A Black Hole

Until recently, my family history beyond my two parents was a black hole. They were both adopted and died knowing next to nothing about their origins. After more than 60 years of living, I know now what those origins are.

Most people KNOW who their parents are. Even a parent who abandons his family may still be a known entity to his child but not someone who was adopted. It is all unknown, unless it is a modern, more progressive and supportive adoption – which thankfully, many of them are beginning to be.

People don’t want to hear that you have no freakin’ clue to your identity. Not knowing is both painful and unusual in our society. It is associated with negative stereotypes such as “bastards” and “mistakes”. You hear about “those people” but you never expect to be talking to one in the flesh.

I recently read about the child of an adoptee who’s coping mechanism with that unknown was to tell everyone he was Cuban. Until recently, I used to tell everyone I was an “albino African” because I could have been. There was no one to tell me I wasn’t. Then, I got my DNA tested and finally knew I was Danish and Scottish and English and Irish, even a little Ashkenzai Jew and Neanderthal.

It is wonderful to now have a universe of genetic connections out there instead of being the product of a black hole.

Who Am I ?

“Whose tummy did I grow in ?”

Consider this. Most of us take for granted that we grew inside our mother’s womb. A child that has always been told they were adopted will eventually reach a point where this question will arise in their own mind. In closed adoptions, the child will never be given an answer. In fact, great care has been taken to erase every fact related to their beginning in life.

Georgia Tann often falsified birth certificates and original parental data so that even after records were allowed to be opened for “qualified” persons (the adoptee or their direct descendants) one had to view the information skeptically. I am fortunate that for the most part, the information in my mom’s adoption file seems to have been accurate.

But there was fudging about the nature of her parents who were presented to my adoptive grandmother (who thought very highly of advanced education) as two unfortunate college students who were caught by pregnancy. That was hardly the truth. My grandmother never went to college and my grandfather was a widower 20 years older than her who had already fathered 5 children.

Adoptees in a closed adoption will have their birth certificates falsified (as both of my parents did) to appear that their adoptive parents gave birth to them when they did not. They will have their original name changed to something the adoptive parents want. In my dad’s case, it happened twice, because my Granny divorced the husband she was married to when she adopted my dad. The second husband objected to my dad carrying the vanquished man’s name and so at an age of already 8 years, my dad was given a new name.

Is it any wonder that adoptees often struggle with an identity crisis ? Many adult adoptees believe that adoption should be ended. The children should be given guardians and keep all of their original identity information. Much like in the case of slavery, a child is not something one owns but a human being we are privileged to protect and provide for.

Links in the Chain of Life

What about women who do NOT want to know the children they gave up for adoption, do they have the right to not have their identities revealed ?

I’ve not met one yet who would not want to know what became of their child, though everything that can be thought of does exist. I would also wonder if it is a denial of pain long suppressed. I do know I have felt a bit “unwanted” by one genetic relative when I turned up. “Oh yes, I do remember hearing she had a daughter . . . ” an inconvenient truth, I suppose.

When a woman has a child, even if for whatever reason she gave that child up for adoption, it is my belief that child is still owed an identity, you owe them at least this.

Each of us wants to understand our place in the chain of life. Closed adoptions with sealed records are like the lock up there in the middle of the links of a chain.

Does such a mother have a right to be free of the trauma of confrontation ? How about the denial of joy in knowing where they come from for the child ?

In most cases, I do not believe a confrontation with one’s now grown child would be traumatic, unless the outcome of that child is one that causes a deep regret and sense of responsibility in the original mother.

I don’t believe that anyone who conceives a child has any right to privacy from that reality. A woman who insists on such a “right” is at the same time infringing upon the right of an adoptee.