I don’t like being conflicted. I love it when things are clearcut, but there are some things in life that I’m just not sure about. Adoption has added a lot of gray to my world- a place that I prefer to be black and white. Birth family relationships have definitely been one of those areas where I’ve had to learn to live with a certain level of tension, never entirely sure how to feel or if I’m handling things right. It’s always a balance of wanting my kids to have access to people and information that may be important in their life, a desire to be sure my kids’ birthparents know they did the right thing, and wanting my kids to have privacy and the ability to have normalcy in their life. Because these things are important to me, I have tried to have open relationships with my kids’ birth families as much as it is safe and agreeable to everybody involved.
So what made me get all adoption angsty recently? Random Facebook photo shares.
Did you see that heartwarming story back in the end of January about a woman who found her birthparents by posting some basic info about her birth and her birthparents on Facebook? The photo went viral and eventually she was connected with her birth family and it seems to be a happy ending. I honestly loved the story. She genuinely wanted to find them and had run out of options. They seemed genuinely happy to be found.
I am an advocate for an adoptees rights to their original birth certificate. Factual information about their history should belong to them. You shouldn’t have to petition the government for the right to view your own information. I know this is an oversimplification, but I want you to understand that I don’t have a problem with open adoption or with people having access to their personal information. I have seen this recent utilization of Facebook to help adoptees find their birth family when other routes have failed to be a positive development.
And then I saw other Facebook photos floating around.
There were birthparents looking for the children they placed for adoption. That started to feel a little weird to me. Maybe it wasn’t “weird”. . . it just started to feel a little too personal. Hopefully my kids will always have access to their birth family if they want it, but what if they didn’t? What if there were legitimate safety concerns? What if they had been hurt by their birth family and had decided they wanted that door closed? Is it now okay for a couple hundred thousand people to share a photo with their birth history written on it? Would you feel okay about that for your child?
But still, I was justifying it. What if their child is looking for them, too? Don’t they have a right to know their child is okay? If I think the child should have access to their original birth certificate, does the birth parent have a right to know exactly where that child is now?
Then I had to draw the line. The picture was of a grandma saying she was 93 and wanted to find her grandson. She listed his birthdate and said “his adopted parents named him” and then listed a name. It just bothered me. It bothered me a lot.
I don’t feel I owe every member of my child’s birth family (no matter how distantly related or unsupportive they may have been of the adoption) an explanation on where we are and what we’ve been doing when they decide they want to be involved. It doesn’t seem like a recipe for a good relationship connection if their way of getting the information they want is to share a photo with a hundred thousand people listing my child’s name and birthdate. I’m sympathetic that this grandma wants to know what happened to her relative (if this is legit), but is this the most respectful way to try and obtain that information? Does my child have an obligation to keep every last relative filled in on the details of their life regardless of their feelings about their adoption or birth parents? In this situation by posting the child’s legal name along with their birthdate it just feels like a violation of their personal information. Maybe this person doesn’t talk about their adoption, but now here it is being shared with thousands of strangers. The stated goal is that information will be found and passed along back to the birth family, but I think it’s entirely possible that adult (who was once an adopted child) doesn’t have a desire to have that personal information shared around the internet.
I noticed in this picture the adopted individual was born in 1968, but what if we were talking about a minor? This just opens the door for so many complicated stories and the potential for hurt in the lives of people we’ve never met. I also felt strange about the wording of the poster. “His adopted parents named him”. . . what if she’d just said, “His parents named him”? What assumptions would we make? I wonder if we wouldn’t be as quick to share that picture if we thought they’d been separated for reasons other than adoption.
As a culture we love the idea of a happy adoption reunion. Even if you’re supportive of adoption, you may love the idea that this woman who made a noble choice for her child now can have a beautiful relationship years down the road. We have a desire to want to facilitate the happy ending we can just imagine on the other side. Except adoption reunions aren’t always happy. Some adult adoptees don’t want to be found. Some birthparents had the adoptions closed for a reason. Even under the best of circumstances, who of us would be thrilled to have such a private decision about our lives made public on such a grand scale without our consent?
Obviously we can’t control what other people do, but we do control what we choose to pass along. It may not be a great idea to share every photo that says it’s centered around an adoption reunion.
Adoption involves sacrifice. There are losses on all sides. I’m just not sure if the loss here is the loss of privacy for adopted individuals and birth families or the loss of connection that happens when you aren’t able to grow up with your biological family members. Really, I’m conflicted. I want the happy reunion stories too and my heart breaks for families that want to find each other and have run out of options in the usual channels. I hope my children are never in the position of having to post a picture to try and make contact. And I hope if you see a picture of someone hunting for a relative, imagine for a moment how you might feel if this was personal information about your child before you pass it along.
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