This letter in Slate is about a 40 year old woman who goes looking for her bio-mother, finds her and the bio-mom is horrified at being discovered and wants nothing to do with her. The adopted woman then basically threatens her bio-mom with exposure if she doesn’t give up the bio-dad info.
The most rankling thing in all of this is that the adopted woman is the one that takes on a tone of being wronged by the terrified bio-mom. I think the adopted daughter has a highly developed sense of entitlement that she can run roughshod over people’s lives.
How far should the rights of the adopted extend in going after their bio parents information?
I don’t think ‘bio children’ and ‘bio parents’ have any inherent rights at all toward one another following adoption. The whole point of adoption is to replace the default relationship.
The desire to know where we came from is primal. Was the adoptee in this instance a jerk? Yep. That can be primal too. Life has consequences, and one of the consequences of having babies is that they might come looking for you one day. Or every day. That is what restraining orders are for.
Adopted people have no absolutely no right to information about or to contact their bio parents. And the reverse is true as well. Not even for purposes of medical history.
My adoption records are sealed (thanks, 1970’s!), back when I think they all were. If I needed a kidney or something, I could get them unsealed by court order but that’s it. I’m totally fine with that, and I think open adoptions might have their place, but I think the majority of adoptions should still be private and need considerable doing to open them. My adoptive parents know the name of the bio-mom and if I asked for it in order to track her down and circumvent the courts, it’s been offered. I have no desire whatsoever.
I see this attitude from other adopted kids all the time. I can’t figure out whether it’s something wrong with me or them. My adoptive mom is my mother through and through as far as I’m concerned and nothing can or will change that. I have never had any desire to track down my bio-mom, she was a surrogate in my eyes and that’s it. I also never had my adoptive status sprung on me - my parents told me from before I really understood what it meant and has always just been part of the fabric of my life from the beginning. Maybe it’s different for people who were told later.
So, with all that said, yes, the adopted woman in the OP is a total, ungrateful, bitch, stupid asshole. She will never get whatever satisfaction/connection she thinks she’s after, because whatever’s wrong with her life is inside her and finding her bio-parents and pursuing other biological family will never fix it.
It’s funny how these adopted people never seem to mention their adoptive families when talking about finding their biological ones. Myself, I can’t imagine pushing my adoptive family away like that. I don’t even really think of it until the subject comes up through someone else and don’t understand the adopted people who seem weirdly obsessed about having a second family just because they share genes. If I suddenly had the need to pursue finding a parent, and did the certified letter thing with no reply, that would be that. What giant balls this woman has to then push the issue with a phone call and threats. OMG what an asshole.
I think parents should absolutely have the legal right to anonymously give up their children for adoption, insofar as the government will not keep any records of the parent’s identity, if they request it. It’s vital to remove possible motives for abortion and infanticide.
But at the same time, I don’t think a child thus given up is doing anything immoral if he grows up and wants to try to find his parents by extraordinary means. It might be highly unrealistic for him to expect his parents to desire a loving relationship with him, yes, but nonetheless he does have an inherent link with them that the legal act of adoption is incapable of destroying, and he’s not doing anything inherently wrong by being curious about it. The parents and the government or adoption agency might be bound to secrecy by the contract of adoption, but it’s a bit ridiculous to say someone who was an infant at the time of the contract should be bound by it as well.
I think she was in the clear to seek, and to ask for a relationship, and completely out of line to persist when she was told “no”. And blackmail? That’s beyond the pale.
+1
Adopted kid here too - in the 70s as well. All the above is the same for me.
Once in a blue moon, when I actually see a doctor or something, I get asked about family health history. Knowing that would be nice, and it could be done with privacy kept in tact - but no standard method for obtaining that info exists that I’m aware of.
When you’re so self-centered that you think blackmail is an acceptable method to get medical history info, you probably don’t give a shit about how your bio mom actually conceived you. :smack:
Agreed, and the birth mother has every right to say no. Adopted child is a total bitch in that letter…she sends a letter twice, calls, and when the bio mom is 100% clear she doesn’t want any more contact, she then threatens to out her and INSISTS that she has a right to relations with her family. NO, you don’t.
I definitely did read it that way. In fact, throwing in the tidbit that only the brother, mother, and father of the mother knew made my incest alarms immediately go off.
You have a right to know about genetic history that might affect you or your children during a lifetime - but we’re fast approaching a point where you can test a person’s genome directly rather than relying on medical history.
You have a right to ask for a relationship.
You do not have a right to have a relationship with your bio-family. (This even applies to non-adopted people, as people who grow up in their bio-family might disown some or all of them or vice versa.)
I’ve known adopted people who apparently never wanted to seek out their bio-families. I’ve known adopted people who were obsessed with it.
I’ve known people who gave up a baby who would love to be reunited with him or her. I’ve known people who would be horrified if their given-for-adoption child came back. Yes, rape is one of the circumstances where that might apply but there are probably others.
I’ll all in favor of a database where parties on both sides of the adoption could register their desire to meet, and when both sides agree a meeting could be arranged. I can’t get behind a situation where the adopted child’s desire to meet with bioparents trumps the desire of bioparents to not meet them, as the bioparents might have good reason to not desire that.
Not to mention the awkwardness when a child is conceived by something like stranger-rape or, in the case of someone I know, during an exacerbation of mental illness, where the woman can’t identify the father because, really, she doesn’t know.
She has every right to know, but the way she went about it was all wrong. Terrifying your biological mother won’t get you anywhere. The two letters a year apart were fine, but the exposure comments were totally out of line.
There was a lot of shame involved in getting pregnant out of wedlock back in the day, and this woman has lived with a lie of omission for all these years. It was common for only immediate family to know, and incest is extremely unlikely. That’s just how it was handled. Your parents knew, and sometimes a sibling or two.
If the biological mother was raped, she should have told the letter writer. It would have put a quick stop to the inquiries about her biological father. Since she didn’t, I’m guessing it’s because he used her and dumped her and she has even more shame attached to that.
I think the letter writer should back off from the biological mother entirely and search for her biological father for some answers.
I think medical history should be given up when you put a child up for adoption. That’s the only thing I think a person has a right to, and that can be gained through third party intermediaries. (You don’t actually have to meet the person)
Prudence’s advice, as usual, is full of shit. Bio-relatives don’t have a right, either way. Blood isn’t thicker than water.