Do adopted children have a right to know their birth parents?

Great Debates
1

And if you feel that they do, at what age should they “find out” they are adopted?

I feel they do have a right to know their “blood” and “true family” history. If I were adopted I would want to know my birth parents and why they gave me up for adoption, I think it’s mentally healthy to know these things. Basically I feel it should be know-it-all about your past or nothing at all.

I also feel that as early as possible is the best age to tell them. I think around the teenage years could be a bad time to find out, they’re are already rebellious enough.

2

I think the question of whether adopted children have a right to know their birth parents is entirely separate from whether they should know that they are adopted–and when they should find that out. I do agree that adopted children should know from an early age that they were adopted–even if they look like the adoptive parents, as opposed to adopted children from other races.

That said, adopted children DO NOT have an absolute right to know their birth parents. Should they be informed to the best of the adoptive parents ability (and the child’s curiousity) at an appropriate age? (which again is separate from the age at which they should know that they were adopted) Sure–but there are reasons why it isn’t always possible. Open adoptions are great, for those who want them, but I know people who have adopted foster children where a clean break would have been easier on all concerned. In other cases, if the birth mom can’t give the child up with a promise of privacy, she may reconsider the adoption. (Either choosing abortion, or keeping a child she doesn’t want and can’t afford to raise). In other cases, the adoptive parents feel threatened by the birth parent remaining in the child’s life.

Probably someone with more direct experience with adoption will come along and explain some of the possible pitfalls in requiring that an adopted child be fully informed about their birth parents, but it isn’t just the child who is affected by the choices and public policies made on this issue.

3

These are actually two unrelated points. I believe that children should ALWAYS know that they are adopted. There was no time in my life that I am aware of when I didn’t know. Being told as though it is some big revelation is, I think, damaging to children, because it make them feel lied to (not because of an actual lie, but because it is natural to assume your life is as it appears to be), and therefore is destablingizing to the feelings of belonging in one’s family.

Whether or not this has anything to do with the right to know your birth parents, I am not sure. As a child, I’m not sure most adoptive kids think much about it (the idea is pretty abstract at this age). As a teen or an adult, if it is really important to them, maybe they do.

I don’t mean to contradict you, but I’m not sure that you know how you would feel if you were adopted. Many, many adopted people feel no urge whatsoever to know their birth parents. Adopted people grow up with a different frame of reference about adoption, and about what it means to be a family. You may very well be in the group of people who feel the need to have a blood connection, but unless you have actually been in the shoes of an adopted person, you don’t really know what it is like, or how you would feel…you only know what you THINK it is like. I find that most non-adopted people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of “blood.” You may be surprised to know that adopted people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, either! It’s kind of irrelevant, in most significant ways. (Of course, if I needed a kidney transplant, it might become a lot more relevant pretty quickly!)

Of course, I agree with you here. Really, if there are “rights” involved here, I certainly think that knowing a simple fact such as this would be one of them.

The way I think of it, and I am being totally honest here, is that my parents (my real parents who raised me) have the right to feel secure in the family that they loved and nurtured. I should no more give them cause to feel unappreciated or unloved as either of their “natural” children (there are 2 of each of use in the family), since the job of parent was no different for the adopted kids vs. the natural.

4

I’m put off by the use of the word “right” in such arguments in general. Anyway, for practical reasons, I’d at least try to convince birth parents that providing a certain compilation of facts about themselves, well short of their actual identity, if they do not wish to share that, would be helpful to their child for a variety of reasons. To offer one specific example, a thorough medical history requires some information about heritable health risks, and that can only be gotten if the birth parent makes their own medical history available.

5

No, I do not.

The whole family health history is a crock, if you ask me. Most people have no idea of specific health histories in their family, or if it applies to them. In addition, most adoptions happen when the birth parents are young, and most genetic health issues aren’t a factor yet.

And the “I would want to know my birth parents and why they gave me up for adoption, I think it’s mentally healthy to know these things.”

Well, ok, if your mom was a European princess who was impregnated by the charming and handsome prince from a feuding country, who tragically died in childbirth. Not so mentally healthy when you find out that your mom was a $2.00 crack whore who would on occasion sleep with her brother.

Should you know if your were adopted? Yes. Should you have an ongoing relationship with your birth parents, an “open adoption?” Not so sure about that.

