Yeah. I’d have half the responsibility of ensuring the child has a good start in the world.
Marc
Sure, they make those decisions all the time. And there are many other decisions that, as a society, we don’t allow them to make. I’m not so sure that refusing to allow an adoptee to know even the name (which would make registry matching easier- there might be any number of women who gave birth to a boy on a particular date in NYC and surrendered him, but probably only one Helen Schmidlapp who did so),or not providing at least some mechanism through the agency to forward a letter is one of the decisions that should be allowed.
**
I think it was obvious that my statement was not cruel. If it was only cruel because of your adoptive status, and I didn’t single you or anyone else out to begin with, then I think perhaps your definition of cruel is a bit odd.
**
I can see your point of view and I do have a little empathy. But unless they want to contact you I don’t think you have a right to get to know your adoptive parents.
**
That’s not exactly true. If you live a life with a balanced diet, get enough exercise, and get regular check ups you’ll probably be ok. Your need for medical information does not entitle you to private information about your adoptive parents. And I’m not saying this to be cruel.
**
There’s more people involved then the adoptee. Let’s consider the people who gave the child up for adoption. They took the effort to find you a home perhaps they don’t want someone to disrupt their lives 20+ years after the fact.
**
I’m not an expert but I think I have a pretty good grasp on the subject. I have sympathy for you adoptees who can’t find their biological parents but I don’t think you’re entitled to find them.
**
I see where you’re coming from. I’m not just dismissing your feelings because I’m a cold hearted bastard. I just don’t see how your desire to be a part of a friendship means that you have a right to know. If a birth parent and the adopted both want contact then I’m all for it. Otherwise I’m not.
Marc
OMFG…You will not believe this.
I called the woman that handled the intermediary for me and my birth-mom. About two months ago, my birth-mother contacted her about wanting contact with me…OMG, I am sitting here shaking like a leaf. Out of joy and out of being afraid.
My intermediary is no longer in the program but suggested I call the service and let them know that I spoke with her and that my birth-mother wanted to contact me. That she gave her (my birth-mother) the information with which to contact the service etc…She said that if they give me a hard time to call her back.
OMG, this is just bizarre.
Techs Mex, thank you, thank you thank you for starting this thread. Bringing up all the pain and such that I have felt, only to find out that my birth-mother has attempted to contact me makes me feel better. Thanks again. OMG, I can’t believe this.
So for those of you calling me a stalker, please eat your damn words.
Techchick, this is a reminder.
Strong opinions and personal attacks are NOT what IMHO is about. Others, who might have different experiences, values, or feelings than yours have just as much a right to post their opinions here as you do. The thread title was not “Adopted kids ARE obliged to search for their biological parents!!”, after all. From now on in IMHO, try to respect the opinions of others, o.k.?
Techchick! This is wonderful news!!
I was going to write and suggest you find out if the intermediary was able to pass on a letter from you to your birth mom. Your posts touched and saddened me, and I thought if you could express the same feelings to your birth mom through a letter, she may reconsider her decision not to meet you. I’m overjoyed that she came to this point on her own, without needed you to prompt her.
I wish you all the best meeting your birth mother for the first time. Your postings here give me the feeling that you think the two of you will walk into a room strangers, and walk out family. If it goes like that, wonderful, but don’t go in expecting this to happen. A relationship is something that takes a while to build, and both of you are sure to be very nervous about the first meeting. There is a distance of 32 years between you - go softly, you both need to get to know each other. The mother you’ve read about, thought about and dreamed about may be nothing like the real person - don’t be disappointed if reality doesn’t meet your expectations.
If possible, start slowly. Letters exchanging your history, photographs, phone calls. I hope this goes well for you, and fills that void you feel in your life. I hope you’ll let us know how this progresses.
All the very best
cazzle
Czarcasm,
Sorry about that. I will do my best to hold my tongue when I am frustrated over other’s comments. It’s so hard sometimes when something so emotional is brought up.
Canby, the answer is YES. She does, and not just on your birthday. Rarely a day goes by that she doesn’t think about you.
She wonders how you did in school. If you went to college. If you’ve got a good job. If you’re married. If you’ve got kids of your own. But most of all, she wonders if you’re happy, because that’s probably all she really wanted for you when she relinquished you.
I’m a birthmother. So is my mother–I have an older sister that my mom relinquished before I was born. I have an open adoption, so I am lucky enough to know my daughter (got an email from her this afternoon, and IM’d with her adoptive mom just a few hours ago, in fact). My mother had a closed adoption. But one thing my mom and I have in common is that we always wonder what’s going on in our childrens’ lives. Every day, I think about my daughter. And every spring, from 1966 to 1988, the year my mother was reunited with my sister, my mother would suffer from crushing depressions. My mother’s wounds began to heal after she met my sister, and knew, really knew for certain, that my sister was okay, and happy.
