Adoption is still offered up as an alternative for couples facing infertility, or as an idea of offering a permanent home to a child healing from past traumas, or as a motivation or desire to provide a home for a child in need. For those individuals who grew up never knowing anyone who was adopted, you probably hold these narrower definitions of what it means to have gone through the adoption process to add a new family member. Most people are oblivious over what it really means to be an adoptee.
In the U.S. the number of total adoptions doubled post World War II reaching approximately 100,000 placements annually by the mid-1950s. Previously, judges could not legally cut the ties between a child and their biological family. Being akin to a fostering system, children were sent to live with other family members for education, labor training, apprenticeship, or charitable support. In times of financial hardship children were sent to “orphanages” so the parent could get back on their feet while someone else paid the bill for things like childcare, education, food, and housing.
Before the mid nineteenth century adoption was often done in secret and kept out of the courts. Prevailing stigmas surrounded adoption and people were reluctant to adopt poor children from different ethnicities into their home. Illegitimate children were commonly adopted by family members and raised as their own without telling anyone (the child included) because of the negative stigma of single motherhood. Other reasons for adoption include illness, financial troubles, and death in a push for the “betterment of the child.”
In the decades following the Adoption of Children Act (1851) nongovernmental charitable societies such as the Salvation Army emerged to “protect the children” and homes were introduced so the unwed mother could wait out their pregnancy hidden from family members and neighbors only to then surrender the child at birth. Some children were immediately handed over to their new parents while others were sent to a foster home or orphanage while awaiting to be adopted. Imagine not knowing where you spent the first month or months of your life…if you were just one of many children housed at the same location…were you picked up, held, or just left to cry in your cradle…or worse, you learned not to cry because nobody would come.
By the 20th century, the government became more involved with the protection of children through state run child welfare agencies for the protection and care of homeless, dependent, and neglected children. At its peak in 1970 an estimated 175,000 annual adoptions were arranged through adoption agencies but the practice of perpetuating family secrets and illegal adoptions continues to exist, even today.
Fortunately, most adoptions now involve some level of openness, which allows for some level of contact between the birth parents, adoptive parents, and the adoptee, both during and after the adoption. Many adult adoptee’s now have access to adoption records that were previously sealed, and several states have passed legislation to allow access to original birth certificates.
DNA testing began in the late 1990s to identify genetic markers. Thanks to the availability of home DNA testing kits, the identity of individuals and their biological relatives, can be determined with unprecedented precision if anyone in the family has taken the test. The potential for the identification and determination of linked biological relationships both present and past is now commonplace.
There are approximately 5 million Americans alive today who were adopted, and it is estimated that 2-4 percent of all families have adopted; of which 2.5 percent were younger than 18 years old. As an adoptee I am here to tell you there is a huge gap between the way adoption was handled in the past versus today’s more modern attitudes and practices. For many of us there is a huge hole that exists in our soul that will never be filled, not by our birth families and not by our adoptive families. So, here’s what so many of us have faced in our adoption journey.
Let me begin by saying being an adoptee includes anyone looking for their birth family, such as in the case of secret unofficial adoptions, orphans, foundlings, black market babies, gray market babies, donor conceived babies, etc. By today’s standards it can also include having grown up with one birth parent and a known other parent that you may have been told is your natural father but later find out that you are not blood related. My adoption was more traditional in that my unwed mother gave me up to be adopted.
Other than family medical history, most adoptees question how they came to be and what their birth families are like. An adoptee can only answer the question about what questions they have until after they’ve found birth family, because they don’t know what they don’t understand or have knowledge of. The questions they do have are based on the birth families they find. It is only in finding their families that they can discover who they are.
Something to consider, is that an adoptee will discover that they have the same laugh, the same body structure, mannerisms, even the same jokes, as a parent, the same likes and dislikes of food, music, movies, etc., even the same hobbies and passions, common interests as a birth parent without ever having known them. Suddenly, their whole life, everything, makes sense. Only then do they discover, why they are, the way that they are. This is called **epigenetics** love of certain hobbies, passions, interests, likes, dislikes, etc., that get passed down. DNA experts acknowledge it exists, but they haven’t figured out exactly how it works.
I met my birthmother in 2010 and later discovered my birthfather in 2018. Unfortunately, my birthfather and his family rejected our reuniting. I do know that I have the same love for horses, learning, and favorite colors as my birth mother. In spite having been raised by a different family I also share similar mannerisms and interests with my cousin and half-brother. You know how psychics see visions, but they don’t know what those visions mean? That was my whole life, knowing that I had these passions but not understanding why I had them. I had no idea that I had Welsh and German heritage in my blood on my mother’s side, and Austrian, Irish, and Scottish heritage on my father’s side.
The only way to describe what happened, was like angels pulling back a life-long veiled curtain, and whispering, chanting, “This is why you are, the way that you are. This was always in your blood. This is your family. This is your DNA.” Meeting my birth mother and the family was one of the most profound, deeply moving, spiritual moments of my life. Most of the time, people will assume that someone has certain likes and passions, because that’s what they grew up with. You throw an adoptee into the mix who never knew their birth family and that theory gets blown out of the water. These things are inherited and passed down in generations through DNA.
Another aspect of being adopted comes down to a single component of needing to complete a timeline; the prequel to one’s existence on earth, how we came to be, names, dates and places of immediate family and ancestors, as well as understanding the inter-personal relationships of the family dynamic.