My story–My unmarried mother had me when she was 24, my birth father supposedly died in Vietnam about 3 weeks after I was born. The story was she was banished from his family because of grief, etc. About 4 years later she married the guy who became my father, and adopted me, legally. But a man with the same last name, different first name, signed off his parental rights during the adoption, supposedly it was my birth father’s brother, who happened to be married the entire time. Now this guy is still alive, and living in AZ, I did a search on him about 10 years ago. I have never contacted him. I’m not so sure I’d like the answers about something that happened 38 years ago. My mother died about 15 years ago, so no answers there. Is it an overwhelming yearning in my life to know of my origins? No, I am an adult, and there wouldn’t be much benefit to knowing what the truth actually is, it’d have no major impact on my life, (unless the uncle/father is rich, rich, rich and terminal. And I have never liked blood money, so that’s out.) By the way my mother handled the entire situation, I think there is more to the story, and it’s probably not pretty.

Sometimes it is better not to know. I think in many, many, many cases of adoption this rule applies.

6

You seem to insist that A) risk assessment from pedigree hasn’t improved and won’t continue to, and B) the discrete sharing of records must cease once the adoption is finalized.

7

Give my a specific example of where health history would be an overwhelming advantage. Not trying to be argumentitive, looking for specific afflictions that would prove your case for knowledge.

8

Breast cancer.

9

Oh, for the Hell of it: Cystic Fibrosis, Huntington’s Disease, Tay-Sachs, ALS, hemophilia A & B, PKU, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and at least a couple dozen more are worthy of some consideration, and will become more amenable to interventions in the future, especially if caught in a timely fashion. Of course, one could simply screen a baby for every one of these allelic variants to determine if they are afflicted, a carrier, or completely negative, but that’s not how it’s normally done, and it will be prohibitively expensive for most for the forseable future. One can only employ the services of a genetic counselor to narrow the list if one has information to be counseled on.

10

My son, given up for adoption, found me as a consequence of having testicular cancer at the age of 22. Apparently the court felt that knowing if there was any history of this in his birth family might be significant in his treatment, and gave up the identifying information along with the non-identifying information.

However, I myself was adopted–so this turned out to be not very helpful. Also finding me took him 10 years, by which time he was completely cured, no remission, perfectly healthy. So, really, he just wanted to know, and the medical data was a good excuse.

11

http://www.breastcancer.org/genetics_breast_cancer.html

“Women diagnosed with breast cancer who have an abnormal BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene often have a family history of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or both. But it’s also important to remember that most women with breast cancer have no family history of the disease.”

Bolding mine.

Go to regular checkups, do a self examination every month, get mammograms after a certain age.

Yes, I have heard of a few women who have had double mastectomies prophylactically because of near relatives incidences of breast cancer, but those are a rarity. I tend to believe that the vast majority of women would not choose to do that, even if their family was rife with breast cancer. So, they’d do self exams, do regular checkups, and get mammograms. Just like every other women with no family history should.

12

My mother’s family has an extensive history of cancer. My grandfather died of liver cancer, my grandmother of breast cancer, two of her sisters also of breast cancer, the only other sister of ovarian cancer…my grandmother’s parents also both died of cancer, as did some of her great-grandparents and assorted aunts/uncles and great aunts/uncles. It gets quite a reaction from doctors when they take my family health history.

Knowing this family history, I can either a. choose to minimize my exposure to things such as smoking and hormonal birth controls which studies are currently debating the risks associated with them and cancer. Or b. ignore the possibilities that these things could be more harmful to me than a lot of other women. The point is that it’s my at (least somewhat, given current scientific inconclusiveness) informed choice because I know what’s happened in the past.

I think that an adopted child should have access to as much as their family’s medical history as is possible at the time of their adoption. If the parents don’t know much, that put the kid in the same boat as a lot of people, but an effort should be made to do a medical history in any case.

As for the right to know their parents, no. It’s nice when they do get to, but it isn’t something that ought to be a right. I fear that if it was mandated into law it could lead to more women choosing to abort because they don’t want to be tracked down.

13

Are you saying that because heritable disease is rare there’s no point in recommending passing medical histories along? I disagree. Lots of risks are unlikely to afflict any particular person, but that doesn’t make one irresponsible to try to take some measure of precaution against, them, and family history provides one of the easiest and most-cost effective ways to do so. Again, without it, you’re just casting about wildly to get at the info. that’s relevant to you. With the history, you’re likely to not be better off, but you’re certainly not going to be worse off, and the parent needn’t make personal contact to share it. I really don’t see the harm, and the potential benefits, though presently unlikely to be realized, could be of crucial importance in the future.

