Dear Adam,
Ah, the old secrecy versus privacy question—something else I scribbled about in the margin. As Melosh explains, in her fittingly titled “Adoption Challenged” chapter, “Even as Americans have assaulted secrecy as conspiracy … we have also long defended privacy … [because] without privacy, there is no freedom.” This relates directly to the ongoing debate about open records—on one side, are activist organizations such as Bastard Nation, who consider open records a civil right. Soon after my memoir Ithaka was published in 1998, I appeared on the talk show Leeza (yes, that’s right, and I’m not ashamed to admit it) as their supposed “moderate voice of reason.” As such, I found myself caught in the crossfire between Helen Hill—the author of Oregon’s contested Measure 58, which proposed that adoptees should have access to their original (that is, “un-amended”) birth certificates—and Carol Sandusky, a rather media-hungry adoptee (profiled in People and elsewhere) who was contacted by a social worker and, despite her repeated protestations that she had no interest in her biological origins, was told harrowing details about her birth mother (stabbed while pregnant with her, et cetera). I was on the show because of my unusual position: as an adoptee—and therefore, one might assume (correctly), in favor of open records, like Hill—and as someone who had been contacted out of the blue by my birth family—and therefore, one might assume (wrongly), in favor of closed records, like Sandusky.
Interesting that Leeza Gibbons et al. didn’t invite a birth mother who was opposed to open records, instead of an adoptee like Sandusky, but maybe that was because the show’s producers couldn’t find one. This is a point that Melosh thoughtfully addresses: Adoption agencies’ and social workers’ standard argument for closed records has consistently been a case for protecting the privacy of birth mothers, who allegedly were guaranteed anonymity. However, numerous surveys have shown that the overwhelming majority of birth mothers (some claim 90 percent or more) never requested anonymity. They feel just as stymied by closed records as adoptees do and just as eager for reunion. In fact, the original purpose of closed records, in the conservative social climate of the 1950s and ‘60s, was to protect birth mothers from the stigma of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and adoptees from the stigma of illegitimacy—not to “protect” them from being found by one another.
But Sandusky’s presence on the show speaks to another question raised by Melosh, which I mentioned earlier: Do all adoptees long for reunion? If an adoptee—say, Sandusky or Melosh’s teenage son—claims to have no curiosity about his genetic background, is he simply worried that he might hurt his parents’ feelings if he expressed interest? Or is he afraid of what he might find if he searched? Angry about being relinquished? In a general state of denial? My own answer has to be no. While these are undoubtedly the reasons for some adoptees’ reluctance to search, I believe that many others genuinely aren’t interested. In my mind, people who refuse to take this position seriously, like The Primal Wound’s Nancy Newton Verrier and the folks in Melosh’s discussion group, are hypocritically going against their purported goal, by infantilizing rather than empowering (forgive the self-help speak) the adoptee.
Perhaps because she’s an adoptive mother or perhaps simply because she’s a more open-minded, sophisticated thinker, Melosh acknowledges the wide range of adoptees’ feelings on the subject of privacy and reunion: “Is it self-evident … that all [adoptees] suffer fundamental identity problems, an emptiness at the core? We have the testimony of many adopted people that this is their experience. Others, though, see their adoption as relatively insignificant; and still others experience its unknowns as a wellspring of imaginative possibility and creativity.”
For my part, though I couldn’t be more grateful for my relationship with my birth family, I can appreciate this idea of the power in the unknown, the freedom to imagine, the autonomy of the as-yet-untethered adoptee. Growing up, I certainly fell into the category of children for whom being adopted was relatively insignificant; in no way did it preoccupy my daily life. But when I happened to be in the mood, I’d fantasize about who my birth parents might be: As a little girl, I pictured fairy-tale characters of the Cinderella and Prince Charming variety; as an adolescent, I considered current celebrities like Marie Osmond and John Travolta as possibilities. But again, this was not because I was yearning for any parents, family, or reality other than the one that I’d been blessed with—not because I was some abandoned victim trying to fill a gaping void, but rather because, hello, it was fun.
Whew. So this leads us to the increasingly common practice of open adoption—where the birth mother sometimes chooses the adoptive parents herself and often continues contact or even a relationship with her child post-relinquishment. It also leads us to the growing popularity of international and transracial adoption. In these incarnations, adoption is out on the table from Day 1, raising a new set of questions: In the case of open adoption, how much involvement should the birth mother have? What if the birth mother and adoptive parents have contrasting opinions about their child’s needs? What if the child is confused by these multiple parents? And in the case of international and transracial adoption, how can adoptive parents best grapple with cultural differences—in terms of educating themselves and the child about her heritage? Or handling confused and discriminatory reactions from people outside the family, who see the child as conspicuously and fundamentally “different” from her parents?
Whatever the problems posed, these new forms of adoption represent a crucial progress toward openness and away from secrecy. Parents are no longer faced with the questions, When should we tell her? How will she react? And the child, in turn, doesn’t have to struggle with, Should I search? Will it hurt my parents’ feelings? Whom will I find?—which in my mind is all to the good. But what are your thoughts about the benefits and costs of open, international and transracial adoption, given your membership in this latest generation of adoptive parents?
All best,
Sarah