Now this is just wishful thinking, and perhaps a bit irresponsible.
What is correct to say here, Persephone, is that your mother felt that way, and (if I am understanding correctly that you have also given a child for adoption) you feel that way.
We see all around us every day evidence that parents are able to go days or weeks or years without thinking of children that were kept. It may be nice to think that somewhere out there is a stranger thinking good thoughts about you every day, but to perpetuate the myth that there is some inherent bond between a parent and their bio-child only makes it that much more unlikely that a reunion (if one happens) will live up to expectations.
The stalker comparisons are no less valid now. Hinckley would still be a stalker if Jodie Foster decided tomorrow she wanted to meet him. But I agree that the comparison might have been a bit inflammatory, it’s just that it seemed so…obvious. Seriously, you should try looking at your self from the POV of those who disagree with you, i.e. your birth mother.
Techchick, I think you just attach way more importance to line-of-descent than I do. I mentioned three personal connections to adoption I have, that of my grandmother and one of my best friends being adopted, and that one of my loved ones (close, but I’m leery about saying more about her) put up a child for adoption. I’m a lot closer to the latter two but you fixed on my grandmother (who, BTW, was not a bastard, she was the 9th child of a poor family around the turn of the century who made a sacrifice to ensure a better life for her).
I do wish you the best and hope your meeting with your birth-mother goes well, though I’m afraid your expectations may be too high. I’m not against adopted children meeting their birth-parents. I even think they should have the right to some basic information about their parents when it is available, primarily for medical reasons, but I understand some people have interest in their ancestry (though with the increase in places that allow anonymous baby dropoffs this information will become rarer). I just don’t think people should be forced to meet people they don’t want to, nor do I think information that was intended to be kept private when given should be released to those it was intended to be hidden from. The right to privacy and the right to associate with who we wish are important to me.
Just a quick reply today.
I am adopted and I really couldn’t care less who my birth parents were. Of course, medical reasons would make me want to looks, but I’d do so only if utterly neccessary. For whatever reason, they gave me up and I’m perfectly happy where I am. Well, besides the prick of a father who has been a thorn in my side for over 17 years now…
No one should be asked to look for anything they have no desire to find. My husband is adopted and has zero interest in any bilogical contributors to his existance. His parents, as far as he is concerned, are the people who raised him not the folks who contributed the genetic material. We have discussed this at length - he says if some biological calls looking for him he just might ask a few questions but he has no interest in a meeting or establishing a ‘relationship’. Personally, though my heart goes out to techchick (and other adoptees like her) and her obviously raw emotion regarding this issue, I think my husband’s attitude is far healthier. I honestly do not think either end of the adoption has the right to intrude on the other’s lives - intermediaries are a pretty good idea, but if the answer is no then it is no.
When we have discussed the possibility of adoption for ourselves, we have almost decided catagorically against domestic adoption entirely since the adoptive parents seem to have damn few rights anymore when bios can sue for custody seemingly at anytime even after all the legalities are supposed to have been addressed. How is that good for the kids?
obfusciatrist:
When it comes to the issue of adoption, I do not speak without knowing what I’m saying. I do not perpetuate myths. I do not promote wishful thinking. This is an issue that is far too near and dear to my heart for me to do so.
IRL and here on the Net, I have met literally hundreds of birthparents, and they all have said the same things as I said to Canby. It’s not just me and my mom. If it were, I most certainly would have phrased it as such.
One of the biggest (and most heinous) myths about adoption is that birthparents forget. They do not. Not ever. No woman forgets pregnancy. No woman forgets labor. No woman who has been delivered of a child, and goes home with no baby (be it due to adoption or death), forgets that. It is indeed possible to go for stretches without thinking about it, but it will hit you in the head again. This does not mean that a reunion is desired. It doesn’t even mean that there is a bond. What it does mean, as I said in my first post, is that the child is thought about.
Something I didn’t mention in my first post is that I am also an adoptee, reunited with my birthfather in 1991 (raised by my biological mother, adopted by my dad when I was two). My reunion with my birthfather was successful, in that we both learned that the other was happy, and we’d thought of each other often. We’re not as close as we were at first, but physical distance (he’s in Florida and I’m in Michigan) didn’t allow us to really maintain a close relationship. Life also took a lot of turns for both of us. We certainly don’t hate each other–we’re just not close. I’m glad I’ve met him, though. Damn glad.