14

You know, Loopy, we could go on forever sifting through genetic diseases debating on the merits of family history. I don’t think it’s that much of a factor. Most of the ones you mentioned are only important if you have children with another carrier of those genes. If I was that worried I would have genetic testing with my partner before having children. Whether I knew my family health history or not.

Cystic Fibrosis- Diagnosed typically before 3 years old.
HD, I’ll agree with you there, but I am not sure I would want to know, nothing can help.
Tay-Sachs, again diagnosed typically within a few months of birth.
ALS is only 5-10% genetic—90-95% random
Hemophilia is too big of a description of blood disorders to address.
PKU is screened at every birth, and is a recessive gene, no one would know anyway.
Duchenne is also diagnosed in childhood, you’d know you have it.

I think the family health history is a straw man, and not very helpful in general. But hey, that’s me.

HD, I’ll give you, but I’m not so sure I’d want to know anyways, nothing can be done.

15

Elfkin, if you are a female, (not sure, pardon me,) considering your family history, would you have a double masectomy? That’s the only way to be sure to not get breast cancer.

Other than that, you are sitting in the same boat with the rest of us.

Shouldn’t smoke, eat crap, drink in excess, jump out of planes sans parachute, and make sure to exercise regularly.

Just like the rest of us who* don’t * know.

16

Cripes, the entire point of some genetic counseling is to determine if one is a carrier. And the impact of some genetic diseases, if caught early through a screen, can be mitigated considerably by intervention before the patient is symptomatic, because by then terrible damage may already have been done. This is just considering the indentifiable alleles. Lots of formerly ideopathic illnesses with suspected heritability will have objecive diagnostics in the future, and even relatively common conditions like type-II diabetes, for which the genetics remain obscure, still are widely recognized as having significant heritability in many cases, and good doctors are likely to implement aggressive interventions at the first sign of trouble if they feel there is an enhanced risk of developing the full-blown syndrome. The value of nearly all of this counseling is preventative, so if you wait until the disease presents and is clearly diagnosable by symptoms or the objective measures one then knows to utilize, it’s quite a bit less than optimal timing.

This is just well-established public health policy, for crying out loud. I can’t fathom why you’d call it a “straw man”, or even consider it all that debatable. I’ve cited genetic counseling as arguably the most modern example of a rapidly growing, and increasingly relevant field, but it’s news to me that the importance of family history is a serious bone of contention even without it. That the proper availability of a history is often lacking in more conventional family arrangements does not seem to me a worthy argument against recommending it be shared. Rather it ought to shed light on the need for concomitant efforts at getting those could more easily know their history to obtain it.

17

Ok, you got me off on a tangent with specific diseases, Loopy. I never said that genetic counseling is bad. I said that

“The whole family health history is a crock, if you ask me. Most people have no idea of specific health histories in their family, or if it applies to them. In addition, most adoptions happen when the birth parents are young, and most genetic health issues aren’t a factor yet.”

This was in regards to the excuse of adoptees and others who say it’s necessary to know the birth parents because of medical history. At the time of adoption, and even periodic anonymous health updates, I have no problem. (I am still not convinced of it’s overwhelming value, but it’s not a bad thing to have.) I think it is a straw man when adoptees say, “I went looking for you because I was concerned about my health.”

You might be able to make the case of mandating that all couples, before having children, must have genetic counseling, but boy oh boy, is that a can of worms, and another debate for another day.

18

Oh, and just as an aside, my husband’s father at 78 years old, smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, worked a very stressful job, and is at *least * 40 pounds overweight on his 6’5 frame. He’s been doing it for at least 50 years. So, knowing my husband’s family history, is he ok in smoking, drinking, stress and gluttony? Because he should be immune genetically, at least by one generation’s example. Somehow I don’t think that’s the response you’re looking for when you or the Surgeon General advocate family health history.

So, in summary, don’t smoke, don’t eat crappy food, don’t jump out of airplanes without a parachute, and exercise regularly. No matter what your genetics are.

19

Well, if you re-read my first post, you’ll note I said I am uncomfortable with the application of “right” to this subject, but as a matter of policy I’d advocate, at bare minimum, the sharing of whatever potentially useful medical historical info. is available, for the sake of the child. I can see no reason why the state of being adopted makes a child less worthy somehow of having the opportunity to access such information. To the extent I could in a free society, I’d advocate the discrete disclosure of parental medical history in the same way most public health recommendations are advocated. I’m not for legal mandates forcing the relinquishing parent to disclose any information.

20

Ok, we agree, Loopy.