by Ann Fessler
Many of the mothers I interviewed had not searched for but, rather, were found by their surrendered child. If an adoptee is able to obtain a copy of the original birth certificate the search can be relatively simple, but access to this document varies widely from state to state. In the 1930s, states began issuing revised birth certificates when adoptions were finalized. These amended birth certificates list the adoptive parents as the mother and father who gave birth to the child. The original birth certificate, with the name of the surrendering mother, is kept on file with the state, and before World War II these original birth certificates were generally available to adoptees and often to both sets of parents. But during the postwar adoption boom, most states sealed the unamended birth certificates, making them inaccessible to all parties, in part to prevent possible interference from the natural parents.1 In the process, most states closed the records to adoptees as well. The debate about reopening these sealed records is ongoing and emotionally charged, but the trend is slowly moving toward opening them.
Currently, there are only a few states that allow adoptees born in that state unconditional access to their birth certificate when they reach a particular age, usually eighteen or twenty-one. These states are Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Oregon, and, as of January 2005, New Hampshire. Eighteen other states allow access under certain conditions, such as adoptions that took place before or after a specific date, or access with permission of the surrendering parent. The specific conditions vary considerably. In Pennsylvania, for example, records are open to adult adoptees if there is a waiver from the surrendering parent. In Ohio, records are open to adult adoptees if they were born prior to 1964, but not to adoptees born after that date. In Tennessee, adult adoptees may obtain a copy of their unamended birth certificate except in the case of rape or incest, where additional conditions apply. The remaining states, about half, require a court order.
Adoptees, mothers, and many adoptive parents have been campaigning to change the laws state by state, as have national organizations. American Adoption Congress (AAC) was formed in 1978 from many smaller organizations and is “committed to achieving changes in attitudes, policies, and legislation that will guarantee access to identifying information for all adoptees and their birth and adoptive families.”2 Bastard Nation, an adoptees’ rights organization, “advocates for the civil and human rights of adult citizens who were adopted as children.” Bastard Nation’s Web site has a full list of state disclosure laws and provides updates on pending legislation.3
Most states will now provide adoptees with nonidentifying information. Such information may include the age, physical description, race, ethnicity, religion, medical history, and level of education of the surrendering parent or parents. About a third of the states will give surrendering mothers nonidentifying information about their child, and some states will even help facilitate a reunion. The laws, services, and location of this information vary considerably, but the National Adoption Clearinghouse provides an online state-by-state listing with details about who may access information, what is available, and which agency or department to contact.4
Those who decide to search are generally categorized as either active or passive searchers. Active searchers work at locating the other person, whereas passive searchers generally limit their efforts to trying to make themselves findable. Hundreds of homegrown Internet Web sites have emerged to provide assistance, or space to post information. A quick Google search with the keywords “adoption reunion registry” will result in about 350 hits. It can be difficult to navigate through all of the information. Often those interested in a reunion join a support organization, where they can communicate with others who have conducted successful searches and who may be able to offer advice. Some mothers and adoptees try their hand at searching for a period of time and then turn to professional searchers, who can sometimes locate the missing person in as little as twenty-four hours. In some cases mothers, fathers, siblings, and adoptees pay private detectives or professional searchers considerable fees to locate a missing family member and in other cases “search angels,” or volunteer searchers, help for free.5
With the trend toward more openness in adoptions, some adoption agencies will now facilitate a reunion between the parties they originally separated. But the willingness of agencies to cooperate in this endeavor varies. Some have systems in place and will, for a fee, conduct a search and serve as intermediaries between the parties involved. Other agencies will accept letters only from mothers, keeping them on file in the event that the adult child contacts the agency seeking information. It is a long-standing practice for agencies to allow mothers to leave a letter in their child’s file and for several of the women I interviewed this later proved to be instrumental in their reunions. But this strategy has unfortunately left some mothers with a false sense of security, as in the case below.
In 1974, I wrote a letter to the agency and I said, “I want this letter put in my son’s file so when he’s twenty-one, or whatever the age is, if he wants to find me…here’s where I am.” Here’s my name, my Social Security number, and I gave them the name and address of relatives that I knew would never move. He went to the agency when he was twenty-one and the letter was not there. They never put it in there, or they chose not to give it to him. If they had given him that letter, I would have known him ten years before.
