All of the adopted children I’ve ever known were well aware that they were adopted. All of the parents I’ve known who have adopted children have made the kids aware since Day One that they’re adopted.
Was there a time in American (or if you want to expand it to your own country if you’re not American) history when adoptive parents were specifically encouraged (by their clergy, by pediatricians, by their elders, what have you) to NOT tell kids that they’re adopted? Or was it just Not Done?
ANECDOTE: I read the Slate advice columns because I love reading about other people’s problems, and one letter writer said that she and her husband adopted their daughter as an infant and were waiting for “the right time” to talk to her about it. “The right time” never came and now she’s like 21(!) and the letter was like “I know we dropped the ball pretty eggregiously on this…” The columnist was like, “Wow, you guys dropped the ball pretty eggregiously on this…”
I don’t know if it was official advice, but I know it wasn’t done. There was a family in my neighborhood with adopted kids, and it was something people whispered about.
The long-standing advice for adoption agencies has been to tell kids they are adopted… here for example is some research from the 1950s.
That said, not all adoptions are through agencies, and my suspicion is that private adoptions can take place in more complicated circumstances, for example where the child is already an indirect family member. I’m not suggesting that’s a good reason, I’m just saying that the few random examples I hear of kids not being told they’re adopted seem to have some other circumstance that affected the adoptive parents’ judgment.
I have worked in child welfare for almost 30 years and cannot recall our agency ever keeping adoption a secret.
I have encountered a few occasions where private/family adoption disruptions have included some measure of subterfuge on the situation through the years.
I do know that my father had a great deal of difficulty getting his original birth certificate from his state in the 1980s, even though he was quite openly adopted by a stepfather as a tween and knew both bioparents well. The birth certificate he used to obtain passports etc. has his stepfather’s name as his birth father, despite the fact that the issuing state knows that to be false, and military records prove said stepfather was not in conception range at the appropriate time! Born 40s, adopted 50s.
We finally managed to get the original, and the adoption paperwork; by this century the process was pretty straightforward.
In cases of private adoption (not involving an agency), I think it was often NOT done at least through the 1950s. Even when it was known, it was evidently papered over (literally), so there must have been some pretty strong perceived stigma.
Case in point: my former wife’s first husband only found out that he was adopted when it inadvertently came up in conversation with a former neighbor when he was in his 30s. It’s likely that his biological mother was a distant relative who found herself pregnant and unmarried, so he was given to relatives to be raised. His birth certificate listed his adoptive parents as his biological parents.
It was apparently so important to keep this secret that when his sister sadly died of vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in her early 20s, he and his kids had genetic testing to make sure they weren’t carriers of the genetic defect, even though they weren’t actually biological siblings (a fact that he did not find out until a few years later).
A famous person who only discovered much later that he was adopted is Jack Nicholson. He was 37 years old and already famous when a journalist discovered his biological mother was the woman he was told was his older sister. He grew up being told that his biological grandmother and grandfather were his parents. His biological mother was 17 and not married when he was born. The biological grandmother and grandfather lied to everyone outside the family (and to Nicholson) because they knew that it would shame his biological mother and Nicholson if they admitted the truth.
I knew someone who found out she was adopted in her 40s when one of her children developed an illness that made no sense based on her parents ancestry. They then admitted she was adopted, and said they always intended to tell her when the time was right. Of course as time goes by there’s less and less of chance of such a right time occurring because then it has to be the right time to reveal that their child was adopted and the right time to reveal they’ve been lying to their child for years and years.
Eric Clapton has almost the same family history. Maybe that’s the reason he became so fucked up.
I have a cousin who was adopted and never knew, as far as I know. I vaguely remember being told when I was younger that she was adopted and not tell her. I haven’t spoken to her since we were kids.
I had forgotten all about this when I was talking to an aunt around 15 years ago or so, when she reminded me. My aunt insisted that said cousin never knew she was adopted. By that time, both of her adopted parents were dead. Cousin was 7 years older than I, so she would have been born in the early 50s.
