Posted on

The Dark Side of Adoption

Childless couples rescuing cute little newborn babies from sad situations and giving them a wonderful life filled with comfort, joy and love — that used to be my impression of adoption. Adopting a baby was always a feel-good kind of story filled with noble characters. It starts on a sad note of course with a woman, usually young and single, learning she’s pregnant. She’s distraught, doesn’t know what to do, but ends up having the baby. She surrenders her infant soon after birth, realizing it’s in her baby’s best interests to be raised by a nice married couple who can provide a stable and loving home. Of course giving up her baby hurts but this brave, selfless woman sucks it up. She makes the best of the situation and moves on with her life. Meanwhile, those married couples willing to open their hearts and homes to a baby who wasn’t their biological offspring were nothing short of heroes. The lawyers, adoption agencies, social workers and other supporting players were the good guys who made the happy ending happen. Doesn’t this scenario put a smile on your face?

Call me naïve (or stupid) but I did know about the dark side of adoption. Journalist and author Lynne McTaggart opened my eyes with her book, The Baby Brokers: The Marketing of White Babies in America (1980: Dial Press).

Image

My husband, Tom, gave me a used copy of this book for Christmas. Born in the 1960s,  I know very little about my birth mother and absolutely nothing  about my biological father. I know I was the result of a private adoption so naturally the book’s honest examination of private adoptions in the 1970s intrigued me.

To uncover the reality of private adoptions in those days, McTaggart posed as a pregnant single woman wanting to give her baby up for adoption and as a prospective adoptive mother. She encountered unsavory characters who took advantage of legal loopholes and figured out ways to skirt the laws. The best interests of babies didn’t figure into their decisions. These characters didn’t waste valuable time investigating the backgrounds of people seeking to adopt babies. They were mostly interested in making a fast buck at the expense of couples with the money to pay their fees. Birth mothers were not always treated with kindness.

I found the book disturbing. It raised questions in my mind about the circumstances behind my own adoption.  It also makes me wonder about modern-day private adoptions, particularly private adoptions in Illinois, my home state. What’s changed since the 1970s? I would love to hear from adoptees and adoptive parents.

Posted on

Discovering Family

I am enjoying Richard Hill’s engaging memoir, Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA (2012), Hill, a Michigan native, discovered he was adopted accidentally at the age of 18. In his well-written book, Hill takes readers on a decades-long journey to find his biological relatives. Along the way, he meets and establishes real relationships with a few of his living relatives and learns about the lives of his biological parents. Hill’s story is uplifting and fascinating.

richard-hill-01-lo-resfinding-family-photo-01-lo-res

 

What’s especially valuable to adoptees is how Hill used DNA testing to determine the identity of his biological father. Hill has a website that looks like a great resource for adoptees who want information on their biological roots. I plan to use it.

Many aspects of Hill’s story strike a chord in me. Like Hill, I was an adult – 38 years old in fact – when I found out I was adopted. In his book, Hill notes how some adoptees fantasize about having their birth mothers enter their lives. That was not the case for Hill, who was about to leave home for college when he learned the truth about his past. At that point, he was eager to start the next phase of his life with less parental supervision. “I had no desire for a second mother in my life,” Hill wrote.

That’s exactly how I feel. My adoptive parents are long gone. My mother died in 1998 and my father passed away in 1999 so I’ve been free of parents for many years. Like 99.9 percent of the population, I had issues with both of them. They raised me in a loving but  ultra protective environment and I often felt stifled. Moving out of their house at age 23 was the happiest day of my life. Pure joy! I felt totally relieved of the burden of parental interference in my everyday life.

The relationship we have with our mothers and fathers, whether they are birth parents or biological parents, is intense. I had that relationship with my parents and now it’s over. I have no interest in having a relationship with another mother or father but I would love to know what type of type of people they are (or were), what the circumstances were when my mother gave birth to me and whether she felt any pressure to give me up for adoption. For her sake, I hope not. I would also love to see photos of my birth parents.


Posted on

I’m Adopted and In the Dark

My friends and in-laws were intrigued when I told them I was adopted. Among the questions they asked:  “What are you going to do to find your parents?”  “Aren’t there adoption records on file? and “Don’t you think someone in your family knows something?”

