Mr. Inskeep, thank you for this post and for your article (which I’ve read and sent onto my therapist). My story is very similar to yours. Born in Philadelphia in 1961, adopted in New Jersey. Like one of the individuals in the Atlantic piece, a doctor facilitated the adoption (as he did for my older brother; different birth parents).
Some differences: I decided to find my birth mother after giving birth in 1987; my son was the only biological relative I had, and I realized I wanted to know more. By 1990 I’d worked up the nerve to ask my parents (who raised me=my parents) to sign off on my request to unseal my birth records. In the county in which I was adopted, they could be unsealed if all three parties agreed: adoptee, birth mother, adoptive parents. To their eternal credit, they took the leap of faith and agreed. (Like your mom, there was some fear of losing me. Unfounded, it turned out.)
I met her in 1990, along with my then husband and toddler son. I also met my five half-siblings. Over the years it became clear that she had a lifelong grief about having surrendered me (about which she’d had no choice; family pressure). Meeting me did not heal it. She apologized over and over. I told her she had nothing to apologize for; I was grateful for the family who’d raised me.
She’d become pregnant in college in Maryland (where she lived her whole life). She was sent away to Wilkes-Barre for the last half of her pregnancy. The father was a Brazilian exchange student; about ten years older than my birth mother. He fled to Brazil leaving two coeds pregnant.
You probably will be deluged with stories now. Adoptees do want to know, even if we suppress that desire for years (as I did).
Thank you for bringing attention to laws whose time has passed. Everyone deserves the dignity of knowing who they are.
Thank you, Steve, for your moving story. I'm the father of a four-year-old adopted daughter who is just now starting to become aware of how she came into our lives. She is a different ethnicity than we (her two dads), and we lost contact with her birth mother over two years ago. I can already feel the emotional complexities coming down the pike. Rather than avoid thinking about them, reading stories like yours makes me feel more confident that somehow we'll navigate them as they come.
Thanks for posting on this topic. I am a birth mother whose daughter was 'scooped' by the Catholic Church in 1982. Fortunately she was able to locate me when she turned 21, but she did not receive a copy of her original birth certificate from the State of Ohio until it was recently released to her at age 41. The entire experience created lasting trauma for both of us. Based on our experiences, I also highly recommend "The Girls Who Went Away" by Ann Fessler.
Mr. Inskeep, thank you for this post and for your article (which I’ve read and sent onto my therapist). My story is very similar to yours. Born in Philadelphia in 1961, adopted in New Jersey. Like one of the individuals in the Atlantic piece, a doctor facilitated the adoption (as he did for my older brother; different birth parents).
Some differences: I decided to find my birth mother after giving birth in 1987; my son was the only biological relative I had, and I realized I wanted to know more. By 1990 I’d worked up the nerve to ask my parents (who raised me=my parents) to sign off on my request to unseal my birth records. In the county in which I was adopted, they could be unsealed if all three parties agreed: adoptee, birth mother, adoptive parents. To their eternal credit, they took the leap of faith and agreed. (Like your mom, there was some fear of losing me. Unfounded, it turned out.)
I met her in 1990, along with my then husband and toddler son. I also met my five half-siblings. Over the years it became clear that she had a lifelong grief about having surrendered me (about which she’d had no choice; family pressure). Meeting me did not heal it. She apologized over and over. I told her she had nothing to apologize for; I was grateful for the family who’d raised me.
She’d become pregnant in college in Maryland (where she lived her whole life). She was sent away to Wilkes-Barre for the last half of her pregnancy. The father was a Brazilian exchange student; about ten years older than my birth mother. He fled to Brazil leaving two coeds pregnant.
You probably will be deluged with stories now. Adoptees do want to know, even if we suppress that desire for years (as I did).
Thank you for bringing attention to laws whose time has passed. Everyone deserves the dignity of knowing who they are.
Thank you, Steve, for your moving story. I'm the father of a four-year-old adopted daughter who is just now starting to become aware of how she came into our lives. She is a different ethnicity than we (her two dads), and we lost contact with her birth mother over two years ago. I can already feel the emotional complexities coming down the pike. Rather than avoid thinking about them, reading stories like yours makes me feel more confident that somehow we'll navigate them as they come.
Thanks for this. Another excellent book on the subject is Barbara Melosh's Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674019539
And I write about adoption in secrecy during the baby-scoop era in this article:
Wilson, Robert M. 2020. “Relinquished.” GeoHumanities 6 (2): 413–23.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2373566X.2020.1803100?needAccess=true
Thanks for posting on this topic. I am a birth mother whose daughter was 'scooped' by the Catholic Church in 1982. Fortunately she was able to locate me when she turned 21, but she did not receive a copy of her original birth certificate from the State of Ohio until it was recently released to her at age 41. The entire experience created lasting trauma for both of us. Based on our experiences, I also highly recommend "The Girls Who Went Away" by Ann Fessler.