—Cathy II
Those who conduct passive searches signal an interest in being found by signing up with one of the voluntary mutual-consent registries, in addition to leaving contact information with the agency that facilitated the adoption if it still exists. Mutual-consent registries allow mothers, fathers, adoptees, and in some cases siblings, to register. Often all that is needed is the sex of the child, the birth date, place of birth, and the name of the city where the adoption took place. If all known statistics match, the parties looking for each other are contacted to determine whether a match has been made. There are independent voluntary mutual-consent registries and state-sponsored registries. A 1998 survey indicated that twenty-one states operated voluntary mutual-consent registries, though some had made very few matches, perhaps because many adoptees and parents who are interested in reunions still don’t know that the registries exist.6
Perhaps the most well-known and successful mutual-consent registries thus far have been independent registries started by those with a vested interest. Jean Paton, an adoptee and a social worker, is credited with originating the first registry and beginning the adoptees’ rights movement in 1949. Her adoptee search organization, Orphan Voyage, and her 1954 book The Adopted Break Silence were firsts of their kind.7 But it was not until the early 1970s that the registry movement in the United States took a firm hold, when Florence Fisher founded the ALMA registry. Today, the ALMA Society has a nationwide network of support groups and continues to facilitate reunions through its registry database.8 The other widely used registry is the International Soundex Reunion Registry, more commonly called Soundex. It is a free registry that was founded in 1975 by Emma May Vilardi, the daughter of an adoptee. The current director, Marri Rillera, who is both an adoptee and a surrendering mother, estimates that the registry has between 200,000 and 250,000 active registrants at any given time. Approximately 60 percent of those who have registered are adoptees, adoptive parents, or otherwise related by adoption; 40 percent are members of surrendering families, including mothers or fathers, half- or full-blooded siblings, aunts, uncles, or grandparents.9
Although registries are an important part of the search process, mutual-consent registries depend on both parties knowing that the registry exists, taking the step to register, updating contact information, and being in possession of enough information to make a match possible. Both parties seeking contact must also, of course, be aware of the adoption—which many siblings, fathers, and even some adoptees are not—and, equally evident, both must be living.
Mothers embarking on a search generally have the same fear that searching adoptees have—the fear that th
e person they are in search of may not want to be found. The majority of the women I interviewed who had not actively searched said that they desired contact but felt they did not have the right to interfere in their son’s or daughter’s life. Many of these women had, nevertheless, registered and were trying to make themselves findable should their adult child decide to look for them.
I don’t think it’s my role to look for her. I mean, I feel like I had my play and I played it and now it’s her turn to make a decision that she can live with, if you know what I mean. It’s not my privilege to say, “You need to know about me.”
I am waiting and hoping she will come and find me. I’ve tried to make myself findable. This unwed mothers’ home has turned into yet another form of social-service agency and I keep updating my file and saying, “Here’s my cell number, here’s my fax,” and asking, “Has anybody come around, do you know anything?” “No, no. No activity on your file.” So that’s depressing. I really, really want to know that she’s okay.
—Deborah
Women also worried that bringing a surrendered child back into their life might adversely affect their relationship with their husband or their subsequent children. Among the women I interviewed, only a few families had experienced difficulties with subsequent children who were not pleased with the news. The vast majority of the women had families that were accepting and children who were often eager to meet their newly discovered sibling. Some of the women recounted the healing effect of being able to introduce their surrendered child to their own mothers, who had pushed for relinquishment all those years earlier.
From the time she was eighteen, my daughter had been looking for me. By the time she found me, my mother was very sick. She had lucid days, but most of the time she was in la-la land. My daughter and I went to see my mother in the hospital, because I wanted to tell her my daughter was back and she was going to be a part of my life. I wanted her to be a part of my mother’s life, too. This particular day, my mother was lucid. She took a look at my daughter and started to cry. I said, “You know who this is, right?” And she said, “Yea. Yea. Oh, Bonnie, I’m so sorry.” And I think when she told me she was sorry I let go of all the resentment I had felt for so many years. I was so glad that my daughter got to meet her before she passed.
—Bonnie
First-person accounts of mothers who do not desire contact with the child they relinquished are much harder to gather, since these women are more reluctant to tell their story. But the mothers I interviewed who said they would not have searched—but were found by their child and who were initially very fearful of a reunion—described as the primary reason their reluctance to reveal their secret to family members and friends. They feared they might be judged harshly for their past behavior or for not being honest in the years since.
One thing that came through quite clearly in the interviews was that coming clean to family members can be extremely difficult, sometimes traumatic. It is best to have someone to lean on for emotional support, whether it’s a close friend, a partner, or a support group made up of people who are familiar with the emotional ups and downs of reunions.
I came home from work one day and there was a slip in the mailbox that said I had certified mail at the post office. I knew that it was something from Catholic Charities about my daughter. I just knew it, because there would be no other reason to have certified mail coming here. The next day I went to the post office, and it was a letter from the social worker. She told me that my daughter wanted to meet me.
I was scared to death after all these years. My husband knew, but it was just never spoken about. First I tell Catholic Charities, “I can’t have you open the records. I just can’t do it after all these years.” How can I all of a sudden have a twenty-five-year-old daughter? None of my aunts and uncles or friends or neighbors know. I’m scared to death because this has been a big secret all these years. In that era it was a shameful, dirty, nasty thing, and nobody talked about it.