I’d consider that a special case. It’s perhaps the one situation where you would be most likely not to tell. It generally involves a young, unwed mother, and often a rape. So you just don’t talk about it.
I could also see it not being told if one of your parents adopted you, because mom had you out of wedlock and/or your parent left when you were very, very young. No need to tell about the former, and no desire for you to seek after “that deadbeat.”
Those both still happen today, though. I do indeed wonder if there are situations that would seem absurd to us today.
As someone born in 1958 and later adopted, I can personally attest to the fact that a certain amount of shame was attached to the process. I always knew I was adopted because my adoptive parents didn’t even meet me until I was over 3 years old, and I have memories of foster homes and the orphanage I was in. However, my peers and their parents had a tendency to recoil a bit if I mentioned that I was adopted.
I believe that for a while the official advice was to tell your adopted kids, “you’re special - because we deliberately picked YOU to be our child.” (My parents chose me because my mother loathed babies, and it was a then-rare opportunity to adopt an older child. They were fairly honest about that.)
Later, I think the advice changed, I’m not sure exactly why - maybe because it was thought to place too big a burden on the adoptee to be branded “special”? I dunno. But I’m pretty sure that by the 1970s you were just supposed to tell your kid, but be matter-of-fact about it.
But official advice aside, I’m aware of any number of instances from decades ago when parents kept adoption hidden, regardless of what Social Services might have advised. And without that as a standard behavior, we wouldn’t have the trope of “alienated teenager doesn’t get along with family, is sure they were secretly adopted” that appears in many stories.
I adopted older daughter at birth, 31 years ago. She was born in a hospital in a not-very-progressive town. One of the nurses in the nursery asked me, very grimly, “Are you going to tell her she’s adopted?” I said, “Yes, certainly!” She became very dismayed.
I was born in 1970. It was a rural area where most of the fathers were farmers or factory workers (or both, like my father). Pretty much everyone’s ancestry was northern European. About 90% were Protestants and the other 10% were Catholic. Nobody was Jewish and nobody was Black in the school district I was in. There were some Blacks and probably some Jews in the town that was the county seat (with a population of 30 to 40 thousand), although I didn’t know any of them. A married couple who lived on a farm a mile or two down the road from our farm had one child, who was in my grade. We all knew that he was adopted and nobody made a big deal about it. There was a boy in the grade one year older than mine who told me when I asked him about the derivation of his last name that it was English. However, he said, he was adopted and his biological parents were actually of Polish ancestry. This was, as I said, unusual in my area. Again, nobody made a big deal of it. I never thought about the possibility that either of these two adoptees that I knew were born to an unmarried couple. I suppose I thought that their biological parents died or were desperately poor and wanted to have their child grow up in a better home.
Yes, according to the link I posted above, the book “The Chosen Baby” was a common tool for communicating adoption in the 50s. But it’s not surprising that went out of vogue, as it’s a weird message (but I guess maybe okay for little kids? I’m not sure).
We have two adopted children (now adults) and have been clear about our desire for kids, and how the adoptions came about. Neither has been particularly curious about it.
When my kids were growing up in New Jersey they had a lot of friends who were adopted. They all came from other countries - one Korean, two Colombian, so it was pretty obvious. I don’t know offhand of any adopted kids matching the ethnicity of the parents, but since there was zero stigma about being adopted I don’t know why it would be kept secret.
That’s just a datapoint - I’ve heard about how it was often kept a secret.
What years?
That reminds me - at the time I was adopted, it was usual to match the coloring of adoptive parents and children. The rule was ignored for me because as an older child I was considered unadoptable. I have brown eyes and both my parents’ eyes are blue - people didn’t usually notice (or if they did, they didn’t say anything) but I did once encounter a Nosy Nelson who sweetly inquired about the fact my parents were both tall and blue-eyed while I was short and brown-eyed. I could have told him why, but I decided not to clue him in. When I told my mother the story later, she laughed and said, “I’m sure he thinks I slept with the mailman.”
I knew a woman who must have been born around 1930 who not only knew she was adopted but was not shy about sharing that fact with casual acquaintances (me).