Reunion isn’t always positive. I can hope that techchick* has a good reunion, and I do wish for it with all my heart and soul. But I would be an absolute idiot to tell her or anyone else that she will have a good reunion. Most of the reunited people I’ve spoken to have experiences similar to mine in the long run–it’s okay. You meet, you share the stories of your lives…and then you keep living. Hopefully you’ll maintain a healthy relationship, with continued positive contact. But it doesn’t always work that way. I know that.
Hope I’ve explained myself a little better. 
You DON’T have the right though. If you impregnated a woman and she wanted to keep that secret from you, nobody has an obligation to tell you.
There’s a difference between rights we have and rights we’d LIKE to have. I’d LIKE to have the right to smoke the buds of a certain plant in the privacy of my own home, but I don’t have that right.
**
Yeah I suppose you’re correct. After all she doesn’t have to tell anyone who the father is assuming she was even sure. However if that child has a right to part of my income, which just about every court in the nation would agree on, then I’ll argue that I should have a right to know if I sire a child.
Marc
A few minutes ago I started a post to reply to Badtz and I am glad I waited…it was long (go figure) and I will state, I agree whole heartedly with Marc on this.
A man should know especially if he may be required at any later date to know, to pay child support or any if any other legal ramifications of a child being brought in the world will fall upon him. Also, he does have the right to know if the woman is going to give birth and should have the option of taking on the responsibility of raising the child if he so chooses.
In a time where we expect men to take more roles in raising children I believe that a woman who chooses to carry a child to term should let her bedmate/SO/one night stand know he is about to be a father…this also brings up subjects not related to this thread, aka a GD thread, but if she carries a child to term he has a right to know. If he raped her then he should know and be forced to pay the mother or adoptive parents child support above and beyond a standard amount…then that’s another GD thread waiting to happen.
I agree wholeheartedly that if someone is to be responsible for a child, that person has the right to know who the child is. That’s common sense. I just don’t think that people who put their children up for adoption should be held responsible in any way to said children. For oen thing, I see it as a pretty fundamental human right - if you want nothing to do with a person that you have given up and/or satisified all obligations to, you should not be forced to have any contact with that person, whether you are related or not. There are also practical reasons why parents should not have any legal obligations towards the children they have put up for adoption - if someone is pregnant with a child they don’t want, and they have two choices of how to deal with it, one which will leave them with zero responsibility towards their offspring (abortion, because the offspring will cease to exist) and one that will leave them some responsibility, some will choose the former who might not have otherwise. As I said before, I’m all pro-choice, but I see abortion as a necessary evil in many cases.
This is why I really like that many places in Europe allow newborn infants to be dropped off with no questions asked, and I hope this becomes more common over here in the U.S.A. It’s definitely not good that there are mothers who are willing to do anything to hide the fact that they are mothers, and I think as a society we should do what we can to reduce their numbers, but I don’t see the problem disappearing in the near future, and I’d rather these babies end up never knowing who their mother is than end up dead in a trashcan somewhere. It’s not encouraging these kinds of pregnancies, a woman (or girl) who would rather abandon her baby than go to a hospital and do the paperwork to have it adopted wasn’t thinking about the consequences of a possible pregnancy when they got knocked up.
Hey Techie!
I hope your reunion goes well.
I am a reunited adoptee. I met my bio mom, Joy, through an online registry in 1998 and then we hired an intermediary to confirm the match by examining the records. We have met and vacationed together a couple times - I had a great experience meeting her family.
I had always resembled my adoptive family pretty closely - or so I thought - but being in a house with these people - realizing that my bio-grandmother (who in her 70’s still stands at 6’0") and I have the same nose - that Joy and I not only look startling alike, but have similar voices and laugh alike as well. It was really creepy - in a good way. Going hot-tubbing with my bio-aunts and seeing various examples of a very familiar body - mine! The little mannerisms - like the way a person squinches up their face at something they don’t like, the odd sense of humor, how much my daughter resembles her cousins! I could on and on. Additionally, they are really INTO the family tree thing - in one weekend I got all of the background I could handle - Back almost 600 years - crazy, man. They made fun of me because I took notes the whole time I was there so I’d be able to remember it all - but if I hadn’t - it was so overwhelming that a lot of the experience would have been lost.
Then there was the bad news: Diabetes (both types), Arthritis, a whole array of “female” cancers that struck early in lives of Joy and my aunts, weird degenerative diseases that aren’t lupus, clinical depression, alcoholism and addiction problems, obesity, weak kidneys. I became quite a hypochondriac for several weeks. I scheduled lots of doctor appointments and disclosed all the medical history I had never been able to include before.