I asked the social worker if I could write my daughter a letter through them, because I didn’t want to give my address. So we did that for a while. I would send a letter to Catholic Charities and they would forward it to my daughter.
Even though my husband is a wonderful person and my best friend, I’m afraid to say anything to him about this. My daughter and I write back and forth; I send her a picture and she sends me a picture. She’s a grown woman with children of her own, but in my mind I see the baby in the pink blanket.
For one year, I didn’t say anything to my husband about the letter that came. Then one Saturday I went to church and I just lost it. I started crying and I cried all the way home. By the time I opened the door to the house, I was shaking like a leaf, tears were streaming down, and my face was all red. I couldn’t stop the tears. I said to my husband, “I have to tell you something.” After a year, I just couldn’t keep this secret anymore. I mean, a thirty-year secret was enough. Now I have a one-year secret, too.
I told my husband that my daughter had found me and she wants to meet me. After I got that out, it was like the Hoover Dam burst. I was hysterical. I couldn’t stop crying or shaking. I told him that he has no idea how hard it’s been, because once I saw her in the hospital I didn’t want to give her up.
By now he’s dealing with a complete lunatic. I’m crying, sobbing hysterically, shaking. He didn’t know what to do with me. I think he thought I was on the verge of a breakdown. I said, “I already told her that I can’t all of a sudden have a grown daughter in my life. I just can’t do that.” He said, “You have to meet her and you have to let her be a part of your life if she wants to be. Why should you be without her now when you’ve already had to be without her for thirty years?” He said, “Things are different now. You’re not a teenager who has to do what she’s told. Don’t worry about what anybody says. Who really cares?” He said, “Call whoever it is you have to call, your aunts, everybody, and tell them that you had a baby that you gave up for adoption and you’re going to be reunited. If they can’t deal with that, it’s their problem.”
I was so afraid, I probably wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for my husband. I still had in my head that it was very shameful, that I would be disrespecting my parents by telling my big secret thirty years later. So I wrote my daughter a letter. I wrote, “I have told my husband, we talked about it, and I want to meet you. I want you to meet my family, your aunt and uncle, your cousins, and I can’t wait to see my grandchildren.”
We knew we couldn’t meet at a restaurant or any place where there would be people, because we would both be hysterical and crying. So we met in a parking lot. We hugged, we cried, we blew our noses, we held hands and then we cried some more. When I was able to drive the car without wrapping us both around a pole, we came to my house, sat on the couch, held hands, and cried some more. From the first day that we got together, it was like she belonged in this house. I never felt awkward or uncomfortable with her.
After I came home from the hospital, I said a prayer every night. And at the end, I would ask God to take care of my baby. God answered my prayers, because she wound up with the most wonderful parents. Her father was not a doctor, like Catholic Charities told me. It was better. He was a music teacher. All of the children played instruments. They sang in the church choir, there is a piano in the house, violins, everything was music. She has the best family I could have ever hoped for. There was so much love in that house; there was enough love for five children and enough for me and my husband when we walked in the door.
—Karen II
I have three sons and I couldn’t see telling them, “You’ve got a sister somewhere.” I wanted to wait until I found her. I had shared with my husband, but not with my sons. So I called the three boys in. They were five, fifteen, and eighteen. I was terrified: “What are my boys going to think about me? They’re going to think I’m a slut and a whore and everything.” I’d been called that. I was just weeping openly; it was all I could do to tell them. After I told
them, my oldest grabbed the youngest and he was just jumping up and down and he said, “We’ve got a sister! We’ve got a sister!” And the youngest said, “What’s a sister?” And the middle one said, “It’s like a brother, only it’s a girl.”
—Pollie
Often mothers not only had to tell immediate family members or subsequent children about the baby who had been relinquished but, at the request of their child, they also had to locate and inform the father. In some cases, they had not had contact for more than thirty years and in a few instances the man never knew of the child’s existence.
After the reunion, my daughter wanted information about her father and I had none to give her. I had a yearbook picture of him, which I gave her. This was the most horrific thing I’d had to go through in the reunion. I mean, it was easier to find her than to have to find him. I sat down at my computer and I tried to compose this letter to her father. I said to my husband, “Imagine this is you and you’re getting this letter, what do you want to hear?” He said, “I want to hear that you don’t expect anything from me, because I don’t know if I can give you anything. I certainly don’t want to hear anything about financial issues, and I don’t want to hear that you need anything from me.” So that’s the kind of letter I wrote.
I wrote, “You may not remember that much about me but I can tell you that you were the only person that I had sex with for a period of several months and you are the father of my child.” I tried to fill him in a little bit about who I was and that she was interested in her family history and did not expect or want anything from him other than information, if he felt that he could give it. I gave him her name and phone number and he contacted her within a few weeks. He’s actually been lovely about the whole thing.