that feels more true.

Ironically, the progressive filmmakers who made Daughter from Danang, with their objective stance and lack of knowledge about adoption, ripped off its reunion scenario far more than the hucksters at ABC are doing.

It's come home to me, how insecure all members of the adoption triad often feel—adoptees who believe they were given up because something was wrong with them; birth parents who don't get to watch a child grow up; adoptive parents who know they don't share a blood connection with their children.

This is not exactly a revelation. But there are moments when it seems wrong to fudge the ethical quandaries or the grief of others. None of us should, because to fudge is to lose a piece of our humanity. It means we too easily ignore the real tears on a show like Find My Family because of its cheesy trappings.

I'm well aware of my own insecurities as an adoptive mom. I used to worry that I'd never be viewed as a "real" mother. These fears have eased over time as the love in our family has taken solid root. But it seems that each of us, in our separate corners, grapples with whether we're loved enough.

Last night on Find My Family, birth father Wavie was shown reuniting with an adult son he hadn't seen since babyhood. They embraced on what looked like a golden California hillside under the spreading tree, as if they were in New Age heaven.

Was it corny? Of course. But Wavie and his son, in their before-and-after discussion of what this reunion means, approach the deepest existential questions. Neither comes off as a victim. And a celebration of love on television is never a bad idea.