Joy and I have grown to have a closer relationship than either of us ever imagined possible despite the fact that we live in different states. We have another visit planned in about 2 weeks. I will be in her ceremony of commitment to her lover this coming June.
The only thing about the entire experience of meeting Joy that hasn’t been positive is that my older brother, the one with whom I was closest, does not understand. He had always opposed me registering or seeking her out at all - and the day I told him we had found each other - he cursed me and said that meant he wasn’t my brother any more. He hasn’t spoken to me since. I call and leave him 3 messages a week on his voice mail - relentlessly - without fail. Is that stalking?
No one is forcing anyone. In my case, I contacted my birthmother after a good length of time. At the time she declined, well, again thanks to this thread and me contacting my intermediary because of it, she apparently has changed her mind after three years of mulling it over. That’s the funny thing about humans, we change our mind when we can work through it in a different way. Initially it was a shocker to her but then she worked through it and apparently she chooses to make that step and get to know me. I don’t mean this is typical but it’s a sign that we all have a right to at least seek and find out…and pray that things change if the initial outcome doesn’t go our way.
Also, there is no real responsibility when a birth parent gives up a child for adoption, the responsibility relies upon the adoptive parents to give and create a loving and caring home. However, I do believe that birth parents need to have some understanding that some of us “kids” will be curious and have the need to know where we come from. As I kind of stated before, my rights as an adoptive child didn’t end the moment the doctor carried me away to social services. I have rights too. My rights don’t become less because of someone 19 years older than me decides them, especially when I turn 18. It goes both ways. We all have rights and if her/their rights supercede my rights we are on a slippery slope.
I am appalled that anyone would think it’s okay to drop off a child with no questions asked. I think a woman/girl needs counseling when dealing with such a circumstance. She will be scarred for life by her actions. The act of abandonment is not a natural instinct in most animals. Being the fact we are humans, we are more affected by doing things out of the norm because of our brains and how we think.
What ticks me off about adoption, as related before, is the fact that we are bastards, we are looked upon as “throwaways” in the eyes of many who are not directly adopted or a birth parent. We need to change the idea of adoption and help people realize that the act of giving birth should not end the relationship. Birth parents and adoptive parents should be encouraged to work together to raise the child, I truly believe this. Times have changed, this isn’t the 1950s where the thought of sex before marriage was so looked down upon, this is the year 2001. We need to get our heads out of the sand and realize that a child’s needs are just as important as the adult who is in the predicament. Obviously if a woman is wacked out on drugs, in circumstances where it might harm her, her baby and the adoptive parents, then I believe the ties should be minimal. But I honestly believe, not just for the adoptive kid but for the triad as a whole to have a relationship if at all possible.
A painful reminder are those we can’t confront. I have my own painful reminder of something I can’t confront, something I wish never happened in my life. For my current circumstances it possibly was the best decision I ever made, it also was the worst decision I ever made. I have dreams, thoughts and prayers for that decision. You can draw your own conclusions as to what that decision was but it weighs on my mind, sometimes, very heavily. So in that light I am more understanding of a birthmother than you might think.
Commander Dear, I am so sorry your brother has reacted this way. I am thankful in that my older brother is somewhat supportive even though he doesn’t comprehend my need to know where I come from. He’s almost kind of indifferent but knows that I have this need to seek my roots and have explained to him that he knows his roots, he has a lot of the answers to the mannerisms, the smile, the eyes, the bird legs he has, etc. He can look at his children and see parts of his family, something I may not ever be able to do, however I have chosen not to have kids so that’s a different story I guess.
Personally, that’s not stalking in my eyes. He has taken the low road and taken in some weird way a sense of abandoning your family because you decided to meet your birth family.
People need to remember, our adoptive families also fit into our lives differently. We can connect, many of us, some of us can’t, some of us need just a little more even though our adoptive families are more dear to us than our own lives. It doesn’t matter to me. It especially hits me even more strange when step-families enter the picture. If we aren’t connected somehow, then we are just individuals that walk the Earth waiting to die…weird thought but it’s how I see it.
From my perspective our bio families and our adoptive families and the families we have in our lives because of divorce are more intermingled that some people care to see.
If your brother can’t see that, I will have my little, non-religious prayer for you in hopes that he comes around. You didn’t do anything wrong but be an adoptive child who wanted to seek out your roots. He sees it differently but hopefully he will come around. Oddly enough about the same amount of time it took for my birth mother to contact my intermediary…