Almost all adoptees will not have a full sibling, sharing both parents. So, when they do find family, there will be a definite mother’s side with maternal ½ siblings, and a definite father’s side, with separate paternal ½ siblings, and those ½ siblings from each side don’t know each other, have never met. Sadly, many adoptees only find their birth family after both birth parents have already passed on or when their parent is too old in their 90s to even comprehend the new relationship. Many adoptees begin their search in their twenties or much later, only to hit walls and roadblocks that prevent them from finding the answers they seek because of the social practices and laws that were commonplace during most of the 20th century and well into the 2000s. Many adoptees are also led down a path of lies by those close to them, when a birth mother or other family members lie about who is listed on the birth certificate as the father.
This means ineffable joy, complete euphoria, elation, victory, accomplishment, and validation upon discovering a parent along with unbearable sadness, loss, utter devastation, grief, with all of these emotions going on inside the adoptee over a loss, and all at the same time. This is a unique experience only for those searching for birth family. For those who grew up with birth family, the death of a parent means, “Never again.” For adoptees, discovering the death of a birth parent means, “Never ever.”
In the case of both parent’s passing before a discovery, when this happens, grief is the realization that the adoptee will never have a complete timeline. There will always be a gigantic hole never to be filled because no one is left to ask the simple questions of, “Soooo, how did you two meet? Was it at school? Was it at a coffee house? Was it at a bar? What were your common interests? Did you both like dancing? Did you two have a special song?” So, you can hear stories from each of your ½ siblings and aunts and uncles about each parent, separately, but no one is left to tell them about how they were as a couple. And, hearing about a romantic involvement from one or both sides, is a unique perspective that can only come from one or both individuals.
Although the secrets of past may have been easily perpetuated pre 1990, it is important to understand that because of DNA testing there are no longer secrets that can be taken all of the way to the grave. Imagine if you will being an adoptee or being raised by your parents only to find out in your 40s, 50s, or even later that what you were told is a lie…that was perpetuated by someone you loved and trusted. This discovery blows your mind and shatters your world because it is only through our identity that we truly develop a sense of who we really are.
Many times, when a birth mother is found she refuses to talk about the birth father, which ends up being the same situation; no information about the other side and no information about them as a couple. In my case I had spent countless hours researching the man listed on my birth certificate only to find his obituary and pictures of him and his children. I grieved for the father I never met. I connected with his cousins and learned the history of his family…only to later find out we did not share any DNA whatsoever.
Think for a moment about what this means, on an emotional level. In an instant, a person gains….and loses, a birth parent, all in a single moment and over time. All because my birth mother lied to me and falsely recorded this lie permanently onto my birth certificate. The story she told me of how they were high school sweethearts, in several classes together, also turned out to be a lie.
Other common questions are about their extended family. What the grandparents were like, that is, their parents’ parents? Were either of them close with a particular aunt or uncle? In my case my birthmother was an open book about my grandparents and her family history but I wanted to know why both of my grandparents on my father’s side had died so young. To this day I have very little information about his entire family history because of his refusal to acknowledge me. Since my birthmother never told him of my existence when she was pregnant, his learning of me came at a complete surprise and threat to his marriage. He married his wife only four and a half months after I was born. His daughter is only a few years younger than me and we hope to know each other someday after he and his wife pass on. My half-sister also has children.
Something else to consider, is that it’s not just about adoptee and birth parent; there’s a much, much bigger picture involved, here. Eventually, future generations… a descendant will be interested in genealogy and start digging into public records or perhaps one of their children. Any potential family squabbles now, won’t matter then because no one involved will be alive. It’s completely irrelevant whose secret we are trying to keep buried or whose reputation is at stake. I’ve learned the hard way that science doesn’t lie but people do. I’m sad to say my half-brother still hasn’t told his own children that they have an older brother from a woman he met before marrying their mother. So long as adoptee records are closed these secrets will continue to perpetuate these and other lies.
Lay the groundwork for future adoptees and ancestors and be truthful about your family tree. We have a responsibility as the, “Gateway Ancestor,” to our present and future generations. As an adoptee I have an unnatural curiosity about my ancestors – who were they, what were they like, what experiences did they live through…it’s my missing piece. My love of history is another reason I had to learn about my ancestors. My children and grandchildren will now know and recognize the individuals over the centuries whose lives helped make us who we are today.
I can study a face in a photo and then ponder over whether or not great-grandfather’s nose is just like my grandson’s. I can visualize the ancestors in those photos living their daily lives, just as we do today. With a photo I feel a connection I can’t quite feel with only a name and a date. I am who I am because of them and would not be here otherwise. They are forever a part of me and my genetic makeup.
These are the questions, or rather more aptly put the “quest and desire” that adoptees have, to ultimately discover why they are, who they are, in discovering their birth families. Adoption has come a long way in the last 200 years or so. In the past, families were prized for homogeny. Today however we celebrate families simply for the love they share for one another. There is no one way that a family should look, and there are more options and paths to attain the family you always dreamed of than in the past. But the sad truth is that it won’t be until sometime past the year 2100 that the adoptee experience will begin to be made right, and it begins with access to open adoption records in all states. Someday we will get there.
Please share your personal experiences and opinion on how we can do better as a society to bring about the necessary changes to give adoptees a voice.
Please follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook Groups, Twitter (@womensvoices3) or on my blog at www.womensvoicesleading.com for more interesting posts from Womens Voices Leading.
#womensvoicesleading #adoption #causes #unseal_adoption records #geneaology #family #trauma #DNA #medicalhistory #stoptheshameofunwedmothers #singleparents