I had no answers. I didn’t have a shred of documentation when I first learned I was adopted in 2000. Everythng I knew was based on a conversation with my sister and my godparents’ daughter. The three of us were adopted around the same time but unlike my parents, my godparents informed their daughter she was adopted. They also filled her in on my adoption and my sister’s adoption and she passed that information on to us. Some people (non-adopted of course) thought I should jump on this mystery and solve it pronto but the thought of digging deeper, possibly turning up painful facts, was too daunting. A little voice inside me said, “Lynne, you don’t want to go there.” I was afraid. Finding out my parents weren’t my birth parents was mind blowing enough. I was working full time for a weekly trade magazine and raising a family in New York City so I just kept doing what I was doing. I didn’t dwell on the past.

birth certificate photo for blog

But the past has a way of intruding into the present. Last year, at the urging of my curious husband, Tom, I obtained a copy of my original birth certificate from the state of Illinois. I was able to get this document after a new state law went into effect, permitting people adopted in the state to obtain their original birth certificates through the Illinois Department of Public Health. It took a couple of months but then one day the mail brought a thin business sized envelope addressed to me from the state of Illinois. My hands were shaking and I swallowed hard as I opened the envelope. The birth certificate provided my birth mother’s name, her address, her place of birth and her age at the time she had me. She was 28, which I found surprising. The birth certificate listed her maiden name and married name but I have to wonder if she was really married. She has beautiful handwriting, based on her signature, but that’s all I know about her beyond the bare facts. My father is “not legally known.”

After spending several hours poring over sites like ancestry.com, Tom and I got tired of looking for my birth mother’s whereabouts. Tom thinks I should travel to southern Indiana to look for my birth mother but I’m on the fence. Again, I fear what I might discover.

Reading about the Baby Scoop Era only reinforces my qualms. The Baby Scoop Era refers to a period between 1945 and 1972, when American adoptions of newborn infants soared to an estimated 4 million infants. Born in the 1960s, I could be a Baby Scoop baby. These women gave birth to babies and surrendered them for adoption, often under pressure from social workers who believed the women would be unfit mothers. In those days, unmarried women were sent out of town by their families to have their babies in secret at maternity homes. The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative cast a spotlight on these dubious adoption practices that left many birth mother scarred for life. The experts estimate women surrendered as many as two million infants during the 1960s alone. Times have changed. Just 14,000 infants were given up for adoption in 2003, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Posted on

The Bombshell: How I Found Out I was Adopted

My parents were long gone when I found out, at age 38, that I was adopted.  My sister, Melissa, called and dropped the bombshell. I was stunned, saddened and basically dazed by this revelation. Of course it raised all sorts of questions. Who were my birth parents? Why did my birth mother give me up for adoption? Was she still alive? Were Melissa and I biological sisters? Did I have other brothers and sisters out there somewhere? What’s my ethnic background? What’s in my medical history? Things I had taken for granted about my identity were suddenly up for grabs.  My slender fingers, thin build, Roman nose – I thought I got those features from my father, who was small, thin as a rail with a nose that resembled a beak. Blue eyes, fair skin and curly hair of course came from my mother. “You look just like your mother,” my cousin told me at the lunch that followed Mom’s funeral.

Nobody likes being lied to. I wish my parents had told me the truth. If they couldn’t bear to talk about it, they could have at least left a letter or something for me to read upon their deaths. Not a word. No adoption paperwork. Nothing. They took the secret to their graves.

I am sure my mother and father had their reasons for not divulging the truth. I can’t entirely chalk up their secrecy to the different world of the 1960s, when Melissa and I were born. Gina, who is about the same age as my sister and me, was also adopted. Her parents, my godparents who were good friends with our parents,  told Gina the truth about her origins and also told her about Melissa and my adoptions.  The three of us were all adopted around the same time.

Bullies have been known to hurl “You’re adopted!” at other kids on the playground. Even today, some people think  adopted children are somehow not as “good” or authentic as biological offspring. I suspect my mom and dad kept quiet because they didn’t want my sister and me to feel any less loved than any child being raised by birth parents.

Personally I think it’s better for parents to be straight with their adopted children. My good friend, Lucia, told her boys they were adopted when they were 1 ½ and 3 ½ years old. “That’s what the experts advise, too,” Lucia says. “Then the kids accept it as normal.”

The American Adoption Congress  supports openness. This non-profit advocacy group has worked to change laws to make it easier for adoptees to get access to formerly sealed adoption records.  For moral support, there’s also a Facebook group for people who, like me, found out later in life they were adopted.

family tree for blog